Torah Anthology - Pirkei Avot – Ethics of the Fathers - Me'am Loez

Avot is the one Talmudic tract that explores the very root of Judaism. As in the case of most Talmudic tracts, every word here is charged with meaning, and innumerable scholars have struggled to understand the full meaning of the text. It is therefore not surprising that over 200 commentaries have been written on Avot. Of all the many commentaries written on Avot, perhaps the clearest is that written some 200 hundred years ago by Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso as part of the famed Me'Am Lo'ez series. Rather than burden the reader with many obscure and often contradictory explanations, the author immediately ferrets out the root meaning of the text, and presents it in a clear, unambiguous language. Tales, parables, and ethical discussions round out this text to produce a clear and highly readable book. It can be safley said that no other book explains text of Avot as lucidly. Translated from the Ladino to English by David N. Barocas, edited into a contemporary idiom by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, it explains the text extremely lucidly.