This is not a book for beginners. If you want an introduction to Jewish prayer, see "Entering Jewish Prayer" (Reuven Hammer) or "To Pray As a Jew" (Hayim Halevy Donin). This book is, in contrast, is the most thorough academic study of the Jewish liturgy ever written. Originally published in German in 1913, and subsequently updated in a number of Hebrew editions, the latest edition now has been translated into English by Prof. Raymond P. Scheindlin. This study covers the entire range of Jewish liturgical development, beginning with the early cornerstones of the siddur; through the evolution of the medieval piyyut tradition; to modern prayerbook reform in Germany and the United States.

The only problem is that it doesn't deal with the liturgy of Conservative Judaism. To learn more about that one should consult the introduction to "Siddur Sim Shalom", edited by Jules Harlow, and the introduction to "Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat and festivals", edited by Leonard Cahan, and the section on liturgy in the CD-ROM version of the "Encyclopedia Judaica".

This book serves as an excellent outline of Jewish History. If there is a time period you are not familiar with, this book will illuminate using the Jews as narators. An accurate, reliable telling, which can be used by the reader as a launching point for further study on a wide range of historical events and personalities.

The author gives his personal English rendition for the story of Job. He stays away from the literal translation of the Hebrew text. The book is an easy to read and easy to understand poem. Included are a few informative notes that I injoyed reading. I would liked to have seen the book include the Hebrew text in a linear fashion, so it would be easy to know when the author took poetical license in his translation.

The author, Rabbi Scheindlin, provides clear and informative notes with an easy to understand text. Though it is traditon to consider Job as a fictional character, the notes fairly state that the name is found in "ancient Semitic inscriptions" which possibly makes Job the oldest story of an historical character in the Bible. Older than Abraham by one hundred years. In my reading, I see Job as a rival for the label "first Jew".

I would have liked to see a convenient access to the complete Hebrew text in an appendix.

201 Arabic Verbs offers precisely what it says: 201 Arabic verbs fully conjugated. Conjugating verbs in semitic languages is not a simple task because there are many structures and those have many exceptions, so right there, a book that lists fully conjugated verbs is a useful thing. This book, however, is a failure because it doesn't live up to what it could have been and because it was initially poorly thought out. Let me explain:

First off, as a project, the book was poorly done:

- There is no index of the verbs conjugated in the book, so the only way to see whether a verb is there is to look it up.

- The verbs were chosen from a list of words compiled in 1940. The verbs do not represent the most useful verbs the author could have chosen from each of the verb structures in Arabic.

- The organisation of the book is alphabetical rather than by the type of structure (fa'ala, naf'al, etc). Of course, the lack of an index makes this organisation nessary but this is a poor design choice.

- Examples of usage would have been nice.

But beyond these technical points, the basic idea of a list of 201 conjugated Arabic verbs is of limited use. If the point was JUST to give the student an example of conjugating different kinds of verbs, then fine, but this is a very humble task. This book could have been INFINITELY more useful had it given exactly ONE example of a fully conjugated verb from EACH verb category, and then contained a HUGE list of thousands of verbs and a reference to their respective category and page number... that way, rather than compiling a mindless and mind-numbing repetition of similar conjugations, the book could have covered all verb structures AND several thousand verbs all within the same space! The title would then have to be changed to something like 50001 Arabic Verbs Fully Conjugated in all the Forms and it would still be about the same size. Such a book would be of immense value to beginners and experienced students alike.

I was dissapointed with this book because I was expecting the verbs to be written in Arabic (which they are) but also that the verbs be written as they are pronounced in English. This book is not usefull to people who do not know how to read in Arabic.

In high school I studied French and found the 501 French Verbs to be one of the best books around because it conjugated all of these verbs in every form, then gave sample sentences showing various usages of the verb. It also featured a long list in the back of thousands of other verbs that conjugated just like another verb already in the book and gave the page number.

So, when I found 201 Arabic Verbs I was very excited, then a bit disappointed. This book has selected the 201 most common verb forms, though not the most common verbs, and has conjugated them. There are no sample sentences and there is no larger list at the back of the book. It is because it is not as comprehensive as the other 201/501 Verb books that I have only given this book 3 stars.

On the other hand, though, the authors selected every common verb form, including the defective and hollow verbs, and DOES have an index of conjugation forms, indicating which page that form is on. So, once you have a verb you want to conjugate, you will probably be able to find one that conjugates just like it.

A superb complement to 201 Arabic Verbs is "The Concise Arabic-English Lexicon of Verbs in Context" (available here on Amazon). This book features close to a thousand verbs in their most common forms, including a sample sentence. This is especially helpful in differentiating the different "measures". It does not, however, show conjugations. These two books, therefore, work very well together to match the power of the other 501/201 Verb books.

If you are a serious student of Arabic, 201 Arabic Verbs is a must-have!