It’s not every day that you get a reflection on life, religion, and spirituality from a professor of computer science. Frankly, you might expect him to launch into a tirade on his favorite programming language. But David Gelernter is certainly no ordinary tech guru. When Gelernter sat down for his front page interview with Evan R. Goldstein for The Chronicle Review, Goldstein highlighted that Gelernter “occupies a unique spot in American intellectual life, at the intersection of technology, art, politics, and religion.”

The interview was timed to the publication of Judaism: A Way of Being, in which Gelernter tries to answer the “easy” question: What is Judaism really about? Of course, there is no simple answer, but the book attempts “to lay out a ‘common Judaism,’ a Judaism whose beauties and animating principles can be recognized and (with qualifications) agreed to by all. From there, the book explores the role of images in Judaism, questions of Jewish philosophical thinking, family and life, and finally, beauty and truth in Judaism.

But this is not a book intended for an expert; rather, Gelernter intends to present his interpretation of Judaism to everyone, certainly those who know the least about it. The book is also illustrated with Gelernter’s own paintings, which are actually a thematic series and titled after important Hebrew words and phrases (the one to the left is Ha’Mavdil, “who distinguishes/separates”); these themes, he writes, “are presented in this book just as they present themselves to practicing Jews: visually; as mental images.”