On the book that has most influenced me, I think it is probably David Daube's "Collaboration with Tyranny," a short monograph I read when I was a rabbinical student. It discusses in great detail how people should behave when an enemy forces them to do something immoral, such as choosing which of their number to hand over so that they can be killed.
It begs all the terrible moral questions about collaboration. It shows that religious Jews have been thinking about these issues since Roman times and before. It absolutely forbids us saying to ourselves or anyone else that this is too difficult and we cannot tackle such questions. It made me realize that to try and ascertain what God wants of us, we have to be prepared to do some real hard thinking and studying. We cannot just wait for inspiration.
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