Books like Worldmask

Let me begin this review with a reminder: Rabbi Akiva Tatz is brilliant. He is a wonderful author: his books are genuinely deep and meaningful. He explains difficult topics in a very clear way. I recommend you all his books (as a side note: he tends to repeat and even copy-past entire chapters in different books, so be aware).Worldmask is excellent. A brilliant introduction to many of the most complex issues of a Torah-Judaism (i.e. Orthodox Judaism) perspective. As the author explicitly says at the Acknowledgments, almost the whole book derives from Rabbi Moshe Shapira and Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler lessons. So if you liked this book, yo should run to read Michtav MeElyahu (Strive for Truth! in the English edition) and Akifei Mayim.The first chapter is arguably the most polemical so I will focus on this one. In a nutshell, Tatz says the following: the Torah is the source of reality. And Torah means not only the written text but fundamentally the heart and mind of Torah scholars (i.e Gedolei Hador). In fact, the only reason why pig is treif is because Rabbi Kanievsky says so. If he says the opposite ("pig is kosher"), then magically the pig changes his anatomy to adequate to the psak halacha of the venerable Rabbi. This is weird (to say the least) and the fact that Tatz specifies that this applies only to few individuals doesn't help to dissolve the weirdness of the concept. And then we have another problem: in chapter 7, Tatz explains that any word that appears in the Torah is the source of a thing in reality. The conclusion is simple: if a word doesn't appear in the Torah, it's an ilussion. It doesn't exist for real. Examples? Adventure, romance, etiquette, entertainment, doubt and nature. Of course, writes Tatz, we feel they are real so the Sages coined words like "Safek" (doubt), "Vadai" (certain) and "Teva" (nature) but, in fact, are non-existent entities. But wait, you just wrote at chapter 1 that Torah scholars create reality! So if the Sages coined these words, then now the corresponding entity exists in reality. It doesn't matter whether it was originally part of the Creation or not. In fact, according to the logic of chapter 1, that's precisely the meaning of the statement "Lo Bashamayim hi" ("Torah isn't in heaven"). Leaving this (apparently) straight-forward contradiction, Tatz's approach (which, if I'm not mistaken, is taken from Rabbi Shapira) means that "sword", "Sun" or "famine" are real, while "Pluto", "galaxy", "llama" or "television" are inexistent. So yes, Worldmask is absolutely amazing and mind-blowing. But don't forget the pitfalls and flaws. And more importantly, don't think this is the only Torah approach to this world and life. So please, read the books of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi David Hartman or Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (to put a few accessible examples) and then extract your own conclusions.