Rabbi Pini Dunner of Beverly Hills has a great eye for a story, as those of us who enjoyed his book, Mavericks, Mystics and False Messiahs, will know. Hearts & Minds is a collection of Dunner’s previously published short insights on the weekly Torah reading (divrei Torah), each one woven around a news item or current theme, with one or two take-home points of Torah.

As with his previous book, there is a lightness of touch, but you still come away having learnt something, not only about the theme and parashah in question, but Rabbi Dunner’s state of mind. He is refreshingly forthright in his opinions.

His dvar Torah for Parashat Beha’alotecha, for example, berates American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her statement that the United States “is running concentration camps on our southern border”. Dunner recognises that not everyone can be expected to understand Jewish post-Holocaust sensitivities. But what worries him is that Ocasio-Cortez not only failed to apologise but tried to justify her language by reference to the US treatment of Japanese internees during World War Two.

In Beha’alotecha, God became angry with Miriam and Aaron when they spoke behind Moses’s back. Dunner sees a link. Miriam, like Ocasio-Cortez, compounded her wrong by refusing to admit her guilt. This format is applied throughout.

So, in Parashat Naso, Dunner discusses Menashe, the 2017 film, which portrays the life of a Charedi family in Borough Park, New York. The parashah describes the identical sacrifices brought by each of the Israelite tribes. Dunner sees the film, like the parashah, as teaching that regardless of our backgrounds, we are basically all the same.

Dunner later sees Moses’s wrong-headed attempt to pacify Korach as showing why Trump’s approach to King Jong-un of Korea was wrong. Yes, this collection will date, but in the meantime, provides a nice lesson on how to make Torah relatable in micro-bites.