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My brother was only five years old // Adonai
our mother taught him // to love You
that You // would not let him stumble //
would not let him fall
Out of the horror of the abyss, the narrow places of his family's history, Menachem Rosensaft has written a Book of Psalms that laments, accuses, rages, weeps and yet, somehow, still addresses God. The son of two Auschwitz survivors, Rosensaft imagines the voice of his older brother, Benjamin, who perished in the gas chambers before Menachem was born. His 150 psalms are masterful recreations of the original texts, turning praise into dirges, festivals into mourning - until subtly suggesting a hint of comfort through the mere fact of their existence.
A legal scholar by trade, the author has published multiple works that combine memoir, poetry and Holocaust remembrances. In these pages, responding to all 150 Psalms individually, the author balances his mastery of Jewish theology with a raw writing style that is unafraid to question, lash out at and lament God's seeming passivity in the face of evil. ... A haunting reimagining of the Book of Psalms.
-Kirkus Reviews
These searching, unflinching new psalms express an agonizing crisis of faith as Rosensaft, like the original psalmist, addresses his god directly, but in agony and expecting silence in response. ... The hauntingly sparse poetic style is as contemporary as the key question is ancient: How could a compassionate god permit the chosen people to face such darkness? ... Searing lamentations on divine silence and abandonment during Holocaust.
-Booklife
Like the Book of Psalms of the Bible, Menachem Rosensaft's psalms speak for our souls. With a gift for expressing even the most hidden thoughts and feelings, his psalms give voice to the horrors and trauma that haunt children of Holocaust victims and survivors. Burning Psalms is one of the most powerful Jewish expressions of our day.
-Susannah Heschel, PhD., Eli M. Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
In every generation, the Biblical Psalms have provided humanity with a theological lexicon for the challenges and opportunities that come with standing in God's presence. In this extraordinary volume, Menachem Rosensaft - poet, advocate for humanity and child of Holocaust survivors - has recast the sacred poetry of the past into a vade mecum for those presently seeking meaning in the extended shadow of the Shoah. Faithful both to the text and the burning questions that sit on our broken hearts, Rosensaft has elegantly and audaciously provided his readers a pathway to pursue justice, find comfort and continue to seek beauty in this world.
-Rabbi Elliot J. Cosgrove, Ph.D., Senior Rabbi, Park Avenue Synagogue; author, For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today
Menachem Rosensaft's evocative, heartfelt work is among of the most informed and gut-wrenching attempts to understand belief and comfort in the Divine in the shadow of the Holocaust. More than that, it is a strong and compelling reminder that understanding the Shoah and its legacies requires knowledge of the history and openness to the psychological and emotional resonance of such immense loss. Rosensaft accomplishes both with remarkable skill, helping us all to understand and to speak the 'unvarnished painful truth' (Burning Psalm 78) of the Shoah and its relevance to our lives today.
-Robert J. Williams, PhD., Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation; UNESCO Chair on Antisemitism and Holocaust Research
Siddur HaKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook is a Jewish prayerbook with a myriad of possibilities for connecting with the Source of Life. In Siddur HaKohanot, find creative and traditional Jewish rituals and prayers that explore an earth-honoring, feminine-honoring spirituality with deep roots in Jewish tradition. Siddur HaKohanot includes morning, afternoon, and evening services for weekdays, Shabbat and holidays that balance traditional liturgy and creative language and readings.
Siddur HaKohanot primarily uses feminine-gendered Hebrew God-language, and also includes non-binary and masculine language. Names for Goddess/Goddexx/God change throughout the siddur as the prayers unfold. This reflections devotion to the Shechinah in Her many guises, and a commitment to the paths through which She is embodied. The siddur also reflects a deep spiritual connection to the four elements / four worlds of Jewish tradition. Siddur HaKohanot is created for people of all genders who wish to honor the Divine feminine.
Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken ancient Jewish mystical text and transformed it into a contemporary guide for meditative practice. In Return to the Place, Rabbi Hammer guides the reader through the story of creation as the ancient text of the Sefer Yetzirah draws readers in and invites them to become participants in the book's vibrant incantations, bringing the Creator's sacred energy into the world.
The Sefer Yetzirah is a creation story like none other, describing the creation of the world in cryptic, mystical, poetic text. Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken a fresh look at this text that scholars believe goes back to the sixth century CE, embracing this text with healing intention.
Through guided meditations at each step along the way, Rabbi Hammer allows readers to dig deeply into the text to experience the potential power of these ancient writings. Hammer builds a thought-provoking bridge from the past to the present-translating the text and focusing on its key aspects to give readers a relevant focus for contemplation.
Advance Praise
Sefer Yetzirah has been called the foundational text of Jewish mysticism, but despite many scholarly attempts to explain it, readers still find its language baffling and its message indecipherable. Now Rabbi Jill Hammer has clarified the text for us all. Without ruining its mystery, she reveals its cosmic vision of 'space, time, and body-soul.' Beyond this, she has created a new-ancient meditative practice based on this mystical masterpiece. Her superb achievement is a gift for all of us
-Dr. Daniel Matt,
author of The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism
A tour de force -at once scholarly, whimsical, deeply poetic, and eminently accessible. Hammer combines translation, commentary, and meditations with her uniquely seasoned sensibility, one that balances feminine and masculine, sensual and philosophical.
-Rabbi Tirzah Firestone,
author of The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women's Wisdom
Rabbi Hammer, one of the most original religious guides of our time, opens up for us a text that has fascinated mystics and philosophers for more than a millennium - and yet has remained deeply mysterious. Return to the Place shows us that the Sefer Yetzirah is a 'doorway into the deep structure of creation'-with the power to transform the cosmos as well as each person's most intimate experience.
-Dr. Nathaniel Berman,
author of Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar
Like its subject, the mysterious Book of Creation, Return to the Place brilliantly defies categorization. It is a detailed commentary, a bold spirit-guide, and a valuable work of scholarship. It is both audacious and perspicacious. And no one could have written it but Rabbi Dr. Jill Hammer.
-Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson,
author of Everything is God:
The Radical Path of Non-Dual Judaism
Advance Praise for Weaving Prayer
Few discussions of the Jewish prayer book carefully separate their historical, literary, and inspirational commentaries. Hoffman's offering, drawn from years of teaching liturgy in rabbinic seminaries and serving congregations, offers an accessible inter-denominational perspective on American Jews' Ashkenazi heritage, both summarizing traditional and academic scholarship and addressing contemporary spiritual needs.
-Rabbi Ruth Langer, Professor of Jewish Studies, Boston College. Author, Jewish Liturgy: A Guide to Research.
Jeffrey Hoffman is one of the few scholars specializing in the history and significance of Jewish prayer-and he is a good one. He is, equally, a superb teacher of his subject. His work thus combines academic credibility and lucid presentation; and this book will make a significant addition to anyone's library.
-Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Professor Emeritus of Liturgy Worship and Ritual, Hebrew Union College, NY. Author, Beyond the Text: a Holistic Approach to Liturgy.
This engaging and erudite volume transforms the prayer experience. Not only is it of considerable intellectual interest to learn the history of prayers-how, when, and why they were composed-but this new knowledge will significantly help a person pray with intention (kavvanah). I plan to keep this volume right next to my siddur.
-Rabbi Judith Hauptman, Professor (emerita) of Talmud and Rabbinic Culture, Jewish Theological Seminary. Author, The Stories They Tell: Halakhic Anecdotes in the Babylonian Talmud.
The inclusion of both a scholarly and spiritual commentary is a bringing together of two worlds often thought distant from one another. This book should appeal equally to those already familiar with Jewish prayer and to beginners. Difficult concepts are explained in accessible language and the footnotes provide valuable additions for those ready to go deeper. Rabbi Hoffman has provided a valuable addition to the literature on liturgy.
-Rabbi Daniel Siegel, editor of ALEPH's Siddur Kol Koreh project.
Weaving Prayer is a gift to the modern Jew-regardless of denomination or affiliation-seeking to find their place in the siddur and in the act of tefillah (prayer). Through Rabbi Dr. Hoffman's keen eye for literary structure and his expansive soul that humbly articulates the values and challenges of prayer today, this book illuminates and inspires. As much a resource for study as a companion to keep in hand in worship, Weaving Prayer is a much-needed contribution to our synagogues, schools, and homes.
-Rav Steven Exler, Senior Rabbi at Hebrew Institute of Riverdale-The Bayit.
Rabbi Jeffrey Hoffman was ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary where he also received his Doctorate of Hebrew Letters in Liturgy. He spent 23 years serving as a congregational rabbi in Vancouver, B.C. and Upper Nyack, NY. He is the editor of Siddur Tisha B'Av published by The Rabbinical Assembly and has published widely. He has taught at The Academy for Jewish Religion (pluralistic) for many years, and also at The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative), Hebrew Union College-NY (Reform), and the Aleph Ordination Program (Renewal), and has served as a guest lecturer at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Orthodox).
After nearly half a century of studying and teaching major works of modern Jewish religious thought, Arnold Eisen has written a personal theological essay remarkable for its honesty, accessibility, and insight.
Like many Jewish theologians before him, Eisen is resigned to the fact that there is little mere mortals can know about God's nature. His focus is rather the search for the hiding God, the meaning of fleeting encounters with the Creator, and the acts of justice and compassion that human beings are called to perform as God's partners, in God's name.
The book's three chapters meet contemporary Jews of all persuasions, and non-Jews interested in Judaism, at the points where they are most likely to experience Jewish ritual and tradition: a Passover Seder, with its them e of past and future redemption; the Yom Kippur liturgy that guides worshippers through the difficult work of atonement, forgiveness and return; and the day-to-day responsibilities, personal and communal, of covenant, mitzvah and love.
Seeking the Hiding God is a rich, original, and moving work that invites readers to join the author in asking, perhaps for the first time, what they actually believe about ultimate matters of faith and doubt - and rewards fellow- searchers for ultimate meaning with reassurance that the search itself can be a source of personal fulfillment, vibrant community, and great joy.
How can we make our study of Torah not only interesting, but truly transformative in our own lives?
In this volume of original essays on the weekly Torah portion, Rabbi Josh Feigelson guides readers on a journey that weaves together Torah, Talmud, Hasidic masters, and a diverse array of writers, poets, musicians, and thinkers.
Each essay includes questions for reflection and suggestions for practices to help turn study into more mindful, intentional living.
Whether you are new to studying Torah or have been studying it for a lifetime, whether you engage with it on your own, with a study partner, or in a study group, Eternal Questions will help you feel more at home in Jewish life and in your own life.
Torah as a guide to personal growth
Following the framework of the ancient tradition of weekly Torah reading, Shefa Gold shows us how to find blessing, challenge and the opportunity for spiritual transformation in each portion of Torah. An inspiring guide to exploring the landscape of Scripture... and recognizing that landscape as the story of your life.
Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land promises to turn the year-long cycle of Torah reading into a journey of personal spiritual growth. The first book by Rabbi Shefa Gold, the popular teacher of chant and meditation, Torah Journeys is designed to be meaningful for those at any spiritual level.
Shefa Gold is renowned in Jewish Renewal circles and beyond for her teachings, particularly in the realms of chanting, meditation, and connecting to the sacred. She received rabbinical ordinations from both the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Salomi.
In Torah Journeys, Rabbi Gold reveals a blessing and a challenge hidden in each weekly Torah portion, based on her principle that the Torah is happening now, and that its stories - from the Creation in Genesis through the death of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy - are about each individual's life journey.
Drawing from her spiritual search as an adept in an array of practices, Rabbi Gold offers transformative practices for each week, ranging from meditation to visualization to chant.
Torah Journeys is the fruit of the religious journey of an engaging teacher with an impressive grasp of the texts and liturgy. Having experienced other traditions inspired Rabbi Gold to search out similar tools in Judaism to expand consciousness, become fully human and know God Rabbi Gold shares with us her insightful approach to Bible study and personal growth. The result is poetry for the soul.
Torah Journeys is a book that is not merely about Jewish Renewal, but in fact, gives the reader tools to do it.
A classic of Jewish spiritual renewal.
Step into the vivid, unsettled, and sometimes lonely life of the poet Rosa Nevadoska. With a strong foundation in Jewish and Russian education, her deep intellectual hunger pulled her from her native Bialystok toward studies in Ghent, Brussels, Berlin, and Paris. Ultimately, during the time between the wars, she immigrated to the United States.
Nevadovska's first publications were in Russian. Then came her Yiddish works. Here, in So Many Warm Words, in English translation as well as the original Yiddish, you can see the world through her eyes, in poignant, at times heartbreaking, images. Walk with her through indelible scenes of quiet despair. Share her wonder at the mysteries of night and silence.
Nevadoska writes, No thing is silent./ Everything possesses a voice. The immediacy of these poems will transport you as she shares the voices of city, mountain and sea; of joy, sorrow and yearning.
With Shaken to My Bones, Brian Rohr has crafted an astonishing set of parsha poems, a multilayered midrash, questioning the text, challenging God, while still embracing love and the earth. As a maggid, a storyteller in the finest sense of the Jewish tradition, he weaves together elements of Torah into a new tapestry, creating a personal, ancient yet contemporary and magical work.
If you think you have read enough poetry books inspired by the weekly parsha, you might have to think again- but only after reading this one. Turn it and turn it again! In Brian Rohr's exquisite poems, wonders unfold: a star traverses the sky before there is a sky or even stars at all, and a covenant is taken from the sky and made into a knife for circumcision. Crisp lines like 'It is solstice and warmth is a distant memory, like fresh plums picked from the neighbor's tree' augment the wonder of the book. The author, also, never leaves behind a reader. Instead, Rohr manages to weave readers into poems of biblical reflection, by telling us, for instance, of 'Twelve sons, each with a complicated past like your own complicated past' and calling for the cities of refuge from the Torah, but for the persecuted of our times. So, yes, we are taken along on a journey both ancient and immediate - one that is rewarding beyond comparison.
-Baruch November, author of Bar Mitzvah Dreams
Like all good poetry, Brian Rohr's book stirs more questions than it gives answers. And like all Torah, it seeds more questions than it sprouts answers. Munch on the harvest!
-Rabbi Arthur Waskow, founder/director of The Shalom Center and author of many books including the Freedom Seder, Seasons of Our Joy, Dancing in God's Earthquake, and Down-to-Earth Judaism
Brian Rohr's Shaken To My Bones honors the biblical ancestors by engaging in the dance of interpretation. The poet explores the books of the Torah with a clear sense of the pathos of the patriarchs of Genesis and their descendants, sensitively giving voice to dilemmas, wonders, and sorrows. For Rohr, the entry into sacred text is a process of widening the self, like 'surrendering to some great river, whose destination is unknown.' And yet, there is also a sense of the poignant gulf between a contemporary life and these culture-shaping myths; as the poet writes: 'How am I to understand the instructions they left me when so much has happened and so much has changed?' It might be that Shaken To My Bones will inspire the reader to engage in some midrash-making of their own.
-Rabbi Jill Hammer, author of Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women and The Jewish Book of Days
In the passed-out light of night
when body
melts into flesh
letters break out of us
& gaps are fired into the poem.
Take a Breath catapults you right into the frenzy spiral of Yakir Ben-Moshe's dating life. Against the backdrop of violence, war, and trauma that has always permeated Israeli society and shaped the personal as well as the political discourse, the round dance of lovers entering and exiting and re-entering the poet's life takes on a timeless quality. The passionate vows and furious arguments between Ben-Moshe and his girlfriends, their break-ups and lovemaking in sweltering and noisy Tel Aviv are both a respite from and a mirror of the upheaval and breathlessness of day-to-day life in a country whose citizens constantly expect the unexpected. Their longing for simplicity, their solitude and clamoring for attention, their wit, self-doubt and cynicism all become tangible in Dan Alter's brilliant, playful, and vibrant translation.
About the Author
Yakir Ben-Moshe, an Israeli poet of Iraqi descent, won the Prime Minister's Prize for Literature in 2012. He has published five books of poetry and one of children's literature. His poems have been translated into English, Russian, Greek, Chinese and Turkish. He lives with his wife and children in Tel Aviv, where he is the Director of the Bialik House, as well as a teacher of creative writing.
About the Translator
Dan Alter's poems, translations and reviews have been published widely; his first collection My Little Book of Exiles won the Poetry Prize for the 2022 Cowan Writer's Awards. Hills Full of Holes, his second collection, will be published by Fernwood Press in 2025. He lives with his wife and daughter in Berkeley where he works at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.
it's the Sabbath ... // and my own child is sifting sand from sand on a summer morning //
so indescribably beautiful you can't help but grieve
The preciousness and resilience of Judaism lies within the effort of its adherents to hold both beauty and grief, even when the latter seems overpowering. And overpowering it has been time and again for the family of Jews around the world; for every individual family trying to make it through a silent dark of healing. The poems in Phil Terman's anthology delicately balance between the universalist and particular, between shtetl and suburbia, tenderness and tacheles, between unspoken names and those lovingly recorded. Most of all, these stellar and masterfully crafted poems are a testament to continuation against the backdrop of loss; a poetic Yizkor, an inventory of Jewish life.
Poetry is a commentary on life, on the human longing to find shelter in a space where the spiritual and the physical, the holy and the profane meet. For thousands of years, the exploration of text, of words, of what was not said between the lines has been a creative and meaning-making outlet for Jewish scholars and artists. Tikva Hecht inscribes herself into this tradition, adding her distinct and honest voice, inquisitive, meditative, enchanting.
if you have an idea of god
it is not god
god negates your idea.
So begins this book of heretical prayers, Dharma aphorisms, neo-Hasidic koans, and unorthodox blessings for unexpected occasions. Is asks the question of what it means to live as a human in a world infused by the sacred, the profane, and the magical.
Written over a ten year period, and completed in the mourning period after the death of the author's mother, The Gate of Tears is not a self-help book. If anything, it is a self-helpless book, discovering a happiness deeper than transitory joys that emerges precisely when the resistance to sadness is released. As the contemporary Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das says in his foreword to the book, the only thing that prevents happiness is searching for it.
The Gate of Tears draws on Jay Michaelson's fifteen years as a student, and now a teacher, of Buddhist and Jewish contemplative paths. Michaelson is a rabbi, and holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought, and has taught Jewish mysticism in and outside the academic world. Yet he is also a longtime teacher of insight meditation in Western Buddhist and secular mindfulness contexts, who has sat many months-long silent meditation retreats. With his usual blend of erudition and accessibility, Michaelson weaves together Hasidic tales and Dharma teachings, Leonard Cohen and Langston Hughes.The Gate of Tears is not a New Age book with easy answers; it is infused with a contemporary sensibility, skepticism, and humor.
All of us, if we are to be fully human, experience pain. The Gate of Tears is about how the embrace of that experience ennobles, empowers, and liberates us.
Advance Praise
Jay Michaelson's incisive and exquisitely profound insights into our human condition come in full force in The Gate of Tears. Here we have an antidote to mindless feel-good ideology, and gentle instructions in attending to the fullness of our experience so we see the value in the downs, not just the ups. Our inner world will never seem the same.
- Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence
The Gate of Tears is a beautifully written, transformative book. Jay Michaelson guides us, instead of denying, avoiding, explaining away or resisting sadness, to go right into the heart of it. There we find open space, true love of life, and, perhaps most redeeming, one another.
- Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness
Jay Michaelson's writing is always bracing and brave, but The Gate of Tears has particular power. He guides us to explore - and accept - the truth of what he calls ordinary sadness, and stop looking for happiness so that we might actually find it. Every chapter made me feel as if he was seeing me personally. This book will change your perspective and ease your load.
- Abigail Pogrebin, author of Stars of David
About the Author
Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of six books, including Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism and the Next Generation of Enlightenment (North Atlantic, 2013) and the bestselling God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality (Beacon, 2011), as well as over 300 articles in The Daily Beast, Atlantic, Tricycle, the Forward, and other publications.
Beside Still Waters: A Journey of Comfort and Renewal is a book for mourners, for those who will someday become mourners, and for those anticipating their own journey out of this life. It offers liturgy both classical and contemporary for different stages along the mourner's path, from prayers for healing (even when cure may be out of reach) and prayers to recite before dying, to prayers for every stage of mourning: from aninut (the time between death and burial), to shiva(the first week of mourning), to shloshim (the first month), the culmination of the first year, yahrzeit (death-anniversary) and yizkor (times of remembrance).
This volume features traditional words alongside renewed and renewing interpretations and variations. It contains complete liturgies for shiva accompanied by resonant new translations, evocative readings, and complete transliteration. It also contains prayers for a variety of spiritually difficult circumstances (miscarriage, stillbirth, suicide, when there is no grave to visit, mourning an abusive relationship, and more).
In the trans-denominational spirit of Jewish renewal, Beside Still Waters is for individuals and communities across the Jewish spiritual spectrum.