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Introducing The Sabbath Bee by Wilhelmina Gottschalk!

You voted on which of our books I should introduce next, and the winner was:

🐝 THE SABBATH BEE 🐝 by Wilhelmina Gottschalk!

Heartwarming, thought-provoking, sometimes gender-bending prose poems about Shabbat 🥰 Because we all need some warmth for this new year!

These poems feature some sort of personification of Shabbat. The classic one, of course, is Shabbat the queen, Shabbat the bride… but this book very deliberately goes beyond that. As Gottschalk says in the foreword:

“There are times when Shabbat might be more like a visiting uncle than a queen. And for that matter, as a citizen of a representative democracy, how should I feel about royalty?”

Shabbat can be anything really.

“if Shabbat can be a queen, doesn’t it stand to reason that he can also be a grandparent? Or a blanket? Or to take an idea from the Kabbalist Shlomo Halevi, the ruins of a mighty city?”

(SHABBAT IS TOTALLY A BLANKET. I am CONVINCED)

Every week, Shabbat is different, so there are poems in the book for each week of the year, and then some more. As the author explains, sometimes you feel like “Oh, it’s Friday again!” 😍 And sometimes you feel like “Oh. It’s Friday. Again?” 😩

Some of the poems are very short, some are longer. Some are for special Shabbatot, like the ones falling on holidays, or Shabbat Shuvah, which is coming right up!!! (It’s between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.)

Let’s start with a tiny one.

Just cuddle

Battered by the week, I lean into Shabbat. “Can we just cuddle tonight?”

We actually posted the Rosh Hashanah one recently on our parent publisher’s Twitter account, so you can head over there to read it – it’s a bit longer and titled “Beads”. (Very sensorily satisfying if you like that kind of thing!)

Some of the segments are very serious. Some are fun! Some are little stories that miiiiiiiiight sound familiar.

Let me share “The Muse-Shabbat Smackdown”!

Friday at 6:45, my muse knocks on the door.

Shabbat answers. “Oh, it’s you. What do *you* want?” she asks.

“Who is it?” I call.

My muse starts to answer, but Shabbat cuts her off. “No one! Just a salesperson!” She glares at my muse. “You can’t come in now. It’s *my* time.”

My muse raises her hands in confusion, diaphanous robes fluttering. “But, I just have this one really great idea-“

“Tough. Come back in twenty-five hours.”

“Can I just leave a message? A short little-“

Shabbat glares. “I don’t take dictation,” she says, slamming the door in my muse’s face.

I watch from the end of the hallway, slipping back into the kitchen before Shabbat turns around. When she glides back into the room and cups her body against my back, I pretend nothing happened.

Shabbat is a taste of paradise, but she can be jealous.

😫😝

I think that’s painfully relatable! Now let’s pick another one where Shabbat is more like… things. Or rather, processes? (to paraphrase William James, Shabbat is a process, not a thing 😆 ) I really enjoy these reconceptualizations –

Becomes easy

The first moment of Shabbat is when everything becomes easy.

Shabbat is the waterslide after waiting in line under the summer sun. Shabbat is the tiny change in calculation that makes X finally mark the spot. It is the moment when the 3-D picture resolves itself, when the pie dough reaches the right consistency. Shabbat is slippers after stilettos, a real hug after a week of quick pats on the back. When the curtains open and the first streams of Shabbat shine in, the middling details and distant humming vanish.

It all happens in the flare of a match, the last sliver of sunlight. You just have to know the magic words.

😌

But you know, Shabbat is actually drag. The next piece might convince you 😁 (All-ages! While we have certainly published some VERY adult content elsewhere, this is not it.)

The cover of night

Night falls, the darkness spreading over the sky as a shelter of peace. On Shabbat someone asks, “To what can the black sky be likened?”

One says – to the roof of a tent.

(But no, a tent protects from storms and poor weather, while the night sky often brings with it rain or hail.)

Says another – to a covering blanket. (But although Shabbat is a day of rest, surely most celebrants will be awake very late, enjoying its festive cheer.)

Is not the darkness of Shabbat like a wedding canopy? asks a third.

(Perhaps, but only two stand beneath a wedding canopy, while the whole world is shadowed by the dark.)

And finally a child speaks, saying, “The sky of Shabbat is like dress-up clothes, that let anyone underneath become a king or queen for just a little while.”

(SEE, I TOLD YOU)

And for the last piece today, I picked something a little mysterious… that resolves into something very familiar…

Reluctant Shabbat

Shabbat was hiding.

Somewhere in the house, I hoped. The windows were all closed, and anyway I hated the idea of him lost in the hard, unfriendly outside. I looked everywhere, pretending that I was just cleaning as I checked under the couch, behind the curtains, in drawers.

No luck. Next I tried to lure him with the smell of pie just out of the oven, fresh bread from the bakery. Nothing.

I lit candles hoping to attract him like a moth. I sang his favorite songs.

Finally, I gave up. I collapsed on the sofa and watched the candles burn until the room went dark.

…And sometime in the middle of the night I woke up with a crick in my neck and the warm, fuzzy feeling of Shabbat curled up warm against my stomach. I shifted to a more comfortable position and fell back asleep.

Thank you for reading – I hope these poems brought a bit of Shabbat cheer and warmth into your weekday!

👑 🐝 👑 🐝 👑 🐝 👑 🐝 👑 🐝 👑 🐝 👑 🐝 👑 🐝 👑 🐝 👑 🐝

You can buy the book directly from us:

The Sabbath Bee

Or you can order from Bookshop.org (associate link) to support local bookstores.

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Some thoughts about grief

So we’re at the point where the National Review and the New York Times are attacking Joe Biden for how he grieves.

I suppose it’s only fair to criticize president for being too human; after all, we criticized his predecessor for being too inhuman.

If one does want to engage seriously with the world of parental grief, three of our authors are in that very sad category of bereaved parents, for which Hebrew has a more redolent word, שכול.

B. J. Yudelson’s memoir, “With an Outstretched Arm,” encompasses the arc of her life, from growing up very Reform in the South to being a grandmother and a member of an Orthodox congregation in the snowy north.

 

The dramatic center of that arc was the Friday night where her 13-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a drunk driver while walking home from shul at an NCSY Shabbaton on February 6, 1981.

(Note that the @nytimes got both Ruth’s last name and age wrong.)
 
Our favorite review: “Buy this book NOW, curl up on your couch with a box of tissues and this book. I have not been so moved and so deeply touched by a book in a long time. BJ’s illustrative storytelling pulled me into her story, her experiences, her struggles and victories.”
 

Cover of Reaching for Comfort“Reaching for Comfort” opens several years after Sherri Mandell’s son Koby was murdered.

She had already written an award-winning memoir, “The Blessing of a Broken Heart.”
 
But her heart was still broken, because that’s the curse of being a bereaved patent.

So she embarked on a path of trying to help others. She studied to be a hospital pastoral counselor. That was a new field in Israel, where hospital clergy was there to certify kashrut, not minister to emotional needs of patients.

“Sherri Mandell has done it again with this deeply personal and profoundly moving book about caring and compassion under the most trying of conditions. Reaching for Comfort will inspire readers with its compelling prose, riveting narrative, and uplifting spirituality.”

That’s from historian, novelist, ambassador, and New Jersey native, Michael Oren.

“A poignant, deeply human look at the author’s attempt to deal with her own unspeakable pain by opening her heart to the pain of others.” That’s from an Amazon review.

(To return briefly to the political realm, which launched this thread: It’s worth highlighting the contrast between this who would “deal with [their] own unspeakable pain by opening her heart to the pain of others” and those deal with their pain by inflicting pain on others.)

Parenting on a Prayer was already finished and in the editorial pipeline when Rabbi Amy Grossblatt Pessah’s 19-year-old son Josef died, nine months after a brain cancer diagnosis.

The book looks to the siddur to find 18 principles for parenting, combining explanations of prayers with anecdotes from Amy’s years as a mother of three.
 

“Every page of this inspiring work is filled with lessons to live by.”
— Rabbi Naomi Levy

Obviously, the book takes on added poignancy under the cloud of Josef’s death, described in the book’s dedication and afterward. And since all parenting takes place under the shadow of the potential of this infinite grief, that works. #MashiachNow

Jay Michaelson wrote The Gate of Tears in response to the grief he felt at the death of his mother.

I’ve always wondered what B. J. Yudelson would have thought about Gate of Tears. For the first several years of Ben Yehuda Press, she proofread every book. But by the time The Gate of Tears was ready for proofing, she was too ill from the cancer that would take her life.
 

But I don’t have to wonder about what she would say about people criticizing Biden for he handles his grief. Or about the people at the @nytimes that decided this was a story.

(Originally tweeted by @BenYehudaPress on September 5, 2021.
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This week’s Torah portion: Nitzavim

It’s that time of the week! Welcome to our post on the weekly Torah portion.

This time around:

🌳 NITZAVIM 🌳

Trees will be happening. Talking trees. Delightful trees. Get to know the Talmudic proof by flying tree! (We would like to take this time to reassure you that hurricanes and other extreme weather events are not involved.)

A photo of a tree and a red bench by the seaside, Crete, Greece. Image by Marc Ryckaert.

This parsha includes a very famous section about how the Torah is not in the heavens, and not beyond the seas either…

Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach.

It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?””

“Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?”

No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it. (Deut 30:11)

(Sea provided above ⬆️ )

So for our first Torah tidbit of the day, I picked something that involves this quote!

It’s from our book AN ANGEL CALLED TRUTH AND OTHER TALES FROM THE TORAH by Rabbi Jeremy Gordon & Emma Parlons –

It has short, illustrated parsha stories for all ages!

I’m going to put here images of the pages so that you can see the illustration too 🌳 but I’ll also type up the text below…

(yes, a FLYING TREE is coming!)

This Tree Shall Prove I’m Right

A verse from this week’s reading, which states that the Torah is not in the heavens, appears at the heart of one of the most famous arguments in rabbinic literature. The argument is between Rabbi Eliezer, who claims that a particular kind of oven doesn’t need to be demolished, while the rest of the rabbis think that it does.

If you’re wondering if this is a typical topic for the Talmud, yes it is…

Rabbi Eliezer proves his point time and time again, but the rabbis simply don’t accept his arguments. This is our retelling of that Talmudic passage.

“If you still won’t listen to me,” Rabbi Eliezer said, pointing in the direction of a carob tree, “then this carob shall prove I am right.” The rabbis shook their heads in resignation. That Rabbi Eliezer – you could almost hear their scorn – how does he think a tree is supposed to prove anything?

The sidebar helpfully tells us:

The carob, or Ceratonia siliqua, is native to the Mediterranean region. Some people say carob fruit tastes like chocolate. But who do they think they are kidding?

So, back to the story, how does the carob prove Rabbi Eliezer is right? Oops!

Then the tree uprooted itself from the earth and flew through the air. Rabbi Eliezer nodded quietly to himself. Surely – he thought – he would have their attention now. But no. Oh no. These rabbis were not about to accept proof-by-flying-tree.

Rabbi Eliezer tried again. “If I am right, let this stream of water prove it.” The water began to flow upstream, but the rabbis were not accepting proof-by-backwards-flowing-stream.

Rabbi Eliezer tried a third time.

And now, in unison, let us say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, Rabbi Eliezer, NOoooooo~

“If I am right, let the walls of this study hall prove it.”

It’s going to be JUST FINE…

…right?

And the walls of the study hall started to lean in and fall.

At that moment, Rabbi Joshua stood up and told the walls, “When rabbis argue, who are you, walls, to get involved?” Out of respect for Rabbi Joshua, the walls stopped falling inwards but, out of respect for Rabbi Eliezer, they didn’t right themselves either.

Very Jewish solution, but I guess they were the walls of the study hall after all….

Rabbi Eliezer summoned the powers of heaven. Looking upwards, he called on God to settle the debate. A voice came from the heavens. “Why are you arguing with Rabbi Eliezer? He is always right.”

Rabbi Joshua rose again, “The Torah itself says that the law IS NOT IN THE HEAVENS. It was given to us!”

And – to this day – the walls still stand and lean. Neither siding with Rabbi Eliezer nor with Rabbi Joshua.

And we should note a very important detail, namely that G-d did not kill Rabbi Joshua for the ALL CAPS either… Though that might only be because Hebrew has no capital letters 😉 But to be honest, G-d has a high tolerance for people yelling at Them.

We also have some discussion questions to go along with the story:

Rabbi Eliezer was in the minority, so should he have sided with the majority? When have you agreed with a majority, even though you thought that position was wrong? When should you agree with the majority?

Rabbi Eliezer attempts to prove his point with miracles. Do you think Rabbi Joshua was right to refuse to accept miraculous proofs? If so, why?

Is it good to be the odd one out? Why? Do you tend to stand alone or with the crowd?

The story ends here, but I should add that it actually goes on even further in the Talmud. Wikipedia has a summary, with some interpretations too! But now we’re going to segue to our next tidbit, which also includes trees.

(I have to say it’s easier to do this with trees than with cats. The Torah doesn’t include very many cats. For that, you’ll need our Jewish Cat Calendar.)

This one I’ve picked from THE JEWISH BOOK OF DAYS: A Companion for All Seasons by Jill Hammer. (Incidentally, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award!) It has something for each day of the Jewish calendar – and for some mysterious (or not so mysterious) reason, for this Shabbat, it includes a fascinating midrashic quote about trees.

It is from the midrash collection Genesis Rabbah (or Bereishit Rabbah) and it’s a commentary on the very beginning of Genesis, where all manner of plants and trees are created. You probably already know this one from Genesis, but do you know the midrash that goes with it? Genesis Rabbah tells you………

*dramatic suspense*

R”All trees speak with one another. All trees speak with other creatures. All trees were created for the delight of other creatures.” (13:2)

You heard it here first! I mean, this was written ~1500 years ago, but still.

So let’s see what Rabbi Hammer says about this quote and why she picked it for this day:

Those of us who are raised around trees are used to a certain whispering in the leaves. For those of us who grow up where trees dry out in the autumn, the leaves’ rustlings grow particularly intense at this time of the year. In the imagination of one midrash, the trees actually are speaking, to one another and to us.

On the third day of Creation, the Divine creates plants and trees. A midrash in Genesis Rabbah focuses not on the things trees do for us by giving fruit, wood, sap and medicines but on their companionship. The aliveness of trees feels like friendship to us. We celebrate the plants that are our companions on earth.

Some plants will grow all winter. Some plants have died down to a bulb, yet they will come to life again in spring. Some seeds have been torn away by the wind to distant places. At the new year, we may feel like any one of these plants. In that sense as well, the plants are our companions, showing us the way to renew ourselves.

And for our last tidbit I chose one of Rachel Barenblat’s Elul poems from Open My Lips: Prayers and Poems.

This one has a LOT of High Holiday poems (and prayers!) so I’ve been quoting from it a fair amount…

Rocking chair (for Elul)

The exalted throne on high
   is a gliding rocker.
      God watches us with kind eyes

rejoicing when we figure out
   how to fit two pieces together
      and create something new

looking on us with compassion
   when we struggle for balance
      and thirst for what we can’t name.

The sages of the Talmud knew
   more than the wobbly calf wants to suck
      the mother yearns to give milk

God is the same way
   overflowing with blessings, and yet
      we turn our faces away and wail.

When will we learn?
   God’s lap is always open
      all we have to do is return.

Thank you for following along, and stay tuned for multiple surprises coming up and a lot of new things during the holiday season. When we are not away, we will be here with double the intensity 😀 G-d willing, but this is the plan.

In the meanwhile, you can browse our previous parashah threads on Twitter – with a lot of fun stuff (and some weird, and some terrifying…).

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Strange Fire excerpt!

Strange Fire edited by T.S. Mendola is our unorthodox anthology reflecting on our COVID-conscious present! Preorders are open and the book is coming soon.

Strange Fire has four sections: Anger, Death, Sex and Faith. For today, we chose to share a few paragraphs from an essay in the Sex section,  “The Whores’ Covenant” by RG! Please note that the below content is meant for adults 18+.

Strange Fire cover

*

We shoot for two hours. I am efficient and professional; we never need longer. Afterward I peel off the now-damp velveteen choker and plush false lashes. I put on my street clothes, my Star of David, and a mask in muted florals a friend made for me. I pay my photographer, tip as generously as I am able, reassure him that I don’t need the shots immediately, family comes first, it’s fine, text me, let me know how your brother’s doing, and slip into the alley behind his studio. I mop the makeup from my temple, damp from the softbox lights, and check the bus schedule for the next transfer home. This shoot will sell well, I think, my ass looks perkier since I’ve lost some weight and stockings are always popular with my regular clients. I sit at the bus stop, redolent of piss and dirty, ashen summer heat, and mentally extrapolate the budget for the projected earnings; what goes to charity, what goes to debts, what goes to little extras like skincare, a new duvet set, more lingerie, a gift for a relative’s birthday. I finger my necklace, lackluster from years of anxious rubbing, like a worry stone, and say minhah before the bus comes. It is nearly dusk. I am late in my daily prayers, but it cannot be helped. I trudge onto the bus with my overstuffed duffle, earbuds in, podcast on. My thumbs dictate a quick promotion for the evening crowds as I heave myself into a seat, “FLASHSALE: five erotic, high-res photos for $15, tonight til midnight, DM for details.” I add a kiss emoji and a coy but suggestive glamour shot. I spellcheck, debate which promotional shot to use, add my time zone, and post. I turn on my notifications and try to relax into the rigid, inhospitable plastic of the bus seat.

I have done this work for a decade now, in various iterations. An amateur burlesque performer, awkwardly and excitedly accepting meager, grubby tips from audiences; a trained dominatrix, wiping my crops with alcohol; and now, a professional sexter and peddler of nudes. A college-educated smut purveyor. Unwed. Devorah in a g-string. I pray thrice daily, often more; I do not eat pork or shellfish; I volunteer at the local foodbank; I attend Shabbat service regularly. I fast, I bake pies and casseroles for families sitting shiva. I take God’s law seriously, then I take my clothes off and pose with lace, clamps, and crops.

The untold story of this labor, throughout the centuries, in brothels and nightclubs, on Backpage and OnlyFans, is the labor of the soul that comes with confessing desire to a stranger, of witnessing their confession, of admitting to and meeting those needs that we’ve been told all our lives are at best problematic or at worst outright sinful. My clients, past and present, aren’t looking for mere titillation: they can get that anywhere. What they seek is the intimacy of witnessing someone’s desire, in full bloom, unabashed. To be invited, for a fee, into the world of that desire. Being isolated in your own yearning amplifies the associated sensations of perversion and lonesomeness. My goods and services provide a private viewing of another’s desire, of their mating display, and a kind, unselfconscious voice to reassure them that they are not alone in their needs.

*

If you’re interested in more, make sure to get yourself a copy! We’ve also posted an amount of short snippets at our Twitter account, and we plan on posting other longer excerpts as well.

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COVID-19 and the Theological Challenge of the Arbitrary by Shaul Magid

We are busy converting our chapter-by-chapter Twitter readthrough of Torah in a Time of Plague (edited by Erin Leib Smokler) into blog posts. Please imagine little cogweels turning!

Today’s chapter is “Covid-19 and the Theological Challenge of the Arbitrary” by Shaul Magid. (Who just had an incisive book review in +972 Magazine!)

Torah in a Time of Plague, deposited on a pillow with animal print sequins.
The pillow returns!

 

Did people think plagues were a punishment? Magid points out that in the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud the usual assumption for a famine is that it’s G-d’s punishment for something the people did. But is a plague also such a punishment? That seems to be much much less clearcut…

The Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kama 60b discusses plagues and:

“is almost entirely concerned with ways to best protect oneself from contagion. There is no mention there of praying, repenting, fasting, or engaging in other devotional acts to ward off the disease” – !

Medieval commentators on this section emphasize the arbitrariness of plagues. Not every natural disaster is G-d’s punishment. But why is this especially important?

At least partially because Jews don’t live in isolation with no other people around them.

As Magid says,

“Without the notion of the arbitrary as extra-covenantal, Judaism becomes vulnerable to making all disasters, even those that equally affect non-Jews, the fault of the Jews, which could easily, and understandably, evoke negative reactions.”

There is a tension here, because if we say OK, how about “everything is arbitrary?”, that would be heretical and not something traditional commentators would like. (Though we as a press are always interested in people’s heretical thoughts 🙂 )

The Talmud doesn’t outright say “this is arbitrary!” either. But it seems to treat it as an assumption.

The sages also discuss how to avoid the plague and not how to nullify it. Later commentators also focus on this (including ones who lived during plagues!)

So there is this tension between G-d ordaining what happens in the world, but some things affecting people seemingly indiscriminately. Different authors try to resolve this tension differently, and in the chapter you’ll see how they go about it!

Next time, we’re planning on discussing the following chapter: “Theodicy and the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune” by Gordon Tucker.

You can order the book in the meanwhile:

Or check out the previous chapter, the introduction!

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Into My Garden by David Caplan

On Chof Av, the Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of Chabad, we introduced you to a related poetry collection on Twitter. Now you get to read it in handy blog post format!

Allow us to present INTO MY GARDEN by David Caplan.

Into My Garden cover. A man walking in a fall forest of decidous trees that have dropped their leaves.

This collection was titled after the classic Chasidic discourses named Basi L’Gani, “I have come into my garden”. This is a quote from Song of Songs:

“I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride” (5:1)

The sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, expounded at length upon this quote. These discourses are called ma’amarim (singular = ma’amar) in Chabad-Lubavitch. The rebbe discusses Chasidic mysticism at length, in front of a (usually large!) audience. Here is a video where you can get an impression of what it is like to be in said audience.

Now! What does this have to do with poetry?

The Song of Songs is obviously poetry 🙂 But David Caplan also writes poetry about his experience in Lubavitch – including studying this maamar, watching other people study it, watching other people watch videos… This sounds very meta. It is in fact very meta. But it’s like this in Chasidism itself: there are maamarim about this maamar by the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn. (He’s the one who people think of these days as “the Rebbe” of Chabad.)

I’ll share a poem because I feel like I’m giving all this abstract exposition, when Caplan’s poems are actually very immediate & sensory…

Into My Garden (II)

All week they studied what he is about to say.
Born after his death, they want more than stories,
want to feel how it felt to be in that room,
stand with the old men he blessed for long life and listen.

Under the white tablecloth, a handkerchief
wrapped around his hand bound his soul.
I have come into My garden, My sister, My bride…
Projected across the study hall, downloaded
and captioned, he closes his eyes and explains.

This is a moment that’s going to be familiar to people who are associated with Chabad in some way. I spent a decade attending the synagogue of a Chabad yeshiva, so it was both immediately recognizable AND a revelation: This moment can be something that appears in poetry?

Caplan has moment after moment after moment of Lubavitch life, Orthodox life. Poems about prayer. About studying in the study hall. About watching young yeshiva bachurim horse around. Not exoticized, but presented through the gaze of someone who did not grow up there, but ended up belonging there (Caplan talks about growing up Conservative elsewhere).

And with the best tools that American post-modernist poetry has to offer. Let me show more…

Even the Thief

A night of snow no one expected.
This late the study hall sounds different,
the same words said again, dark and glowing,
a window scratched with its mistakes.
Everyone knows God controls the universe,
my study-partner translates without a pause.

Even the thief prays for success. To know
what you feel, not what you ought to feel,
is there anything harder? At the airport,

a man with The Book of Genesis
tattooed down his leg boarded in front of me,
and I couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel
to have those words that close.

Caplan has a contemplative gaze that he turns upon himself too:

To get religious—what does that mean?

Sometimes it all feels like an improvisation:
the snow lifting from the tracks,
a hardboiled egg wrapped in foil, an extra
sandwich in case he meets someone who needs it.

He’s very aware that a good chunk of his readership is secular. But he goes on to write poems about prayer, and not just that; Jewish prayer. Mindfully, carefully, but also unapologetically.

Last year’s words sour in our mouths, useless:
last year’s failures.

Rain claws the roof.
Embarrassed to be heard, we need

to be answered. Too late for good manners,
each prayer jostles to break free.

– “Neilah”

And that makes you face yourself. (At least it made me face myself.) Why cannot this be done? Here, it can absolutely be done. Not only that, but it feels like it needed to be done; these poems needed to come into the world. (Like Chasidim would say about a maamar…!)

This is what covenant means: each night
he carries home
a briefcase no more than a brown paper sack

stuffed with names to pray for.

– from “Bris Milah”

The night’s symbols have performed their obligations:
the eggs smooth with salt water, the unleavened bread,
the pillows we lean into like a question. 

– from “Second Seder, Atlanta”

And Caplan has the same quiet thoughtfulness about the world around him as a whole. Not just when you are packed in with a bunch of people and doing Something Religious, but in the everyday –

Memory halves whatever it touches:
the harbor cleared of pleasure boats,
the pier ending before the dock.

A man too small for his clothes
leans into the story he tells,
the boy beside him, listening.

– from “Memory halves whatever it touches…”

No tide pools, no couples on the beach
where my parents met,

only whitecaps lifting into themselves,
bowing and lifting,

until each blurs into something else:
rocks pink with crab shells,

a workday of gulls circling trawlers,
indecipherable buoys.

–  from “Fisherman’s Beach”

Boys dressed like men race the stairwell as if to the singing,
as if to hear what My garden means:

seven generations caused God to withdraw,
seven generations drew him back.
All those years of talking—what did I learn?

And one more, “Old Recording” –

I know how to pray but not like this –

in the old recording, he repeats the blessings
we repeat three times a day,

his familiar accent and cadence, urgent and assured,
naming what is missing when I say

the same words, the certain knowledge
that each word needs to be said.

If you enjoyed this, the book can be all yours for under $10! (with free shipping too…)

“Other poets have made American poems from Jewish interpretive traditions; Caplan stands out in that he makes poems about the present-day people who try to live by those traditions.” – Stephanie Burt

 

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This week’s Torah portion: KI TEITZEI


It is time for our weekly discussion of the Torah portion!

This week we have Ki Teitzei, a portion filled with a lot of small details and lesser-known commandments! Including, yes, something related to birds…

Nesting Eurasian Coot. Photo by SkywalkerPL

But before we get to the birds, let’s discuss something else about the portion, based on Rabbi Shefa Gold’s always fascinating Torah Journeys…

She notes that Maimonides counted the commandments in this portion and there were 72 of them. That’s a lot! We have all these commandments, so what do we start with?

(I note that it’s not “A list of a bunch of commandments”. If the Bible happened to be edited by an academic press, it would’ve been like that. Subheading 2! Underline! We are not an academic press either and can be forgiving of a lack of subheadings. 😉 )

No, the Torah portion starts with something rather unexpected: “If you go out to war against your enemies”.

How does that relate to the commandments?

Well, there are commandments about going to war too, but there is also a deeper meaning, as Rabbi Gold explains. This is about how commandments can be a struggle. Not just doing them (though I’d say, that too…), but also understanding and receiving the values and qualities they are meant to convey.

I am reminded of the classic Chasidic song…

“Essen esst zich, trinkn trinkt zich, vos zol men ton az es davent zich nisht”

Which means, eating and drinking work by themselves, but what can one do if the davening doesn’t go by itself?! Here is Avraham Fried singing it – probably a relatable sentiment.

As Rabbi Gold says:

“Ki Tetze begins by acknowledging the struggle. It’s much easier to be a decent human being when you are at peace… but there is a battle to be waged and that battle will try our decency, challenge our integrity and put every good intention to the test.”

What can be a struggle? Rabbi Gold notes that one possible clue comes from the title of this book of the Torah. Deuteronomy is called in Hebrew “Devarim”. Which also means THINGS (among other things).

(Are we covered in things already? I am covered in books…)

“One voice inside keeps saying that if only I would be more organized then the battle with clutter could be won.

Another voice whispers that perhaps the problem is deeper and the solution more radical.”


(We suggest the Marie Kondo method, it’s not only good for messes, but it also helped me resign from a job!)

Rabbi Gold also has a bunch of suggestions, some are related to the holidays… E.g., on Passover, instead of buying the extremely processed readymade kosher-for-passover food items, cooking and eating simpler foods. (We had to do this because of the pandemic and we survived!)

Another suggestion that you can try RIGHT NOW …welll, ok, *checks time* in a few hours… is about Shabbat.

She suggests that even if you don’t observe Shabbat traditionally, you try turning off the computer/TV for one day.

My friend Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who works so passionately for social justice throughout the rest of his week, turns off his computer before Shabbat and says,

“The world will just have to save itself for the next 25 hours!”

(He still managed to write several books this way, we have a small pile of them!)

And we also have a small pile of Rabbi Shefa Gold’s books – hmm, maybe it’s time for a bundle? (This also brings up one of Rabbi Jill Hammer’s books, because it was blurbed by Shefa Gold 🙂 )

But while we’re at Shabbat, let us enhance your Shabbat experience and your upcoming High Holiday experience at the same time with an excerpt from Wilhelmina Gottschalk’s The Sabbath Bee, from our imprint the Jewish Poetry Project! This book has prose poems, microstories and thoughts about Shabbat – often personifying it or presenting it by analogy to something else…. Like in this chapter: beads.

Beads
(Rosh Hashanah)

Shabbat clinks into place with the lacquered clarity of a bead sliding onto a necklace string. At this stage, the new Shabbat is clear and unmarked — a perfect pearl.

It takes its place along the length with nearly a year’s worth of Shabbats, each one engraved with the faces of all the people I saw that day. The workmanship is flawless.

Soon this bead too will grow heavy with the gilt edges of delicate designs, dozens of tiny faces etched upon its surface.

The necklace weighs down like a yoke upon my shoulders, almost choking me.

Is it heavier than usual, or do I simply notice the weight because I know that the jeweler will be coming soon, to examine each individual bead and determine the value of my year?

If you liked the excerpt, you can get the whole book:

The Sabbath Bee

It also has genderbent Shabbat Queen!! You need genderbent Shabbat Queen in your life.

The last tidbit I picked from Rabbi Jill Hammer’s The Jewish Book of Days – it is for today (12 Elul) and it relates to the theme of struggle and to the theme of the commandments.

She quotes from the Midrash Tanhuma:

“There were two sittings of Israel where they would meditate on Torah night and day. Twice a year, in Adar and Elul, all Israel would gather and engage in the battle of Torah until the word of the creator was established.” (Noah 3)

What kind of battle was this?! Rabbi Hammer explains. This was the classic Talmudic way of studying:

“Their method was to study in pairs, with each person bringing prooftexts and arguments to one another.”

She also notes:

“Both Elul and Adar are before harvest festivals (Passover and Sukkot). The tradition of Torah study during these months reminds us to gather in the fruit of the Torah as well as the fruit of the earth.”

What does this teach us?

“[T]wo study partners must listen carefully to one another’s positions while holding to their own points of view,” and this “trains us in how to have respectful conflict with one another.”

And if you liked this, we do have a Rabbi Jill Hammer bundle!

The Jill Hammer Collection

(Now that you’ve gotten rid of the things that do not spark joy, you can bring in things that do 😉 )

And at the end, back to the birds!

I just wanted to highlight some of the lesser-known commandments from this portion, and ask you for your favorites.

1. (My paraphrase) If you take a bird’s eggs, chase away the bird first.

Here I must say that I had to change the cover image for the portion, because my first choice had a license that explicitly ruled out its use in a context of chasing away birds. Therefore I can’t show it to you either.

2. If your husband is fighting with another man, don’t grab the genitals of the other man.

I remember being rather scandalized to realize that this was explicitly stated in the Bible, but I was young and innocent.

3. Fence in your roof, because if someone falls from it, that’s going to be terrible.

(Interestingly, the Talmud discusses people falling from roofs & things falling from roofs, so I guess not everyone put up a parapet, regardless…)

Thank you for following along! Now it is your chance to share some commandments you found interesting, either from this weekly portion or from any other! Chabad brings you the complete list, as per the Rambam.

Some other favorites that are timely:

* Not to destroy fruit trees even during the siege
* Not to insult or harm a sincere convert with words
* Not to move a boundary marker to steal someone’s property

Now it’s your turn!

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A poem for Elul! Teshuvah by Rachel Barenblat

To help along your repentance and self-reflection, we share this Elul poem from Rachel Barenblat’s Open My Lips: Prayers and Poems. This is one of two Rachel Barenblat collections we published in our Jewish Poetry Project imprint; the other one is Texts to the Holy.

Open My Lips cover art, featuring a painting of a hand wrapped in t'filin pointing at a place in the Torah text.

Teshuvah
by Rachel Barenblat

God and I collaborate
on revising the poem of myself.

I decide what needs polishing,
what to preserve and what to lose;

God reads my draft with pursed lips.
If I really mean it, God

sings a new song, one strong
as stone and serene as silk.

I want this year’s poem
to be joyful. I want this year’s poem

to be measured like flour,
to burn like sweet dry maple.

I want every reader
to come away more certain

that transformation is possible.
I’d like holiness

to fill my words
and my empty spaces.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written
and on Yom Kippur it is sealed:

who will be a haiku and who
a sonnet, who needs meter

and who free verse, who an epic
and who a single syllable.

If I only get one sound
may it be yes, may I be One.

*

Thank you for reading! If you appreciated this poem, we offer free shipping on the book within the US. We also have more information to entice you:

This volume of contemporary liturgical poetry is both a poetry collection and an aid to devotional prayer. Open My Lips dips into the deep well of Jewish tradition and brings forth renewed and renewing adaptations of, and riffs on, classical Jewish liturgy. Here are poems for weekday and Shabbat, festival seasons (including the Days of Awe and Passover), and psalms of grief and praise. Open My Lips offers a clear, readable, heartfelt point of access into the Jewish tradition and into prayer in general.

Those who wish to begin a prayer practice in English but don’t know where to start will find this volume offers several starting points. These poems could be used to augment an existing prayer practice, Jewish or otherwise ­— either on a solitary basis or for congregational use. For the reader of poetry unfamiliar with liturgical text, they can serve as an introduction to prayer in general, and Jewish prayer in particular. And for the pray-er unfamiliar with contemporary poetry, these poems can open the door in the other direction.

We offer another way of preparing for the High Holiday season as well – have you checked out our calendars for the upcoming Jewish year? We have cats and also plants, for the cat and/or plant lover in your life. Start your new year with us!

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Torah in a Time of Plague: Introduction

Let’s talk about our latest book, Torah in a Time of Plague! It’s now available in our webstore, and we have been discussing it chapter by chapter on Twitter under the hashtag #TorahInATimeOfPlague, and now – as requested 🙂 – we will also make these discussions into blog posts.

There are many interesting, unique and/or lesser-known ideas in this book, and now we’ll be able to share them with you!

Torah in a Time of Plague, deposited on a pillow with animal print sequins.
We have print copies!

We begin with editor Erin Leib Smokler’s introduction that talks about “Theological Vertigo in Proximity to Plague”.

The term “theological vertigo” is from Avivah Zornberg, who uses it to discuss situations of being near death.

“[T]he reaction is a sense of theological vertigo, of asking what does anything mean in that case. If it’s really just a matter of a millimeter—it could go this way, it could go that way—how do we understand God’s providence?”

Zornberg points out that it’s a common Biblical interpretation that this was the cause of Sarah’s death, because of what happened to Isaac. Sarah did not think Isaac was killed, but she knew that he was almost killed, and she couldn’t live on knowing that.

Smokler points out that this is now our shared experience because of COVID-19, and now we’ll also need to deal with that.

(She also gives a Talmudic example about the destruction of the Temple related to how to go on in a situation like this, but you’ll see that in the book,)

The book has five sections:
1: Theology of Plague
2: Jewish Community and Practice Under Duress
3: History and Literature of Plague
4: Quarantine Reflections
5: Time in Unprecedented Times

and we’ll gradually make our way through these!

Hopefully by so doing, we’ll have a new understanding of what it means to have lived through something when we were near death – and also how our ancestors lived through those times, and what they thought about them.

…They thought some surprising things, as we’ll see next time in Chapter 1: “Covid-19 and the Theological Challenge of the Arbitrary” by Shaul Magid!

In the meanwhile, you can get the book:

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Relaunching our blog in the spirit of the season!

Dear beloved Ben Yehuda Press readers,

We hope you are having a great start to your Elul! In the spirit of repentance, we’d like to apologize for the lack of blog updates in the past two years. As part of our expansion – we now have a social media person! – we are also returning to our blog.

We’ve already been posting a lot of new material on Twitter, but now these will also be converted to blog posts. If you prefer Twitter, don’t worry, your experience there will stay the same! This is an additional service for those who prefer something differently formatted.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been running a series of weekly parsha readings on Twitter – offering carefully handpicked tidbits from books we published, about each weekly portion. (Check out this one on Eikev!) Going forward, these will also be made available here on our website.

We’ll also post our deep dives and author introductions: on Twitter we just started a series focusing on Rabbi Tamares, a provocative thinker of the early 20th century!

Of course you’ll also get our news updates about upcoming books, exciting sales and preorders.

We have one right now: our unorthodox anthology reflecting on the present day, STRANGE FIRE: JEWISH VOICES FROM THE PANDEMIC edited by T.S. Mendola is now available for preorder! Free shipping within the US. You can also add it to your to-read list on Goodreads.

Thank you for reading, and we wish you great High Holy Day preparations!!