Chesky Kopel
When the definitive account of American Jewish poetry in the early 2020s is one day written, it will no doubt call attention to the turbulence of the period. The poets labor in an environment of pandemic, existential war in Israel, politically-charged culture wars, retrenched nationalism, and an increasingly mainstream antisemitism. It will also account for the publishing environment: While outfits like Teaneck-based Ben Yehuda Press’s “Jewish Poetry Project” expand opportunities to write for an intra-community audience, broader hostile trends in English-language publishing eliminate opportunities to reach beyond this audience.
Three recent works of English poetry by American Jews–covering a spectrum of styles and areas of focus–reflect the impact of these forces. What comes through clearly from each is a sense of unbridgeable distance, in which physical precariousness leads to spiritual instability.
Review of Tikva Hecht, Tashlikh (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024).
The introductory poem of Tikva Hecht’s inaugural collection acts as a signpost of sorts, warning the reader that the verses that follow will not maintain static boundaries between time, space, and abstraction. Here, “you find the hours on your clothes,” and the “freedom of circling seagulls” is “grating against your body” (“Afterwards,” 14).[1] The poems, which place Jewish ritual, theology, and emotional pain into open conversation and conflict, also give no respect to the boundaries between lines and stanzas. This is free verse territory.
Hecht takes different approaches to different poetic subjects, but all are provocative. In examining the nature of the human being, she imagines a conversation between cannibals about the properties of mind and spirit: “Suck out the marrow, you say / but don’t pray to it—the empty bone / and the shiver, that’s the good stuff… I still long / for the glimmer and sorrow / of an infinite heart, crafted / from the finest materials / of an enchanted world, unfettered / by cravings or the cold” (“The Dispositions of Cannibals,” 28). Other poems, working through first-person reminiscences, adopt the visual format and interpretive style of the printed Bablyonian Talmud’s tzurat ha-daf (“Tashlikh,” 8; “On Misplacement,” 52; “Félix Fernández García,” 56).
Most provocative of all, though, are the collection’s various approaches to God. At one point, the speaker’s attempts to conceive of God lead to spiraling, oppressive thoughts: “I will tell you every conception of god is a false god made in the image of god. Which is to say every conception of god is a conception of self. And every self the mirage of god posing as a false god and so—you do the math. I am tired of this logic and its aesthetic. Please god, let me be rid of you” (“Configurations of Worship,” 40). Elsewhere, she seeks to plumb the meaning of traditional personifications of God: “God used words, / only words they say / to make all this, but then / is it even words we mean, / or inclinations? And what can those / ever effect?” (“The Angel Made of My Thoughts Uses Her One Phone Call,” 70). In yet another, aptly titled “Theology,” the institutions of worship are an immutable fact of creation, guarded by nature against the humans that seek to destroy them: “So you say, burn your temples / and I will burn mine / but dutiful is the rain / and nothing will catch” (63).
Tashlikh provides a powerful artistic statement in familiar Jewish language, with special emphasis on themes of the High Holidays (e.g., “While Looking at the Portrait of Patience Escalier Between Mincha and Ne’ila,” 66; “Songs of Creation and its Infidelities,” 73). It is, however, challenging reading for those not already inclined to free verse poetry.
Review of Brian Rohr, Shaken to My Bones: A Poetic Midrash on the Torah (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024).
For all of the advantages of an early childhood parashat ha-shavua education, it presents one notable disadvantage: because students gain familiarity with the stories before the onset of critical thinking—sometimes even before the onset of long-term memory!—they are deprived of the opportunity to encounter the parashah for the first time as mature readers, to feel the drama of the story without knowing how it ends.
In the darkness of the COVID lockdown era, poet and storyteller Brian Rohr undertook to read the entire Torah for the first time (79), privileged with the opportunity to form initial reactions to its weekly portion as an adult. His project evolved into a commitment to compose a poem on each parashah, and this commitment evolved into his inaugural published collection: Shaken to My Bones. The collection also prefigures Rohr’s subsequent undertaking, “The Stafford Challenge,” a selective cohort that commits to write a poem each day for a year and to convene for events and discussion groups.[2]
Shaken to My Bones does not consistently resonate, but its themes and cadence are intriguing and reveal Rohr’s highly sensitive religious personality. Encountering the Creator as an often troubled character in the narrative of the parashah, the poet is driven to empathize. First, as a struggling composer: “like a writer tossing incomplete / pages into the bin, half thoughts / disappointed ideas, / God destroys this work to start fresh” (Noach: “A Second Life, Retold,” 7). Next, as an imperfect parent: “Even God lacks patience. / It is like my own child as we prepare to move, / stubborn, obstinate and with physicality / he lashes out towards those he trusts. / And I, like God, send demerits, / rather than what was truly needed” (Beha’alotecha: “Their World Was Uprooted Once Again,” 52). And even as a personality with unmanageable feelings: “transitions bring great emotions, / amongst humans and amongst God” (Haazinu: “It Makes Me Wonder and Question Thus,” 75).
The COVID environment—a presence so overwhelming at the time but difficult to reconjure today—tinges Rohr’s experience of the parashah. On reading of the “angels bearing news” to Avraham, the poet recounts: “Years ago, in the before times / loved ones on the couch / or standing in the kitchen / told of pregnancy, of laughter, / of unbelievable events” (Vayera: “My Longing,” 10). On encountering Pharaoh’s intransigence, he considers the resonance of “Those in power playing reckless games / with our lives. / Community condensed / into family units, condensed. / Singing through walls, / as air itself feels unsafe” (Bo: “Some Days My Heart Too is Hardened,” 27).
Rohr’s preoccupation with bones is perhaps the most unique feature of the collection. The bodily impact of the biblical drama is described as being wrought on his bones in the title and in his poems on Vayetzei (13), Emor (45), and Eikev (65). His poems revisit the bones of Yosef (addressed in Bereishit 50:25 and Shemot 13:19) repeatedly in reference to parashiyot that do not explicitly concern them. The ultimate arrival of Yosef’s bones in Canaan is foreseen as a symbol of emotional closure: “Seeing you cry reminds us of our own deepest longing. / Yet even then, your feet never fully touch the ground. / They never do, until your bones are carried / to the land of your fathers” (Vayeshev: “You Are Blessed, Not Through the Love,” 16). Later, the bones are viewed as a talisman of national fortune. The children of Israel are “blessed and chosen because they are. / Because of promises made long ago. / Because of the bones they carry and his ancestors” (Balak: “Wisdom Finds Passion and Forms into Action,” 56). The patriarchs themselves here are considered secondary sources of Israel’s merit; most important are the bones.
Just as Rohr experienced the Torah through the poetic prism of COVID, we now experience and interpret his verse in the context of the cautious optimism of 5786. The bones of murdered hostages, our contemporary Yosefs, are slowly carried back from Gaza into their own land, and we pray that their return ends our latest period of hopeless wandering.
Review of Eden Pearlstein, Nothing is for Everyone (Ayin Press, 2024).
Eden Pearlstein is a writer, musician, editorial director of Ayin Press, and self-styled “trickster-teacher of Jewish text, thought, and practice” (xi). The mischievous demeanor and fast rhythm of his poetry live up to this title. While Hecht (considered above) turns written verse into a visual medium, Pearlstein’s debut collection employs it as music.
The first section, “stranded in paradise,” riffs heavily on the theme of the Garden of Eden—an unsurprising source of interest for a poet who bears this garden’s name as his own. In one early example, the man named after paradise tells of the end of humanity’s stay in a paradise full of names: “Until one day they ate a name / Off a branch of the name / That had been named by The Name” (“Jewish Geography (Tikkun HaShem), 4). A later poem conceives of humanity as enduringly foreign to the world following our creation and banishment from Eden, “bad astronauts / crash-landed in / paradise” (“Squatters’ Rites,” 11). Proper fulfillment of our religious duty requires us to recognize our alienness: “For God’s sake / make things / more beautiful / Than they were / before you got / here—then / Vanish. / Anything else is / trespassing.” (Ibid.).
The essential meaning of being human is that we cannot return to Eden, but must live and strive in perpetual exile: “The palace stands inside a square that has been long deserted / With a sign slung from a gate on purpose poorly worded / written in a cryptic script / familiar and strange / welcoming or menacing / depending on the sage / For those inclined to take the time to scale the outer wall / A snake awaits inside the gate to make sure that they fall” (“words/myth,” 27). This reference to “those inclined” to seek a return to Eden acknowledges the existence of different religious types: some are inclined to pursue the secrets of Creation in mysticism, and others are not. Regardless, neither will find those secrets.
That brings the poet to the Torah, the revelation that follows us into exile. The Torah is simultaneously a collection of minutiae and an expression of infinity: “Everything is / A big deal for / The God of small things. / Torah is a thesaurus / With infinite entries / For only one Word. / With this many / Windows, why have / Walls at all?” (“Home in Exile, 51).
Unlike Rohr’s collection, Nothing is for Everyone makes no explicit promise of guiding readers through parashat ha-shavua, but its playful, transgressive pages escort us from Creation to Sinai. One hopes that Pearlstein’s next collection will guide the Israelites through the wilderness that follows.
[1] Parenthetical citations refer to the page numbers of each poetry collection.
[2] See https://staffordchallenge.com/.
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