Culture

In this poetic tale from Marina Zilbergerts's recent poetry book You Were Adam (Wipf and Stock), a learned and passionate woman struggles with her yetser hara, nicknamed "Wicked." The yetser is imagined as a fantastic character who accompanies her through Jewish Toronto's banal suburbia. "Wicked '' is a sympathetic and tragic apikores who knows how to get her where it hurts, but he also speaks the truth. He is a careful social observer present with her at all times. From going on weekly shopping trips, being in shul, to more intimate moments, this demonic character becomes her unlikely friend. In an ironic twist, the lessons taught to her by her yetser help her embark on the path of repentance.

In this pair of poems, Dovid Campbell imagines the unspoken words that arise from scenes in Aggada

A new poem by Hannah Butcher-Stell, on love and loss.

Jennie Mintz revisits the death camps in her powerful new poem for the Lehrhaus.

In honor of his tenth yahrtzheit, art historian Jackie Frankel Yaakov explores the art of Jewish Israeli artist Edwin Salomon (1935-2014). She argues that he was able to embrace his own expressionistic, Surrealism-evoking style when these approaches were marginalized in the Israeli art, shedding light on the ways he processed his experiences in the Holocaust and as a new immigrant to Israel.

In this poem, Avi Schild reflects on the source of the blasting cry we hear on Rosh Hashanah.

David Berger's eulogy for Revel's late Prof. Arthur Hyman, a leading scholar of Medieval Jewish philosophy.

As we approach Pesach, Bruce Black's latest poem vividly retells the splitting of the sea.

In this story, Devorah Talia Gordon writes about a young woman seeking to reclaim her inheritance after experiencing the loss of a loved one.

Alia Saphier examines the concept of cultural genocide, how it relates to the Holocaust, and how both Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Diana Blumenfeld fought for the longevity of Jewish music.