February 25, 2018
“At last you’re tired of this elderly world:” Towards a New Judaism through Poetry
We harness ourselves over and over wherever hope is a yellow shore. —“Nomad,” Robin Beth Schaer Decades later, no, I still can’t let it go: that Rosh Hashanah my […]
March 14, 2017
Voyager I Am Singing the Fire
Jews, we sing the fire. Our song is of people who care for the fire. We sang from inside fire. For thousands of years in the diaspora, our fire survived through […]
February 23, 2017
On Difficult Loves
July 20, 2016
Speak Us Into Life: A Tribute to Elie Wiesel
Must we be reminded that, in the end, all works of literature, even despairing ones, constitute an appeal to life? —Elie Wiesel I didn’t want this tribute to […]
July 12, 2016
Identity In Flux: On Jewishness & Poetry
In late 2014, I asked six different poets of various ages and backgrounds questions about Jewish identity and poetry. I had answered some questions about poetry and faith on The Best […]
May 30, 2016
Peace is a Bus that Has No Destination
…for history has yet to start and there’s no geography and no other languages. And even better: the war has left its “r” behind and turned into love, so the […]
April 1, 2016
The Year I Forgot Passover: On Love, Memory, and Honor
I’ll eat with money and I’ll eat with my teeth until the rocks and the mountains curl and my blood sings — I’m such a good girl to eat the world. […]
December 10, 2015
Notes on Love and Violence, Part 3
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” —Albert Einstein (1) […]
November 19, 2015
Notes on Love and Violence
‘Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.’ — Max Frisch (1) My mother did not like me hanging around outside: to stand on a street corner any day, […]
October 29, 2015
Hard and Brittle Religions
Why do some religions die out, while others persist in the face of brutal persecution? Religious diversity, while not completely analogous to biological diversity, has drastically diminished over the […]
October 29, 2015
Hello from the Other Side
I tasted once The milk of a woman friend, The milk of a sister— Not to slake my thirst But for the liberty of my soul. —“Memory of a […]
October 23, 2015
“This Balance Hangs in a Place That Is Not” : The Work of Michael Hafftka
In A Retrospective: Large Oils 1985-2003, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition of Michael Hafftka’s work at the Housatonic Museum of Art, Michael Bordsky compares the artist and the “creatures” of his paintings […]