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While the poems in this collection are inspired by the story of Fievel Mousekewitz, the cartoon mouse of the author's childhood, they are gut-wrenching in their examination of the American dream. Fievel's family history-and the author's-is one of a Jewish family immigrating from the Old World to the New and eventually being pulled across the plains: "When migrant boys looked west in leather hats, their slang pierced with Polish accents." Even though "tomorrow is made of rocks and time; is the draft that sweeps sleepily through the fallen branches," it is also where immigrants "watch their dreams decompose on plywood" as they search "for whatever it is that makes men free."Using the story of Fievel, Burt plays masterfully with the ambivalence of hope and cynicism, as if he had traversed the ocean and the continent westwards himself: "I am the hope that has not been forgotten, because I declare myself welcome here, as if there is nothing in history I will not make mine."

Two Jews, three arguments - as the saying goes. But what kinds of topics have Jews disagreed about historically, in the present day, and potentially also in the future? Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz surveys forty major controversies in Jewish culture, and presents how opposing sides have each laid out their arguments in good faith. Disagreements happen between people: Hillel vs. Shammai, Ayn Rand vs. Karl Marx, Tamar Ross vs. Judith Plaskow... but also Abraham vs. God, and God vs. the angels! Movements debate each other: Reform versus Orthodoxy, one- two- and zero-state solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, gun rights versus gun control in the United States. The book doesn't shy away from the fundamental questions of existence either. Is life about struggle or about peace? Should we focus on love based on emotions or love based on deeds? What is better: seeking absolute truth, or building compromise? Ultimately, what is the meaning of life?Rabbi Yanklowitz presents difficult and often heated disagreements with fairness and empathy, helping us consider our own truths in a pluralistic Jewish landscape.

"Michael Dylan Welch once quipped that, 'if haiku is a finger pointing at the moon, senryu is a finger poking you-or someone else-in the ribs.' In his wonderful new collection of senryu and longer poems, Robert Deluty manages to capture both the humor and pathos of these always fraught relationships - parent/child, teacher/student, doctor/patient - as in this senryu: Rose Cohen asking/ her forty-year-old gay son/ if it's a phase. In each of his poems, Deluty delivers what R. H. Blyth called, 'moments of vision into, not the nature of things, but the nature of man...as in a flash of lightning.'"-Ronald W. Pies, M.D., author of The Unmoved Mover and The Levtov Trilogy."Robert Deluty's poetry shows why parents, teachers, and doctors need to be careful, observant, and vigilant about how they process the world. For they give and receive in ways that should help children, students, and patients to grow - to make their lives better for themselves and for us all. With poignancy, humor, and wisdom, Deluty draws out our innermost feelings and thoughts so that we may become truer to ourselves and others."-Joseph L. DeVitis, Ph.D., editor of The Future of American Higher Education: How Today's Public Intellectuals Frame the Debate"Robert Deluty's new book serves up in abundance the keenly observant humor we have come to expect, springing from the inherent comedy of the human condition and viewed invariably through the lens of his tender compassion. Likewise, he empathizes with the vulnerability and grief we encounter in others and ourselves. We are fully human, after all, only in our mixed-up connections with each other. Like the six-year-old in one of Deluty's senryu, who fills in the boxes of a crossword puzzle with tiny hearts, this book inserts love at every opportunity."-George H. Northrup, Ph.D., author of Wave into Wave, Light into Light: Poems and Places

Psalms are our people's songs, an ancient playlist that still strikes a chord in our hearts. From lamentation to celebration, the Psalms speak to us from generation to generation.Rabbis Elie Spitz and Jack Riemer take us into a deeper exploration of the Psalms, going beyond the surface meaning of the words with new, thoughtful interpretations, taking a fresh look at these ancient texts and the relevance they can hold for us today. These contemporary translations of the ancient text reveal new facets of insight and understanding.It is a testament to their lasting power that the Psalms continue to provide readers with solace, challenge, inspiration, and more. Duets on Psalms will inspire you to revisit these ancient texts and see them with fresh eyes because, in the end, it's not what the psalmist intended that matters but the meaning you gain from each psalm as you make its words your own.

As the twenty-first century continues to bring rapid changes to Judaism and Jewish affiliation, and as major challenges continue to mount within and well beyond the Jewish world, effective leadership increasingly requires familiarity and dexterity in multiple ethical areas: interpersonal, social, political, environmental, medical, and business.Torah, Service, Deeds presents essays on diverse approaches to the spectrum of ethical issues. Written by faculty and alumni from the transdenominational Academy for Jewish Religion California, the chapters demonstrate that a shared and genuine commitment to values and concerns can be expressed through varied lenses and applications.Each author is paired with another who has written on related themes. Following their essays, the two authors respond to one another, modeling pluralistic Jewish dialogue. It is our hope that this "simulated chavruta" (study pair) inspires readers to reach out to people of other stripes, Jews and non-Jews, to productively engage the issues of today.

The study of Jewish text, over two millennia, has traditionally taken place in the Bet Midrash (the communal study hall), sitting at a table or desk. Studying the Bible has been a project of thinking, talking, contemplative reflection, and debate.There are other ways.Dr. Ora Horn Prouser, Cantor Michael Kasper, and circus artist and choreographer Ayal Prouser have joined to edit this volume which explicates their philosophy and technique as they work with students to study Hebrew Bible through the embodied experience of movement and circus arts. They have invited an international group of distinguished scholars and practitioners to share their own visions and work; each chapter adds information about circus, movement, educational practice, and theory.When seen as a whole, the collection of articles helps to frame the book's central premise: that circus and dance are perfectly matched to help students study and think through their bodies, finding valuable and enlightening textual interpretations.This flows logically as movement has been central to the Jewish experience. Similarly, though less known, circus has a documented, long, and powerful connection to Judaism and the Jewish people.Prouser, Kasper, and Prouser do not attempt to interpret text through art creation. Rather, they use art as a study partner and method, a context within which to do the research that yields new and exciting learning possibilities and readings.

Haggadah Min HaMeitzar is liturgically traditional, visually beautiful, ideologically progressive, and discursively provocative. It uses a complete traditional text and translation, paired with original commentary and art, thought-provoking quotations, and discussion prompts. The art functions as a form of commentary and provides another layer to discuss.The commentary focuses on four voices, corresponding to the four names of Passover:Chag HaCheirut/Festival of Freedom: a progressive voice prompting discussion on the meanings of liberation and oppression in the Exodus story and today.Chag HaAviv/Springtime Festival: an environmental voice making connections between the Passover seder, ecology, and regrowth and regeneration.Chag HaPesach/Passover: a meta-commentary about how we tell our stories, the voices that get shared and the voices that do not get shared enough.Chag HaMaztot/Matzah Festival: a voice about embodiment and the tangible and sensory aspects of the seder.

Rabbi Hyman Babushkin has headed and cultivated a progressive religious movement, Encounter Judaism, for half a century - but as he turns 83, he has lost his wife, his prostate, and, perhaps, his faith. The loyalty of some of the key women among his cohort is wavering, his leadership is being challenged, and he is beset by fantasies of fleeing back to the ultra-Orthodox world from which he was excommunicated during the heady 1960s.What's a guru to do?HYMAN is a novel rich in humor, Jewish thought, and provocative questions about power and sexuality as it vaults back and forth through fifty years of American culture.

In his latest collection, Robert Deluty explores the many layers that bind us to tradition, faith, customs and, more than anything else, to the people that represent this visceral and often inexplicable connection: our loved-ones, our relatives, our next-of-kin. Deluty intertwines memories of his ancestors, recollections of moments spent with his wife and children with snippets of fellow yet anonymous Jews he has collected over the years: a joke overheard on the street, a glance caught through the window of a subway train, a thought prompted by an old sign in the neighborhood. The result is an intimate and universal testament to the poet's sense of belonging to both his family and the broader Jewish Family - full of associations, sensations, and devastating, comforting, and unbreakable truths.

צוליב דער פּאַנדעמיע פּון קאָוויד 19, קען רויה נישט פֿײַערן דעם יום־טוב פּסח צוזאַמען מיט איר באַליבטער באָבען. "צי האָט די באָבע אַמאָל פֿריער געמוזט זײַן אַלײן פֿאַר פּסח? " פֿרעגט זי איר טאַטע ־מאַמען. דער ענטפֿער איז יאָ. און רְוָיה לערנט פֿון דער באָבען וועגן אירע איבערלעבונגען ווי אַ קינד אין דער וואַרשעווער געטאָ.Because of the covid pandemic, Reva can't celebrate Passover with her Bubby, her beloved grandmother. "Has Bubby ever been alone for a Passover before?" she asks her parents. The answer is yes, and as Bubby tells the story of a Passover in her childhood, Reva learns an important lesson about resilience.(NOTE: THIS EDITION IS YIDDISH ONLY.)

These are poems from when I walked about Shanghai and thought about the meaning of the Holocaust. Why did I think about the meaning of the Holocaust? That is answered by what brought me to China in the first place. What brought me to China? Only the encounter with the plain reality that in the West the Nazis really won, under a hundred different names. Theirs was not a unitary thought. Gathering my own thoughts in a unity, I came to the conclusion that it does not matter if they won or not. No evil had been done except if we forget the evil. Why do we forget the evil? Because if I forget the evil which is at the roots of my life, it is easier to think that the temporary pleasures and worries that my life is filled with, are important. So that I can go and love myself, and not like other people, under a hundred different names, forgetting the simple meaning of the one name I was born with: Human. To be human is to have inherited the Holocaust; and to pretend this does not matter, is to prefer the inheritance of something other than humanity to be my innate name."Ilya Gutner's endeavor is to confront the enormity of the world, whose past, present and future saturate and overwhelm his poetic consciousness. To read these poems is to be in the company of a human being who continues to take humanity seriously, and lives by the heroic principle of sacrifice: each of his poems is a moral act, an exertion, and a selfless offering that hopes but to propitiate the truth. Gutner's sympathies are deeply humane, generous and courteous to his reader as interlocutor; there is much for us to cherish in his gift, and much to be consoled by on these pages, in our own moments of perplexity and inner wrestling."- Anna Razumnaya, author of Under the Sign of Contradiction: Mandelstam and the Politics of Memory"These are quirky, unashamedly monotheist and reactionary poems, not afraid to imagine the Lord in exile in China and developing a taste for pork buns for breakfast after thirty years. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely for those who are not heartless."- Atar Hadari, author of Rembrandt's Bible, translator of Bialik: Selected Poems of H. N. Bialik (Syracuse University Press) "In Walking Triptychs everyone is an outcast and God bullied into exile. In this beautiful and witty collection of poems, Ilya Gutner loafs around the shadowy streets of China and meets those who haven't forgotten the evil, the humans who know the importance of liking other humans." - Alexandros Plasatis, author of Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness: a novel in stories and editor of the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigrant literature