Mission

Yetzirah is the only national nonprofit literary organization dedicated to supporting Jewish poets and Jewish poetry, nourishing writers and readers of Jewish poetry now and for generations to come.

Vision

Just as God is said to have spoken the world into being, we believe in the transformative power of language. According to Jewish mystical traditions, in Yetzirah, the World of Formation, we create our art from the world around us, a world enriched and informed by our connections with each other. These notions of formation and connection—exploring the past, present, and future of Jewish poetry—are essential to our mission.

Through annual readings and workshops online, regular in-person gatherings with our network of Regional Chapters, as well as an annual Jewish Poetry Conference—the only one of it’s kind, we further strengthen these connections, encouraging the energy and inspiration generated from our collective experiences, creativity, and wisdom.

As we are bolstered as much by the differences among us as the commonalities we share, Yetzirah welcomes any and all poets who identify as Jewish. (You can read more about our pluralistic, nonpolitical culture here.)

And we welcome poetry lovers of all traditions to attend our readings, workshops, conference, discussions, and events, as we believe that the more members of all communities can learn about Jewish poetry and Jewish culture, the more likely those individuals will be to push back against detrimental assumptions and antisemitism and the more opportunities we’ll have to be enriched by what we learn from our broader interfaith community.

Organizations with Whom We Work

Programs & Resources

Yetzirah Jewish Poetry Conference 

• Held every summer in the mountains of Western North Carolina
• Structured as an egalitarian community, our conference supports Jewish poets at all levels of their careers
• The Dayenu Cohort offers opportunities to be a part of Yetzirah’s community to writers of all levels of experience and traditions
• Afternoon and evening events are open to the public, in-person and via livestream, and are recorded and available for viewing in our Media Archive
• Keynote speakers: Alicia Ostriker, Eleanor Wilner, Edward Hirsch, Robert Pinsky
• Generative workshop faculty: Ellen Bass, Dan Bellm, Sharon Dolin, Dana Levin, Jess Greenbaum, Rodger Kamenetz, Ilya Kaminsky, Jacqueline Osherow, Victoria Redel, & Jason Schneiderman
• Dayenu Faculty (in-person): Hadara Bar-Nadav, Yehoshua November, Hila Ratzabi, and Dan Rosenberg
• Dayenu Faculty (online): Elana Bell, Joy Ladin, & Marcela Sulak
• Manuscript Faculty: Carol Moldaw & Alicia Ostriker

Yetzirah Workshops

• Opportunities to study with some of today’s most dynamic poets, scholars, translators, theologians, and teachers
• Our workshops are first offered live online via zoom
• Most of our courses are then recorded and available asynchronously; so you can learn with our faculty any time

Regional Chapters

• Yetzirah Regional Chapters are local groups of Jewish poets and readers of Jewish poetry around the U.S. and abroad, organized and hosted by Yetzirah members with the support of Yetzirah staff, which meet to offer programming and community-building aligned with Yetzirah’s mission
• We believe an important part of supporting Jewish poets is helping people make connections in their own communities, facilitating local networks of mutual support and inspiration. After all, online friends can’t drop off soup and a good book when you have the flu

Yetzirah Reading Series

• Featuring some of today’s most exciting Jewish voices in poetry, emerging and established, from around the U.S. and abroad
• An annual international events, offer poets from around the world, along with their translators
• We’ve also partnered with a number of Jewish organizations for events online and in-person, including the Jewish Book Council, Lilith Magazine, the Yiddish Book Center, JBI (Jewish Braille International), Central Synagogue in NYC, Ayin Press, Ritualwell, and the Jewish Theological Seminary

Yetzirah Book Club

• With a deep dive into poetry collections new and old; talks by authors, scholars, and translators; and opportunities for discussion, we invite readers to join us in savoring and celebrating an expansive range of Jewish poetry

Yetzirah Membership Program

• In addition to the knowledge that their membership fees offer vital support for Yetzirah’s programs, members are offered discounted fees on our workshops, a regular members-only generative workshop, and occasional additional members-only offerings (like a session focused on the business of poetry with Yetzirah’s founder Jessica Jacobs)

YAPS! (Yetzirah Audio Poetry Series)

• Because the expense to record and distribute audiobooks are often prohibitive for small presses, there are sadly few audio poetry collections available . But in working with JBI, we’ve arrived at a solution where these collections are made available to both their community of visually impaired and reading-disabled people around the world while also being made commercially available through each poet’s respective publishers. So, in partnership with JBI Library (formerly Jewish Braille International) and The Talking Book of Asheville, NC, Yetzirah is proud to share the Yetzirah Audio Poetry Series (YAPS!), the first collection of audio poetry books by Jewish authors. 
• Explore the initial list of YAPS! titles here.

Our website serves as a robust virtual resource providing:

• The Discover Jewish Poets database for use by poets, scholars, teachers, event programmers, and interested readers, searchable by demographic classifications, subject matter, and genre
  • In addition to identifying and promoting Jewish poets of the present and past, this site is intended to encourage and aid increased scholarly focus on Jewish poetry
  • And as it’s searchable by location, it can be used for those organizing literary events or wanting to connect with other local Jewish poets
• Explore our Media Archive to find videos of all of our past events
• Resource pages of
  • relevant publishing opportunities,
  • literary organizations,
  • festivals and reading series,
  • a community bulletin board for Jewish poets interested in meeting other writers with whom to share work in-person or online,
  • a list of reviewers interested in reviewing work by Jewish poets

History & Inspiration

Yetzirah was first conceived of in 2017, when Jessica Jacobs began work on unalone, a collection of poems in conversation with the Torah and surrounding texts. When she sought out other Jewish poets from whom she might learn and draw inspiration, she was surprised by how difficult it was to find them and their work.

While she continued to pursue this study and writing, a series of terrifying antisemitic attacks occurred throughout the country, including the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville and the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. As a result, more than half of Jewish respondents to a 2020 Pew Research poll said that “as a Jewish person in the United States” they felt less safe than they did five years ago. As she reached out to Yetzirah’s potential future community members, she heard often from Jewish poets how their MFA and PhD cohorts and professors often discouraged them from writing work that was “too Jewish” and, even once they’d left those programs, how they’d felt similar prejudice from their colleagues.

Inspired by organizations like Cave Canem and Kundiman, Jessica founded Yetzirah to welcome and support Jewish poets of all backgrounds, at all levels of their writing careers. To this end, offerings include both mentorship opportunities for emerging writers, as well as programs of fellowship and support for more established writers. We also work to feature a diverse array of poets, including Jews of color, Jews of all denominations, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, and LGBTQIA+ Jews.

Our annual summer conference is modeled in part on the Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Writers’ Workshop, a conference where one year’s faculty member is the next year’s participant, where the conference is as much a literary resource as a supportive community, growing along with its members.

Our generative workshops, talks, and discussion panels, explore diverse aspects of the Jewish experience, illuminating further opportunities to draw on Judaism’s traditions, cultures, and history in participants’ writing, and welcoming writers and readers from all backgrounds and at every stage in their careers.

Along with lists of relevant publishing and learning opportunities, the Yetzirah website offers Jewish poets an introduction to and a springboard into a deeper appreciation of the tradition of which they’re a part, informing today’s poets about Jewish poets past and present, as well as Jewish texts and traditions.

Contact Us:

• For questions about our programs, contact Kyra Lisse, Program Coordinator & Conference Director: klisse@yetzirahpoets.org
• For questions about our Discover Jewish Poets database and Events Calendar, contact Rina Shamilov, Program Assistant: rshamilov@yetzirahpoets.org