In the beginnings: Writing in Conversation with Sacred Texts Texts like the Torah and New Testament are often presented as not only sacred but inviolate and above reproach. For many of us, this means these texts and their difficult subject matter can feel far from us, or so close and well known we can no […]
The Golden Chain: An Introduction to Yiddish Poetry with Danny Kraft Curious about Yiddish poetry? Eager to draw on Yiddish literature as inspiration for your own writing and art? No language or cultural background is required for this four-week, online course introducing the richness, beauty, and diversity of Yiddish poetry. Together we’ll read and discuss […]
"Telling the Soul’s Stories: Spiritual Anecdote & Autobiography" with Joy Ladin Spiritual experience often feels private, isolating, uncommunicable. Spiritual autobiographies, from anecdotes to full-blown memoirs, use storytelling techniques to break down this sense of isolation, offering others glimpses of our own struggles and exaltations, and, more importantly, because readers interpret narratives by identifying with characters […]
"Poetic Lineages" with Ilya Kaminsky We will read poems from Jewish poets of Eastern Europe and elsewhere and we will marvel together on the idea of poetic lineages: how do poets learn from other poets across time and geography? Is there such a thing as a poetics of diaspora? poetics of exile? How do poets […]
“White Fire–the Art and Play of Midrash: the Journey and Meanings of Exodus“ with Alicia Ostriker If the text does not apply to us it is an empty text…. We take the text in relation to ourselves, understanding ourselves in its light, even as our situation throws its light upon the text, allowing it to […]
“Season of Our Turning: a Generative Poetry Workshop for the Jewish High Holidays” with Rick Chess “The word verse,” writes Edward Hirsch in A Poet’s Glossary, “is traditionally thought to derive from the Latin versus, meaning a ‘line,’ ‘row,’ or ‘furrow.’ The metaphor of ‘plough’ for ‘write’ thus dates to antiquity. Verse may alternately derive from the Latin vertere, ‘to turn.’” Turning and […]
"Poetry of the Cosmic All" with Mónica Gomery Daniela Naomi Molnar calls it “a generosity too large for us to know.” Tracy K Smith refers to “the universe a house party.” And Joy Ladin dubs it an “infinity thick/ as star-sparked honey.” In this workshop, we’ll explore poems as a portal to enormity, interconnectedness, wonder […]
Writing Shekhinah One of the most ancient functions of poetry is to make divine presence perceptible through language. This class will probe the intersections between language, poetry, and the Shekhinah, Jewish tradition's name for divine presence, an aspect of God that who is present in human time, space, relationships, and communities, and shares our lives […]
"'The Psyche is a Labyrinth;’ Exploring Identity in Yiddish Poetry” with Danny Kraft In a 1919 literary manifesto, a group of modernist Yiddish poets known in English as the Introspectivists wrote that “the human psyche is an awesome labyrinth,” filled with thousands of beings and inheritances from the past and present, whose complexities and contradictions […]
"Sacred Objects: Finding the Magic Inside” with Hadara Bar Nadav What objects do you hold sacred? A ring, a key, a house, or a text? This generative workshop assumes that objects hold energy and power in our lives. Consider the torah, dressed in velvet and draped in silver, for which an entire congregation stands, this sacred text that […]
"Spiritualizing the Ordinary” with Yehoshua November Given contemporary poetry’s largely secular leanings, it’s not surprising that few poets today celebrate supernatural miracles, overtly religious experiences, or Divinity, in general. But how does one explain contemporary poetry’s tendency to insist on profound meaning in the ordinary—a tendency that, at times, appears to border on obsession? In […]
"Imagining Jewish History Into Poetry" with Yerra Sugarman The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, before his death in 1940 when he took his own life to avoid being murdered as a Jew in Europe, wrote: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Urging us to recognize […]