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a hearth for Jewish poetry

Asynchronous Workshop: “Writing Shekhinah” with Joy Ladin

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 and sufferings rather than looking down on them from above. Unlike other ancient forms of divine presence, many of which emerge through prophecy, vision, and received traditions, the Shekhinah first emerged in writing by rabbis who knew that the Shekhinah, a rabbinic term derived from a Biblical verb used to refer to God “dwelling” among the Israelites, did not appear in the Torah or earlier traditions. Instead, the Shekhinah was a conception of divine presence (actually many conceptions) developed by the rabbis, not in response to revelation but to human spiritual needs.

We will explore some of the texts in which the Shekhinah first emerged as well as later, quite different, female-identified versions of Her, including medieval mystical texts and poetry by Jewish feminists working to raise the Shekhinah’s profile in contemporary Judaism. We will discuss these texts both to get to know some of the many things Shekhinah and divine presence have meant in Jewish tradition, and also to understand the linguistic techniques they use to conceive and evoke Her. We will practice these techniques through exercises designed to help us use our own writing to search for, question, imagine, encounter, and respond to the Shekhinah, or whatever we understand as presence beyond the human.

Workshop Costs

Purchase the asynchronous workshop here to receive:

  • One recorded class
  • Link to poems discussed in class

$54—standard registration

$45—discounted registration for Yetzirah Members (you can become a member here)

*As we want our offerings to be accessible to all, there is a pay-what-you-can option if this pricing is a hardship. Please contact Kyra Lisse at klisse@yetzirahpoets.org for a sliding scale option.

 

About Joy

Joy Ladin is the author of twelve books, including the National Jewish Book Award-winning revised second edition of The Book of Anna (EOAGH, 2021); 2018’s The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective (Brandeis UP, 2018), a finalist for both a Lambda Literary Award and Triangle Award that received a starred review in Publishers Weekly; Through the Door of Life (University of Wisconsin, 2013), a memoir of gender transition that was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and winner of a Forward Fives Award; and ten books of poetry, including 2022’s Shekhinah Speaks (selva oscura, 2022), Fireworks in the Graveyard (Headmistress Press, 2017), Psalms (Resource, 2010), Forward Fives award winner Coming to Life, and two Lambda Literary Award finalists, Transmigration (Sheep Meadow, 2009) and Impersonation (Sheep Meadow, 2015). Joy has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, an American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship and two Hadassah Brandeis Institute Research fellowships, among other honors.