Words for Blessing the World - (Jewish Poetry Project) by Herbert J Levine (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

How does one express reverence and gratitude in a world without God?

That question is at the core of this collection of prayers and poems. Words for Blessing the World resonates with traditional Jewish liturgy even as it observes the world through a distinctly modern lens. Words for Blessing the World deals with the theological, the political, and the personal and is presented in both Hebrew and English, anchoring the collection deep within the Jewish tradition.

Review Quotes

"Herbert Levine's poems build a precious bridge across the secular-religious gap in Jewish life with top-of-the-line intellectual and spiritual building materials. His work engrosses, exalts, and amuses me all at the same time, bringing me to many of the ah-ha! moments that liturgy and poetry, at their best, can evoke." - Lawrence Bush, editor, Jewish Currents

"These writings express a profoundly earth-based theology in a language that is clear and comprehensible. Herbert Levine has thought through his ideas and expresses them in a plain style that won't be denied. These are works to study and learn from." - Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus

"A learned and sincere engagement with Jewish tradition. The author suggests that we can pray 'in a world without a master.' The poems express a faith that is committed to human evolution toward more compassion, love, unity and justice. The poems are resonant with Biblical poetry and story. The Hebrew is elegant and prayerful. Altogether, this collection is a gracious and powerful spiritual tool for our time." - Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, author of God Loves the Stranger: Stories, Poems and Prayers; co-founder of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

"Timely and thought-provoking. Words for Blessing the World takes us on a moving and challenging journey of the spirit. 'To know that enough is as good as a feast, ' he writes with the wisdom of one who has struggled with the desires and terrors of existence. His poetry is instructive, its language in the register of everyday speech, yet with a complexity that combines scientific facts with a human search for meaning. These are private and public prayers, poems that demand of both the speaker and the reader to address the world in which we live - where there is violence and hatred between brothers - with compassion toward the self and others. He asks, 'what difference does it make if you have heard the voice of the oppressed and don't change your life?' His poetry can awaken us to action, as Prospero says in The Tempest 'The rarer action is/in virtue than in vengeance.' - Linda Zisquit, author of Havoc: New and Selected Poems

"What Levine beckons in his poetry is a radical shift away from the transcendent to the immanent, from the supernatural to natural.... Levine should be commended for attempting the impossible-to write the prayer of Baruch de Spinoza (d. 1677)-the heretical philosopher whose first name was a formulaic theistic blessing he utterly rejected. .... The strength of Levine's prayerful poetry comes in a flash, in writing those 'unwritten white spaces' of forgotten scriptures especially when he embodies the other, like Ishmael and Esau as well as countless feminine voices, otherwise absent from Scripture in his own poetic midrash. [Levine is] among the most aspiring and inspiring American Jewish poets, who are not only writing a prayerful poetry that may be our future liturgies, but now is the time to pray their poetry."

- Aubrey Glazer, Tikkun Magazine