The Library of Everything: Poems and Torah Commentaries

"Stirring poetry from a leading Orthodox educator… The poetic outpouring of a Torah teacher’s soul." This collection of original poetry on Jewish and religious themes will enlighten and stimulate readers to an array of issues--Jewish learning and teaching; textual understanding and interpretation; prayer, salvation and repentance; and the Holocaust. Each of the twenty-one poems is accompanied by a short essay, notes, or an excursus, through which the author unfolds the genesis of the poem: how it was distilled from classical Jewish sources, or--moving in the opposite direction--drawing the reader’s attention to implications and applications of the poem to contemporary religious life and experience. In a powerfully polemical introduction, the author draws on decades of experience in Jewish education to argue that poetry holds the potential to sensitize us in ways that will elevate and enrich Torah study, prayer, and a sincerely engaged Jewish life.