Going Out with Knots

Wendy I. Zierler is Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and the coeditor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History. She is the author of Movies and Midrash: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation and And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Hebrew Women’s Writing and coeditor of These Truths We Hold: Judaism in an Age of Truthiness.

“This book isn’t just a memoir; it’s a friend.”-Etgar Keret, author of The Seven Good Years “Going Out With Knots is at once deeply personal, literary, and evocative. This is a book I’ll treasure and give to people I love.”-Rabbi Rachel Adler, professor emerita at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion and author of Engendering Judaism “This book is a gift to anyone seeking meaning in the midst of sorrow. Rabbi Zierler’s eloquent blend of personal narrative and poetic interpretation seamlessly melds ancient and new traditions to reveal the profound ways that Jewish texts and Hebrew literature can guide us through loss and healing.”-Rabba Sara Hurwitz, president and cofounder of Yeshivat Maharat “My suggestion: savor small installments. Allow yourself to absorb the fine nuances in the discussion of each poem. When Zierler masterfully weaves together her extensive knowledge of modern Hebrew culture and traditional Jewish texts, there are multitudes of gems along the way.”-Naomi Sokoloff, coeditor of Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction Part 1. So Much Has Been Severed1. Learning to Mourn: Going Out with KnotsThings Fall ApartThe End of StoriesLoose ThreadGoing Out with KnotsSettling InMourning and MetaphorSewing a SeamA Kaddish/COVID Journal with Poems Part 2. Transitions and Translations2. Picturing God in Grief and Prayer: Beginning to Mourn with Lea Goldberg“To Mother’s Portrait”“By Three Things”“In My Prayer Book”“Let Winter Be Blessed”“Blessing”From “One Spring”From “My Silences”“Night Psalm”“He Passed Over Our Door and There Was Light”From “Ending” 3. Facing an Absent God: Grief and God Struggle in the Poetry of Avraham Ḥalfi“Dream of Your Footsteps”“I Know Not the Words”“Crowned Is Your Forehead with Black Gold”“Here a Person Believed”“And Songs Are the Dust of Antiquities”From “Heretic’s Prayers”“At Night Birds Fell”“Jewish Fall” 4. Living with a Lesser, Closer God: Yehuda Amichai’s Secular Theology of Everyday Life“And That Is Your Glory”“In the Morning I Stand by Your Bed”“Half the People in the World”“God’s Hand in the World”“A Sort of End of Days”“My Mother Baked Me the Whole World”“Whoever Wrapped in a Tallit”“Men, Women, and Children”“God Has Mercy on Kindergarten Children”“I Filtered from the Book of Esther”“My Father on Passover Eve” 5. Searching for Female Liturgical Voices: Mourning and Studying with Rachel Morpurgo“Behold the Letter”“And Thus Sang Rachel about Her Wedding”“See, This Is New”“On Those Fleeing the Cholera Epidemic”“A Voice Is Heard in the Heights”“This One Shall Be Called ‘My Delight Is with Her’”“I, Leah, Was So Very Tired”“Fount of Wisdom from a Flowing Stream”“Buried Here Is the Lady”“The Monument Is a Witness”“This Is the Burial Monument that Rachel Morpurgo Prepared for Herself in Her Youth” 6. Retying the Knots: Learning and Relearning with Ruhama Weiss“I Throw Down My Supplication”“Lament for Rashi’s Daughters”“I Am Still Praying”“And Once Again, I’ll Sin and Return”“Chapters of the Mothers” 7. Penning Pandemic Torah: Rachel Bluwstein’s Feminist/Illness Poetry“Soul Walking”“Barren Woman”From “In the Hospital”“Or Maybe”“Ḥoni the Circle Maker”“Day of Tidings”“Sorrow Song” 8. Final Thoughts: Still in Knots“Behold I’ll Craft a Ball from the Pain” Source AcknowledgmentsAppendix: Four Poems by the AuthorNotesBibliographyIndex