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What makes a book like this more than just a collection of excerpts, strung together interchangeably? What makes it a book? If I were to say it had been a matter of selection, who would venture to…
At home I have a blue piano,
I, who cannot play a note.
It stands in the gloom of the cellar door,
now that the world has grown coarse.
The four hands of the stars play there
—the moonwife sang…
Your light is sweet and pleasing for my heart’s joy and gladness,
O my soul’s beloved, my full desire is that I never depart from your presence.
My plan, each day and night, is to find favor in the…
Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32), Aleppo Codex, ca. 925 CE. The photo shows the beginning of the poem (Deuteronomy 32:1–14) and the prose verses from the end of the preceding chapter. The text of the…
My most pious songs have I written
On rising from my sinful bed.
God has given me a wealth of sins,
And God alone has saved me from my sins.
Translated by David Soeterndorp.
It is for us, for all of us together,
To assist, to liberate, to rescue brothers,
From capture, from hunger and slaughter—
Rescue them from the vile Nazi oppressor.
Every man and woman whose soul…
With evening a whistle. Again the sweating store room
opens its throat wide, and we march out in formation
worn down by the heat wave and a day so long:
hard working soldier-women.
And why should…
The holy tongue is a language like no other. All other tongues exist only by agreement, each nation having agreed upon its language. But the holy tongue is the one…
Man has separated lust and sorrow.
But God holds them together like day and night.
I know lust. I know intense suffering.
I praise God’s one name.
Translated by David Soeterndorp.
On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai. Having journeyed from Rephidim, they entered the…