In the Shadow of a Burning BushPoems on Exodus
by Yakov Azriel
(Time Being Books, 2008)
ISBN 9781568091228
$15.95
Paperback, 115 pages
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Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the Torah and the rabbinic texts, Yakov Azriel retells the story of Moses and the Exodus in a series of inspired poems. Like the authors of the Midrash, he reads between the lines and intuits the untold parts of the story. So too does he link many aspects of the biblical account with later episodes in Jewish history, such as the Holocaust. Azriel writes with the kind of authority rarely found among modern poets, with strong echoes of Hayim Nachman Bialik, whose biblical poems have themselves become sacred texts.
— Howard Schwartz, author of Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism
Yakov Azriel has followed his splendid poetic commentary on Genesis, Threads from a Coat of Many Colors, with an even more powerful commentary on Exodus. In the Shadow of a Burning Bush is simultaneously a retelling of the Exodus story, a reliving of Jewish history, and an expression of contemporary Jewish experience. Mr. Azriel approaches these themes with a mastery of poetic forms — from sonnet to free verse — and a brilliant visual and auditory imagination. This is truly high art in the service of faith; the poems seem destined to be read at the Passover seder or at the Sabbath table. As a term of comparison, the Arthur Szyk Haggadah comes to mind; each represents both a significant artistic achievement and an affirmation of the Jewish present.
— Esther Cameron, editor of the Deronda Review and author of Rim of Gold
In the Shadow of a Burning Bush is Yakov Azriel's second collection of verse, a series of powerful meditations on key passages in the book of Exodus which are frequently linked to Jewish historical experience, often with the Shoah as it's prefigured in Pharaoh, and always with a freshness and insight un-embittered by the pain often present in the subject matter. This is poetry as a prayerful bridge across time and space, a kind of contemporary midrash. It's a refusal to allow history to hinder the voice of contemporary spiritual experience and poetry as participation in ancient events as present meaning.
— Albert Radcliffe, Canon Emeritus of Manchester Cathedral, England, and organizer of its Annual Interfaith Religious Poetry Competition
Yakov Azriel's new volume takes the genre of midrashic poetry to the next level. These well-crafted poems are filled with tenderness and nuance; weaving modern sensibility and ancient narrative, this luminous book encourages us to see the Bible with new eyes.
— Amy Gottlieb, editorial director of Aviv Press
In the Shadow of a Burning Bush is Yakov Azriel's new haggadah for Israel and a record of his wrestling match with Jewish history, his conflicted love for the God who set that history in motion, and the joy and pain he feels when he thinks of the country that has been his home for nearly forty years. By using the Exodus narrative as the central motif in his extended series of elegant and technically brilliant poems, the poet is able to link biblical and modern Israel with the fate of Jews during the Holocaust. His complaint is that the One God who spoke to Moses and showed him the way to lead his people out of slavery in ancient Egypt remained silent during the Shoah and remains silent still, in the face of contemporary threats to the existence of his nation. Yakov Azriel writes with the clarity, love, and fierceness of the Hebrew prophets and, on the eve of Israel's 60th birthday, all of us should listen.
— Charles Adés Fishman, author, Chopin's Piano, Country of Memory, The Death Mazurka, and other books, and editor of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust
Once again Yakov Azriel has reached deep to discover new ways of reading ancient texts. From “The Tree of Israel,” which waits for spring at the mercy of the Amalekian woodcutter, to a powerful imagining of Egyptian slavery in “The Angel of Death Does Not Pass over Us,” Azriel's In the Shadow of a Burning Bush brings new images and insights into the book of Exodus. This collection is meant to be read and savored, and its multiple poems on the four questions, the plagues, and the four sons (and four daughters), will find a ready audience at the Passover Seder.
— Rabbi Gilah Langner, coeditor of Kerem: Creative Explorations in Judaism
In the Shadow of a Burning Bush combines formal experimentation with midrashic imagination. Like many writers today, Yakov Azriel revisits the words, and more interestingly, the gaps, in Biblical narrative to touch on Jewish and universal themes. The result is a voice at times prophetic, sometimes conversational, other times almost liturgical.
— Jay Michaelson, author of Another Word for Sky: Poems
Again, as he did for the book of Genesis, Yakov Azriel writes his own poetic midrash on the book of Exodus. As he follows Israel's journey from slavery to freedom, he seamlessly interweaves images from the Bible with images from modern Jewish history, particularly that of the Holocaust. He moves on to visions of redemption, drawing from the Biblical Prophets, from Chassidic sources and from deep within his own soul. Yakov Azriel has created a book that can immeasurably enhance classroom discussion, sermonic presentations, and which can guide each one of us as we attempt to find personal meaning in the words of the Bible. Through the poems of Yakov Azriel, we get a glimpse of how we can view our own struggles through the medium of the Biblical narrative.
— Rabbi Reuben Landman, Congregation Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim, Silver Spring, Maryland
Yakov Azriel looks at the world differently than most of us and that is why he discovers pearls of insight that escape us. And yet, we, too, can see those pearls because of his great gift: Azriel has the ability to paint pictures with his words of what his eyes see and his mind intuits. How fortunate we are to be allowed into his head.
— Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer, editor of Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Life & Thought
Yakov Azriel has gifted us with a most heartfelt and soul stirring commentary on the Bible in his masterful work In the Shadow of a Burning Bush. I truly believe that it should be read by all as an important commentary to the Bible.
— Shlomo Riskin, Chief Rabbi of Efrat, Israel, and Chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone Institutions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Yakov Azriel was born in New York, in 1950, as Gerald Rosenkrantz. After receiving his B.A. in English literature, summa cum laude, at Brooklyn College, in 1971, he moved to Israel, where he changed his name to Yakov Azriel. He studied at the Mercaz HaRav Kook Yeshiva, in Jerusalem, and the Har-Etzion Yeshiva, in Alon-Shvut, Israel, and later completed an M.A., with distinction, and a doctorate in Judaica, concentrating on the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Braslav.
His first book of poems, Threads from a Coat of Many Colors: Poems on Genesis, was published by Time Being Books, in 2005. This book was a candidate for several awards, including the National Jewish Book Award, in the U.S., and the President's Prize for Literature (awarded by the President of Israel), which is one of Israel's most prestigious literary awards.
Over ninety of his poems on Biblical and Jewish themes have been published in journals in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel since he began submitting poems, in 2000. His poems have won twelve prizes in international competitions, including First Place in the 2004 Miriam Lindberg Poetry for Peace Prize, Honorable Mention in the 2004 Annual Poetry Contest sponsored by Poetica magazine, Fourth Place in the 2004 Fifteenth Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition, Semifinalist in the 2005 Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry Competition sponsored by Nimrod magazine, Finalist in the 2006 International Poetry Competition sponsored by Binnacle magazine, Honorable Mention in the 2006 poetry contest sponsored by Inspirit magazine, and Second Place in the 2006 Dancing Galliard Sonnet Contest. In addition, Azriel was awarded a fellowship from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, in 2004-2005, for his poetry.
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