Overview

Interweaving memoir with Hebrew poetry, Going Out with Knots illuminates author Wendy I. Zierler’s literary and personal Jewish mourning journey in the aftermath of unremitting personal loss. She begins with her story: the death of both her parents in one year; the challenges she faced as a woman saying Kaddish in an Orthodox synagogue; and her decision to teach a weekly class on modern Hebrew poems that addressed grief, prayer, and God wrestling. Each subsequent chapter delves into the works of a different modern Hebrew poet-Lea Goldberg, Avraham Ḥalfi, Yehuda Amichai, Rachel Morpurgo, Rachel Bluwstein, Ruhama Weiss, and Amir Gilboa-in the order in which she translated, interpreted, and taught their poems (many translated into English for the first time). Each poet, like Zierler, comes to writing deeply connected to Jewish tradition and yet at odds with it, too. Ultimately, Going Out with Knots reflects on how a woman living in a modern Orthodox community can claim a place in the male-centered rituals that Jewish tradition prescribes for mourning, and how immersion in modern Hebrew poetry can respond deeply to both communal (COVID-19, October 7) as well as personal losses, offering a new form of theology and Torah.  

Full Product Details

Author:   Wendy I. Zierler
Publisher:   Jewish Publication Society
Imprint:   Jewish Publication Society
ISBN:  

9780827615700

ISBN 10:   0827615701
Pages:   360
Publication Date:   30 October 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

List of Images Acknowledgements Introduction   Part 1. So Much Has Been Severed   1. Learning to Mourn: Going Out with Knots Things Fall Apart The End of Stories Loose Thread Going Out With Knots  Settling In Mourning and Metaphor Sewing a Seam A Kaddish / COVID Journal with Poems   Part 2. Transitions and Translations   2. Picturing God in Grief and Prayer: Beginning to Mourn with Lea Goldberg “To Mother’s Portrait”       “By Three Things”       “In My Prayerbook”       “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 Don’t Know 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 Autumn”   4. Living with a Lesser, Closer God: Yehuda Amichai’s Secular Theology of Everyday Life “And That is Your Glory” “In the Morning I Shall 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” “Rachel” “Barren Woman” From “In the Hospital” “Or Maybe” “Honi the Circle Maker” “Day of Tidings” “Sorrow Song”   Final Thoughts: Still in Knots Amir Gilboa, “Behold I’ll Craft a Ball from the Pain”   Appendix: 4 Poems by the Author Notes Source Acknowledgements Bibliography Index   

Reviews

“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

“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 co-founder 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

Author Information

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.  

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions