Ben Yehuda Press, Jewish books here & everywhere

Arik and Company - Ben Yehuda Press There’ve always been questions about Arik. As far back as ’52 when a night patrol Spotted figures crossing the sand dunes. Arik told his men to open fire, ask questions later. A poetic exploration of Ariel “Arik” Sharon might sound counterintuitive, like an oxymoron. And true, much of the monologue that Atar Hadari presents us […]

And I never minded what his parents
grew on their cabbage patch.
So in Latrun I dragged him back.
Yeah, I took him on my back."

Used to come to scout meetings with a stick
for the coyotes. We’d see coyotes
maybe once in five years.
But he always knew his way in the dark.
And he never showed fear.
Once we started running around like tin soldiers
they all liked the fat kid.

"Arik & Co." by Atar Hadari captures the life of a man who looms large over the history of Israel and Gaza, from his childhood through the Disengagement he arranged 20 years ago.

"Why I saved him I don’t know.
A funny looking fat kid with no friends.

King of the Jews - Ben Yehuda Press Alex taught me how to make this in my dreams for you when he was being King of the Jews in his joy for all the dancers who danced in the desert and knew only love. How does one respond to the terror of Oct 7? For Matthew Lippman, it’s through poetry. In King of the […]

their Israeli counterparts are doing the same thing,
but not the same thing."

their homes in Roslindale and Newton and Brookline
and hold hands and pretend there is love
because there is love.
They talk about boys and girls and car washes and happiness
and get lonely with each other and far away

"Natalie and Ben and Ori and Eliora are King of the Jews on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
on Sundays and Wednesdays.
They go to their King of Jews Mall
and spend money at Sephora and Shake Shack.
They walk around in their Lululemon shorts and gold chains,

New Poetry Titles Out This Month

“How does one respond to the terror of Oct 7? For Matthew Lippman, it’s through poetry. In King of the Jews, Lippman names many who perished, were kidnapped, held hostage. He names friends, students, rock stars, too. Lippman honors—and loves—them all. He even anoints them king, King of the Jews. These poems hold the beauty and the horror of the world and the deep longing, living within Lippman’s naked, aching heart.” — Diane Gottlieb

“Atar Hadari’s extraordinary book Arik & Co. reads like a masterly biography magically transformed into vital poetry. Was Ariel Sharon a hero? Was he a monster? The force of a strong and twisting narrative spine, fleshed out in earthy interior monologs and dialogues, brings both the man and the era to inescapable life.” — Alicia Ostriker

Two new timely books of poetry. "King of the Jews" by Matthew Lippman captures the experience of mourning for 10/7 and fearing for the fate of the hostages from abroad.

All of our books are on sale; Find a curated list of some titles particularly relevant to this season of return at www.benyehudapress.c....

Ben Yehuda Press Back-To-Shul sale with savings of up to 40%

A New Year is dawning, may it be for the good, and with it lengthy synagogue stays. Now is the time to pick up shul reading, so we're running a sale: Save 20% on one book, 30% on two or three, and 40% on four or more.

Learn more at www.benyehudapress.c...

3 new prose titles from Ben Yehuda Press

Judaism Unbound (Bound) “Those concerned about Judaism’s future will find plenty to chew on in these creative and expansive dialogues.” —Publishers Weekly

Mussar in Recovery “Illuminates and fortifies a pathway that every person can walk – to become more whole and more illuminated – for the sake of their own soul and of the world” —Dr. Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

As the Story Goes “A delightful and penetrating part of Jewish cultural inheritance that I hadn’t realized was so sorely missing. An invitation to step right inside a vibrant ‘Yiddishland’ culture at once hilarious, painful, genuine, wise and dripping with ironic wit.” —Rabbi Aviva Richman

Three new titles spanning the past, present, and future of Judaism and Jewish life: Judaism Unbound (Bound) by Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg; Mussar in Recovery by Hannah L. ; and As the Story Goes by Mordekhai Lipson, translated and edited by Jonathan Boyarin and Jonah Sampson Boyarin.

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Wu Wei Eats an Egg - Ben Yehuda Press Wu Wei Eats an Egg introduces fascinating Dutch poet Lucas Hirsch. Alternatingly enraged at and bemused by the 21st century, with its traps of bourgeois excess, addiction, and “hollow language,” Hirsch regularly explores the interior self, familial history, and the physical world (in which a tree “writ[es] a poem” each day in front of the […]

a sheep
the buzz of being, and
lazy as it is
a trembling universe

It takes pleasure in seeing
what it created, creates, and refrains from creating

It doesn’t get more active
But fuller
considering the void
Now it is thirsty

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of the beast
It makes breakfast, the cosmos and planets
the tumbling sun

It laughs at all there is
It eats an egg under the heavens
It fills its belly

It sits back
in a chair
on the veranda
of a house
in a country
under the clouds
looking
at creation floating by

As it moves, it creates

Cover of Wu Wei Eats an Egg

“Alternatingly enraged at and bemused by the 21st century, with its traps of bourgeois excess, addiction, and ‘hollow language,’ Hirsch regularly explores the interior self, familial history, and the physical world.” —Wayne Miller, author of The End of Childhood

Wu wei eats an egg What always was, is, and will be cracks an egg on the edge of a frying pan Acts according to the nature of the beast It makes breakfast, the cosmos and planets the tumbling sun It laughs at all there is It eats an egg under the heavens It fills its belly It sits back in a chair on the veranda of a house in a country under the clouds looking at creation floating by

Continuing our series of bilingual poetry translations, "Wu Wei Eats an Egg" presents Dutch poet Lucas Hirsch in English carefully rendered by Donna Spruijt-Metz.

*Wu wei eats an egg*

What always was, is, and will be
cracks an egg
on the edge
of a frying pan

Acts according to the nature

Zion Square - Ben Yehuda Press The music rips the skein of being. The ghost is proudly silent. A triumph of difference. Discordant and defiant. Maxim D. Shrayer’s voice speaks across generations. With a stubborn belief that poetry must be healing, Shrayer writes poems that break through boundaries and fears, accept defeat, and yearn for pleasure. –David Biespiel, author of A […]

Music didn’t end suddenly,
it flowed up toward Jaffa Street and I felt someone
or something carry me, a Jewish feather, to Kikar Tsiyon.

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but also the roof of particolored umbrellas that
hang over the street—once the prey of tourist
photos and travel agents’ brochures, now the sky
of our small warring country. I looked up and cried
for all my cousins-in-arms but also for myself. Mostly
tears of joy and comfort.

Rabbi Chaim-Wolf, of blessed memory, who was
peacefully murdered in the early days of the war.

Orchestras played outside my hotel at night and
I listened to the music Jews couldn’t leave in Europe.
I felt sheltered by the might of the Iron Dome

named after the founder of three Israeli towns
and a Hebrew newspaper, a descendant
of a messenger of the venerable Vilna Gaon,
who in the 1800s left Lithuania for the Holy Land,
and was, perhaps, my distant relative, or rather
kinsman on the side of my father’s grandfather

Cover of "Zion Square" by Maxim D. Shrayer

Orchestras played outside my hotel at night and I listened to the music Jews couldn’t leave in Europe. I felt sheltered by the might of the Iron Dome but also the roof of particolored umbrellas that hang over the street—once the prey of tourist photos and travel agents’ brochures, now the sky of our small warring country. I looked up and cried for all my cousins-in-arms but also for myself. Mostly tears of joy and comfort. Music didn’t end suddenly, it flowed up toward Jaffa Street and I felt someone or something carry me, a Jewish feather, to Kikar Tsiyon.

The memories Maxim Shrayer carries burn in carefully crafted verses as if to contain his furies and his love. Poems born since October 7, poems of Israel and the old Soviet Union, an imagination that can bring Nabokov to size up Putin, but can also relish the sweetness of concord grapes in Massachusetts. These are poems to savor and to learn. —Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Missing Jew: Poems 1976-2022

Just published: "Zion Square," the new poetry collection from Maxim D. Shrayer. Available direct from Ben Yehuda Press and the usual places.

*Zion Square*

In the earthly city of Jerusalem I like to stay
just a couple of blocks from Kikar HaMusica
in Yo’el Moshe Salomon Street, a pathway

Cover of "Happy Camper" by Sarah L. Young

“A moving novel about two young girls finding their true, authentic selves over the course of an eventful kayitz (summer) at Jewish summer camp. I was quickly captivated by the story, and rooting for our young main characters! This was a pleasure from start to finish.” —Joshua Edelglass, Co-Director of Camp Ramah New England, illustrator of the graphic novel José and the Pirate Captain Toledano

A captivating tale of love and identity, set against the backdrop of a Jewish summer camp in 2010. When Reina, an out lesbian, is sent to Camp Geshem for the summer, she anticipates an isolating eight weeks back in the closet — because the camp’s policy at the time is to kick out LGBTQ+ campers. But when she meets Talia, a fellow camper with secrets of her own, everything changes....

Summer may be ending, but summer camp is forever. Recapture the camp feelings with "Happy Camper," a novel for kids 12-15, but fun for nostalgic adults as well.

New from Ben Yehuda Press.

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As the Story Goes - Ben Yehuda Press A treasure trove of anecdotes that illuminate the lives, humor, and wisdom of Eastern European Jewish communities from the 18th and 19th centuries. ​ A bestseller nearly a century ago in its original ...

Looking forward to this translation by Jonathan Boyarin and Jonah Boyarin, who were in my @yiddishbookcenter.bsky.social Translation Fellowship cohort. “As the Story Goes” is forthcoming with @benyehudapress.bsky.social. www.benyehudapress.com/books/as-the...

The Broken Heart is the Master Key - Ben Yehuda Press The Broken Heart is the Master Key is a masterpiece. The poems in Baruch November’s new collection have been honed by years of skilled craft, love, and longing for connection — whether with a woman with chestnut hair or with the Divine. November here infuses the dreams of his younger poetic self with the clear, […]

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Ask the newly dead as they look down.
Ask the soldier missing both arms.

The broken heart is the master key,
said the Chassidic master
to the shofar blower who lost
his page of mystical notations
& thought he had failed his task—

having blasted notes
like a simple,
broken man.

*The Loudest Language*

The broken heart is the master key,
said the Baal Shem Tov.

Despair is the loudest language
in all worlds.

Ask the mother of the stolen seven-year-old girl.
Ask the widowed wives still in love.

with the truth of others.
I built for starlight,
not shelter.

I built for ghosts
of those never born.
I built a hollow home
for howling winds.

I built a demise
in waiting
and thought it
a masterpiece
towering over
the settled lives
of others.

I have lived lives upon lives.
I want to go back
to when I was certain—it was my twenties.
I dismissed many great women.
Someone greater was always coming along.

I have been an inept architect.
I built for one who does not live

*Lives upon Lives*

Contractors affix buildings on top
of buildings in Jerusalem.
Occupants below must clear out
for all the years it takes
to finish adding
to sandstone structures.

November infuses the dreams of his younger poetic self with the clear, sometimes sharp realism of a man who has known loss yet still embraces the world with open arms. The result is a unique Chassidic dance, a lyrical niggun that lingers in our hearts long after the last page.

The Broken Heart is the Master Key - Ben Yehuda Press The Broken Heart is the Master Key is a masterpiece. The poems in Baruch November’s new collection have been honed by years of skilled craft, love, and longing for connection — whether with a woman with chestnut hair or with the Divine. November here infuses the dreams of his younger poetic self with the clear, […]

The poems in "The Broken Heart is the Master Key" have been honed by years of skilled craft, love, and longing for connection — whether with a woman with chestnut hair or with the Divine.