By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Some reviews are more difficult to write than others, especially when there is a difference between my personal and professional opinions about the work. I am able to recognize when a book is excellent, but it just doesn’t resonate with me. That’s the case with “Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry” by Wendy I. Zierler (Jewish Publication Society). The work is a beautifully written look at how Zierler used poetry to help her come to terms with the deaths of both of her parents within a year, with the second mourning period arriving the same time at the COVID virus. I was looking forward to the book, which I thought would be inspiring. It will be for some readers, but the author’s theology and interpretations of the poems didn’t resonate with me.
To put this in context, one needs to know more about Zierler. In addition to being a professor of modern Jewish literature and feminist studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, she is also a practicing Orthodox Jew who accepts Orthodoxy’s legalistic rules about what women can and can’t do, although her frustrations with these limitations are clear. She also is very aware of the lack of women’s voices in both leading services and in the liturgy. That’s one reason why she deliberately used poetry written by women in her discussions about poetry with the minyan she attended during her period of mourning and afterward. However, during the time period about which she writes, she also became an ordained rabbi (please note that she uses the term rabbi, not rabba as do many Orthodox women who have been ordained) at Yeshivat Maharat. The theology she uses to analyze poetry, though, is clearly Orthodox in its belief about the way God is present in this world.
Zierler is clear that, while she discusses her journey during mourning – coping first with the death of her father and moving her ill mother closer to her, only to have her die before a year was over – her work is not a how-to work about Jewish mourning. Although it contains analysis of individual poems, it is also not a critical poetry anthology. Instead, the author offers a personal look at the poems she used as a way to cope with her grief. Zierler writes, “[This book] is at once theological and liturgical reflections, literary close readings of poetry, and feminist interpretations of personal and collective experience. Central strands include personal and persistent response to shock, tragedy, and bereavement; prayer; modern Hebrew literature; and faith, doubt, and hope.”
The title of her book comes from a passage from the Mishnah that the author found distressing: it talks about knots being tied onto a son’s arm to help him deal with the loss of his father. Each commentator she read added to her frustration: in the midst of mourning for her father, these works told her that a daughter’s grief is not equal to that of a son. When her colleagues offered her alternative readings, including noting that those commentaries spoke in the language of their time, she began to search for ways to include women’s voices in her mourning journey. 
Although she didn’t count as part of the prayer quorum in the minyans she attended, Zierler was a regular at services, even when members of the synagogue she attended that didn’t quite understand why she was there. Before, during and after COVID, she remained part of her home minyan. She notes that when people asked her why she still attends morning services when she doesn’t count in the prayer quorum, she says, “I had come to rely on the routine. That daily minyan attendance slowed down my davening and gave me more focus. That I felt responsible to my minyan buddy, Lisa, and to Mark and Laureen, the middle-aged developmentally disabled brother and sister, who came just about every morning, and waited until the end of davening, just to talk to Lisa and me.” She notes that if she misses a morning, she receives texts and e-mails asking how she is. For Zierler, that shows that she counts in the most important way. 
The poets featured in “Going Out with Knots” include Lea Goldberg. Avraham Halfi, Yehuda Amichai, Rachel Morpurgo, Ruhama Weiss and Rachel Bluwstein. Each poem is printed in the original Hebrew with an English translation by Zierler. She notes the biblical and rabbinic references in each poem, in addition to giving biographical information about the author. Her approach is a theological one: she is looking to find lessons about grief. That is the part of work that didn’t resonate with me. Although I’ve read and enjoyed much of Amichai’s poetry, even that section didn’t work for me. What did surprise me were the four poems written by the author that appeared in the “Appendix” of the book. To me, these were the most moving poems offered. For example, when writing about Psalm 100 in “Mourning with Psalm 100,” she notes that “there is too much party/ in this psalm./ Too much loud whooping/ By the whole wild world.” That seems a perfect expression of grief. The three other poems also seem to express her feelings as well, if not better, than the poets about whom she writes.
There was one poem – “Day of Tiding” by Bluwstein – that shows the difference in the author and my approaches to theology. Bluwstein suffered from tuberculosis and was unable to live the pioneer life on a kibbutz she desired, instead being forced to spend her life indoors writing. The poem does not have a positive approach to illness, noting that this was not the life the author wanted to live. Zierler sees this reaction as “urging a form of self-hatred.” While she might be correct that this thought comes from “a Zionist-purist rejection of all weakness, vulnerability, and marginality,” that does not mean that those of us who are unhappy with the disabilities we face are practicing a form of self-hatred. Perhaps Zierler believes that illness is given by God and therefore we must learn to accept and understand the lesson or lessons God wants us to learn from those disabilities. However, my personal theology rejects the idea that illness is given by God for a specific reason. This is not to say that Zierler does a poor job analyzing the poem or that she is wrong. The fact her discussion elicited that type of reaction from me shows how powerful her work can be.
Zierler notes that her purpose in writing “Going Out with Knots” is to prove that poems can “offer solace in the wake of personal and communal pain,” and “that poetry can heal, divert and entertain, mobilize and galvanize.” It’s clear that they’ve done so for the author. Readers may find solace in taking this journey with her. Others, who have an interest in Hebrew poetry, may enjoy exploring the different authors’ voices offered. What is clear, even for those who disagree with Zierler, is that poetry can have a powerful effect on its readers.