By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Poetry can be difficult to judge because each person’s reactions are so personal. It’s not just a matter of whether someone prefers rhyme and rhythm to prose poetry. Some people like to ponder the underlying message of a poem, while others want its meaning to be easily grasped. Two recent poetry books focus on aspects of Judaism: Julie R. Enszer’s “The Lamed-Vovniks: Story-Poems” (Indolent Books) describes a world where the 36 righteous are all women, while “This Longing City: Modern Hebrew Poems of Jerusalem” translated, edited and introduced by Rachel Tzvia Back (Hebrew Union College Press), offers views of the holy city.
The Talmud speaks of the Lamed-Vovniks, the 36 righteous people without whom the world could not exist. These pious people are said to be hidden from view, performing deeds without public acknowledgment. When one dies, another is born to take their place. There have been novels written about those looking to destroy the 36 in order to end the world. Enszer takes a different approach: she wonders what would happen if all 36 were women. Opening with quotes from the Talmud and the writings of Maimonides about the 36, she then offers the thoughts of the angel Tirza, who is in charge of watching over the Lamed-Vovniks. Unlike her predecessors (there are term limits of 360 years) who preferred that the Lamed-Vovniks all be men, Tirza is fine with women being the righteous ones.
The easy-to-read prose poems look at the different women who make up the 36. Some are puzzling – for example, the former prostitute who still occasionally turns a trick – and force readers to reconsider what it means to be righteous. Some poems are marvelous in their simplicity: In “Miriam Bat Murray,” when the titled character is told that she can’t be part of a shiva minyan for her father because she “did not count / in G!d’s eyes,” she remembers all the lessons her father taught her and tells the rabbi, “I know what it is / to not count in man’s eyes / but none of us know / what counts – / who counts – / in the eyes of G!d.”
The beautifully rendered “Mirrored Piyyut” features a translation of Unataneh Tokef, a traditional prayer said on Yom Kippur, on one side of the page with the other side presenting Enszer’s “Let Us Speak of Awesomeness,” which offers the hope that “none will be forgotten” and that during this time of year “truth is revealed / with compassion and understanding.” Tirza also notes that not all of the 36 are Jewish in “Tirza Acknowledges G!d’s Pettiness,” and that Cellestina, one of the 36, is a “young Black angry militant” who is “not your bubbe’s Lamed-Vovnik.”
While not everyone will appreciate Enszer’s interpretations, those seeking a different way to look at this Jewish tradition, one offered from a feminist and queer point-of-view, will find much to delight them. 
While Enszer wrote all the poems in her work, “This Longing City” is an anthology of poems about Jerusalem from the 1930s-2023. Back offers an interesting look at the city from Jewish and personal points-of-view in her introduction. She notes that the city is filled with layers of history, filling a paragraph with the different ways that Jerusalem can be viewed. For the author, that makes the city a “paradox, the place one goes in order to transcend the limits of place.” Back believes that “it is to this Jerusalem, and these many Jerusalems, the poets are drawn.” The author also notes that, in many ways, her book is “an extended love poem to Jerusalem.”
“This Longing City” contains 77 poems written by 41 poets, one of whom is not Jewish. Each poem is published in its original Hebrew with an English translation by Back on the opposite page. Its five sections feature different time periods: “Holy Grandmothers of Jerusalem (1930s-1967)”; “Bound On Her Shoulders (1967-1980)”; “Jerusalem Ecology (1980-1999)”; “I Told the City Watchman That My Beloved Lives Here (1998-2008)”; and “Jerusalem Exile (2008-2023).” Some poets, such as Yehuda Amichai, Lea Goldberg and Zelda, may be familiar to English readers, but many of the other poets are lesser known on this side of the ocean. The poems range from those that are clear and easy to understand to ones that force readers to puzzle out their meaning. All poems focus on Jerusalem, even if the writer did not live in the city.
While not every poem resonated with this reviewer, favorites include:
“Set Me in the Breach” by Yehuda Karmi, whose last line made me reread the poem from a new perspective.
“Jerusalem” by Shlomo Zamir, which beautifully captures a moment of time.
Two poems by my favorite Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, “Mayor” and “Jerusalem Ecology,” which discuss the difficulty of living in Jerusalem.
The charming, very short poem “Pregnant Woman, Phoenician” by Tuvia Ruebner, whose imagery makes it possible to see what she describes.
The long poem “Walk Around Zion” by Brachi Serri, which captures the author’s love of the city.
My favorite poem, which is hidden as the book’s “Epilogue” (and not mentioned in the table of contents), is by Back and summarizes what she sought to accomplish.
Readers will, of course, disagree about the quality of each poem, which means that book clubs that read poetry may want to add this to their list. Those interested in Hebrew can read the Hebrew original and compare it to the English version. My only complaint about this beautifully produced book is that I wish the notes about the poems that appear in the back had been footnotes placed on the same page as the poem, or if Back had signaled which poems had comments in that section so readers could refer to them. However, this is a very minor quibble about an excellent book.