Customer Reviews

Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey (Suny Series, Modern Jewish Literature & Culture)

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An amazing story of self-discovery, " A Spiritual Life, A Jewish Feminist Journey" by Merle Feld, fills her book with beautiful prose and poetry. I identified with this book immensely as the author echoed my inner thoughts that I never took the time to write. Ms. Feld voices the struggle to grow and develop into a special person, concerns about doubts how woman relate to others, professional growth and motherhood. She discovers a gift with words and poetry and along the way - confidence. Her book, a triumph of realization and actualization, expresses her developing passion, hones social action and true friendships. Read this book from cover to cover or open the book and select a poem at random. Each poem allows an opportunity to remember who we are, engage in a dialogue with self and friends, to encourage where we need to be in our lives. Several favorite passages discuss marriage, Israel, re- interpretation of some biblical stories, Shabbat and agonies about menstruation. This book will make you a new friend. Excellent!

I wrote this letter to Ms. Feld while reading A Spiritual Life.

Hi Merle,

I'm not generally a big fan of poetry. But your poems have touched so many different parts of my life. Standing At Sinai has been part of my life and my Rosh Chodesh group on several occasions. We had one mother-daughter meeting where we all invited our mothers, and we brought Standing at Sinai to discuss. Adding our mother's varied opinions to our on-going discussion was amazing. I have given Mazel Tov to more brides than I can count, and I'm now reading your book slowly, savoring it in quiet moments I can grab. Last Shabbat, I finally made it to the poetry section, two days before the bris of a friend who went through a miscarriage before this baby. After Shabbat, I e-mailed her My Friends Baked... so she could read it before the bris. This Shabbat, my rosh chodesh group had our annual Shabbat dinner, and I brought your book. As my friend who had a miscarriage and now has an 8 month old daughter read, she kept exclaiming how true each of the poems struck her. You touch people.

I was like a kid in a candy store when I received your book, jumping around reading parts to my husband and searching for poems I already love, falling in love with new poems. So I just want to thank you for your poems, and now the book. Your path is a path I travel, and its wonderful to see the beauty of things before I get there.

Be well.

B'Shalom,

Max

"A Spiritual Life" gave me permission to digest my past. At the end of each vignette I was surprised to find myself face to face with "me"-my own experiences of decades ago. I suddenly slowed down and felt deep parts of my life that I had been too frightened to listen to long ago. I keep it on my night table and read it again and again reflecting on my own memories. Reading "A Spiritual Life" has been a healing experience for me.

This book written by Merle Feld was extremely good. I couldn't put it down. Merle takes us on a journey through her early days as a child with lovely poems to enhance our reading and onto her married years where she explores the many areas of women in Judiasm. It is a true story of her journey which I truley enjoyed.

Merle's Feld's poetry is so down to earth and fun to read as to appear simple--and nothing can be further from the truth. Her beautiful and touching poems are little jewels, each reflecting her deep connection to Judaism as well as her own humorous and profound insights into life as a Jewish woman. Through her poems and the personal narrative story that she weaves around them, Merle shares her experiences and journey as a Jewish feminist, mother, daughter, American in Israel, and wife.

This book will speak to anyone, regardless of gender or background, who has ever felt that spirituality is in competition with the overwhelming demands of everyday life. Without offering formulas or prescriptions, Merle's voice speaks to a part of myself that I struggle to find; it says that holiness can be found right in the midst of the most mundane tasks and minutae. It is a transcendent experience in itself to realize that we have the power to transform everyday life into something holy.

"A Spiritual Life" gave me permission to digest my past. At the end of each vignette I was surprised to find myself face to face with "me"-my own experiences of decades ago. I suddenly slowed down and felt deep parts of my life that I had been too frightened to listen to long ago. I keep it on my night table and read it again and again reflecting on my own memories. Reading "A Spiritual Life" has been a healing experience for me.

I loved this book, every word. I could not put it down. It is so nice to hove poetry placed in context before being read. A really special book!

This is a book of moments. "Aha" moments. Contemplative moments. Incredible moments in time, put in pause by Feld's wonderful command of words so we might take a longer look before moving on. Merle Feld sees the world the way most of us do: through the lens of daily life. She comments on deep struggles with class, sexism, spirituality, and politics, as they intersect with things like cooking and cleaning and raising children. The result is a sharing of insight at once both gentle and astounding. I found myself grinning, and sighing and remembering how amazing it is to be a Jewish woman.

Merle Feld has the rare ability to capture spiritual ambiguity and complexity without sacrificing its immediacy or power. It is spirituality connected to the details of life, a spirituality that refuses to give up the holiness of daily reality.

What makes for a spiritual life? Merle Feld avoids pop psychology, new-age angels, and inner-children in her deeply personal and intensely human journey. The sacred is often revealed in the mundane, the divine in a moment in time. Through deceptively simple and often in an almost conversational mix of poetry and prose, Feld's spiritual life is found in relationship.

Her relationship with her past and the family she was born into, reveals the earliest struggles with her sense of self growing up in a poor Brooklyn secular Jewish family. She asks herself the questions that she will repeat in one form or another as she moves from one world to another, growing from one period into the next phase of her life. The questions are basic. Who am I? Who are you? Why are we here doing this together? Each of her roles in life, among them, daughter, wife, mother, mentor, artist, poet, playwright, feminist, activist, peacemaker, Jewish woman, and friend are subject to questioning of self and spirit.

Her insights are deeply touching particularly when she expresses the darker emotions usually omitted from books claiming to be spiritual. She never shies away from anger, fear, or resentment when they are true to her experience. She gives us permission to appear less than angelic to ourselves when we experience that shock of recognition, "Oh yes, I felt that, too." Her courage to express it directly reminds us that a spiritual life must be grounded in honesty with our humanness. What she has done is to take those emotions and turn them into art. In doing so she honors that place in her life and encourages us to embrace all the contradictions in our own selves.

Just as the negatives are embraced, Feld also reveals tenderness and joy. Her evocative depiction of Shabbos with her family invites the reader into the sacred time that nourishes the spirit. She makes us aware of the efforts involved in creating sacred space and time, efforts of intention and demonstrations of labor. We learn that to create a spiritual life, one must want to have one. There is a shifting of consciousness and a commitment in action whether baking challah for Shabbos or later working with Palestinian women in Israel. This relational spiritual life is expressed both in brave action and then in honest reflection.

I would encourage anyone to engage with Merle Feld on her intimate and profound spiritual journey. In reading the book one encounters her not only in the roles she has carved out for herself; the reader's spirit is enriched by the words of a wise teacher, the vision of an artist, and the compassion of a loving heart.