Repartings

The haftarah (verses of the Prophets) chanted in synagogue is an often-ignored and even boring liturgical moment. Yet with her breathtaking book Repartings, Joelle Maxx Milman has created a lush, intimate midrash on these texts, in which a sharp yet soft contemporary mystic dialogues with the characters in the haftarah stories about divine reality, prophetic imperatives, and current events. Characters like Rahab and Jephthah's daughter come to life in a modern context, with a prophetic call to sink into our knowing, live differently and treat one another better. Readers perhaps might even consider bringing the volume to synagogue to enliven their study and prayer-I certainly intend to. -Rabbi Jill Hammer, translator of Siddur haKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook, author of Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women and Jewish Book of Days The joy in reading Milman's poems, followed by her own translations, is the realization that the shock of her poetry, whether it be concerning sexuality or violence, is simply the unfiltered leap into the actual prophetic readings. Her poems and translations express a longing to have a relationship with God that is not constrained by the specific constellation of Jewish prophecy, while also even more so wishing to weave Jewish prophecy into an even higher relationship with God and self. -Rabbi Zach Golden, cofounder of Der Nister Downtown Jewish Center in Los Angeles This is a book that stands as a long answer to that most primal of pleas: ""can there be a home to this longing / that you built into our bodies?"" If you've never heard that question gnawing in the depths of your soul, this book might confound you. Or entice you. Perhaps even convert you to dare to live into a deeper and more audacious life. One in which prophecy is not ""over there,"" but ""in here,"" coming to roost uncomfortably in your heart. As a brooding collection of poems and prophecies, Repartings wants to shape-shift you, bend your certainties until they break apart in the flames of justice, lure you to enter, naked, into ancient texts, and re-mind you that you cannot remain what you thought, or hoped, or feared you were. -Mark S. Burrows, poet, translator, and author most recently of You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke Rabbinic tradition teaches that when prophecy ceased, kabbalah began. The ability to turn vision into words, into meandering utterances that were hurled and screamed and chanted and pleaded in public or into the void gave way to mysticism; the words turned inward and became veiled, hidden. In one of the most original and unique books of poetry I have ever read, Joelle Millman channels the power of the visionary words of the biblical prophets and playfully drags hidden mysteries into the sunlight, piecing the shards together into something that feels very old and new at the same time, familiar and ancient, tangible and elusive. Prophecy did not cease. It is very much alive in this stellar recently discovered scroll, and an amazing read - both Millman's original poems and her own truthful translations of selected haftarot. -Rabbi Julia Knobloch, author of Liner Notes