Author: Esther Adler

Publisher:

Published: 2021-03-07

Total Pages: 101

ISBN-13:

Beloved Jewish educator Esther Adler, brings a poet's eye to nearly a century of Jewish life, spanning her youth in Nazi Germany, her young adulthood in British Mandate Palestine, and her many decades in the United States. With a clear and unfailing voice, she commits herself to bear witness both to the destruction of European Jewry and to its rebirth in the 21st century. Her poems are a call to conscience, a call to inner peace, and a call to joy. Through the lens of Jewish learning, she invites readers to share in the sources that inspire her resilience. Reviews: "In Esther Adler's vivid poems, memories of loss, exile, and dislocation are transformed into injunctions to remember and transcend. Collected on the occasion of the poet's 97th birthday, the reader learns details of a long life well lived and discovers the consolations that come from work and love for Israel, family, Judaism, languages, and words. Full with allusions to Jewish texts and practices, the poems acknowledge every form of grief only to soar into affirmations of life, "sounds of solitary sorrow succumb to ... Sounds of serenity and succor." The reader, like every person whose life has been touched by Esther Adler's indomitable spirit or charmed by the spell of her storytelling, will feel grateful for her influence." Lori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies, Northeastern University About the author: Born in Breslau, Germany, now Wrocław, Poland, Adler grew up in an orthodox family. She attended Jewish Day school and studied modern Hebrew after school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau. After witnessing Kristallnacht, she left her family for Palestine as part of Youth Aliyah in 1938, then rejoined her family in the United States in 1947. Her autobiographical novel, Best Friends: A Bond that Survived Hitler, is available in both English and German language editions. This is her second volume of poetry.