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Praying with the Body

By Richard ChessAugust 7, 2019

It happens only once a year, during the High Holidays: a full prostration, human body to the floor. In my congregation, the rabbi, and sometimes the guest cantor hired for the High Holidays, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, each joined by two congregant-assistants, prostrate themselves fully on the bimah, the platform on which the holy…

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Where’s The Healing Temple? The Luminous Being?

By Richard ChessJuly 1, 2019

The first gift: a stone that nests in my palm. Turned by sea until the sea delivered it to shore, this oblong, ash-colored stone I lifted, held, and slid into my pocket. A year ago, I took it from Whidbey Island. This offering, this theft. I keep it now by my meditation bench and stack…

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Separation and Longing: Meet Tobaron Waxman

By Maryanne SaundersJune 25, 2019

Tobaron Waxman is a Canadian artist, curator, performer, singer and archivist currently traveling around Eastern Europe. Waxman is transgender and a former Orthodox Jew–identities that would seem to be in conflict when one considers the immutable gender binary that shapes the lives, experiences and actions of most practicing Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Waxman’s work…

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A Conversation with Alicia Ostriker: Part 2

By ImageOctober 2, 2018

“When I write a poem, I am crawling into the dark. Or else I am an aperture. Something needs to be put into language, and it chooses me,” says critic, activist, and biblical scholar Alicia Ostriker, whose poetry appears in Image’s recently released issue #98. We asked Ostriker, winner of the Jewish National Book Award…

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Poetry Friday: “are you my god”

By Richard ChessMay 11, 2018

It has been years since I read the Narnia books, but the phrase I remember from them is “Aslan is not a tame lion.” Aslan, the books’ figure of Christ, can be tender and merciful; but the children learn that he can be wildly powerful as well. I recalled this while reading Richard Chess’s poem…

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Dissolving Borders between Self and Other

By Richard ChessFebruary 21, 2018

The Buddhists have four stations of the heart: Metta (kindness), Mudita (compassion), Karuna (joy in the joy of others), and Upeka (equanimity). The Jews have four matriarchs: Sarah, a mother who laughs and who does not speak when her husband takes her son before dawn to offer him as a sacrifice in the place God…

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Poetry Friday: “Sabbath”

By Dan BellmJanuary 12, 2018

Sabbath as beloved bride and queen: familiar tropes in Jewish liturgy and thought. Now, thanks to Dan Bellm’s “Sabbath,” a subtle poem of loss and longing, a promise and a vow, we have another metaphor: Sabbath as mother. The Sabbath, a fixed period of time, stands outside of time. Jews are commanded to keep and…

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Jews Without Jerusalem

By Richard ChessDecember 26, 2017

Unimaginable. That’s precisely why I will imagine it. Shake them, shake the books, shake the siddur, prayerbook, shake the Tanakh, the Bible, shake them vigorously until the word is shaken loose, Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Yerushalayim. Titgadal v’titkadash b’toch Yerushalyim irkha: May You be exalted and sanctified in Jerusalem. Having arrived at the heart of our…

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To Be Born Again

By Richard ChessOctober 9, 2017

The day after Yom Kippur 5778  When I finish being born for the fourth time, I will live in a house by the sea. The windows facing the ocean will hold the ocean, as much as glass can hold. The phone will vibrate with messages of peace. There will still be a trashcan: everything that…

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How To Intuit a Book Title

By Richard ChessJuly 6, 2017

How do poets and writers choose their book titles? I didn’t have a good answer to the question, “Why did you choose the title Love Nailed to the Doorpost?” posed at a recent reading, though I knew that sooner or later that someone would ask. I did have a superficial answer, but I hadn’t thought…

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