Toward the Torah, Soaring
Poems of the Renascence of Faith
Hardback and Paperback: 52 pp.
Published: 1998
Price: $22.00, $14.50
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These are ecumenical poems of spiritual awe, by a Jew who returns to his heritage and faith after having strayed for more than forty years.
Praise:
Toward the Torah, Soaring achieves its purpose in grand style. It is a refreshing blend of ancient and modern Jewish imagery that moves with ease between two worlds. . . . It is the passionate record of a Jew who discovers his Jewish soul and cannot hold back his enthusiasm.
— Rabbi
Mark L. Shook
For Louis Daniel Brodsky writing poems is prayer. His brothers in this are Faulkner and Whitman, in whose plenitude of words we often find surprises. . . . So it is when Brodsky writes that it is as if "matter were just a matter of adoration," that mind, heart, and God blend into "One triumphant, endless amen." He observes that "dying defying infidels / May not be faith's best way to Paradise," but he revels in "forget[ting] my skepticism." These are poems of awe and gratitude. Over and over Brodsky dares to be open and vulnerable. He trembles, knowing "God is eavesdropping on His people." . . . This book is an exploration of self, faith, and the religious imagination.
— Dan Jaffe, author of Round for One Voice
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Shabbat
The whole road owns me alone.
No one else has even entered Saturday
Or dreamed this sunny, tasseled morning into being.
I am the exiled breeze,
Widowered, childless, pariahed,
Slowing only for an occasional hamlet
Sleeping inconspicuously amidst the corn.
I am the shadow off to my right,
Running parallel, forcing the pace,
Refusing to be outdistanced or buried
Here in this vast, tractor-dappled prairie.
I am the voice Moses heard in Egypt,
Atop Mount Sinai,
And in the desert, deprived of Canaan;
Its Hebraic accent remembers my throat
From a thousand passages I've made
And commends me to its eloquent mercy.
The words that speak to me now
Are those that ordained Creation;
They sing themselves free of my imagination
Like winged hues soaring from prisms
And urge me on toward a consummation
Of the love I have for life.
Yet, as I drive, this seventh day,
My soul commands me to rest out of respect.
I obey its ancestral poetry
By changing directions, heading home to pray.
Tomorrows are my wilderness trek.
