Reform Jewish Quarterly gives rave review to "70 Faces: Torah Poems"

"There are so many good poems with so many important insights it is hard to know where to start..." says Rabbi Adam Fisher in his lengthy appreciation of Rachel Barenblat's 70 Faces: Torah Poems. Writing in the current issue of The CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly (published by the Central Conference of American Rabbis), the journal's poetry editor praises Barenblat's writing and her approach to the texts, especially those that are difficult to deal with.

• In "Like God" (Tazria) she begins, "When a woman carries a grain of rice /invisible inside her rounded belly" then tells us some of the difficulties of pregnancy, and "when a woman gives birth to an infant / even the air around her crackles . . . /changed by the enorrnity of being like God/ and shaping new life in her compassionate womb." She gets us beyond the sacrifices and the ritual uncleanness, and gets to the heart of the matter: the wonder of pregnancy and childbirth. Barenblat, who has a son, doesn't romanticize pregnancy and childbirth but she does understand Tazria in terms of its most fundamental meaning.

The review (unfortunately not available online but further quoted here) concludes "Not every poem will strike a chord within all us -- no book could do that -- but there are such riches here that everyone will find many, many poems that will help him or her see these passages with new eyes."