reviews - Jewish Book Council

59 TH NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS
THE KOREN SACKS SIDDUR:
A HEBREW/ENGLISH PRAYERBOOK
Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks
Koren Publishers
The Koren Siddur is a landmark
achievement for Chief Rabbi Lord
Jonathan Sacks, Eliyahu Koren, and the
Orthodox Union.
This new Orthodox, Ashkenazic rite
prayerbook features:
• Koren’s beautiful, clear fonts
for prayers and Bible texts
• innovative Hebrew-English pagination (with the book
open, Hebrew appears on the left, English on the right,
and both texts flow outward from the center)
• passages of Hebrew and English text laid out in meaningful
phrases
• special symbols for grammatical vocalization (sh’va na,
meteg, kamatz katan)
• instructions for women’s Zimmun at Grace After
Meals, Ceremony of Zeved HaBat (celebrating the birth
of a daughter)
• explanatory notes accompanying the text
• a useful appendix of month-by-month practices and
customs
• a table of variant texts “endorsed by practice or noted
halakhic authorities”
• an English translation which is consistently faithful,
original, engaging, and clear
• Rabbi Sacks’ superb introductory essay, “Understanding
Jewish Prayer”
But this prayerbook is much more than the sum of its parts. It integrates
perfectly the finest esthetic elements of book-craft with a rich national
heritage and personal engagement in Jewish prayer.
As Dr. Moshe Sokolow, one of the contributors to
this project, said, “The siddur actually functions as a
kind of liturgical time machine, transporting one
from ordinary weekdays to Shabbat” and to other
special days and occasions.
What other book does that?
POETRY
Winner:
THE BOOK OF SEVENTY
Alicia Suskin Ostriker
University of Pittsburgh Press
Alicia Ostriker is one of the finest
poets writing today in America.
She is known for her commentary on
Jewish women writers and Jewish
women of the Bible as well as for her
poetry. In one of her poems, “West 4th Street,” she calls herself a “fool for beauty”—but
she is also a fool for wisdom.
Book by book, she grows better and bet-
16 Jewish Book World Spring 5770/2010
ter; she has had to shed many skins to get here, but
she is—finally—here. She has humour, scholarship,
knowledge, and the courage of a woman at the
height of her power looking lovingly and quizzically
at the world.
Finalists:
EZEKIEL’S WHEELS
Shirley Kaufman
Copper Canyon Press
Passionate and breathtakingly direct, Shirley Kaufman maps the
territory of aging and blindness with clarity and courage:
“Nobody’s story but my own/coming to an end.” There is no self-pity
and nothing trivial in these stark, wise, beautiful lyrics. Kaufman’s
questing spirit interrogates everything, tasting life with undiminished
appetite. A poet who has been writing and publishing for decades,
Kaufman wastes no time and no words. Lucid, truthful, pared down
to powerful understatement, these are poems to read over and over.
DOOR TO A NOISY
ROOM
Peter Waldor
Alice James Books
The insurance industry now has poet
Peter Waldor to add to its ranks along
with Wallace Stevens. This first book is
spare and yet bountiful and delicious, ending
with “Warmth”:
“The ones I love/
strip shirts,...
I lift the old
clothes/... to feel the
warmth/ still in
them./
Who will tell me/ to
put them down?”
STUPID HOPE:
POEMS
Jason Shinder
Graywolf Press
Stupid Hope is Jason Shinder’s last
book, published after his untimely
death in 2008, at the height of his lyric
power. These poems from a life shortened
by illness are startlingly open and emotionally
daring. Unsparing
with himself, facing
the loneliness of his fears
and failures with clarity and an undertone of wry wit,
Shinder is fully alive and still willing to risk desire.
The poignancy of “stupid hope”—for life, for love—
is that these poems are filled with both.
www.jewishbookcouncil.org
J.P. Ostriker
Brad Fowler