Rachel Barenblat

Rachel Barenblat is the author of 70 Faces and a contributing editor to Zeek. She is also the Velveteen Rabbi, one of the most popular blogs in the Jewish blogosphere. She writes there:

I can't take credit for my blog's clever title. As my first post notes, the name is borrowed from a cartoon by Jennifer Berman, which has hung over my desk for 15+ years. I've been blogging since October of 2003; in April of 2008, Time.com named Velveteen Rabbi one of their top 25 blogs in their first annual blog index. (They said very nice things. Thanks, Time.)

I'm a writer, in a variety of genres. My first love is poetry; I hold an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and have been writing poems for a long time now. And my other longstanding love, unsurprisingly, is Judaism. You can find my Judaism-related work in The Jewish Women's Literary Annual, Lilith, Zeek, and The Women's Seder Sourcebook (Jewish Lights, 2002), among other places. In 2004 I wrote "Blog Is My Copilot," an article about women in the godblogosphere published in Bitch magazine.

I'm co-founder and former executive director of a literary arts nonprofit called Inkberry. I'm a contributing editor at Zeek magazine. I'm author of four poetry chapbooks, most recently chaplainbook (laupe house press, 2006), a collection of poems arising out of hospital chaplaincy work, and Through (2009), a self-published collection of poems chronicling the experience of miscarriage and healing. I'm interested in the places where poetry and liturgy intersect, and my poems have appeared in a variety of siddurim and siddur/machzor supplements.

Religion

Batya Kuncman, Collecting the Sparks

Chava Weissler: Tradition and Renewal

By Rachel Barenblat

Rachel Barenblat speaks with Chava Weissler, writer, scholar, and folklorist, about Jewish spirituality, the blurry boundaries of a participant-observer, and the Jewish life of “non-elites.”

Culture

Polyartist: An Interview with Richard Kostelanetz

By Rachel Barenblat

There may not be a causal relationship between Jewishness and an avant-garde sensibility, but Jewish communities have given rise to some terrific avant-garde work. Or maybe Jews just tend to be comfortable outside the mainstream, which is often where the most interesting creative work flourishes and finds its home.

Culture

In Song Together: For Linda Hirschhorn, Music is a Path to Transformation

By Rachel Barenblat

Harmony is like drash. Singing a song simply is like pshat; harmonies give you the chance to interpret text. If you hear a lyric, especially sung in counterpoint, the words coming at a different time, you’ll get a different experience of what the words might mean, what’s important. Major or minor, syncopated or lullaby: those communicate so much. It’s important to understand the text, to try to find how my song matches my understanding of the text.

Culture

Holy longing, holy language: Yehoshua November’s "God’s Optimism"

By Rachel Barenblat

A wordless niggun I know asks why a soul enters the world, and then answers “to know God.” Surely that is the answer these poems provide.

Culture

Merle Feld Finds Her Words

By Rachel Barenblat

Liturgy and family, awe and anger, these mixed ingredients produce a book best savoured in small bites.

Religion

New Teachings from Exodus: Berman & Waskow’s Freedom Journeys

By Rachel Barenblat

Egypt’s revolution should remind us of the Jewish “Passover” revolution there 3000 years ago. Freedom Journeys comes at just the right time.

Religion

Parenthood and Prayer

By Rachel Barenblat

We bring in the New Year with a babe, as the Velveteen Rabbi ponders the meaning of prayer.

Religion

The Spirituality of Parenting

By Rachel Barenblat

How parenting is a spiritual practice; plus two poems from Barenblat’s mother cycle