Blogged Essays, Drashot, and Poetry

I’ve been blogging regularly since 2008. You can find that many years of sermons, essays, stories, and more, right here on the Itzik’s Well blog. There is a search feature to help you find specific pieces, although there is a quirk with the Squarespace search engine: if you put more than one word in the search field, it comes up empty. Search with just one key word. And if there’s something you know I’ve written and you can’t find it, email me. I’ll hunt it down for you.

BOOK: SHECHINAH AT THE ART INSTITUTE

A long-awaited collection of essays, memoir, and poetry, taking us on dazzling journeys into Jewish mysticism, love, loss, memory, gender, AIDS, and the Milky Way itself. Buckle your seatbelts. Read more here.

Research & Thought

• “Where You Go, I Will Go: Same-Sex Marriage and Jewish Law” (2020). This treatment of Ruth’s oath to Naomi as a vibrant model for queer and other egalitarian marriages within Judaism can be read by clicking here.

• “Joseph’s Womb: Gender Complexity in the Story of Joseph” (2021). This paper explores the numerous unexpected ways that Joseph is gendered in the Hebrew text and in rabbinic commentary. There’s far more to Joseph than meets the eye. Click here.

Anthologies

• “Postcard from the Effeminati,” in Liberating Gender for Jews and Allies: The Wisdom of Transkeit (Litman and Hero-Shaw, eds., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022). A new anthology of scholarship and memoir from trans Jews and allies. Click here.

• In the Light of Peace: Poems and Meditations of a Creative Spiritual Community (Bowden, ed., Bayit Publications 2021). Click here.

• Beside Still Waters: A Journey of Comfort and Renewal (Barenblat, ed., Bayit 2019) . Click here.

• Words from the Heart: Multi-Faith Prayers, Poems and Blessings (Smith, ed., 2020).

Articles on Line

• “The Rebbetzin’s Moon” in Tablet Magazine. A piece of family-friendly feminist Chanukah fiction. Click here.

• “Oath of Disloyalty” in Tikkun Magazine. A widely shared poem written in response to an infamous presidential comment in 2019 that Jews who vote Democrat are disloyal. Click here.

• “Robed in Malkhut: The Hidden and Revealed in Esther (and Us)” in Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations (Reconstructing Judaism). An exploration of a mystical undertone in the Book of Esther. Click here.

•  “How Stephen Sondheim Helped me Find my Gay Jewish Sensibility” in JWeekly (received an award from the American Jewish Press Association). A queer, Jewish elegy for Sondheim. Click here.

• “The Kedoshim Question: Aural Argument” in Kol Aleph (the voice of ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal). A fantasy of a heavenly court hearing to do away with the anti-gay bits of Torah, modeled on the Supreme Court argument in Windsor vs. United States, and referencing the decision in Lawrence v. Texas. Click here.

Miscellaneous

• Website documenting the life (and destruction) of a Jewish agricultural community called Kolonja Isaaka. Click here.