Gracefully merging classical commentaries with mystics, poets, and philosophers, each essay forms a unique and compelling study of the weekly Torah portion.
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Since 2019, Rabbi Zohar Atkins has been reflecting on the Torah through an existential lens, in a weekly newsletter that is enjoyed, discussed, and shared at countless Shabbat tables each week. Gracefully merging classical commentaries with mystics, poets, and philosophers, each essay forms a unique and compelling study of the weekly Torah portion. Selected, sourced, indexed, and prepared for publication, they now appear in print for the very first time.
Volume 1; 310 pages, soft cover; book dimensions: 6″ x 9″
Zohar Atkins is a rabbi, poet, and the founder of Etz Hasadeh, A Center for Existential Torah. He holds a DPhil in Theology from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and semikha from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He received both an MA and BA from Brown University. In 2016, The Jewish Week named him one of the “36 under 36 Changemakers in Jewish Life.” The winner of a 2018 Eric Gregory Award for Poetry, Zohar is the author of Unframing Existence and Nineveh.
“In this set of virtuoso essays, Zohar Atkins presents his Torah teachings. Both scholarly and witty, in conversation with modern poetry and philosophy, he invites his reader into a dazzling but accessible world of thought about these ancient sacred texts. Highly recommended.”
—Aviva Zornberg
“These short essays are both an illumination and an excavation: we see more clearly the meaning of the text but also how it can inform our lives. Etz HaSadeh touches both the mind and the soul.”
—Rabbi David Wolpe
“If you’re looking for poetry at the heart of the teaching that Torah is, you’ve found it: the play of a searching, resisting mind, the ardor of desire for renewed meaning, the electricity and beauty of fusing horizons. Zohar Atkins turns the text and turns it again—culturally and counterculturally, through the ages and for readers reading now—and he does so with a rare combination of warmth and rigor; steepness and surprise; acuity, range, and exuberance. Highly recommended.”
—Peter Cole, author of Draw Me After: Poems
