Ben Yehuda Press

10/10/2025

Our Simchat Torah sale is underway. Save 25% on all our parsha titles: prose, poetry, and pictures; the serious, the silly, and the interactive. https://www.benyehudapress.com/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=view_in_browser&action=view&data=WzgxLCI3NGNkYWU4NTBjMjciLDEyOTUsIjNiZWNhZiIsMTkzLDBd

09/16/2025

Two new timely books of poetry. "King of the Jews" by Matthew Lippman captures the experience of mourning for 10/7 and fearing for the fate of the hostages from abroad.

"Natalie and Ben and Ori and Eliora are King of the Jews on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
on Sundays and Wednesdays.
They go to their King of Jews Mall
and spend money at Sephora and Shake Shack.
They walk around in their Lululemon shorts and gold chains,
their homes in Roslindale and Newton and Brookline
and hold hands and pretend there is love
because there is love.
They talk about boys and girls and car washes and happiness
and get lonely with each other and far away
their Israeli counterparts are doing the same thing,
but not the same thing." https://www.benyehudapress.com/books/king-of-the-jews/

"Arik & Co." by Atar Hadari captures the life of a man who looms large over the history of Israel and Gaza, from his childhood through the Disengagement he arranged 20 years ago.

"Why I saved him I don’t know.
A funny looking fat kid with no friends.
Used to come to scout meetings with a stick
for the coyotes. We’d see coyotes
maybe once in five years.
But he always knew his way in the dark.
And he never showed fear.
Once we started running around like tin soldiers
they all liked the fat kid.
And I never minded what his parents
grew on their cabbage patch.
So in Latrun I dragged him back.
Yeah, I took him on my back."
https://www.benyehudapress.com/books/arik-and-company/

09/11/2025

A New Year is dawning, may it be for the good, and with it lengthy synagogue stays. Now is the time to pick up shul reading, so we're running a sale: Save 20% on one book, 30% on two or three, and 40% on four or more. All of our books are on sale; Find a curated list of some titles particularly relevant to this season of return in the comments.

Save 20% or More with our Back-To-Shul Sale SaleProduct on sale Judaism Unbound (Bound) Original price was: $27.95.$27.95Current price is: $27.95. $22.36 Add to cart SaleProduct on sale As the Story Goes Original price was: $24.95.$24.95Current price is: $24.95. $19.96 Add to cart SaleProduct on s...

09/09/2025

Three new titles spanning the past, present, and future of Judaism and Jewish life: Judaism Unbound (Bound) by Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg; Mussar in Recovery by Hannah L. with Rabbi Harvey Winokur; and As the Story Goes by Mordekhai Lipson, translated and edited by Jonathan Boyarin and Jonah Sampson Boyarin.

Learn more at https://www.benyehudapress.com/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=view_in_browser&action=view&data=WzExNSwiNmQ1MTFlM2U0Nzg0IiwzNTksImMwMDEyNCIsMTgxLDBd

09/02/2025

Continuing our series of bilingual poetry translations, "Wu Wei Eats an Egg" presents Dutch poet Lucas Hirsch in English carefully rendered by Donna Spruijt-Metz.

*Wu wei eats an egg*

What always was, is, and will be
cracks an egg
on the edge
of a frying pan

Acts according to the nature
of the beast
It makes breakfast, the cosmos and planets
the tumbling sun

It laughs at all there is
It eats an egg under the heavens
It fills its belly

It sits back
in a chair
on the veranda
of a house
in a country
under the clouds
looking
at creation floating by

As it moves, it creates
a sheep
the buzz of being, and
lazy as it is
a trembling universe

It takes pleasure in seeing
what it created, creates, and refrains from creating

It doesn’t get more active
But fuller
considering the void
Now it is thirsty

https://www.benyehudapress.com/books/wu-wei-eats-and-egg/

08/28/2025

Just published: "Zion Square," the new poetry collection from Maxim D. Shrayer. Available direct from Ben Yehuda Press and the usual places.

*Zion Square*

In the earthly city of Jerusalem I like to stay
just a couple of blocks from Kikar HaMusica
in Yo’el Moshe Salomon Street, a pathway
named after the founder of three Israeli towns
and a Hebrew newspaper, a descendant
of a messenger of the venerable Vilna Gaon,
who in the 1800s left Lithuania for the Holy Land,
and was, perhaps, my distant relative, or rather
kinsman on the side of my father’s grandfather
Rabbi Chaim-Wolf, of blessed memory, who was
peacefully murdered in the early days of the war.

Orchestras played outside my hotel at night and
I listened to the music Jews couldn’t leave in Europe.
I felt sheltered by the might of the Iron Dome
but also the roof of particolored umbrellas that
hang over the street—once the prey of tourist
photos and travel agents’ brochures, now the sky
of our small warring country. I looked up and cried
for all my cousins-in-arms but also for myself. Mostly
tears of joy and comfort. Music didn’t end suddenly,
it flowed up toward Jaffa Street and I felt someone
or something carry me, a Jewish feather, to Kikar Tsiyon.

https://www.benyehudapress.com/books/zion-square/

https://bookshop.org/p/books/zion-square-poems/634246e01821d870?ean=9781963475715&next=t&affiliate=201

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1963475712?tag=bypress-20

08/27/2025

Summer may be ending, but summer camp is forever. Recapture the camp feelings with "Happy Camper," a novel for kids 12-15, but fun for nostalgic adults as well.

New from Ben Yehuda Press.

https://www.benyehudapress.com/books/happy-camper/

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/happy-camper/03d02682c8398dc2?ean=9781963475241&next=t&affiliate=201

Amazon: https://amzn.to/45AKEKs

08/26/2025

Just published: "The Broken Heart is the Master Key," the new poetry collection from Baruch November. Introduction by Alicia Ostriker. Available direct from Ben Yehuda Press and the usual places.

The poems in "The Broken Heart is the Master Key" have been honed by years of skilled craft, love, and longing for connection — whether with a woman with chestnut hair or with the Divine. November here infuses the dreams of his younger poetic self with the clear, sometimes sharp realism of a man who has known loss yet still embraces the world with open arms. The result is a unique Chassidic dance, a lyrical niggun that lingers in our hearts long after the last page.

*Lives upon Lives*

Contractors affix buildings on top
of buildings in Jerusalem.
Occupants below must clear out
for all the years it takes
to finish adding
to sandstone structures.

I have lived lives upon lives.
I want to go back
to when I was certain—it was my twenties.
I dismissed many great women.
Someone greater was always coming along.

I have been an inept architect.
I built for one who does not live
with the truth of others.
I built for starlight,
not shelter.

I built for ghosts
of those never born.
I built a hollow home
for howling winds.

I built a demise
in waiting
and thought it
a masterpiece
towering over
the settled lives
of others.

*The Loudest Language*

The broken heart is the master key,
said the Baal Shem Tov.

Despair is the loudest language
in all worlds.

Ask the mother of the stolen seven-year-old girl.
Ask the widowed wives still in love.
Ask the newly dead as they look down.
Ask the soldier missing both arms.

The broken heart is the master key,
said the Chassidic master
to the shofar blower who lost
his page of mystical notations
& thought he had failed his task—

having blasted notes
like a simple,
broken man.