rosh hashanah

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Cover of the volcano sequence

Alicia Suskin Ostriker. From the volcano sequence. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002.

In an interview with Rain Taxi Review of Books, Jewish feminist poet Alicia Suskin Ostriker describes a moment of understanding she experienced about her relationship to Judaism: “In 1960, I was doing a good deal of graphic art and I did an etching of Jacob struggling with the Angel, with the title: ‘I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.’ Which is what Jacob says to the mysterious angel, and in my etching, Jacob is struggling and frowning, and the Angel is smiling, just waiting to be asked for the blessing he plans to give. I didn’t do more with this until decades later, but in the end, what really defined my relationship to The Bible, and to Jewish tradition, is wrestling, trying to wrestle a blessing out of this patriarchal scripture, and this patriarchal tradition—to wrestle a blessing out of it. It wants to be wrestled with. That’s my view.”