"And the Fine Blade Gleamed with the Fury of Live Coals: Twentieth Century Poets Confront the Akedah"*
Larry Kohn
Education Director of Temple Beth El from 1979-2014

The Torah’s story of the sacrificial binding of Isaac (Akedah) has been addressed by a number of Twentieth-Century American, Yiddish, and Israeli poets. The Akedah (Genesis 22) will be read in English translation along with a sample of Rabbinic and contemporary Torah commentary. This will be followed by a reading and discussion of poems in English or English translation written by Anthony Hecht, Marge Piercy, H. Leivick, Hayim Gouri, Amir Gilboa, and Yehuda Amichai.

As Education Director of Temple Beth El, Larry Kohn facilitated the temple’s Shabbat morning Torah study for the last two decades of his tenure. Beginning in 1976 a dozen of Larry’s poems under his given name, Lawrence, have appeared in small press publications including Green’s Magazine, Response: A Contemporary Jewish Review, The Journal of Reform Judaism and Neo-Victorian/Cochlear edited by Esther Cameron in Madison.

* Title quote from: “Isaac” in The Darkness and the Light by Anthony Hecht, Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 2002

Includes Lunch and Dessert