“Mezrich is a cultivated craftsman– interpretively astute, sonically deliberate, and spiritually cunning. Between The Mountain and the Land Lies the Lesson is a work of alluring, hard-won simplicity.”
– Zohar Atkins, author of Nineveh
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From the Book Description:
In his latest book of poetic Midrash, Abe Mezrich breathes new life into the last third of the Torah. This third act, beginning with Moses sending spies into the Land, becomes the setting for poetry that fully engages the mind and the heart.
With clarity and beauty, Between the Mountain and the Land Lies the Lesson explores fundamental Jewish questions: What does it mean to be sacred? To be a community? And, especially, what does it mean to be a sacred community that both flees from and longs for Revelation?
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Sample Poems from the Book
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Love Story
Do not look up to the sky
to worship the sun, moon, stars.
Other nations do this,
but not you.
You worship He Who Has Taken you
from the iron crucible of Egypt
to bring you close.
Others worship the things they see,
the given facts of the world.
Your worship is a love story.
Deuteronomy 4:9-20
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Revelation
the mountain burned in fire up to the heavens,
and HaShem spoke from within the fire
Not a great light from Heaven
but fire from the Mountain below,
making Heaven bright.
Deuteronomy 4:11-12
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Tefillin
Remember: it is God
Who sends rain down from heaven
to the ground where we work.
Take this truth,
place it on your head
& on your arm.
Tie your strength below
to what is above.
Deuteronomy 11:13-18
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Purchase Between the Mountain and the Land Lies the Lesson through Amazon, Book Depository, IndieBound, or Ben Yehuda Press
Abe Mezrich 