Sea of Reeds

Poems of the soul in flight
By Simcha Wasserman
(49 Pages)Publisher: Tiferes, 2003

Sea of Reeds is a lyrical gift to the Jewish community. In his book of finely crafted poetry, Wasserman spotlights the spirituality in our lives, and his work is neither strained nor contrived. In this he is unique. Wasserman has a true understanding and instinct about poetry, and a rare ability to merge art with Jewish values. Like all poets, Wasserman writes about what moves him, yet it is obvious from the natural smooth flow of his writing that he is not placing the message before the medium, but rather allowing his personal experience as a Jew to seep into his writing. This is what makes Sea of Reeds stand alone in the arena of Jewish verse.

Sea of Reeds is a lively, sometimes humorous, always moving work of art. It is delightful to find a religiously observant poet capable of experimenting with language in fresh ways. Wasserman s collection includes a wide range of poetic forms, including haiku, lyrical, rhyming and free verse. The underlying theme of his work is our connection to G-d in daily life; his message is gentle and sincere. He speaks of spiritual journeys and revelations, his own and those of famous Jewish personalities, in a way that we can all relate to, translating the mystical into engaging English.

He has an eye for seeing the sublime in the mundane. His poem Humidity, for example, begins lightly, from the perspective of a raindrop, with the verse;

'Humidity is fine if you re a young raindrop
Into water-weight training, pumping moisture.
But once you re too muscular,
You ll be on your own without a parachute.

By the end of the poem, however, his imagery gradually swells to encompass the loftiest concepts in Judaism;

Or the apex of dreams,
To be the descending dew
That revives the dead.

His novel ability to smoothly join the ordinary with the holy is what makes his poetry so exciting. He reminds us that G-dliness is accessible everywhere, at all times, if we remember to look for it. His poems are loosely categorized into five sections, Torah and Tefilla, Tzaddikim, Children, Nature, and Redemption.

This book would be an excellent resource for teachers working in the Jewish day school system, enriching the curriculum with quality poetry on Jewish themes. As an expression of spirituality, poetry dates back to the Song of Songs, and the Psalms. But today it is a neglected art form in the Torah-observant world, which is a pity, since a poem can transmit the spark of an idea, the heart of a feeling in a way that lengthier writing forms cannot. A good poem can jolt the reader with surprise, with the joy of language, with a pure concentrated feeling. It magnifies our view of life, like observing a common object under a microscope.

Perhaps with his work, Sea of Reeds, Wasserman will revive the popularity of inspirational poetry and of poetry in general in the Jewish community. (Book Review by Yehudis Danzinger)