From the back cover of Jerusalem Awaking
These poems and pictures present Jerusalem from a Jewish viewpoint…. The touch is delicate and wide ranging…. Throughout the poems there is an awareness of what cannot be reproduced by poems or pictures, the sounds of music, secular and religious, ancient and modern, foreign and Jewish, which combine to fill even the empty streets of Jerusalem with echoes. Against this music… the daily life of the city and its Jewish Quarter takes its eternal place.
In such a context, in such a vision of Jerusalem, even the screech of a swift can sound for a moment like an angel’s song… and who can say it isn’t?
Richard Sherwin, Associate Professor of Poetry, Bar Ilan
Through her poems and photographs, Ruth Fogelman shares with the reader the privilege of living in the Old City of Jerusalem, on ground that is both sacred and welcoming. Reading it is often like walking, or dancing, to the Western Wall in the company of a gracious friend.
Esther Cameron Editor, The Deronda Review
In Jerusalem Awaking, Ruth Fogelman walks on sacred ground where “stones whisper… from eras long past….” Jerusalem, “where lion and lamb leap together,” is the center of her experiences, beginning at daybreak as “crowds stream through [the] streets” and ending under “a pale embryo moon.” Fogelman celebrates her days through poems vivifying nature and people of centuries living in an ancient city. In her own time she looks for the “spirit that answers” in a touch of stone-arch, taste of fig and pomegranate, sound of pipe and harp on rooftops. She finds continuity despite “attacks on… buses and cafes…” never forgets to send a healing prayer to those who survive[d] through history. Fogelman longs for harmonious relationship between the walls… calls upon the “defenders of the City” to bring a “joy [to] men’s eyes” and “sing [to] the Lord a new song…” a song of unity, of One.
Michal Mahgerefteh
Editor, Poetica – Reflections of Jewish Thought
In such a context, in such a vision of Jerusalem, even the screech of a swift can sound for a moment like an angel’s song… and who can say it isn’t?
Richard Sherwin, Associate Professor of Poetry, Bar Ilan
Through her poems and photographs, Ruth Fogelman shares with the reader the privilege of living in the Old City of Jerusalem, on ground that is both sacred and welcoming. Reading it is often like walking, or dancing, to the Western Wall in the company of a gracious friend.
Esther Cameron Editor, The Deronda Review
In Jerusalem Awaking, Ruth Fogelman walks on sacred ground where “stones whisper… from eras long past….” Jerusalem, “where lion and lamb leap together,” is the center of her experiences, beginning at daybreak as “crowds stream through [the] streets” and ending under “a pale embryo moon.” Fogelman celebrates her days through poems vivifying nature and people of centuries living in an ancient city. In her own time she looks for the “spirit that answers” in a touch of stone-arch, taste of fig and pomegranate, sound of pipe and harp on rooftops. She finds continuity despite “attacks on… buses and cafes…” never forgets to send a healing prayer to those who survive[d] through history. Fogelman longs for harmonious relationship between the walls… calls upon the “defenders of the City” to bring a “joy [to] men’s eyes” and “sing [to] the Lord a new song…” a song of unity, of One.
Michal Mahgerefteh
Editor, Poetica – Reflections of Jewish Thought
Write in Subject: Jerusalem Awaking
