Jakob Stein

Genizah Jakob Stein

Poetry. Jewish Studies. 'Genizah: Room, closet, or cabinet, usually in a synagogue, where fragments of text bearing the name of God are stored, perhaps forever.' What then does it mean to call a book of poetry a genizah? It means that existentially, spiritually, these poems have been discarded, cast into the trash heap of religious history, but remain indelibly marked by the sign of divinity. And insofar as they bear this mark, they are, indeed, bound to eternity, impossibly figured as 'the waste lands of angels.' Out of fragments of texts, memories, momentary revelations, and the mortal woes of the flesh, Jakob Stein has given us a true prophecy, a 'Star collapsed to black / book, to scroll // to one coal // heavier than the whole world.'--Norman Finkelstein