Reviews & Blurbs

REVIEW by Alden Solovy in RITUALWELL

CLASSES
“The feedback has been extremely positive, and a number of our participants stated that you both inspired and challenged them to think about the power of prayer in their lives. The work they did over the weekend also encouraged self reflection, and allowed them to get out of their comfort zones in order to create a personal prayer.” — Director of Education, Beth Israel-West Temple, Cleveland

“In Trisha’s prayer writing class we learned about and rethought the purposes of traditional prayers. Trisha stripped the prayer forms down to their elements, and guided us in rebuilding them to express the cries of our own souls. Trisha’s deep, imaginative exercises pushed me to stretch and extend my conception of God and my relation to Judaism. Hearing what others in the group wrote was often a profound experience and always a revelation: Listen to how someone else’s life puts its own flesh of words on the same bones.” — Adult Student, Brooklyn

WRITING

 “How does a contemporary person engage Jewish prayer and make any sense of the words?  How do we reconcile what we know about the messy, uncertain, often painful and unjust world with the God the prayerbook describes?  Conversely, how do we express the awe we feel at the beauty of the universe when we are immersed in a culture of cynicism, materialism, and doubt?  In her by turns whimsical, incisive, and vulnerable prayer-poetry, Trisha Arlin offers a bold answer to these questions…

[Trisha Arlin’s) prayers make space for the things we thought we couldn’t say.  If you want prayers for the Sabbath, holidays, and other occasions that speak to the heart and don’t discount your head, Arlin’s work is for you. If you’re ready to be honest and vulnerable, reverent and heretical, mystical and down-to-earth, you’ve come to the right place. You can use these words as a resource for enhancing your Jewish prayer practice, or you can use them to re-enter Jewish prayers you left behind forever.  However you place yourself, may you find this book to be a blessing.”

—Rabbi Jill Hammer, forward of the book, PLACE YOURSELF

“Trisha Arlin’s Place Yourself invites us to experience prayer with powerful metaphor, a modern sensitivity and a deep love that at once refreshes the act of prayer and simultaneously invites us back into the Siddur to explore the texts of generations past.” — Alden Solovy, Liturgist and Author, This Grateful Heart and This Joyous Soul

“Trisha Arlin’s liturgical poetry breathes with authenticity, honesty, and a spiritual sensibility informed by the dissonance of real life. Her contemporary theology offers a necessary respite from the lofty and flowery, and we have much to learn from her wisdom.” —Amy Gottlieb, author of The Beautiful Possible

“”Thanks to Trisha Arlin we observe Rosh Hodesh Elul with prayers and blessings for animals. Her extended blessing focusing on the smallest of animals – the bugs and even smaller – was astonishing: funny, deep, thought-provoking. It connected us all to the Divine in a completely new way.” —Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives

“Trisha Arlin’s prayers create worlds of spiritual space that invoke a worshipful tone. Then they puncture complacency and boldly ask, badger, and provoke. They awaken us. And then they restore the spiritual space, but we’re a bit more comfortable in it because like us, the prayers are faithful and faithless, hopeful and hopeless, serious and playful. The overall affect is a prayer spot wherein moderns who yearn may find comfort, solace, and a smile.” –Rabbi Jeff Hoffman, D.H.L., Rabbi-In-Residence and Director of Institutional Assessment, The Academy for Jewish Religion

“In my congregation are published authors and readers of professional quality as well as students and just plain folk. They relish the opportunity to read one of Trisha’s kavvanot aloud during services. The rhythms of her poetry awaken our hearts on the High Holy Days and her words, real, alive and down to earth enhance our Shabbat worship experience throughout the rest of the Jewish calendar year.”--Rabbi Peg Kershenbaum, Congregation B’nai Harim, Pocono Pines, PA.

“Trisha Arlin’s prayer-poems are evocative, moving, and spiritual. I am constantly amazed by their deceptive simplicity, which opens like a flower unfolding to reveal color upon color, each richer than the last.”–Rabbi Jennifer Singer,Spiritual Leader, Congregation Kol HaNeshama, Founding  Member, Bayit

 “Love this [Rosh Hashana Amidah] and am sharing it again to Kol Hai this year.” —Shir Yaakov Feit, Aleph Rabbinic Student, Spiritual Leader, Kol Hai, New Paltz NY