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Can Judaism be saved from its most dangerous currents?

That’s the question Rabbi Arthur Green poses in this urgent exploration of the spiritual and ethical challenges facing Judaism today.

Cover of "Can Judaism Be Saved? Its Future After Gaza" by Arthur Green

November 14, 2025 at 5:20 PM

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Our Simchat Torah sale is underway. Save 25% on all our parsha titles: prose, poetry, and pictures; the serious, the silly, and the interactive. www.benyehudapress.c...

Serious, silly, and interactive Torah companions.

Save on parsha poetry, prose, and pictures.

October 10, 2025 at 5:36 PM

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Two new timely books of poetry. "King of the Jews" by Matthew Lippman captures the experience of mourning for 10/7 and fearing for the fate of the hostages from abroad.

“How does one respond to the terror of Oct 7? For Matthew Lippman, it’s through poetry. In King of the Jews, Lippman names many who perished, were kidnapped, held hostage. He names friends, students, rock stars, too. Lippman honors—and loves—them all. He even anoints them king, King of the Jews. These poems hold the beauty and the horror of the world and the deep longing, living within Lippman’s naked, aching heart.”

— Diane Gottlieb

“Atar Hadari’s extraordinary book Arik & Co. reads like a masterly biography magically transformed into vital poetry. Was Ariel Sharon a hero? Was he a monster? The force of a strong and twisting narrative spine, fleshed out in earthy interior monologs and dialogues, brings both the man and the era to inescapable life.”

— Alicia Ostriker

September 16, 2025 at 4:58 PM

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A New Year is dawning, may it be for the good, and with it lengthy synagogue stays. Now is the time to pick up shul reading, so we're running a sale: Save 20% on one book, 30% on two or three, and 40% on four or more.

Ben Yehuda Press Back-To-Shul sale with savings of up to 40%

September 11, 2025 at 8:56 PM

Ben Yehuda Press, Jewish books here & everywhere

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Three new titles spanning the past, present, and future of Judaism and Jewish life: Judaism Unbound (Bound) by Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg; Mussar in Recovery by Hannah L. ; and As the Story Goes by Mordekhai Lipson, translated and edited by Jonathan Boyarin and Jonah Sampson Boyarin.

3 new prose titles from Ben Yehuda Press

Judaism Unbound (Bound)
“Those concerned about Judaism’s future will find plenty to chew on in these creative and expansive dialogues.”
—Publishers Weekly

Mussar in Recovery
“Illuminates and fortifies a pathway that every person can walk – to become more whole and more illuminated – for the sake of their own soul and of the world”
—Dr. Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

As the Story Goes
“A delightful and penetrating part of Jewish cultural inheritance that I hadn’t realized was so sorely missing. An invitation to step right inside a vibrant ‘Yiddishland’ culture at once hilarious, painful, genuine, wise and dripping with ironic wit.”
—Rabbi Aviva Richman

September 9, 2025 at 4:17 PM

Ben Yehuda Press, Jewish books here & everywhere

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Continuing our series of bilingual poetry translations, "Wu Wei Eats an Egg" presents Dutch poet Lucas Hirsch in English carefully rendered by Donna Spruijt-Metz.

*Wu wei eats an egg*

What always was, is, and will be
cracks an egg
on the edge
of a frying pan

Acts according to the nature

“Alternatingly enraged at and bemused by the 21st century, with its traps of bourgeois excess, addiction, and ‘hollow language,’ Hirsch regularly explores the interior self, familial history, and the physical world.”
—Wayne Miller, author of The End of Childhood

Wu wei eats an egg

What always was, is, and will be
cracks an egg
on the edge
of a frying pan

Acts according to the nature
of the beast
It makes breakfast, the cosmos and planets
the tumbling sun

It laughs at all there is
It eats an egg under the heavens
It fills its belly

It sits back
in a chair
on the veranda
of a house
in a country
under the clouds
looking
at creation floating by

September 2, 2025 at 2:00 PM

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Just published: "Zion Square," the new poetry collection from Maxim D. Shrayer. Available direct from Ben Yehuda Press and the usual places.

*Zion Square*

In the earthly city of Jerusalem I like to stay
just a couple of blocks from Kikar HaMusica
in Yo’el Moshe Salomon Street, a pathway

Cover of "Zion Square" by Maxim D. Shrayer

Orchestras played outside my hotel at night and
I listened to the music Jews couldn’t leave in Europe.
I felt sheltered by the might of the Iron Dome
but also the roof of particolored umbrellas that
hang over the street—once the prey of tourist
photos and travel agents’ brochures, now the sky
of our small warring country. I looked up and cried
for all my cousins-in-arms but also for myself. Mostly
tears of joy and comfort. Music didn’t end suddenly,
it flowed up toward Jaffa Street and I felt someone
or something carry me, a Jewish feather, to Kikar Tsiyon.

The memories Maxim Shrayer carries burn in carefully crafted verses as if to contain his furies and his love. Poems born since October 7, poems of Israel and the old Soviet Union, an imagination that can bring Nabokov to size up Putin, but can also relish the sweetness of concord grapes in Massachusetts. These are poems to savor and to learn.

—Rodger Kamenetz, author of
The Missing Jew: Poems 1976-2022

August 28, 2025 at 6:35 PM

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Summer may be ending, but summer camp is forever. Recapture the camp feelings with "Happy Camper," a novel for kids 12-15, but fun for nostalgic adults as well.

New from Ben Yehuda Press.

www.benyehudapress.c...

Bookshop: bookshop.org/p/books...

Amazon: https://amzn.to/45AKEKs

Cover of "Happy Camper" by Sarah L. Young

“A moving novel about two young girls finding their true, authentic selves over the course of an eventful kayitz (summer) at Jewish summer camp. I was quickly captivated by the story, and rooting for our young main characters! This was a pleasure from start to finish.”

—Joshua Edelglass, Co-Director of Camp Ramah New England, illustrator of the graphic novel José and the Pirate Captain Toledano

A captivating tale of love and identity, set against the backdrop of a Jewish summer camp in 2010.

When Reina, an out lesbian, is sent to Camp Geshem for the summer, she anticipates an isolating eight weeks back in the closet — because the camp’s policy at the time is to kick out LGBTQ+ campers.

But when she meets Talia, a fellow camper with secrets of her own, everything changes....

August 27, 2025 at 5:35 PM

Ben Yehuda Press, Jewish books here & everywhere

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Just published: "The Broken Heart is the Master Key," the new poetry collection from Baruch November (@bnovember). Introduction by Alicia Ostriker. Available direct from Ben Yehuda Press and the usual places.

“God works through the fires in the collection, inviting us to reflect on our own spiritual journeys… these poems … are courageous and vulnerable, unlocking painful and uplifting truths.”
—Jewish Book Council

The broken heart is the master key,
said the Baal Shem Tov.

Despair is the loudest language
in all worlds.

Ask the mother of the stolen seven-year-old girl.
Ask the widowed wives still in love.
Ask the newly dead as they look down.
Ask the soldier missing both arms.

The broken heart is the master key,
said the Chassidic master
to the shofar blower who lost
his page of mystical notations
& thought he had failed his task—

having blasted notes
like a simple,
broken man.

I have been an inept architect.
I built for one who does not live
with the truth of others.
I built for starlight,
not shelter.
—Baruch November

August 26, 2025 at 6:51 PM

Ben Yehuda Press, Jewish books here & everywhere

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We are proud to be launching three new poetry titles this month:

Wu Wei Eats an Egg by Lucas Hirsch, translated from the Dutch by @dsmpoet.bsky.social

The Broken Heart is the Master Key by Baruch November

Zion Square, by Maxim D. Shrayer

Zion Square by Maxim D. Shrayer: “Maxim D. Shrayer’s voice speaks across generations. With a stubborn belief that poetry must be healing, Shrayer writes poems that break through boundaries and fears, accept defeat, and yearn for pleasure.”
—David Biespiel, author of A Self-Portrait in the Year of the High Commission on Love

Wu Wei Eats an Egg by Lucas Hirsch: “Alternatingly enraged at and bemused by the 21st century, with its traps of bourgeois excess, addiction, and ‘hollow language,’ Hirsch regularly explores the interior self, familial history, and the physical world.”
—Wayne Miller, author of The End of Childhood

The Broken Heart is the Master Key by Baruch November: “God works through the fires in the collection, inviting us to reflect on our own spiritual journeys… these poems … are courageous and vulnerable, unlocking painful and uplifting truths.”
—Jewish Book Council

August 12, 2025 at 2:13 PM

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Midrash Hazak: Torah Wisdom by 70 Over 70 (But Who's Counting?) is a collection of commentaries on the weekly Torah portion, written by our elders with all of their wisdom, grace, and power. Here's an excerpt for the commentary on this week's Torah portion, Va-etḥanan.

“Like Moses, each of us looks into the future knowing that, at some moment, we will fully receive the message ‘rav lach–it is enough for you.’ The future will continue to unfold without us.”

—Rabbi Janet Madden,
Va-etḥanan,
“Rav Lach,
It is Enough for You”

August 8, 2025 at 4:38 PM

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Midrash Hazak: Torah Wisdom by 70 Over 70 (But Who's Counting?) is a collection of commentaries on the weekly Torah portion, written by our elders with all of their wisdom, grace, and power. Here's an excerpt for the commentary on this week's Torah portion, Devarim.

“As elders, like Moses,
we not only recount our personal stories,
but also are able to reconstruct and promulgate the communal past.”

—Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman, Devarim,
“The Journal of the Journeys”

August 1, 2025 at 3:32 PM

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Midrash Hazak: Torah Wisdom by 70 Over 70 (But Who's Counting?) is a collection of commentaries on the weekly Torah portion, written by our elders with all of their wisdom, grace, and power. Here's an excerpt for the commentary on this week's Torah portion.

“The Israelites never made it to the Promised Land, but their children did. And yet what they did in the desert, and what they learned and how they lived, shaped their lives and the lives of their descendants.”

—Rabbi Ron Isaacs, Masei,
“The Journal of the Journeys”

July 25, 2025 at 6:44 PM

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They address the questions: How can we best live until we die? How do Jewish traditions and teachings inform our best lives?

“Every journey that the Torah describes is not only a geographical journey of an individual, and of the people, it is an inner journey that we must make within ourselves, as well.”
—Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, Lech-Lecha, “The Journey of The Next Chapter”

July 24, 2025 at 5:28 PM

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Midrash Hazak: Torah Wisdom by 70 Over 70 (But Who's Counting?) is a collection of commentaries on the weekly Torah portion, written by our elders with all of their wisdom, grace, and power.

"Midrash Hazak. Torah wisdom from our elders.

July 24, 2025 at 5:28 PM

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Hammerman argues that treating the Ten Commandments as an object as sacred violates Jewish understanding of the Ten Commandments themselves.
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The fetishization of the image of the Ten Commandments is, ironically, a form of idolatry, which is explicitly prohibited in those very commandments. It is a distortion of “Judeo” values to elevate to sanctity an object that is, at most, a nice temple decoration or the backdrop for a Charlton Heston film festival.

For Jews, the Big Ten are just the appetizers. Our tradition has many more commandments that are of equal or even greater significance than them. Would Louisiana like to display all 613 (according to Maimonides’ count) in their classrooms, including the one that allows for leniency on abortion?

July 2, 2025 at 3:00 PM

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This is still relevant as the GOP tries to pass state laws—BYP author Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's op-ed in Religious News Service opposing Louisiana's law mandating hanging the Ten Commandments in public schools.

religionnews.com/202...

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I have nothing against the Ten Commandments, but not a single Jew — and I would venture to guess not a single Christian — would run into a burning building to save a framed poster of a couple of mass-produced fake tablets. It’s an insult to my religion to force us to act as if anything other than our Torah is being presented as the paradigm for sanctity — all the more in the name of “Judeo-Christian values.”

July 2, 2025 at 3:00 PM

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You and your young readers can learn more about Priesand in HEROES WITH CHUTZPAH by Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky, available at the links below.

BYP: www.benyehudapress.c...
Amazon: www.amazon.com/Heroe...
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Cover of HEROES WITH CHUTZPAH: 101 TRUE TALE OF JEWISH TRAILBLAZERS, CHANGEMAKERS & REBELS

By Kerry Olitzky and Deborah Bodin Cohen

The cover shows the title HEROES WITH CHUTZPAH in curvy fancy letters, radiating lines of yellow light against a blue-green background. Lines of photo headshots of Jewish heroes are in the background, mostly too faint to identify.

June 27, 2025 at 2:01 PM

Ben Yehuda Press, Jewish books here & everywhere

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Priesand's ordination and career were difficult. She faced sexism in seminary, and had difficulty in finding a congregation. She finally served for 25 years as rabbi of Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.
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Sally grew up in a Cleveland household that was more culturally than religiously Jewish. Sally decided at age 16 to become a rabbi. There was one challenge: no seminaries admitted girls into their programs. Luckily, Sally was accepted to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1968—just as the school decided to admit female rabbinic students. “I had no desire to be a pioneer. I just wanted to be a rabbi. And I certainly didn’t start out to attract a lot of attention, although that inevitably happened,” says Sally.
Some professors and classmates thought her interest was a passing fancy. Others assumed she was there to find a husband. The seminary’s dean worried aloud about Sally balancing the rabbinate with motherhood. Finding a congregation willing to consider hiring a woman was challenging. She was the last one in her class to find a position.

June 27, 2025 at 2:01 PM

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Sally Priesand, the first ordained American woman rabbi, was born on this day in 1946. She's one of our HEROES WITH CHUTZPAH!

www.benyehudapress.c...
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digital illustration showing a tween girl from the back with long hair looking at a portrait of Priesand on a wall in a gold frame; Priesand is a young woman in glasses; a torah scroll is beside her

June 27, 2025 at 2:01 PM

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You can pre-order SOURCES OF PRIDE right now. The book provides Jewish views on gender and sexuality anthologized from Biblical, Talmudic, Midrashic, Rabbinic, and Chassidic sources with contemporary and personal commentary.

It is out in September:

www.benyehudapress.c...
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June 26, 2025 at 3:00 PM

Ben Yehuda Press, Jewish books here & everywhere

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We are thrilled to announce that pre-orders are available for Rabbi Abby Stein's SOURCES OF PRIDE, a look at Jewish views on gender and sexuality in a range of core texts.
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