Texts to the Holy

"When I wake
your name is honey
on my lips."
So begins this latest collection by poet and rabbi Rachel Barenblat. These love songs to an unnamed other capture a God-intoxicated spirituality in plain-spoken language redolent of the Bible yet anchored in modern life.

Texts to the Holy follows in the tradition of the Song of Songs, the great Biblical poem that describes love between two human beloveds and is also read as an allegory for the love between us and God. It's in the tradition of the medieval poet Judah ha-Levi, whose writings of yearning for God use human love as a metaphor. And it's in the tradition of Adrienne Rich and Pablo Neruda, whose poems of human love and passion are suffused with awareness of the sanctity of the tangible and the everyday.

These poems can be read purely as love poems from one human beloved to another, and they can be read as poems of love between a soul and her Source. Texts to the Holy expresses deep emotion in contemporary language, without sentimentality. It reminds us of the truths that the yearning heart finds reminders of the beloved everywhere and that even a text message can be a locus for holiness.