In the Cleft of the Rock Deborah Masel Sensuously evocative, these images inform an associative language in which paradox and mystery give birth to unforeseen wisdom Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Deborah Masel’s meditations on the Five Books of Moses come  from deep study, yet they are effusive. The dialogue between the ancient text and the modern writer is dramatic. As she says herself, ‘We are brought out to tell the story, and through the telling we are brought out.’ Her insights lift us to a realization of how we may live now.




ISBN 978 1876044 64 0
Published 2009
228 pgs
$27.95
In the Cleft of the Rock book sample

CD included with selected readings
narrated by Rachael Kohn
music by Adam Starr



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The Five Books of Moses


Bereshit : Deep Things Out of Darkness
Noach : When Water Meets Water
Lech Lecha : The Awakening
VaYera : Journey to the Mountain of Sight
Chayay Sarah : Women and Torah
Toledoth : The Changeling
VaYetze : Jacob the Jazzman of Genesis
VaYishlach : Poetry and Pragmatics
VaYeshev : Judah and Joseph, Two Paths to Redemption
Miketz : Dreams Within Dreams Within Dreams
VaYigash : Deep Calls to Deep
VaYechi : The Imagination’s Life


Shemot : Depravity and Dignity
VaEra : Hear, My people, and I will speak
Bo : From Darkness to Great Light
BeShalach : Songlines
Yitro : Walking with Angels
Mishpatim : Law and Metaphor
Terumah : The Power of Negative Space
Tetzaveh : Prophecy and Posterity
Ki Tissa : Between the Essence and the Descent
VaYakhel/Pekudey : The Song of Creation


VaYikra : Smoke and Glory
Tsav : Words on Fire
Shemini : The Fruit and the Fire
Tazria/Metzorah : Who Will Buy the Elixir of Life?
Acharei Mot/Kedoshim : L’Chaim, To Life!
Emor : The Sound of Silence
BeHar/BeChukotai : Letting Go and Letting God


B’Midbar : Codes of Redemption
Naso : Drink
BeHa’alotecha : The Art of Travelling
Sh’lach : Seeing and Believing
Korach : A Wish Fulfilled
Chukat : Elegy
Balak : Flooded With Love
Pinchas : This above All
Matot/Masay : Speaking Spirit


Devarim : The Breath and the Word
VaEtchanan : Wings of Prayer
Ekev : Not By Bread Alone
Re’eh : The Greatest Gift
Shoftim : The Time of Singing has Come
Ki Thetze : Into this World of Cruel Wonder Sent
Ki Thavo : Until this Day
Netzavim-VaYelech : Through a Glass Darkly
Ha’azinu : Hard Rain
V’Zot Haberachah : Where the Image meets its Source


Passover : A Different Night
Passover : The Neverending Story
Lag b’Omer
Shavuot : The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Shavuot : Living Waters
Tisha b’Av
Elul
Rosh Hashannah
Yom Kippur
Sukkoth
Hannukah
Tu B’Shevat
Purim : A World Beyond Miracles
Purim : A Taste of the World to Come


“Turn it, turn it, for everything is in it”

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By Dr Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Deborah Masel’s work is vitally haunted. Haunted by texts and images, which achieve their own life in her prose poems. Drawing from a rich imaginative knowledge of midrashic and hassidic commentary on the Bible, she creates a personal mythology of death and life, darkness and light, void and meaning. Passionately searching, her words draw together fragments of hidden beauty.

I met Debbie in 2003 at the Nahum Goldman seminar in Melbourne. She was in the early stages of a new career as a teacher of Torah. Avid for learning, she sought out every opportunity, including weekly telephone study sessions with teachers in the US and encounters with visiting scholars. I was impressed by her passion and by her literary sensibility and we began a weekly email correspondence which continues till now. We write mostly, but not entirely, about our work on the weekly Parsha. Over the years, I have witnessed Debbie’s maturing authority, as she has become a beloved and respected teacher of Torah, affecting increasingly large audiences with her resonant poetic voice.

Now, we have an opportunity to read a collection of Debbie’s written reflections on the Parsha. These were written in tandem with her oral presentations. They represent in condensed and often brilliant form the nodal images that emerge from the midrashic literature. Sensuously evocative, these images inform an associative language in which paradox and mystery give birth to unforeseen wisdom. Here, Wallace Stevens, Thomas Mann, and Bob Dylan find themselves in a new world. And here, the inner life of a complex modern Jewish woman reaches out to many other lives seeking for more life.

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Deborah Masel’s In the Cleft of the Rock; Writings on the Five Books of Moses was launched at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University by Sam Lipski AM and Dr Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg on 23 August 2009. Deborah Masel is to be interviewed on Radio National’s ‘The Spirit of Things’, in a program to be broadcast in the near future.

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Masel biography