Cooper Bernstein

In the aftermath of the tragic loss of her father in 2019, Wendy Zierler began a project of weekly Hebrew poem translation and teaching that persists to this day, and has resulted in a Kaddish memoir (Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry, JPS 2025, Shortlisted for a National Jewish Book Award) and a forthcoming Parasha commentary through Hebrew poetry entitled The Well-Versed Torah.

During three talks throughout the weekend, Rabbi Zierler will engage with Hebrew poetry as a cultural, interpretive and spiritual resource, especially in times of mourning and grief.

Friday, April 10 - "Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years With Hebrew Poetry"

6:00pm — Book Talk during Shabbat Services, followed by Shabbat Dinner and Q&A - REGISTER HERE

Saturday, April 11 - “When Holiness Burns: Mourning, Poetry, and Parashat Shemini”

10:00am — Community Shabbat Service, followed by kiddush lunch and Torah Study - REGISTER HERE

8:00pm — "Torah and TV: Mourning, Blessing and Community” with Havdalah and Dessert Reception - REGISTER HERE

Building on her prior book, Movies and Midrash this session will examine two TV episodes to address the blessing of community in a time of loss. Please view Gilmore Girls, Season 2, Episode 17: "Dead Uncles and Vegetables" (Netflix) and Northern Exposure, Season 4, Episode 22: "Kaddish for Uncle Manny" (Prime) in advance of the program.

Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler - Bio

Wendy Zierler was born in Sarnia, Ontario, grew up in Toronto, and currently lives in New York, where she is the Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at Hebrew Union College in New York. Prior to joining HUC-JIR she was a Research Fellow in the English Department of the University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. and her MA from Princeton University and her BA from Stern College of Yeshiva University and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. In June 2021, she received rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva Maharat. Her most recent book, Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry (Jewish Publication Society), was named to Zibby Owens’ list of most anticipated books of Fall 2025 and the JWA 2026 Winter Book Club. She is the author, previously, of Movies and Midrash: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation (SUNY Press, Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, 2017) and of And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Hebrew Women’s Writing (Wayne State UP, 2004), and many articles in the fields of Jewish literature and Jewish Gender Studies. With historian Carole Balin, she edited Behikansi atah, a collection of the trailblazing Hebrew writings of Hava Shapiro 1878-1943 (Resling Press, 2008). Her English translation of Shapiro’s writings, To Tread on New Ground: Selected Writings of Hava Shapiro, also co-edited with Carole Balin, was published by Wayne State University Press in 2014. She also co-edited two other books, These Truths We Hold: Judaism in an Age of Truthiness (with HUC colleague Joshua Garroway, HUC Press 2022), and Building A City: Writings on Agnon’s Buczacz in Memory Alan Mintz (with Sheila Jelen, Indiana University Press, 2023). In 2017, she was appointed Co-Editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, a leading scholarly journal in the field of Jewish Literature. This past summer she served as a consultant in the writers’ room of the Fox Prime Time TV Show The Faithful, a dramatization of the lives of biblical women, set to air in March 2026. As a fiction writer she has written two collections of linked short stories as well as a middle-grade Jewish fantasy novel entitled, The Return of Gerda Wertheimer. She is married to Daniel Feit and has three adult children.