To All the Mirrored Doors of Beginning, a Journey Ending
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2024
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Publisher's Description
In her ninety-sixth year, Ruth Rifka still finds herself searching out and advocating for ultimate truths. To All the Mirrored Doors of Beginning . . . A Journey Ending spans the beginnings of the Ukraine/Russia war and the first seven months of the Israel/Hamas war. It is a journey of seeking and forming a Weltanschauung, a facing down of one's mortality, while preoccupied with the realities of war and navigating the stress of facing down and coming to terms with the imminent demise of a husband in palliative care. In the writing process, the poems become sustaining prayers for peace, guidance, expressions of humbling gratitude, and parting blessings for the reader. WINNER OF THE 2025 CANADIAN JEWISH LITERARY AWARDS PRIZE FOR POETRY
Endorsements (3)
“Ruth Rifka writes from the surprising advantage of many decades of life. Her age gives the book its wonderful authenticity. That she feels such a sisterhood / brotherhood to all peoples seeking answers to the same puzzles of existence is a lesson of hope for us all. We are all the same, asking only peace and understanding from our foolish species. With the young and old journeying together, we surely have hope for love and harmony to prevail. I felt privileged to read these poems of amazing insight. Their immediacy and truth are an inspiration.”
“In her ninety-sixth year, ‘a disappearing inkblot being born’ Ruth Rifka trysts passionately with God, the ‘receiver of prayers,’ who allows evil. Written largely in response to war, hostage-taking, life’s darkness, Ruth yet exhorts us to ‘live life,’ for ‘all we get is now.’ This extraordinary, moving collection of psalm-like poems includes parting blessings as a coda to ‘the terrible, the wonderful, and the holy’ to ‘God there, in all the greenness.’”
“Timeless, while also contemporary and immediate, Ruth Rifka’s eloquent poems, written from the perspective of a nonagenarian with ‘one foot in God’s waiting room,’ are bound to engage and charm and move readers of all ages. Through an admirably wide range of moods and modes, they are speculative, inquiring, prophetic, prayerful, anxiously troubled and concerned, and spiritually luminous. Each finely written, richly imagined poem is not unlike ‘a toasted perfect marshmallow tossed / from God’s holy bonfire.’”
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