Valley Beit Midrash

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler

EVENT CO-SPONSORED BY: Temple Har Shalom

Please note event times are listed in PST. 

ABOUT THE EVENT:

This class will trace the origin of my feminist Kaddish / COVID memoir and the related Shir Hadash project, as well as of the title "Going Out with Knots," and will cover some thematically related poems.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Wendy Zierler is Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at HUC-JIR in New York. 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 / COVID Years with Hebrew Poetry (Jewish Publication Society), was named to Zibby Owens’ list of most anticipated books of Fall 2025. 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 Thoughtand 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. Most recently 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.