Winner: NYC Big Book Award "Distinguished Favorite" in the category of JudaismHeart Map and the Song of Our Ancestors is for the reluctant and the yearning. It is for those of us who crave a Jewish path that makes sense out of life but embraces us right where we are. For anyone who has encountered a barrier to Judaism, Heart Map invites Jews without community, or Jews in struggle with community, to know that where they are, right now, is totally and completely Jewish and authentic. Revealing everything from tattoos to griefs that go beyond just death, the book also presents the unexpected joys of Jewish life and the wandering that takes us to find Jewish significance and blessing at every moment of our weird and winding way.Combining the radical new genre of contemporary piyyutim (Jewish liturgical poems) with visual images of Jews as they really are and live, Devon Spier reminds us that people matter and that the Jewish story has all of us in it. For we are not only part of our ancestors but our ancestors are actually us.
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Soaring, wrenching, and always heart-stretching, this offering is truly a treasure. The spirit moves here.
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Senior and Founding Rabbi of IKAR
Author of “The Amen Effect”, a Penguin National Bestseller
From the moment I turned to the first page, my heart became full and my tears fell at the beauty revealed: poems of journey, of revealing and being revealed, of becoming and blossoming and finally, accepting. Devon braids the connections between our own very lived lives and our ancestors who came before. She does so with enormous grace, respecting the wisdom of our sages and familiar metaphors of our tradition and still asserts a fresh way of seeing. Her voice is needed in this fractured world – her words heal, and lift. Devon has a gift that shimmers and shines and draws one in for more. What a joy.
Rabbi Jill Zimmerman, Founder and Leader of Hineni – The Mindful Heart Community and The Jewish Mindfulness Network
Devon is a thinker on all matters Jewish. Her poems are deep, and meant to be pondered, not to be read casually. Her writing is particularly powerful for those whose Jewish and life paths have been challenging. At the same time as she addresses difficult challenges, she always comes across at optimistic and life-affirming. It is wonderful to see her weave Jewish texts into her work, bringing them alive in new ways.
The poems in this work can be used by the individual reader and also have potential for use by study groups and as supplements to prayer books. We can expect to see more great writings from her. As a rabbi, I look forward also to her joining our ranks and providing unique approaches to the community.
Rabbi Arnold D. Samlan, Chief Jewish Education Officer of the Jewish Federation Broward County, Florida
Spier ably uses the hypnotic power of lyricism to shift from voice to voice, from feeling to feeling, throughout the book. In doing so, she offers us company, a host of role models, and the feeling of being seen, ourselves, through her examples on the written page …
Across the length of this collection—or is it the winding road of a single book-length poem?—we end up somewhere new. “There is a space/ Beyond guilt/ And struggle/ And shame./ The space where the ladder ends./ And we all begin.” Spier is not promising us an easy journey, but she is inviting us to find deep meaning in our steps, some of which will take us deeper inside. “Our desert thirst is worth more than the mythic homes we set out for,” we learn. “And to walk is greater than to grasp.”
Note: Excerpt published from a book review on Ritualwell.org.
David Ebenbach, Author, “The Artist’s Torah”
Devon Spier drew a map to her ancestors and her heart started beating again. After a year spent routinely bedridden and unable to pray, she picked up a pen and began to relocate all the messy and complicated experiences of being human from out on the margins into the heart of everyday life and community. “Heart Map and the Song of Our Ancestors” is her first book and the culmination of that very work. Newly a writer, ritualist and artistic creator, Devon's work has been featured by The Jewish Women's Archives, PJ Library, Bayit and Ben Yehuda Press, as well as consulted by the London Institute for Jewish Studies. In addition to her written output, Devon has been the recipient of awards for academic work in Religious Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Waterloo as well for Canadian peacemaking from the YMCA. In April 2018, The Ontario Government honoured Devon with the Leading Women/Leading Girls Building Communities Award. A rabbinical student at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York, Devon learns, yearns and works to raise Jewish life to what it ought to be. She invites you to bring yourself to the journey, revealing the power of what is utterly Jewish and undeniably human in all of us.
