Yeshiva Boys: Poems

David Lehman, a poet of wit, ingenuity, and formidable skill, draws upon his heritage as a grandson of Holocaust victims and offers a stirring autobiographical collection of poems that is his most ambitious work to date.

Yeshiva Boys covers an expansive range of subjects – from love, sex, and romance to repentance, humility, the meaning of democracy, Existentialism, modern European history, military intelligence, and the rituals associated with faith and prayer.

The title poem is a work in twelve parts that blends the elements of espionage fiction, memory, history, and moral philosophy. It reflects David’s experience as a student in an orthodox Yeshiva, and it, along with many other poems in the book, explores what it means to be a Jew in America, what is gained and lost in assimilating to secular culture, how to understand the peculiar destiny of the Jewish people, and how to reconcile the existence of God with the knowledge of evil.

Beautiful, provocative, and accessible, this is David Lehman’s most inspired collection.