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Birthright
The poems in BIRTHRIGHT, Erika Dreifus’s debut collection, embody multiple legacies: genetic, historical, religious, and literary. Through the lens of one person’s experience of inheritance, the poems suggest ways in which all of us may be influenced in how we perceive and process our lives and times. Here, a poet claims what is hers as a child of her particular parents; as a grandchild of refugees from Nazi Germany; as a Jew, a woman, a Gen Xer, and a New Yorker; as a reader of the Bible and Shakespeare and Flaubert and Lucille Clifton. This poet’s birthright is as unique as her DNA. But it resonates far beyond herself.
"With its honest, accessible language and straightforward storytelling, Erika Dreifus’s first full-length collection is a welcome addition to the modern American poetry canon—narrative, Jewish, feminist, or otherwise."
—Sivan Butler-Rotholz, Managing Editor, “Saturday Poetry Series,” AS IT OUGHT TO BE MAGAZINE
"With its honest, accessible language and straightforward storytelling, Erika Dreifus’s first full-length collection is a welcome addition to the modern American poetry canon—narrative, Jewish, feminist, or otherwise."
—Sivan Butler-Rotholz, Managing Editor, “Saturday Poetry Series,” AS IT OUGHT TO BE MAGAZINE
- GenresPoetry
86 pages, Paperback
Published November 5, 2019
44 people want to read
About the author
Erika Dreifus
11 books222 followersErika Dreifus's latest book (and first poetry collection) is titled Birthright, published by Kelsay Books in November 2019.
Erika is also the author of a story collection, Quiet Americans, which was published by Last Light Studio and named a 2012 Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title (for "outstanding Jewish literature"). The book was also recognized as a Top Small-Press Book (Shelf Unbound) and Notable Book (The Jewish Journal) for 2011.
Quiet Americans is largely inspired by the experiences and stories of Erika's paternal grandparents, German Jews who immigrated to the United States in the late 1930s, and by Erika's own identity as a member of the "third generation." Portions of proceeds from sales of Quiet Americans are being donated to The Blue Card Fund, whose mission is to assist survivors of Nazi persecution and their families who are in need in the United States.
Erika is also the author of a story collection, Quiet Americans, which was published by Last Light Studio and named a 2012 Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title (for "outstanding Jewish literature"). The book was also recognized as a Top Small-Press Book (Shelf Unbound) and Notable Book (The Jewish Journal) for 2011.
Quiet Americans is largely inspired by the experiences and stories of Erika's paternal grandparents, German Jews who immigrated to the United States in the late 1930s, and by Erika's own identity as a member of the "third generation." Portions of proceeds from sales of Quiet Americans are being donated to The Blue Card Fund, whose mission is to assist survivors of Nazi persecution and their families who are in need in the United States.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 27, 2020
I’m proud to call Erika a friend, so I can’t pretend to an unbiased reading of this, but I also can’t pretend I don’t admire many of these poems very much.
The central project here is Erika’s exploration of “birthright,” of that which she – and many other contemporary Jews – have inherited from our theological, cultural, and genetic forebears. In multiple ways, she explores how we can recognize what those named and unnamed ancestors have left for us. She doesn’t seize; instead, she reaches out gingerly. She doesn’t claim to own; she suggests instead that what we have today others will have in their turn.
Much of that project becomes clear in the opening poems (where some of my favorites are) but it also slowly becomes clear that the project is larger than simply understanding herself as a contemporary Jew. Yes, that’s central, but one moving element of this work is that Erika insists that all of what she experiences is part of her “birthright.” That’s true whether the subject is what it means to buy haircare products, to have a warm interaction with an old crush on Facebook, to deal with surgery for fibroid growths (that one with the powerful title, “Kaddish for My Uterus”), to acknowledge the mixed feelings of seeing armed security at her niece’s religious school, or to imagine various Biblical stories in the fresh light of the 21st Century.
There is in all that, a kind of implicit prayer. If you read the translation of Jewish services, it might surprise you to see how little we ask of the divine. I associate Christian prayer (perhaps wrongly) with petitioning, with praying for some particular blessing or outcome.
Jewish prayers, in contrast, are about gratitude, about acknowledging the power of the divine and praising it. With the exception of our prayer for healing, we spend our worship working to be appropriately grateful for existence itself.
That, I think is Erika’s project here. She names her experiences, her joys, and her disappointments, owning her gratitude for the life she’s been given.
In that light, my favorite of these may be “This Woman’s Prayer,” which begins:
Blessed be the One
who made me.
Yes, the One might have aimed higher:
made me smarter, nicer,
more loving, more generous.
But the One could also have done far less:
given me limitations and burdens
and weaknesses that might have broken me.
Another of the strongest ones here deals with that same owning of what is over what might have been even better. While a number of these grapple directly with the politics of Israel, my favorite is “Sisters, or Double Chai,” which concludes:
Like my younger sister,
Israel shares my blood.
I decided to keep any quarrels quiet,
because those outside the family
do not love her as a sister can
and does.
In perhaps the same vein, and opening the entire collection, comes “Puntlichkeit,” a poem in which Erika considers her family’s habit of being on time, perhaps too much so, to all events. It’s a funny series of reflections, conjuring awkward early arrivals, but it concludes with the revelation that it was just such a compulsion to be early – or some related impulse – that caused her grandparents to leave Germany while it was still possible for Jews to do so. It’s a haunting story, and the gratitude in it still registers even as the tone becomes dramatically more serious.
I have to include one more, the title poem, as a way of reflecting one what I’d sum up as Erika’s praise of a broken world. As she writes in “Birthright”:
Eyesight dimmed, aged Isaac
could nonetheless discern
the sound of one twin’s voice
from the other’s
and detect the scent
of each from his garments;
alas, how the story
might have shifted
could the patriarch have distinguished
Esau’s skin from a goat’s.
What a pleasure to be able to hear the work Erika is doing as she reflects on the wide range of the birthright that she experiences, and that she has shared. There is a lot to be grateful for in this world, and it doesn’t diminish our praise when we see the limits of that which we have been granted.
The central project here is Erika’s exploration of “birthright,” of that which she – and many other contemporary Jews – have inherited from our theological, cultural, and genetic forebears. In multiple ways, she explores how we can recognize what those named and unnamed ancestors have left for us. She doesn’t seize; instead, she reaches out gingerly. She doesn’t claim to own; she suggests instead that what we have today others will have in their turn.
Much of that project becomes clear in the opening poems (where some of my favorites are) but it also slowly becomes clear that the project is larger than simply understanding herself as a contemporary Jew. Yes, that’s central, but one moving element of this work is that Erika insists that all of what she experiences is part of her “birthright.” That’s true whether the subject is what it means to buy haircare products, to have a warm interaction with an old crush on Facebook, to deal with surgery for fibroid growths (that one with the powerful title, “Kaddish for My Uterus”), to acknowledge the mixed feelings of seeing armed security at her niece’s religious school, or to imagine various Biblical stories in the fresh light of the 21st Century.
There is in all that, a kind of implicit prayer. If you read the translation of Jewish services, it might surprise you to see how little we ask of the divine. I associate Christian prayer (perhaps wrongly) with petitioning, with praying for some particular blessing or outcome.
Jewish prayers, in contrast, are about gratitude, about acknowledging the power of the divine and praising it. With the exception of our prayer for healing, we spend our worship working to be appropriately grateful for existence itself.
That, I think is Erika’s project here. She names her experiences, her joys, and her disappointments, owning her gratitude for the life she’s been given.
In that light, my favorite of these may be “This Woman’s Prayer,” which begins:
Blessed be the One
who made me.
Yes, the One might have aimed higher:
made me smarter, nicer,
more loving, more generous.
But the One could also have done far less:
given me limitations and burdens
and weaknesses that might have broken me.
Another of the strongest ones here deals with that same owning of what is over what might have been even better. While a number of these grapple directly with the politics of Israel, my favorite is “Sisters, or Double Chai,” which concludes:
Like my younger sister,
Israel shares my blood.
I decided to keep any quarrels quiet,
because those outside the family
do not love her as a sister can
and does.
In perhaps the same vein, and opening the entire collection, comes “Puntlichkeit,” a poem in which Erika considers her family’s habit of being on time, perhaps too much so, to all events. It’s a funny series of reflections, conjuring awkward early arrivals, but it concludes with the revelation that it was just such a compulsion to be early – or some related impulse – that caused her grandparents to leave Germany while it was still possible for Jews to do so. It’s a haunting story, and the gratitude in it still registers even as the tone becomes dramatically more serious.
I have to include one more, the title poem, as a way of reflecting one what I’d sum up as Erika’s praise of a broken world. As she writes in “Birthright”:
Eyesight dimmed, aged Isaac
could nonetheless discern
the sound of one twin’s voice
from the other’s
and detect the scent
of each from his garments;
alas, how the story
might have shifted
could the patriarch have distinguished
Esau’s skin from a goat’s.
What a pleasure to be able to hear the work Erika is doing as she reflects on the wide range of the birthright that she experiences, and that she has shared. There is a lot to be grateful for in this world, and it doesn’t diminish our praise when we see the limits of that which we have been granted.
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July 24, 2019I'm not going to rate/review my own book! But please don't let that stop YOU! ;-)
May 15, 2021
"With any such gathering of poems, there are those that you move through quickly and those that speak to you with an intensity that causes you to linger and to reread. For me, “A Single Woman of Valor,” a revisioning of Proverbs 31, falls into the latter category. Here—and elsewhere— Dreifus uses Jewish textual traditions to champion the diversity of Jewish women’s lives and to value those who, by choice or circumstance, are not wives and mothers."
For my full review, see https://lilith.org/articles/a-woman-o...
For my full review, see https://lilith.org/articles/a-woman-o...
December 16, 2019
This is a personal and affecting collection rife with humor, honesty, wisdom and reflection. Anchored in family history and Jewish text, Dreifus's spare and direct style deftly serves these miniature (yet expansive) narratives, packing a deeply poignant punch.
February 12, 2021
Birthright: Poems
By Erika Dreifus
2021
Reviewed by Angie Mangino
Rating: 5 stars
How do those who came before us affect our own lives? What do we inherit? What do we become from choices made with what to incorporate into our own lives? How does our spirituality, reading, and life experiences make us who we are?
Readers will find themselves relating to their own legacy reading these poems that so beautifully share the author’s life. The strongest pull of this collection is in both its variety and in its seamless flow.
Family history and connection brings one to share in the author’s birthright, making readers reflect on their own family ancestors in the process.
Biblical references make religious life come alive when seen in the totality of one’s life.
Literary references make readers see known works in a new light, connecting the written word to life experiences.
The author’s life in New York shows through with all the clarity and distinct voice of a New Yorker.
“Through the lens of one person’s experience of inheritance, the poems suggest ways in which all of us may be influenced in how we perceive and process our lives and times.”
This reviewer found these poems memorable with the skillful writing, keenly placed order, and rich open sharing of feelings to which we all can relate.
https://amzn.to/3d9Ffzj
Angie Mangino currently works as a freelance journalist, author, and book reviewer, additionally offering authors personalized critique service and copyediting of unpublished manuscripts. www.AngieMangino.com
By Erika Dreifus
2021
Reviewed by Angie Mangino
Rating: 5 stars
How do those who came before us affect our own lives? What do we inherit? What do we become from choices made with what to incorporate into our own lives? How does our spirituality, reading, and life experiences make us who we are?
Readers will find themselves relating to their own legacy reading these poems that so beautifully share the author’s life. The strongest pull of this collection is in both its variety and in its seamless flow.
Family history and connection brings one to share in the author’s birthright, making readers reflect on their own family ancestors in the process.
Biblical references make religious life come alive when seen in the totality of one’s life.
Literary references make readers see known works in a new light, connecting the written word to life experiences.
The author’s life in New York shows through with all the clarity and distinct voice of a New Yorker.
“Through the lens of one person’s experience of inheritance, the poems suggest ways in which all of us may be influenced in how we perceive and process our lives and times.”
This reviewer found these poems memorable with the skillful writing, keenly placed order, and rich open sharing of feelings to which we all can relate.
https://amzn.to/3d9Ffzj
Angie Mangino currently works as a freelance journalist, author, and book reviewer, additionally offering authors personalized critique service and copyediting of unpublished manuscripts. www.AngieMangino.com
May 14, 2020
My review for AJL News and Reviews:
Dreifus’ poems have appeared in many newspapers, literary journals and on websites, but when they are brought together in this chapbook, recurring themes of family, Jewish identity and women’s power are evident. Some compositions pay homage to her German-Jewish ancestry (“Pünklichkeit,” “Mannheim,” “Bloodlines”). There are several with biblical references (“Miriam, Quarantined,” “Ruth’s Regret,” “Abel’s Brother Anticipates Lady Macbeth: A Soliloquy,” “On Reading Chapter 19 in the Book of Judges,” “Fighting Words”). But Dreifus’s talent lies in making the mundane interesting, like in “A Walker in the Post-Blizzard City” and “The Smell of Infection,” where a root canal inspires thoughts about social media posts that infect the world with hate and lies. She also shares personal moments in “Kaddish for My Uterus,” modeled after the traditional prayer said by mourners, in which she describes her hysterectomy.
Whether referencing other works (one poem is “after Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”) or biblical stories or current politics (“Pharaoh’s Daughter Addresses Linda Sarsour”), there is something for all tastes. Highly recommended for libraries that collect poetry, this quintessentially Jewish poetry collection would work well in the classroom or with a reading group.
Dreifus’ poems have appeared in many newspapers, literary journals and on websites, but when they are brought together in this chapbook, recurring themes of family, Jewish identity and women’s power are evident. Some compositions pay homage to her German-Jewish ancestry (“Pünklichkeit,” “Mannheim,” “Bloodlines”). There are several with biblical references (“Miriam, Quarantined,” “Ruth’s Regret,” “Abel’s Brother Anticipates Lady Macbeth: A Soliloquy,” “On Reading Chapter 19 in the Book of Judges,” “Fighting Words”). But Dreifus’s talent lies in making the mundane interesting, like in “A Walker in the Post-Blizzard City” and “The Smell of Infection,” where a root canal inspires thoughts about social media posts that infect the world with hate and lies. She also shares personal moments in “Kaddish for My Uterus,” modeled after the traditional prayer said by mourners, in which she describes her hysterectomy.
Whether referencing other works (one poem is “after Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”) or biblical stories or current politics (“Pharaoh’s Daughter Addresses Linda Sarsour”), there is something for all tastes. Highly recommended for libraries that collect poetry, this quintessentially Jewish poetry collection would work well in the classroom or with a reading group.
December 21, 2019
This collection of poetry is absolutely gorgeous, a collection I read slowly because after each poem, I needed to pause to savor Dreifus's imagery, the beauty of each piece. The range of the poems is remarkable: The opening poem, "Punktlichkeit," draws on both Dreifus's family history and that of the Jewish people, and the last line sent shivers up my spine. Some of the poems are quite serious and political, yet others are humorous, such as an ode to her hair dye. The book draws on both the ancient, as in "Complicity" about the rape of Tamar based on Jewish text, and the modern, as in "On Refinding My First Crush on Facebook." When the poems are deeply personal, as when Dreifus says the prayer for mourning for her uterus, I couldn't help but be moved. Even with the span of styles, the collection as a whole is extremely cohesive, completely accessible to nonpoetry readers, and a delight of treasures for those who already do love poetry.
November 21, 2019
A deeply moving collection of poems. I'd read quite a few of them as they'd appeared in various publications, and together they pack an emotional wallop. Author Mathew Lippman described the book beautifully, "These are poems that embrace faith, family, and the forest of good intention in all of its contradictory forces." Erika Dreifus captures the mundane and the holy, the personal and the political with grace and heart. Her work is also accessible, in the best way. BIRTHRIGHT would be a great pick for a book group.
January 29, 2020
Erika Dreifus’ poems resonate deeply, not only because I’m a Jewish woman of the same age and demographic, but because they speak to the joys and pain of family, history, loss, love and what it means to be a woman alive today. A friend mentioned that she places poets on the highest rung of the literary arts, and I agree; the words must be chosen with utmost care to achieve precision and emotional resonance. Dreifus is a talented writer whose poems check both boxes, and perhaps more importantly, are accessible to readers at large. I especially liked the opening poem, Punktlichkeit, as well as This Woman’s Prayer, Jerusalem Dream, Ode to a Rescuer, September 1, 1946, and many others. This is a poetry collection that I will keep by my desk, and reread time and again. I look forward to reading more from this author.
March 20, 2020
I admit that I rarely read poetry, but Erika’s poems pulled me in. This was an intimate window into the life of a magnificent woman, one with conviction and heart, deep caring, loyalty, love for family and for humanity. Dr. Dreifus reveals and thoughtfully shares the strength of feminism, the quest for fairness and truth. She does it with grace, allowing the reader to ponder their own questions while finding insight in her poetic words. Vulnerable, honest, revealing, the window into Dreifus’s world is a mirror of many of our own worlds-filled with trials, joys, disappointments and triumphs. May you continue to triumph in your endeavors and share them with your poetic words!
February 8, 2020
A strong, moving collection built from poems speaking into family history, poems dealing with religious texts and stories, and poems that intersect with the author’s own particular experiences. Dreifus gives us poetry that will carry the reader’s emotions across the spectrum between levity and deep sadness. And in this way, the collection becomes larger than merely the individual poems. Instead the collection embodies fully questions and ideas about what a person might inherit and how a person might live. I highly recommend this book.
May 1, 2020
This book was so beautiful. So many of Erika Dreifus' poems seemed to directly express my own thoughts. Dreifus captured the longing and desire and the feeling of intergenerational connection that is so palpable in Judaism. I felt these poems tugging at my heart and at my roots. I can't wait to read more from Ms. Dreifus!
July 19, 2020
Honestly, I have not read much poetry in many years. But I received this book as a gift from my daughter's sister-in-law and was immediately "smitten.' Intensely personal while at the same time, universal, some poems are grounded in biblical texts while others are thoroughly contemporary. It is truly something special.
March 1, 2022
I bought Birthright after hearing Erika read a selection of poems from the volume. Often I find poetry unnecessarily obtuse but Erika's pieces are so deceptively simple and accessible. The words and images are so clear, and slide into deep resonance.
May 11, 2020
Lovely, accessible poetry, deeply rooted in the American Jewish experience.
November 27, 2019
Poignant, exquisite, deeply moving and insightful. Each poem is a gem, and confronts the reader with personal, familial, political questions. The poems related to Biblical stories are particularly well-crafted and thoughtful. And the poet inserts her own personal biography into her words without being mawkish or overly sentimental. I highly recommend this book for your own personal library, for book groups, and for gifts to family members and friends.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews