Post-mod­ern Jew­ish poets present a var­ie­gat­ed, mul­ti­lay­ered tapes­try of inde­fin­able Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. Con­sid­er Chana Bloch’s metaphor­i­cal descrip­tion of a Jew­ish pres­ence dis­con­nect­ed from piv­otal moments in Jew­ish his­to­ry, ​“Make flour into dough…/and fire will turn it into food./Ash is the final abstrac­tion of matter./You can just brush it away.” Images of life and death fail to grasp the abstract mean­ing in reli­gious heav­i­ness, destruc­tion, alter­nat­ing with new birth. (“Flour and Ash”) Many of these non-reli­gious poets, how­ev­er, are haunt­ed by their reli­gious her­itage, as in ​“Mezuzah on My Mind” by Sim Warkov, ​“We are all in exile from the moment/we’re born; each of us, the slackers/​and the pious steered by our own mezuzah,/be it hor­i­zon­tal, ver­ti­cal or on the bias.” Three of these poets ana­lyze Bib­li­cal tales with a more con­tem­po­rary reflec­tion less bur­dened by the neces­si­ty to hold dear­ly to what may be lost so eas­i­ly, as in ​“Lot’s Wife,” who is seen in a last scene, “…Who grieves/​for this name­less woman, Lot’s reflec­tive wife?/I grieve./I know hold­ing on can cost a life.” One writer attempts to rec­on­cile Jew­ish enmi­ty with peace­mak­ing in ​“Milk and Hon­ey,” ​“Couldn’t we come in peace, share what we’ve got/​including You, set­tle down and call/​it off? But No, You answer. You must dis­pos­sess them all.” These poems arise from thought­ful writ­ers reflect­ing on nec­es­sary ques­tions. Tak­en togeth­er they offer an under­stand­ing of what it means to be Jew­ish in today’s world.