Join the JCC for monthly readings as part of a Jewish Poetry Series, hosted by Philip Terman and Baruch November. Each month will feature different Jewish poets reading selections of poems that include but are not limited to Jewish themes, values and ideas. Free and Open to the Public.

Readings by: Donna Spruijt-Metz, Jeff Friedman, Pamela Wax, and Yerra Sugarman

 ‘To Phrase a Prayer for Peace’ is Donna Spruijt-Metz’s second poetry collection (Wildhouse Publishing, 2025) Her debut poetry collection is ‘General Release from the Beginning of the World’ (2023, Free Verse Editions). She is an emeritus psychology professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. Her chapbooks include ‘Slippery Surfaces’, ‘And Haunt the World’ (with Flower Conroy). and ‘Dear Ghost’ (winner, 2023 Harbor Review Editor’s prize).  She lived in the Netherlands for 22 years and translates Dutch poetry. Her poems and translations appear or are forthcoming at The Academy of American Poets, and in the Tahoma Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her collaborative book with Flower Conroy, ‘And Scuttle My Balloon’, is forthcoming from Pictureshow Press in 2025. Her translations from the Dutch of Lucas Hirsch’s ‘Wu Wei Eats an Egg’ is forthcoming from Ben Yehuda press, also in 2025. 

JEFF FRIEDMAN’s eleventh book, Broken Signals was published by Bamboo Dart Press in August 2024. Friedman’s poems and microfiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, On the Seawall, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Funny, Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Anthology, Best Microfiction 2021 2022, 2023,2024,and 2025, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, two individual artist grants from the New Hampshire Arts Council, and numerous other awards. 

Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022), Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023), and the forthcoming Chewing the Remembrances (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). Her poems have been published widely and have received two Best of the Net nominations and awards from Crosswinds, Paterson Literary Review, Poets’ Billow, Oberon, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. Some of her other publications include Barrow Street, Tupelo Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Chautauqua, The MacGuffin, Nimrod, Mudfish, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Epiphany, and Slippery Elm. An ordained rabbi, Pam works as the Director of Adult Education and Programming at a Conservative synagogue in Pittsfield, MA. She has previously served as a pulpit rabbi, a hospital chaplain, the assistant director of adult education for the Reform movement, and for 19 years as the staff rabbi at a social service agency in White Plains, NY where she offered pastoral counseling and ran a spiritual healing center. She travels widely to teach spirituality and poetry workshops, in addition to online offerings. She lives in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.

Yerra Sugarman’s three volumes of poetry are: Aunt Bird (Four Way Books, 2022), which won American Book Fest’s 2022 Best Book Award for General Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry; The Bag of Broken Glass (Sheep Meadow, 2008), poems from which received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; and Forms of Gone (Sheep Meadow, 2002), winner of PEN American Center’s Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature, and is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. She serves on the Board of Directors of Yetzirah/a hearth for Jewish poetry, and co-curates its reading series. Website: https://yerrasugarman.com