Limmud Toronto 2020

Calling upon spiritual ancestors, Carol dares the reader/listener to reimagine Biblical women - silenced by history - yet resilient & strong on the pages of her first collection, "Behind the Blue Gate”. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has called this volume “an entrance to the sacred via transformative imagery”.Several of the poems are set in the sensual landscape of Jerusalem - the heartland - both physical & transcendent.Her second collection, “From The Dream” invites us to draw upon memory, loss, death, friendship & love in an attempt to give shape & meaning to our lives. As though in a waking-dream, the poems spiral back & forth through time where, as author Howard Schwartz tells us, “angels interact with the Shekinah … & “words waiting to be exhumed” fulfill their ancient purpose as spells & prophecies” Rather than focusing on landscape, these poems ask us to travel the strangely familiar terrain of dreams & images where the author hopes readers wrest both meaning & blessings.The reading hopes to invert stereotypical master stories, honoured in both Scripture & myth - permitting more liberating (& possibly startling) images to arise.