"Rarely have I enjoyed the intellectual pleasure I experienced when reading Merle Feld's A Spiritual Life. Her voice is warm and vivid, [offering] a remarkably thoughtful account of how feminism came to Judaism ... Her description of that transformation is both a fascinating documentary of a crucial era in Jewish history and an inspiration to all of us to take seriously the imperative that the spiritual and the ethical must be intertwined."
--Susannah Heschel editor of On Being a Jewish Feminist

"The story of poet and playwright Merle Feld's spiritual life--or lives--as a Jewish woman who has been daughter, mother, rebbetzin and rebel, will resonate with many other women. This is a book full of heart and intelligence, rich with humor and emotion, no punches pulled. Honoring the past, it turns our faces finally toward a future--hopefully--of change and growth in Jewish life."
--Alicia Ostriker author of Nakedness of the Fathers and The Little Space: Selected and New Poems

"Merle Feld captures the feelings, frustrations and hopes of a generation of American Jewish women, and her words will forever be the anthem, the emblem, of the late 20th century Jewish feminist movement."
--Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, editor and translator of Out of the Depths I Call to You: A Book of Prayers for the Married Jewish Woman

"This book cannot be pigeonholed--it evokes recognition and assent in relation to the complex experiences of being a child, being a child dealing with aging parents, being a friend and a lover, being a mother, being a (Jewish) woman at the end of the twentieth century, being a human being seeking a spiritual life. In describing her effort to live a spiritually meaningful life and to find spirituality in everyday experience, Feld names experiences shared by many woman, yet seldom fully articulated, or articulated this clearly and well."
--Judith Plaskow, author of Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective

"You stop by Merle's house one morning. You have a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. She tells you a few of her stories. You look at your watch: it's late afternoon. Or, she brings out a poem she's just finished. Your eyes fill with tears: it's Yom Kippur. Stories and poetry so captivating, powerful, wise, you'll never be the same. An extraordinary achievement!"
--Lawrence Kushner, author of Invisible Lines of Connection

"...Merle Feld has written a wonderfully moving tribute to the multifaceted nature of the human soul. Her poems and stories touch something deep within me."
--Blu Greenberg, author of On Women and Judaism: A View From Tradition and How to Run a Jewish Household

"Feld breaks new ground in spiritual autobiography--locating spiritual growth in the daily life of a daughter, wife, mother, friend. Her distinctive voice is characterized by a simplicity and honest humility that makes the profundity of her insights all the more startling. Feld has a gift for making that which may seem esoteric, accessible; and that which may seem ordinary or mundane, transcendent. This book is one of a kind."
--Gail Twersky Reimer, Director, Jewish Women's Archive, and coeditor of Reading Ruth: Contemporary Women Reclaim a Sacred Story

"Merle Feld speaks honestly about the lives of all women in this deep and penetrating volume. A Spiritual Life is a delight to the mind and the heart."
--Sharon Strassfeld, author of Everything I Know and coeditor of The Second Jewish Catalogue

"Interweaving poems with personal reflections, Merle Feld takes the reader on a spiritual journey through well-known paths not often associated with the sacred. In search of a meaningful Jewish self-identity, she draws upon her everyday experiences as wife, mother, and Jewishly-committed feminist, transforming everyday events into occasions for spontaneous prayer. Feld's honest, sometimes irreverent poems are witty, wise, and religiously insightful. Worthy of a wide audience, this book should be of particular interest to feminist theologians and historians; to Jewish women who, like Feld, struggle to find their place in the Jewish world; and to anyone seeking new paths towards the holy."
--Ellen Umansky, coeditor of Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality: A Sourcebook