Rabbi James Stone Goodman has long worked in the space where poetry, music and Torah meet. His new book “Black Fire White Fire” is the fullest expression yet of that calling — a complete Torah told in poetic verse, where one foot is rooted in text and the other steps into imagination. He’ll present it with a reading and signing on Aug. 24 at Kol Rinah.
A vow, a fever and three and a half years of poems
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The project began as a vow. “I wrote one poem every week for three and a half years until I had covered every portion of the Torah,” Goodman said. He described the process as “fever writing,” an almost obsessive rhythm that produced one poem for each of the Torah’s 54 weekly portions. Together, they now form the spine of “Black Fire White Fire.”
The title draws from a classic teaching that the Torah is written in “black fire on white fire” — black fire as the letters, white fire as the spaces that invite interpretation and imagination. Goodman hears the whole page burning. “What’s written and what’s implied, what’s suggested — it’s all fire,” he said.
From St. Louis to New York with Zach Fredman
The poems did not stay on the page — they became songs. Goodman teamed with Rabbi Zach Fredman, a St. Louis native now based in New York City, to set each piece to Eastern Mediterranean Jewish musical modes linked to the weekly Torah portions. Together they recorded live performances across New York, eventually releasing a double CD. Many of those performances can still be seen at TheMaqamProject.com, where words and melody ignite against each other.
Inside “Black Fire White Fire”
Goodman’s new book gathers the full cycle of poems together for the first time, including poems never recorded. Goodman describes it as “a human Torah, a mystical Torah, an imaginative Torah,” rooted in sources yet open to play and risk. He finished the manuscript as his grandson prepared for his first Torah reading — generations meeting across a page of fire.
Event details at Kol Rinah
Kol Rinah will host Rabbi Goodman for a book reading and signing on Sunday, Aug. 24 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the Guller Chapel. He’ll read from “Black Fire White Fire,” and if we’re lucky, share a few songs. In person, open to the community, no RSVP needed
