Marcia Falk

Poet, translator, and liturgist Marcia Falk received her BA in philosophy from Brandeis University and her PhD in English and comparative literature from Stanford. As a Fulbright scholar and a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she studied Bible and Hebrew literature. She was a professor of Hebrew and English literature and creative writing at SUNY Binghamton, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford, and she now lectures widely.
 
Marcia Falk is the author of three books of poetry, This Year in Jerusalem, It Is July in Virginia, and My Son Likes Weather, and several translations from Hebrew and Yiddish, among them The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible, With Teeth in the Earth: Selected Poems of Malka Heifetz Tussman, and The Spectacular Difference: Selected Poems of Zelda. Her most recent book is a collection of original Hebrew and English prayer, The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season. Excerpts from The Days Between and The Book of Blessings have been set to music by more than two dozen composers.
 
A lifelong painter, Marcia Falk is currently working on a series of pieces that re-create the traditional Jewish mizrach, a plaque hung on the wall to indicate the direction to face in prayer. Her re-creations combine lines from The Book of Blessings and The Days Between with original pastels.
 
Read more about Marcia at marciafalk.com, and check out her YouTube channel  for lectures, musical compilations, and more. 
 
Liturgical Creativity: A Conversation with Marcia Falk and Rabbi Hara Person