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  • Home
  • New Poems, Stories, Songs
  • New Translations
  • Poetry
    • Youth Poems
    • Two Poems about Brooklyn
    • Tefillin
    • Little Psalms
    • The Absence of Stone
    • Some Other Poems
    • Some Other, Other Poems
  • Music
  • Rav Kook
  • Jewish, Spiritual & Beautiful
  • About Myself
  • Contact
  • What Does "Dot-Letter-Word" Mean?
  • Sefirot Sample
  DOT... LETTER... WORD...
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    ​New! Get your free copy of The Sefirot: A Hasidic Perspective on the Spiritual Journey, a full-length book based on Breslov teachings.
    “Beautiful, poetic, and inspiring” —Norman Lamm, president emeritus, Yeshiva University.
     “An elegant and impassioned book that translates Jewish mystical wisdom into a contemporary idiom”—Daniel Matt, The Essential Kabbalah and God and the Big Bang.
    “Drawing on many different sources, Yaacov David Shulman has offered us a book of ancient teachings that can enrich and elevate the modern soul” —David Wolpe, The Healer of Shattered Hearts.

...and immediately receive The Sefirot!
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​Hello! My name is Yaacov David Shulman, and I'm
 a creative writer, translator and editor.
I so much liked your perfect Little Psalms, some of them so much in the spirit (and often the language-of-feeling) of Yiddish poetry. You've created a fine amalgam of the American tongue and its sensibilities, and your new/old yeshiva explorations.
          —Cynthia Ozick, winner of the PEN/Nabokov Award, 2008.
Yaacov David Shulman is a master translator who is able to capture the language, the poetry and the beauty of Rav Kook’s Hebrew, which is often very difficult to read in the original, even by people who are very literate in Hebrew. 
          —Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, president emeritus of the Orthodox Union (OU). 

​​​Dot-Letter-Word is my opportunity to share with you:
My Writing: mostly poetry.
My Translating: great spiritual Jewish texts by Rav Kook, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the Piaseszner Rebbe, and others.
Bonus: occasional songs. 
Click here to join the mailing list and get the latest updates or to hire me to edit or translate your work..

what's new

New Poems, Stories, Songs
April 12, 2017
Thinking about Faith, Thinking

April 10, 2017
We Refine Our Praise Because

April 6, 2017
Oh How I've Come Down

April 2, 2017
You Are (You Say) Ashamed

March 31, 2017
Don't Be Scared

March 30, 2017
I Shake All Over with Rossby Waves

March 28, 2017\
The Light Is On, But Inside

March 27, 2017
I Think (I Think!) There Are Thoughts

March 24, 2017
When You Cannot See the Light of

March 23, 2017
What Is Holiness? Is It

March 19, 2017
The Truly Great Soul

March 16, 2017
Don't Be Afraid (Of What?)

March 12, 2017
להרים את הגורל

​March 10, 2017
The Sweeter the Water

March 9, 2017
Mind and Heart, at Their Peak

March 8, 2017
God's Lamp Is Shining

March 7, 2017
There Is Nothing in the World

March 5, 2017
Healthy Bodies, Meaning: Pure and Clear

March 3, 2017
The Songbird Sings

March 1, 2017
When It Is Love

February 28, 2017
If You Think that Your Prayers

February 27, 2017
Why, We Never Have to Leave

February 24, 2017
If Only My Imagination Would Be As Clear

February 23, 2017
My Window Was So Clear (New & Improved!)

February 23, 2017
My Window Was So Clear

February 21, 2017
It Is Hard to Balance

February 19, 2017
My Body Needs Iron, and So Does My Soul

February 17, 2017
Sometimes the Individual

February 16, 2017
When Our Senses Are Like Glass

February 14, 2017
Until the Good Fills the Canals

February 12, 2017
All We Know Is Rays of Light

February 10, 2017
All of These Books

February 10, 2017
Your Eye Is as Big as a Lunar Parasol

February 8, 2017
When My Eye, Which Is Open and Rational

February 7, 2017
The Story of Creation

February 6, 2017
How Foolish People Are

February 3, 2017
Sometimes Pure Faith

January 31, 2017
My Thoughts Contradict Each Other

January 30, 2017
I Guess the Stars Are High

January 25, 2017
Truth Doesn't Appear Bit by Bit

January 24, 2017
As You'll See, If You Follow Me Down into the Cellar

​January 20, 2017
Does Knowledge Make Man Happy?

January 19, 2017
How, You May Say, Happy Are You

January 15, 2017
Without Wisdom, Prayer Is Not Much

January 15, 2017
Twelve Times Twelve Is a Hundred and Forty Four

January 13, 2017
The Sea Has No Water

January 12, 2017
Each Island Has Its Own Fruits

January 5, 2017
It Reaches But It Does Not
The World Was Created for Me

January 4, 2017
A River Flows It Wishes to Flow

January 1, 2017
As Jagged as a Cracked Wave

December 30, 2016
The Honey of Insight, Its Expanding Lines

December 28, 2016
Oh Fierce Nostalgia

December 27, 2016
The Spirit Grows

December 23, 2016
Do Not Deprecate

December 21, 2016
Every Soul of Cobalt Blue

December 16, 2016
No More than What I Have, I Have

December 8, 2016
I Fled the Moose, I Stalked the Bear

July 22, 2016
My Dear Friend, I Do Not Write These Words

July 4, 2016
You Call the Enemy to the Gate

June 13, 2016
A Song about a Skulking Bird: Aquarius (go to bottom of page)

June 5, 2016
A Stroll through Jerusalem

June 3, 2016
You are a Cloud, a Fuzzy Swarm

​May 31, 2016
...The Women White Were Wearing

May 23, 2016
Bear, Dreaming of Old Age

May 20, 2016
"Why Do I"--Aye Aye Aiie--
The Bridge: A Short Story (can you be religious and creative?)
​
May 19, 2016
The River Barreled Topsidedown

May 17, 2016
The Marvelous Revival of Rabbi Barton: A Short Story

May 14, 2016
Never Stay in Forests Nor Love the Hind
There Are Ships that Are Lustful
The Houses Huddle upon the Onyar River
I Put Off Living Because

May 13, 2016
Thought Is Kind
The Orb Described a Curve
The Mouth of the Lion Lies to My East
Has Any Mind Imprisoned You?

April 14, 2016
South of Chios
Spearhead Island

April 7, 2016
The Name of the District
Even that which Is
Creatures of the Moon
Loud-Roaring, Wine-Colored Sea

March 23, 2016 (Purim)
The Story of the Third Little Piggy
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March 10, 2016
I Found Myself Out-
Poetry Is, Please 
Being Hated Has 
There Are So Many Heads 
The Meadow Flowers Flow in the Breeze 
Between Today and Tomorrow, My 

​February 10, 2016
​"Arrow..." in which I take "An Arrow that Shoots" and transform it into a poem with an A-A-A rhyme scheme, in which the rhyme appears in the first, middle and last word of each three line stanza (each time in a different order).

February 9, 2016
"An Arrow that Shoots"--where I take "There in the Heavens," based on a Pablo Neruda poem, and transform it into a series of "choka" poems.

February 7, 2016
"There in the Heavens," a poem whose body was robbed from Pablo Neruda

February 3, 2016:
A few "choka" poems and two "sedoka" poems (both Japanese forms).

January 31, 2016:
A few poems in the Japanese "tanka" style: lines with syllable counts of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7.

​January 30, 2016: 
A few poems experimenting with alliteration, assonance and rhyme schemes.
New Translations
July 15, 2016
Likutei Moharan Hamevuar: Teaching 3, Complete!

June 5, 2016
Likutei Moharan Hamevuar: Teaching 2, Complete!--Rabbi Nachman's Magnum Opus, with commentary by Rabbi Yehoshua Gross

May 14, 2016
by Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook:
The Wonderful Tzaddikim
From the Comprehensive Light
All Descriptions of Life
The Intelligent Eye
Every Authentic Creation
The Big Truth
Even When the Body is Broken and Crushed
Literature and Prophecy
The Creative Soul

March 18, 2016
Prologue to Likutei Moharan, with the commentary of Likutei Moharan Hamevuar.
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March 10, 2016
Rabbi Nachman's Pleasant Song, which appears at the beginning of Likutei Moharan

February 22, 2016
Profound Creativity, by Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook

February 13, 2016
Three translations of Yiddish poems:
​Ballad of the Ragged Man and the Crucified by Itzik Manger
Treblinka Candidate by H. Leivick
Autumn by Itzik Manger

February 5, 2016:
Fifty years after the passing of Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv, author of the Kabbalistic classic, Lechem Shevo Ve'achlamah, a brief biography and appreciation by Rabbi S. Deblitzki. (Notice that sadly, because of prejudice in certain quarters, he avoided citing Rabbi Elyashiv's colleague, Rav Kook, by name and only referred to him as "one of the great leaders and tzaddikim of the generation.")

January 30, 2016:
Rabbi Aryeh Levin ("A Tzaddik in Our Time") wrote a brief biography of his father-in-law, Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv, author of the Kabbalistic classic, Lechem Shevo Ve'achlamah. It appears here for the first time in English.


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