Enter These Gates: Meditations for the Days of Awe

by Alden Solovy, Naamah Kelman (foreword)

Enter These Gates is a High Holy Day companion for our times, with more than one hundred new poems, prayers, and meditations for Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Poet-liturgist Alden Solovy draws from his unique spirit to blend today's struggles and joys with classic themes, layering a contemporary voice into beloved motifs. Enter These Gates is a vital resource for individual prayer, study, and communal worship. Themes include confession, repentance, forgiveness, and memory, as well as frailty, seeing holiness, and what Solovy calls "the ancient journey." A companion to the machzor, Enter These Gates offers a fresh yet deeply rooted approach to heightening our experience of the Days of Awe.

It is said that no one can put into words "the fragrance of a rose," but Alden Solovy comes very close. His poetry bridges the worlds of sacred and everyday; to read him is to get closer to the Divine. As a worship leader, these poems are essential in my preparation. Their mix of honesty and hope is redemptive.
---Rabbi Edwin Goldberg, coeditor of Mishkan Machzor for the Days of Awe

As in all of Alden Solovy's poetry, Enter These Gates sings to us and opens our hearts. The melody of his words moves us to find new meaning in a piece of liturgy or a Biblical text. He understands our questions, fears, and hopes, and gives voice to them all.
---Merri Lovinger Arian, Professor of Practice, Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion

Once again, Alden Solovy demonstrates why he is one of the great pay'tanim (liturgical poets) of our time. With depth and warmth, he opens a window onto the Jewish soul. His words are desperately needed during these challenging times; they will lift us all to God.
---Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, author of Tikkun Ha'Am/Repairing Our Israel and the Crisis of Liberal Judaism

Alden Solovy's prayer poems give each and every one of us a language for seeking after and hoping for a direct and intimate experience of God. His pieces powerfully resonate with the traditional prayers, but make space for us as individuals.
---From the foreword by Rabbi Naamah Kelman, Dean, HUC-JIR in Jerusalem, 2008-23

212 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 15, 2024

Reviews

[Margaret Klein]

Alden Solovy is a gifted, talented poet and liturgist for our times. He writes poetry about the things the psalmists and the piyutin never could have dreamed up. His prayers have carried me through many a personal moment. This is not his first books, but it is one of his best. He keeps saying he is never going to write another book but then he comes up with more. This book was almost completed before October 7th and is now colored by it. It is well worth the read.

[Gail Fisher]

As a rabbi, I wanted this book both for my own meditative preparation for the High Holydays and also for possible readings that I could share with my congregation as enrichment to our services. I found both in such abundant quantities that my entire book is now bristling with bookmarks! Some of it was written before October 7, 2023, and some of it afterwards, and you can feel the heartbreak and poignancy in those latter offerings. But every one of them is a gem and definitely provides nourishment for the mind, heart, and soul. I pretty much read the entire book in a single setting because I could not stop.