Alexander Nemser

Alexander Nemser is a writer, poet, performer, and educator living in Boston. His poems has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, New York Times and N + 1, and his literary essays have appeared in The New Republic and AGNI. The New Yorker described his one-man show, “Moshe Feldstein, Icon of Self-Realization,” as a “funny, funny piece of work” when it premiered at the Cherry Lane Theater in 2001. He has performed his work internationally, from the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan to the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka, and has led workshops on prison poetry writing, spoken word demonstration, and writing literary parables. He is currently co-teaching a course on “Midrash, Storytelling, and Violence” at the Moishe Kavod House in Boston. He has a BA in Literature from Yale, and an MPhil from Oxford, acquired as a 2006 Marshall Scholar, and has worked as an editorial assistant at the Yale Review, and an intern at the New York Review of Books.

Arielle Tonkin, detail from “Suspension of ThisBelief,” mixed media, 2012. Center. Photo: Laurie Trok.

Arts and Culture

The Sacrifice of Abraham: Three Poems

By Alexander Nemser

Three poems from “The Sacrifice of Abraham,” a series of re-tellings of the biblical story of Isaac and Abraham. In each section, a group of rabbis gathers to re-tell and offer commentary on the story, and with each re-telling transforms it into a broader and broader vision encompassing Greek gods, revolutionaries, insurgents, love affairs, and photographic details from current events.