PRAISE FOR ENOUGH  TO  STOP  THE  HEART                                               

I have long admired how Adam Fisher practices poetry engagee, the poetry of engagement, in the modern American context. He possesses a manner so natural and convincing his poetry seems to roll off the tongue like an easy conversation.  Throughout, Fisher reaches new levels of immediacy, wit  and delicacy of  pleasing. These are  poems that consistently charm us. George Wallace, Suffolk County Poet  Laureate, 2003-05          

Adam Fisher brings to his work an uncommon sensibility. His skills as a poet are rivaled only by his reverence for the world around him. David B. Axelrod, Suffolk County Poet Laureate and Publisher of Writers Ink Press   

We seem usually to be “living in our own shadow,”Adam Fisher says, and we see in him a poet constantly trying to break into fresh light, fresh insight. ... He stays amazed. Little is lost on Fisher as his best poems beguile us and, as gifts, become enlargements for us.  William Heyen  

Adam Fisher’s poems are the kind to take before the poetry-deprived public to demonstrate that poetry  is  interesting,  enjoyable  and meaningful—Indeed compelling. Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr., Nassau County Poet Laureate  

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

 ADAM D. FISHER’s poetry has appeared in numerous Jewish and general literary journals. He is the author of two previous volumes of poetry: Rooms, Airy Rooms (Cross Cultural Communications-Writers Ink, 1988), and Dancing Alone (Birnham Wood, 1993). In 1990, he was the winner of the Jeanne Voege Poetry Prize, at the Westhampton Writers Festival; and, in 1991, he was the recipient of a Rosenberg Award, presented by the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley , California , for poems on the Jewish experience. In 2008, he won first prize in the Performance Poets Association poetry contest.

Rabbi Fisher is also the author of two books of liturgy: Seder Tu Bishevat: The Festival of Trees, published in 1989, (Central Conference of American Rabbis) and An Everlasting Name: A Service For Remembering the Shoah, (Behrman House, 1991). His books for children include, Home Start Holiday Series (Behrman House, 1987), My Jewish Year (Behrman House, 1993) and God’s Garden (Behrman House, 1999), a book of original midrashic stories.

His short fiction has appeared in The Jewish Spectator, Echoes, Paragraph, The Story Teller and Home Planet News. He has also published many scholarly and professional articles, contributed to anthologies and done translations. Currently, he is the Poetry Editor of the CCAR Journal.

Dr. Fisher served as a Chaplain in the U.S. Navy, and as Rabbi in Lynchberg , Virginia , before becoming the Rabbi of Temple Isaiah, Stony Brook, in 1971. He served in that capacity until 2002, when he became the Rabbi Emeritus. He graduated from Colgate University with high honors in Philosophy and Religion in 1962. In 1967, he received Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish  Institute  of  Religion,  where  he earned a Doctor of  Hebrew Letters degree in 1971, and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Divinity in 1992.

            He has served on the Joint Commission on Social Action of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations-Central Conference of American Rabbis, and in 1975 wrote, “To Deal Thy Bread to the Hungry,” (UAHC), an action workbook on world hunger. He was a member of the Liturgy Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and served on an editorial team for new publications. Rabbi Fisher was one of the founders and a past-president of the Shalom Interfaith Project, which provides social services for the poor. He was honored twice by The Ministries, in Coram, New York , for his social activism. The Village Times-Herald newspaper honored him as “Man of the Year in Religion,” in 2002.

            He and his wife, Eileen, who taught pre-school for many years, live in Stony Brook. They have two married daughters: Rachel, who is a reading specialist, and Deborah, who is an artist. They have four granddaughters and a grandson. He is an enthusiastic woodworker who designs and builds studio furniture. He loves the natural world and enjoys gardening, bike riding and kayaking.  

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR           

            Deborah Fisher is a mixed media artist who has exhibited nationally. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, as well as several Special Opportunity Stipends from the New York Foundation for the Arts and JPMorgan Chase Individual Artist Grants for artists working in the community. Deborah has an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA from Maryland   Institute College of Art.  She is a featured artist in the book Art Textiles of the World: USA (Telos Art Publishing).  She is currently the creative director and quilt designer for the Bright Hopes Collaborative Quilt Project, a not-for-profit organization which makes one-of-a-kind quilts for the homeless living in temporary housing. She, her husband and two daughters live in Stony Brook , New York where she works.