Yehoshua would eventually attend high school in Pittsburgh before attending SUNY Binghamton for undergrad and returning to the University of Pittsburgh for his MFA in Creative Writing. Disenchanted with what he calls the “literary culture,” November pursued a higher calling by studying Hasidism at a yeshiva in Morristown, New Jersey, where he currently resides with his wife. Today, he balances the creative and spiritual by publishing books of Judaic-inspired poetry like 2010’s acclaimed God’s Optimism and teaching writing at both Touro and Rutgers University. 

 

“I didn’t even know I’d go back to teach and write,” he confesses of that time just after attending yeshiva. “I had a poetry manuscript from graduate school, and I didn’t really work on poetry for the two years I was in the yeshiva, and then I had to decide what I really wanted to do. I could either become a Judaic studies teacher or rabbi, or try to go back to teaching English, so I decided to try English, and I enjoyed it.”

 

Before long, November re-focused on his writing, refined the manuscript that would eventually become God’s Optimism and—“thank God,” as he puts it—the work was published via Main Street Rag. It was a circuitous, strange, decade-long journey between his first college courses in poetry and the release of God’s Optimism, one precipitated by a sense that he and his literary peers didn’t necessarily share the same values. Where November was motivated by introspection and faith, a majority of his classmates and instructors seemed driven by material success and accolades.

 

“I thought that when I studied poetry and literature, I would meet professors who would be inspiring and have tremendous insight into life,” he says. “I did have very good professors in [Binghamton], and then when I went to graduate school, it seemed like people were really preoccupied with literary life or awards and getting ahead. It kind of turned me off. “

 

Not that he doesn’t understand practical imperatives. After all, poetry isn’t typically a lucrative field. That’s why as a teacher, he’s chosen to emphasize both writing’s power as a personal outlet and how it can translate to a meaningful career . “You’re trying to teach them skills they can use to enhance their opportunities,” he confirms, “and you want to give them the tools to express themselves and more fully inhabit their lives.”

 

In his own work, November had to reconcile his desire to not just be a poet, but be a Jewish poet. That harmony wasn’t always something that occurred as automatic. “When I was young, I thought those were two contradictory forces,” he opines. “But as I’ve gotten older, and not as black-and-white, you see you can integrate the two, and I think they enrich one another. You can write about Judaism in a way that brings it to life or allows you to express how you fit in with the teachings, and it makes it very real and personal, as opposed to something just academic.”

 

Looking ahead, November isn’t thinking too intently past the present toward future goals, though he acknowledges that “all writers long for as much recognition as possible.” When he does sneak a peek down the road, the dedicated learner and educator’s ambitions are aptly modest. “I would just hope to help people be more attuned to the beauty of their lives,” he says. “And more sensitive to their spouses and children, and to what the possibilities are in a mundane life.”

 

 

Before G‑d opens his fist

to let a soul gently descend into this world,

He whispers a name, an occupation, a future bride:

“So-and-so, the architect

will marry so-and-so, the teacher’s daughter.”

If I lie asleep in my bed—

wherein the sages say a man’s soul goes back,

and he is partly dead—

if you must rouse me,

please, my wife,

do not even place your small hand

on my shoulders,

but whisper my name,

remind me that I am such-and-such a man

and you are the dark-haired daughter of so-and-so,

chosen for me

before I took up this journey.