(1)   Trial by Verse

 The following review was published in The Jewish Chronicle.  

Geoffrey Hoffman is a solicitor living in Watford with his wife, daughter, “and the smile on the face of his cat.”  A playful cat’s influence is indeed almost discernable in this quite substantial collection of light verse.

Most of the pieces cut a satirical swathe through the weird and sometimes wayward contortions of our legal system.  Their appeal, however, extends  -  like the inner musings of a Rumpole  -  well beyond that bewigged world.

Hoffman’s ebullient comic capers burst “the gravity balloon with the needle-point of wit,” though “to laugh at the law is dangerous, for the law cannot laugh at itself.  The law is a lion (or some would say, a shark) and its jaws are always open for those who frisk with it.”

Time, I fear,  has moved on since the first sentence was written:  I have retired and moved from Watford; and my cat, alas, is no more.

(2) The Jewish Pilgrimage

Review by Revd. Jonathan Gorski

(and published in Common Ground, the Journal of the Council of Christians and Jews)

When this book by a CCJ member appeared for review I considered myself far too prosaic to review a book of poetry.  Once I read it I found I enjoyed it.  A major theme of the book is the problem that has troubled religious people ever since the book of Job  -  the presence of evil in the world and the need for human beings to show each other compassion.  One poem explains the use of poetry:...'All poetry is prayer:  it is a door that opens to reveal the face of God.'  Several poems try to explain the process of creation  -  one ends:  'God smiled, and there was light.'  Another describes Israel and Jerusalem in terms with which I can identify: 

        'This land is vibrant in its stillness.

         Here all experience seems more intense:

         The mountains seem more mountain...

         And all that is alive seems more alive...

         Until I saw Jerusalem I did not know I was in exile...'      

Review by Lillian Brummet (an American Reviewer)

The Jewish Pilgrimage by Geoffrey Hoffman is clearly written to inspire philosophical discussion. This book depicts the author's personal journey to find some form of understanding about man, our various versions of God and how this effects society and the use of its knowledge. He debates moral issues and provokes deep thinking in several areas that will never leave my mind as I travel along my own road.

Geoffrey questions the justness of creation itself and the gift of consciousness. Also he cleverly uses metaphors when he depicts various pieces of himself by using the universe, planets and astrological colors. Without a doubt this student of life, takes joy in nature. Throughout the book the author makes his awe in the vastness of the universe quite apparent.

My personal favorite piece was Beautiful Among The Buildings, which used powerful visual statements like:
"Night sprawls among the broken lives that line the broken street;
The lonely and unpitied men whose waste is our defeat.
Men stagger from dank cellars; men, imprisoned in their cars,
Go roaring into sightlessness ­ -  unmindful of the stars."

And the equally powerful anti-war piece, No Frontiers:
" The father carrying the limp body of his child,
The soldier staring at his amputated hand,
The little girl among the bloodied pieces of her parents ­
What does it matter if they are of one side or another?
Dogma cannot grieve.
It is the pain of individuals that sears."

I also really appreciated Half Sight, which discussed the inability to witness the good and love in life when there is so much horror to distract us from it. Today Near Watford Market was a very moving piece for me in that it was so visual. It describes an event where the author witnesses a man speaking to the public about his lack of belief in religion. And "circling like wolves, the true-believers snarled, snapping at both his arguments and him." Yet nearby an elderly women fell, sprawling her shopping items on the ground around her. The non-believer ran over to her side and helped her on her way, "jostling to her assistance through unmoving ranks of true-believing ice". It is a beautiful story about seeing God where you least expect it.

In the later part of the book, the author moves away from poetry and gets in to verse debating who the Jewish people are, what they are perceived as being and the persecution of this group of people through the ages. His interesting look at the holocaust does not dwell on the sorrow or loss of the people ­ rather it centers on the people themselves.

By far, Jewish people are not the only race of people who have suffered at the hands of man and I think the author means to use the example as a tool to accelerate the intellectual growth of mankind.