In times of upheaval, we often look to the past. As we seek com­fort in mem­o­ry and tra­di­tion, we also come to under­stand them in new ways. While this is some­times unnerv­ing, even unbal­anc­ing, it’s nec­es­sary to the cre­ative process. In addi­tion to reas­sur­ance, we find inspiration.

In these pages, author Leigh Stein describes doc­u­ment­ing the pan­dem­ic through poet­ry after reread­ing Anne Frank’s diary and con­tem­plat­ing ​“how much thought and effort Anne put into writ­ing some­thing that would have mean­ing to read­ers in the future — us.” Oth­er con­trib­u­tors look fur­ther back. The golem, depict­ed for cen­turies as a war­like defend­er, has been reimag­ined by con­tem­po­rary writ­ers and artists to address every­thing from sex­u­al­i­ty to pol­i­tics, body dys­mor­phia, and disability.

Ques­tion­ing the accept­ed his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive shows us how much rich­er the full pic­ture is. In explor­ing the sto­ry behind two por­traits from the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Lau­ra Arnold Leib­man demon­strates how our impres­sion of ​“Jews in ear­ly Amer­i­ca was dis­tort­ed and impov­er­ished” by ignor­ing top­ics like the sit­ters’ mul­tira­cial lin­eage. Sigal Samuel describes her won­der at dis­cov­er­ing that the first female rab­bi was Mizrahi and Ortho­dox, and her sub­se­quent deter­mi­na­tion to write a pic­ture book ​“to intro­duce young read­ers in par­tic­u­lar to this bril­liant woman who became a leader against all odds.”

It can be tempt­ing to look away from unpleas­ant aspects of the past. Mau­rice Samuels dis­cuss­es a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Jew­ish trai­tor whom most his­to­ri­ans have ignored, con­cerned that high­light­ing his sto­ry would only rein­force anti­semtic stereo­types. Nev­er­the­less, as Samuels writes, ​“It is only by con­fronting the past in all its com­plex­i­ty that we are able to face the chal­lenges of the present.” Just as the golem evades the con­trol of its cre­ator in many of the orig­i­nal tales, cir­cum­stances today are often out of our con­trol. The courage and cre­ative bril­liance with which these authors approach our com­plex time can help to guide us forward.

Watch the video of the Vir­tu­al Launch Par­ty for the 2022/5782 Issue on Face­book or YouTube!