Historical fiction is a conceit that offer a unique lens through which to explore issues that give our society and its individuals great heartburn.

Let’s use death as an illustrative example. People have a fundamental desire to keep living (forever if possible), and today there are a number of companies exploring ways to prolong life and eventually conquer aging as a cause of death. Rather than writing about the founders of these current-day startups, wouldn’t it be more fun to look back to the conquistadors (the swashbuckling entrepreneurs of the 16th century) and follow one of them on their foolhardy quest to discover the fountain of youth?

I see limitless opportunities for historical fiction to provide insights about modern-day life, the results of which could be rich and enticing stories. 

Historical fiction is a conceit that offer a unique lens through which to explore issues that give our society and its individuals great heartburn.

Let’s use death as an illustrative example. People have a fundamental desire to keep living (forever if possible), and today there are a number of companies exploring ways to prolong life and eventually conquer aging as a cause of death. Rather than writing about the founders of these current-day startups, wouldn’t it be more fun to look back to the conquistadors (the swashbuckling entrepreneurs of the 16th century) and follow one of them on their foolhardy quest to discover the fountain of youth?

I see limitless opportunities for historical fiction to provide insights about modern-day life, the results of which could be rich and enticing stories. 

One of my very first creative writing teachers told me that I was a Jewish writer. I didn’t believe him. Simply being Jewish and an aspiring writer, didn’t make me a Jewish writer. At that time, I was working on a collection of interrelated stories about a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, much like my own. But I whitewashed everything that explicitly conveyed my protagonist’s Jewish ancestry. 

When I think about why I did that, an image pops up. A month or so after my family arrived to the US, I donned Tzitzit under my shirt and marched out into the street on my way to school. My grandmother ran after me, dragged me back inside the house (no small feat for a woman who was five foot tall), and demanded that I remove all visible marking that could identify me as Jewish. My protests that we were not in 1941 occupied Ukraine fell on deaf ears. 

The real shame of that story is not that my grandmother prevented me from expressing my Jewishness. It was that, my grandmother, a daughter of a Rabbi, imparted no real knowledge of Jewish culture or religion besides its most basic reduction: a general concern for the welfare of the Jewish people and the world at large. 

I couldn’t include any Jewish themes in my story, because I knew absolutely nothing about being Jewish. Over the years, I’ve set out on a path to remedy my ignorance. The more I learned, the more comfortable I’ve become at bringing some things Jewish into my writing. 

So what is this Jewish lens that I speak of? The best answer I can come up with comes from the image proposed by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

“Imagine that we are in a vast library. In every direction we look there are bookcases. Each has shelves stretching from the floor to the ceiling, and every shelf is full of books. We are surrounded by the recorded thoughts of many people, some great, some less so, and we can reach out and take any book we wish… We begin to read, and for a while we are immersed in the world, real or imaginary, of the writer… Once the book no longer interests us, we can put it back on the shelf, where it will wait for the next reader to pick it up…

Imagine that, while browsing in the library, you come across one book unlike the rest, which catches your eye because on its spine is written the name of your family. Intrigued, you open it and see many pages written by different hands in many languages. You start reading it, and gradually you begin to understand what it is. It is the story each generation of your ancestors has told for the sake of the next, so that everyone born into this family can learn where they came from, what happened to them, what they lived for and why. As you turn the pages, you reach the last, which carries no entry but a heading. It bears your name.”

That is my Jewish lens. My writing is but an attempt to fill that blank page.