Chag Urim Sameach! This year we are celebrating Hanukkah by introducing our readers to a new member of our incredible staff each night as we reflect on the work we’re most proud of from 2022.

We believe something amazing is happening here at Jewish Currents, but we can’t make miracles without your help. We don’t depend on venture capital to fund our work and we don’t accept paid advertising. Rather, it’s your engagement and support that makes the labor of our writers, editors, artists, and fact-checkers possible, and allows us to continue exploring the questions that are most vital to today’s Jewish communities. We’re excited to shine a light on the people behind Jewish Currents, to share with you exactly who and what you are supporting when you read, listen, donate, and subscribe to our magazine.

Hi! My name is Claire Schwartz, and I’m the culture editor at Jewish Currents.

One of the highlights of my year was working with contributing editor Dylan Saba on his essay “Point of No Return.” Drawing together three generations of family history—beginning with the story of his paternal grandparents, who, along with more than 700,000 other Palestinians, were expelled from their homes in 1948—Dylan weaves personal narrative with political theory to make the case for a politics of return that refuses the seductions of nostalgia. Instead, he reframes the idea of return as an imperative to bring about a world where the violences of expulsion cannot be repeated. Dylan worked on “Point of No Return” while he was a fellow at Jewish Currents, so I was lucky to see his thinking thicken as he developed the essay, drawing from wide-flung sources, including those engaged with Palestinian intellectual histories, resistance to the transatlantic slave trade, and various decolonial contexts. It’s a beautiful, roving piece that I’ll be thinking about for years to come.

It was also a joy to edit this folio on Toni Morrison’s only short story, Recitatif, which was reissued this year. Taken together, the contributions from Dionne Brand, Simone Browne, Adania Shibli, and Lauren Michele Jackson—which engage various aspects of the story, from its archival contexts to its resonances with Arabic grammar—illuminate the way a text can act as a site for polyvocal gathering. At Jewish Currents, we talk often about what it means to be a magazine with a capacious understanding of Jewishness, one that turns us toward a vigorous engagement with the world; this experiment in revisiting a text in community resonated with Talmudic practices and reminded me that reading alongside others—attending to how we each see the world—is an element of the work we do that I cherish most, and one that I hope we can continue to enlarge in the future.

To continue publishing bold, challenging pieces like the ones Claire mentioned above, we rely on our community of supporters and subscribers. Please consider sustaining our work by making a donation or subscribing to Jewish Currents today. Our subscriptions also make great gifts!

As a small token of our appreciation for our community of readers and contributors, we are also offering newsletter subscribers 36% off of anything in our online store if you use the code GELT2022. Shop Jewish Currents gifts—like our tote bags, back issues, and special editions—for your friends and family (or yourself!).

Thank you for your continued support, and we wish you a relaxing and peaceful holiday season, no matter what you celebrate.