These Are a Few of My Favorite Jews

With antisemitism on the worldwide rise and attacks in my hometown of Brooklyn, NY scaring people in ways they may have not imagined would reach such startling heights, it seemed an appropriate moment to highlight and give praise to some of my favorite contemporary Jewish poets. Recently Ariana Reines described in a characteristically heartfelt post that she felt grateful for a review that highlighted and understood her within a context of Jewish and Judaic thought in part because it highlighted something that can sometimes feel closeted even when loudly proclaimed or pronounced. While I make no claims to try and know or understand what each of these poets' relationship to their religious background might be, I've often wondered what might bring us all together, if there could be such a thing as a Jewish poetic sensibility and what is at stake, what it means to even have the inclination towards this question? Just last night at the Poetry Project David Henderson said that if you live in New York long enough you are basically Jewish. I'm sure we've all heard some coy version of this half-joke before and while we Jews may seem aplenty in NYC, this comment struck me as particularly unaware of what it is like to be Jewish in any city or state right now. And maybe, though I'm not letting Henderson off the hook entirely, in some way it is because we talk about our jewishness so little. So I ask again, what does it mean to claim or divvy out jewishness for a city? for a mindset? for a poem? This list is just a sampling, for there are many more Jews that I love that did not make this small playlist, many more that I don't yet know exist.