Retelling as reverence
May is Jewish American Heritage Month, and this year, I’m thinking a lot about sacred stories—and how we tell them. How we hold them. How we wrestle with them. And how sometimes, we find ourselves inside them.
I wasn’t raised Jewish. I was raised in a United Methodist household, and I’ve been asking questions about God since I was six years old and a pastor handed me a red-letter Bible. I was obsessed—confused, fascinated, slightly panicked—by the red ink. Why those words? Who chose them? Why was Jesus shouting??
Eventually, those questions led me deeper. In my early twenties, I bought a Jewish Publication Society Tanakh because I was riveted by how much research and reverence went into translating Hebrew and Aramaic into English. That led to more reading—Chaim Potok, Harold Kushner, Yitzchok Kirschner—and, eventually, to a literal pilgrimage: a teacher-exchange trip to Israel with my dear friend and rabbi.
I had been in the process of converting to Judaism at the time. I’d started coursework at American Jewish University, lit candles on Friday nights, practiced the prayers. But it was at Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, that something in me irrevocably shifted. I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t.
Among the many things I learned that day was the term “righteous gentile.” I stood there with tears running down my face, listening to stories of resistance, courage, and protection. I don’t pretend to be Righteous. But I live my life as an ally and advocate for the Jewish people. And—because I’m a writer—that allyship takes the form of stories.
Holland, My Heart is a contemporary retelling of Ruth. Not sanitized. Not Sunday School-safe. Just a story of deep loss, loyalty, reinvention—and saying yes to life again after everything falls apart.
When Ivy Met Adam is based on Eve (and on Lilith!). There’s a lot of scholarly work on how Adam wound up with a wife and I wanted to weave those ancient stories into one where my FMC chooses herself, again and again, in a world that tries to tell her she shouldn’t.
The women of the Bible have always fascinated me. They’re fierce. Misunderstood. Too often flattened by centuries of commentary that makes them palatable—obedient, invisible, voiceless. But I don’t write them that way. I write them queer. Resilient. Messy and magnificent.
And I don’t write them outside of God’s reach. I write them in dialogue with the Divine.
One of the most healing realizations I’ve had is this: I don’t have to reclaim the Bible to belong in it. The stories are already full of people like me. People who wrestle. People who run. People who are told they’re too much or not enough—and still get chosen.
When I write Ivy or Holland or Ximena, I’m not scrubbing them clean. I’m letting them live. Letting them struggle. Letting them touch the hem of holiness and say, “Yes. Even me.”
Is there a sacred story you would want to retell? A faith you want to reconnect with, on your own terms, in your own voice?
Jewish American Heritage Month is a beautiful time to honor the stories we’ve inherited—and the new ones we’re writing into being. You don’t have to be born into a tradition to learn from it, to love it, to let it change you.
