What’s the scoop on pub­lish­ing? What Jew­ish books are agents, edi­tors, and pub­lish­ers espe­cial­ly excit­ed for us to read? JBC’s series Book­Watch is here to answer these fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions. In each install­ment, a pub­lish­ing insid­er writes an email to intro­duce them­selves, give us a behind-the-scenes look at their work, and tell us about forth­com­ing Jew­ish books they can’t wait to ush­er into the world. This month, we’re fea­tur­ing Eden Pearl­stein, cofounder and edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor of Ayin Press. 

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Ayin Press was not start­ed by a fund, an orga­ni­za­tion, a depart­ment, a think tank, or by phil­an­thropic or pro­fes­sion­al insid­ers. It was start­ed by two mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artists (Tom Haviv and myself) who couldn’t find a home that felt expan­sive, exper­i­men­tal, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary, and Jew­ish enough for their work or the work they want­ed to see more of in the world. Not mem­bers of any syn­a­gogue, and often on the out­side of var­i­ous arts and orga­niz­ing spaces, we fre­quent­ly felt like we had one foot in and one foot out of wher­ev­er we were. A core ques­tion at the heart of Ayin’s emer­gence was there­fore: Where do peo­ple go who don’t com­plete­ly fit into any one social, spir­i­tu­al, artis­tic, or iden­ti­ty box? Or, bet­ter yet — where do peo­ple go who don’t want to fit­in­to those boxes? 

Our first, clum­sy attempt to address this conun­drum was to for­go the ele­va­tor pitch and take the long steep stairs by cre­at­ing a poet­ic man­i­festo.This went great with fun­ders and foun­da­tions! But we felt: Hey, life is messy. Peo­ple are mul­ti­di­men­sion­al. Why should a press be any­thing dif­fer­ent? 

We thus found­ed Ayin’s cura­to­r­i­al ethos on what we called three pil­lars: Spec­u­la­tive The­ol­o­gy, Polit­i­cal Imag­i­na­tion, and Rad­i­cal Aes­thet­ics. In a word — cul­ture. We were inter­est­ed in all of it, and we reject­ed the cor­po­rate iner­tia to nar­row or sim­pli­fy our over­ly ambi­tious vision or mis­sion. We want­ed Ayin Press to be an inter­sec­tion­al place of unlike­ly jux­ta­po­si­tion, where peo­ple from var­i­ous walks of life and fields of inter­est, back­grounds, dis­ci­plines, and com­mu­ni­ties might gen­er­ous­ly bump into each oth­er and dis­cov­er new things about them­selves. That ori­en­ta­tion extend­ed to a com­mit­ment to both avant-garde and more main­stream work. Why lim­it our­selves? More specif­i­cal­ly, we want­ed to sup­port cre­ators and thinkers on the grow­ing edges and help devel­op and present their work in a dig­ni­fied way. We feel that the fringes are often where the best ideas are born, and we are com­mit­ted to cul­ti­vat­ing the vital spir­it of exper­i­men­ta­tion and imag­i­na­tion that will hope­ful­ly seed new visions for a bet­ter future. I mean, how does a prophet scream­ing in the wilder­ness make it into a canon anyway?

I know that may all sound high­fa­lutin or what­ev­er. But at the root of it all is mak­ing things: mak­ing books and oth­er forms of cre­ative work; mak­ing mean­ing; mak­ing con­nec­tions; mak­ing friends; mak­ing mag­ic. And so, ulti­mate­ly, we pre­fer to ​“show, not tell” what Ayin is all about. In oth­er words, we like to let our books do the talking.

The Pow­er of Cul­ture and Creativity

After ini­tial­ly launch­ing with a gallery show cat­a­log and a dig­i­tal jour­nal in ear­ly 2021, our first three books were expres­sions of the three cura­to­r­i­al pil­lars men­tioned above: Under­torah by Jill Ham­mer, a bril­liant book of eco-kab­bal­is­tic dream­work; I., the final work by the late, great Ger­ald Stern — a stun­ning book-length poem inspired by the prophet Isa­iah and a crum­bling syn­a­gogue on the gen­tri­fy­ing Low­er East Side across the street from a Greek din­er called The Cos­mos (with an intro­duc­tion by Ross Gay); and The Neces­si­ty of Exile by Shaul Magid, a coura­geous book exam­in­ing the theo-polit­i­cal con­cept of exile in the con­texts of his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary Zion­ism. With these first three books, Ayin’s core tem­plate was activated.

Since then, we have con­tin­ued curat­ing, com­mis­sion­ing, col­lab­o­rat­ing on, devel­op­ing, and dis­trib­ut­ing bound­ary-push­ing work in mul­ti­ple gen­res and medi­ums. Here’s a few exam­ples to give a sense:

• The Secret That Is Not a Secret by Jay Michael­son, is an edgy short-sto­ry col­lec­tion of ten queer, psy­che­del­ic, mys­ti­cal, hereti­cal tales of con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish life; 
• The Place of All Pos­si­bil­i­ty by Adi­na Allen brings togeth­er the rad­i­cal inter­pre­tive strate­gies of ancient rab­bis with con­tem­po­rary neu­ro­log­i­cal research and art ther­a­py tech­niques to reframe the whole of Torah as a guide­book for creativity;
• Rimon­im: Rit­u­al Poet­ry for Jew­ish Lib­er­a­tion by Auro­ra Levins Morale­sis a prayer book for the street con­sist­ing of forty-nine rit­u­al poems of devo­tion and protest; 
• As a Burn­ing Flame, pub­lished under Ayin’s children’s book imprint Some­where, is a beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed biog­ra­phy of Regi­na Jonas, the first Ashke­nazi woman ordained as a rab­bi who was trag­i­cal­ly mur­dered in Auschwitz; 
• And more recent­ly, The Torah in the Tarot is a stun­ning Tarot deck metic­u­lous­ly recre­at­ed from the six­teenth cen­tu­ry — accom­pa­nied by a book­let mak­ing the case that the deck, so full of Juda­ic imagery, was actu­al­ly a secret cur­ricu­lum for cryp­to-Juda­ic study dur­ing the Inquisition.

Ayin pub­lished five books in 2025 (along with twen­ty-eight dig­i­tal pieces), and we are proud to share that three of them were nom­i­nat­ed for and won awards. SUR­VI­VA: A Future Ances­tral Field Guide by Can­nu­pa Han­s­ka Luger, the first pub­li­ca­tion of Aora, Ayin’s new imprint for gen­er­al audi­ences, received PEN America’s PEN/​Jean Stein Book Award; Gold­en Threads by Ariel­la Aïsha Azoulay received a Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award in the Sephardic Cul­ture cat­e­go­ry; and Pro­to­cols: An Era­sure by Daniela Nao­mi Mol­nar was named a final­ist for a Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award for poet­ry. And we are just get­ting started! 

The World We Share and Build Together

2026 and the years ahead are look­ing busy already, with a host of excit­ing upcom­ing books, includ­ing: the fifti­eth-anniver­sary edi­tion of Reb Zal­man Schachter-Shalomi’s first book, Frag­ments of a Future Scroll, with con­tri­bu­tions by Shaul Magid, Tirzah Fire­stone, Jeri­cho Vin­cent, and Arthur Kurzweil; Selah: A Báyò Akó­moláfé Read­er, a col­lec­tion of poet­ic short-form writ­ings by one of the world’s lead­ing philoso­phers; Turn It & Turn It: Post-Sec­u­lar Essays & Poems by acclaimed Jew­ish fem­i­nist poet and schol­ar Ali­cia Ostrik­er; The Gar­lic Eaters, a gor­geous­ly illus­trat­ed and thought-pro­vok­ing children’s book about dis­place­ment and dias­po­ra by Madi­son Safer; Speak to the Bones: A Book of Jew­ish Spells and Incan­ta­tions by Jeri­cho Vin­cent and Zvi­ka Krieger; Judaism Is Psy­che­del­ic: A Prac­ti­cal Guide by Madi­son Mar­golin; the first pub­lished selec­tions of Toratah: The Regen­dered Bible by Yael Kanarek and Tamar Biala; Wher­ev­er You Are: Essays Between East and West by Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can poet and apho­rist Yahia Lababi­di; mem­oirs from Yuli Novak (the exec­u­tive direc­tor of B’Tselem), Ruth Messinger (the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Amer­i­can Jew­ish World Ser­vice), and Ilana Sum­ka (the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of Encounter); and the launch of Ayin Audio, our new pod­cast and audio pro­duc­tion department.

In times like these — when con­ver­sa­tions out­side the algo­rith­mic bub­ble feel impos­si­ble and the iner­tia of soci­etal frac­ture begins to feel inevitable — the work of an inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing plat­form is essen­tial. Cul­ti­vat­ing imag­i­na­tion, cir­cu­lat­ing new and impor­tant ideas and sto­ries, cre­at­ing space for dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, and con­nect­ing peo­ple across ide­o­log­i­cal abysses through art and lit­er­a­ture: these are gen­er­a­tive con­tri­bu­tions to the health and vital­i­ty of the ecosys­tem. And Jew­ish cul­ture — as ancient, adap­tive, and imag­i­na­tive as it is — has plen­ty of tools and tech­niques to offer us, should we choose to meet this con­tem­po­rary moment and work toward a future worth liv­ing for, together.