A Work of Progress: Poems and Prose on Identity, Resistance and Tikkun Olam is a collection that weaves together Jewish wisdom, queer identity, and civic engagement through poetry and prose. Rhode Island poet and community organizer Jacob Brier examines what it means to practice Tikkun Olam - repairing the world - when the work is never finished and the obstacles keep rising.
Across five sections, Brier explores the intersections of personal and political transformation: discovering nonbinary identity at forty, confronting antisemitism and hate in their own community, wrestling with violence and loss, and finding hope in ritual and collective action. The poems move between intimate revelation and public witness, from a bar mitzvah reimagined with gender-inclusive Hebrew to neighbors terrorized while town officials look away, from grief over a sister's death to the persistent work of showing up for justice.
Written during a tumultuous period in American civic life (mostly 2022-2026), these pieces refuse both despair and false comfort. Instead, Brier offers something more sustaining: the acknowledgment that we are all works in progress, that resistance requires tenacity, and that the necessity of repairing the world binds us whether we feel ready or not. These words are for those who keep reaching even when the horizon seems unreachable.