How do you encapsulate the experience of being both Asian American and Jewish American? For New York-based artist Sarah Waxman, it started with the Silk Road.

“When I started thinking about what imagery could adequately encapsulate the experience of being both Asian and Jewish, I considered another question: Where would Asians and Jews have even first crossed paths?” Sarah said.

In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month — both in May — UJA-Federation worked with our grantee the LUNAR Collective to create programming that celebrates the unique history and experience of Jewish and Asian Americans.

Founded in 2020, the LUNAR Collective cultivates connection, belonging, and visibility for Asian American Jews through intersectional community programming and authentic digital storytelling. With support from UJA, LUNAR commissioned Sarah to create artwork celebrating her experiences as someone who is Asian and Jewish.

“As part of UJA's commitment to building bridges between the communities who live side by side in our neighborhoods and supporting Jewish inclusion in the arts, we believe in leading the way by creating opportunities for diverse Jewish representation within the Jewish art world,” said Ayelet Pearl, UJA’s Community Mobilizer for Queens and Long Island. “As part of our JAHM-AAPI heritage month initiative, we were thrilled to work with Sarah, who is both Asian and Jewish, to share her own dual cultural identities in a visual reflection of these goals.”

Sarah’s piece, titled “Year of the H5O7R8S6E”, celebrates the lunar calendar and Hebrew calendar. It presents a horse with a branch of mulberries against a pitch-black sky beneath a shining moon.

As Sarah explains, “The mulberry tree is the humble plant that enticed the silkworm that made the silk that was deemed so valuable it inadvertently launched the Silk Road, the ancient trade route linking much of humankind. Asians and Jews would likely have first encountered one another along one of the Silk Road’s many vast routes.”

The image finds commonality among Asian and Jewish cultures. Contemporary Chinese characters evolved from pictorial forms into the standardized forms used today. This image inverts this evolution, the letters תשפו helping to form the image: The tav is found in the mulberry branch; the shin forms the fiery crown of the horse’s mane; the peh forms the horse’s mouth; and the vav completes the horse’s ear. The moon in the top right corner is the link between both cultures, as both evolved in tune with the lunar cycles. 

“The Fire Horse has a particular intensity. This vibrant, dynamic horse fills the frame with a sense of immediacy and invites the viewer to join her, assured despite the undefined path,” Sarah says. “My hope is that this image can act as a bridge, extending a glimpse into what it feels like to hold multiple cultures within oneself simultaneously.”

Learn more about UJA’s support of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage and Jewish American Heritage Month, and view upcoming events across New York, Westchester, and Long Island here.