I spend a lot of time these days trying to figure out how, in our global moment of unrelenting cruelty and destruction, to protect my children’s ability to imagine a more humane future. I also grapple with how to protect their self-worth as Jewish kids when some of the worst brutality of our time is being perpetrated by a nation-state claiming to act in their name.

In working through this introspective dimension of parenting, and in my art about that process, I’ve drawn on two elements of Jewish mysticism. First is “the breaking of vessels,” an ancient story about a catastrophe that took place during creation in which “divine light” was packed into vessels that then shattered. Our responsibility, as the story goes, is to recover the shards as an act of world repair. Second is a verse: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge / and the main thing is not to fear.”

What in its first iteration was a sculpture made of “kid stuff” (air-dry clay, a broken cereal bowl, string, wire, playground woodchips, hot glue) became this photo essay about my desire to guide my kids in the spirit of those ancient stories in spite of my own persistent doubt.