JSP Feature

There's so much going on in the world. It's moving very fast. We're highly distracted.

We're in the unknown and it's really hard to navigate, how to move, what to do in the unknown.

But when we have tools and the creative capacities to imagine new possibilities for how we want to live, then we know we're on the right path.

That Candace, I recognize. When we are in touch with our creativity, that's how we transform ourselves, our ideas, the world. And so at Jewish Studio Project, we help people access their creativity so that they can transform.

So I wanted to just do a little art warm up here and I thought The Jewish Studio Project is about trying to connect the mind and the heart or to discover that synergy between mind and heart.

What we focus on grows. So if we're focusing on a creative expressive outlet then we are rewiring new stories and new brain parts to happen.

We're talking about these separate circles, right, or are we together, are we one? There's an incredible rabbinic teaching from the Mishnah, Turn it and turn it for everything is in it.

How do we train ourselves to turn it and turn it whatever it is that we are encountering in the world and see it from ever new perspectives because nothing including ourselves are ever just one thing.

This essence of bringing creativity and spirituality together in a variety of Jewish spaces is critical for the world that we're living in today.

I didn't take creativity seriously. I thought that creativity was something for people who had the flexibility and the freedom to be creative.

I didn't have a great deal of intentionality coming into this but what I found here met an incredible number of needs for me.

People come in maybe feeling tight, feeling tense, feeling disconnected. When they touch in on their creativity, you can really see people's countenance change and I find that so remarkable.

I felt immediately reconnected, like a real sense of belonging.

One thing about the Jewish studio process is that it is very much about awakening yourself to possibility.

Well, think that's a perfect lead in to our text study.

Start with the text study which is intellectual.

Then you jump in with all these materials.

And then it's kind of amazing to come back to that by doing witness, which is basically to write in response to your piece.

Discovering what you've done and what it might mean to you.

It's a back and forth between the mind and the Taking in the landscape of everyone's pieces, I feel my heart soften.

We need more of this. The world needs more of this.

Sometimes I would just stop and look at what I had made and notice thoughts, feelings inside me that were heavier. Learning to be with all of it, you know, is really useful.

And in this creative process, not only are we learning about ourselves and others, it helps us to navigate the world.

It's not just the people, it's like I like myself better there and that I felt like this was opening up something in me that I didn't expect and that I liked.

I really hope that this work can continue to grow and to thrive so that anybody who is seeking it can find it and can draw on this process as a resource for them.

We work with both Jewish organizations and organizations beyond the Jewish community through our in person programs, our digital content.

And online we have the opportunity of connecting with people across the country, across the world, and developing a much wider web of of relationships.

This is an incredible time to support Jewish Studio Project and enable creativity and spirituality to be accessed by tens of thousands of people across the world.

Work like this, creativity in community, is holy work.

It's an invitation.

Come and experience it, as with anything. Take a moment to see what comes up.

Come as fully authentic, nuanced, complicated self and enter this moment and see what arrives.