Jewish Studio Project

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Jewish Studio Project JSP cultivates creativity as a Jewish practice for spiritual connection and social transformation. This is a crisis of spirit and imagination.
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Cultivating creativity is a core competency for navigating the challenges and harnessing the potential of our time. Creativity is the wellspring of our deepest power and among the best tools we have for exploring, adapting, and bringing forth new ways to thrive in our ever-changing world. Creativity is inherent within all of us, yet we live in a society in which most of us are cut off from this essential part of who we are. Jewish Studio Project (JSP) exists to address this profound need. JSP was founded on the belief that each one of us is created creative. Over the past seven years, JSP has become a go-to resource for accessible Jewish learning and spiritual connection across the country. Through ongoing community programs, immersive experiences, creative facilitator training and professional development partnerships, JSP is building a movement to activate the creative power of the Jewish community. Rabbi Adina Allen, Co-Founder and Creative Director, developed JSP’s core methodology — the Jewish Studio Process — after identifying a need for new ways of surfacing and processing personal insights from Jewish texts. The daughter of leading art therapist Pat B. Allen, Adina brought practices she learned growing up in an art studio into the beit midrash, while a rabbinic student at Hebrew College. The Jewish Studio Process has been highly valued by those seeking a renewed connection to creativity and a new way into Jewish tradition.

10/02/2026

Join me online this Thursday for Have You Made Art About It Yet, co-presented with the incredible Sefaria | Jewish Library App.

🗓️ Thursday, October 8, 2026 | 9–10:30am PT / 12–1:30pm ET
💻 Virtual, free, open to all!

Link in bio to register.

Before there was light, there was chaos and void. Darkness on the face of the deep, nothing yet taking shape. Sound familiar? That’s every blank page I’ve ever stared at. 🌑

Turns out the very first Torah portion knows something about starting messy, before anything is clear, and that not-knowing isn’t a problem to get past. It’s where the making begins. Come sit with the chaos with us, and make something of it.

10/01/2026

Simchat Torah is secretly a holiday of Jewish creativity.

Here are five reasons why:

1. The Torah begins with creation.
The very first thing we learn about G-d is that G-d creates. Creation isn’t a side note—it’s where the story begins.

2. We get a glimpse of the creative process.
In Beresh*t, G-d names, makes, separates, shapes, and pauses to appreciate what has been created. The Torah itself gives us a portrait of creativity unfolding.

3. We’re made in the image of the Creator.
If human beings are b’tzelem Elohim—created in G-d’s image—then creativity is part of what it means to be human.

4. We turn Torah into movement.
On Simchat Torah, we don’t just study the Torah. We dance with it. We sing, move our bodies, celebrate, and make our joy physical.

5. We finish—and immediately begin again.
We reach the final words of the Torah and then turn right back to Beresh*t. There is no final version. Creation is never really finished—and neither are we.

Maybe that’s the deeper invitation of Simchat Torah:

Keep creating.
Keep dancing.
Keep beginning again.

Join us for Have You Made Art About It Yet? Beresheit Edition!🗓️ Thursday, October 8, 2026⏰ 9:00–10:30 am PT / 12:00–1:3...
09/30/2026

Join us for Have You Made Art About It Yet? Beresheit Edition!

🗓️ Thursday, October 8, 2026
⏰ 9:00–10:30 am PT / 12:00–1:30 pm ET
💻 Virtual & Free!

Our monthly gathering brings together a global community for creative practice and reflection. As we return to Beresheit, the very first Torah portion, we come back to the story of creation itself.

Join Rabbi Adina Allen and Sefaria for the year’s biggest Have You Made Art About It Yet! To celebrate Creativity Shabbat, we’ll explore creation, possibility, and what wants to be born through us using the Jewish Studio Process.

➡️ Link to register in bio or here: bit.ly/JSP-Programs

09/25/2026

Rabbi Adina builds her sukkah and asks: Could an elephant as a wall of your sukkah? 🐘

Judaism is something we receive *and* something we must build.

Our tradition places the hammer in our hands and says, “Make something here. And don’t just make anything. Make something beautiful.”

From “Build Something Beautiful” by Rabbi Adina Allen for My Jewish Learning, Sept 2026 Link in bio.

09/24/2026

Sukkot is secretly a holiday of Jewish creativity.
 
Here are five reasons why:
 
1. We build a giant communal art project.
Every sukkah is something we make together—temporary, imaginative, and unique.
 
2. We let nature become a collaborator.
The sukkah is never finished. Wind, rain, sunlight, leaves, and changing seasons are constantly transforming it.
 
3. We’re commanded to make it beautiful.
Beauty isn’t just decoration. It’s part of the mitzvah—a reminder that how we create and what we surround ourselves with can be sacred.
 
4. We pray with our whole bodies—and with plants.
With the lulav and etrog, prayer becomes movement, and the natural world becomes part of the act of worship.
 
5. It’s z’man simchateinu—the season of our joy.
Creativity isn’t only about making something new. It’s about making space for wonder, play, beauty, connection, and joy.
 
Maybe Sukkot reminds us that creativity isn’t separate from Jewish practice.
 
Sometimes it’s the practice itself.
 

09/23/2026

Sukkot reminds us that beauty isn’t only about perfection. Sometimes it’s about authenticity. 🍋🍂

The etrog: searched for until it’s nearly unblemished.

The sukkah: decorated with paper chains, gourds, whatever your kids hung from the ceiling.

That’s hiddur mitzvah making our practices beautiful. Not just through perfection. Through our own hands, our own taste, our own touch.

What does beauty look like, when it looks like you?

We are earth breathed alive.Across eons and epochs, destruction and devastation, beauty and brutality—That breath has ne...
09/23/2026

We are earth breathed alive.

Across eons and epochs, destruction and devastation, beauty and brutality—

That breath has never stopped moving.

-Rabbi Adina Allen, “Creation Still Creating”
Hebrew College’s, 2026

09/18/2026

Yom Kippur is actually a holiday about creativity.
 
Here are five reasons why:
 
1. We practice revision.
The artistic process is full of revision—looking at what we’ve made and asking what needs to change. Yom Kippur invites us to do the same with our lives.
 
2. We imagine ourselves otherwise.
Teshuvah means turning or returning. It asks us to imagine that we don’t have to remain exactly who we’ve been. We can become someone different.
 
3. We work with the materials we have.
An artist doesn’t get to choose every material they begin with. Neither do we. We create from the circumstances, relationships, experiences, and challenges that make up our lives.
 
4. We let go.
Part of making art is recognizing when something isn’t working—and having the courage to let it go. Yom Kippur gives us a practice for releasing what no longer serves us.
 
5. We begin again without knowing what comes next.
Every creative act involves uncertainty. We take the next step without knowing exactly what the finished work will look like. Yom Kippur asks us to do the same with our lives.
 
Maybe that’s what makes Yom Kippur a creative practice:
 
We revise.
We imagine.
We work with what we have.
We let go.
And we begin again.
 
Follow us as we make our way through the Jewish year with more thoughts about creativity.
 

09/17/2026

Yom Kippur asks us to get our hands deep into the material of our lives and our world.

We rearrange it, cut it, paste, paint, or collage it.

In co-creation, we open up to the fresh sense of possibility we seek.

09/17/2026

Yom Kippur is actually a holiday about creativity.

Here are five reasons why:

1. We practice revision.
The artistic process is full of revision—looking at what we’ve made and asking what needs to change. Yom Kippur invites us to do the same with our lives.

2. We imagine ourselves otherwise.
Teshuvah means turning or returning. It asks us to imagine that we don’t have to remain exactly who we’ve been. We can become someone different.

3. We work with the materials we have.
An artist doesn’t get to choose every material they begin with. Neither do we. We create from the circumstances, relationships, experiences, and challenges that make up our lives.

4. We let go.
Part of making art is recognizing when something isn’t working—and having the courage to let it go. Yom Kippur gives us a practice for releasing what no longer serves us.

5. We begin again without knowing what comes next.
Every creative act involves uncertainty. We take the next step without knowing exactly what the finished work will look like. Yom Kippur asks us to do the same with our lives.

Maybe that’s what makes Yom Kippur a creative practice:

We revise.
We imagine.
We work with what we have.
We let go.
And we begin again.

Follow us as we make our way through the Jewish year with more thoughts about creativity.

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