The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom

Rabbi Allen explores in her stimulating debut the “immense potential of creativity” to cast “ancient Jewish wisdom” in a new light. Defined here as a way of working through “thorny issues within ourselves” and the world while remaining “open to new insights,” the creative process inspires readers to use their experiences to interpret traditional Jewish texts in new ways, yielding “energizing, exciting, and useful... insights.” More broadly, creativity also offer new angles from which to understand key elements of faith. For example, Allen suggests that the knowledge that God fashioned creation from the “void” can inspire readers to experience “darkness... [and] chaos” as “generative.” Through a clever mix of artistic exercises and rabbinic wisdom, Allen encourages readers to “peel back layers of what we think we know” to construct new understandings of their faith and themselves. It’s a unique and invigorating lens on Judaism. (July)