Don’t be afraid of the dark, that’s where creation begins

We all know "in the beginning, there was darkness," right? The first line of the first book of the Old Testament (AKA the Torah). But did you know, there was also “chaos and void”? And then, of course, God created everything. So we're told.
 
Inspired by the places where "creation" began, Rabbi Adina Allen has made a life and a practice of understanding how all creation and creativity–whether art, new understandings, or life itself–comes from darkness, chaos and void, and how these acts of creation heal us.

In her book, "The Place Of All Possibility," Rabbi Allen blends creativity, Torah study, and the open studio art therapy approach she learned at her mother's Open Studio Project to offer a practical guide to inspired creative practice. 

But, like this show, the book is not for people of a single tradition or faith, it’s to demystify for and offer to all of us how curiosity, wonder, joy, creativity and healing are accessible, and challenge us to see that when we wrestle with darkness, ideas we already hold, or texts, or artwork, or family or the divisiveness and polarization of a moment, we can find something new in them, and in ourselves, and maybe even start to heal.

GLOSSARY

Shechinah: Also transliterated "Shekhinah," Hebrew for "dwelling" or "settling." Is generally used to refer to the presence of God, and in Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, connotes the divine feminine attributes of God.

Chevrutah: From the Hebrew for "friendship," it is also used to refer to a group who studies together.

Beit Midrash: From "beit" or "bet" in Hebrew meaning "house" and "drash" meaning "inquiry" or "study", the phrase refers to a designated area for the group study of Torah, AKA "study hall."

B’reisheet: Meaning “in the beginning,” it is the first word in the Torah, and starts the first of the Five Books, also called Genesis.

Tohu va'vohu: A Hebrew phrase appearing in the second verse of Genesis, meaning "chaos and void," or "formless and void." 

The Shema: Named for the first word, which means “listen,” or “hear,” this is the central prayer in Judaism and is generally translated: “Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

Yisrael: Hebrew for “Israel,” the name given to Jacob after wrestling with an angel and being left with a permanent limp, translates literally as “One who Struggles with God.”

Talmud: The central book of law in Judaism comprising the Mishnah and Gemarah, containing centuries of rabbinic opinions.

MORE: 

Jewish Studio Project

The Sabbath (Shabbat) Bride

Viktor Frankl: The Holocaust survivor and author is perhaps best known for "Man's Search for Meaning," but is also a philosopher and founder of the logotheraphy school of psychology.  

The Blind Men and the Elephant

From the Jewish book of law known as the Mishnah Sanhedrin, one passage famously equates saving a life with saving the world: “Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole

Transcript

THIS IS AN AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT WITH AUTOMATIC SPEAKER DETECTION. The robots are good, but they're not perfect. 

SPEAKERS

Hannah Gaber, Adina Allen

Hannah Gaber  00:00

Hey everyone, before we get started, I just want to say thank you so much for your patience with my unintended hiatus. Nope, that was not by design, and nothing particularly important happened. I just got underwater with the editing. Because, you know, this is a one woman show, after all, get it anyway, we're back, and we've got an amazing show for you. And thank you so much for sticking around. And to those of you who reached out and said that you missed the show and you were worried it was over and you wanted to hear more. I just can't thank you enough. You have no idea how much that meant. So thank goodness there's somebody out there listening. Anyway, I'll shut up, or you'll stop listening. So here's the show.

Adina Allen  00:45

I think chaos and void darkness in the depths are the beautiful, generative raw materials that God works with to create everything that comes from birdsong to Starlight to waterfalls to redwoods, and that it's only by working with those elements that what comes next can emerge.

Hannah Gaber  01:08

Rabbi Adina Allen grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, surrounded by art and chaos and women and healing and therapy, largely because of her mother's open studio, which became the open studio project. Check out the show notes. It's very cool. When Adina went to college and felt the call to become a rabbi, it seemed natural to weave in the ideas of creativity as a force for healing, spiritual inquiry as an act of creation into her Jewish spiritual practice. Now she's brought us a book that allows each of us to dip our toe into such a practice. It's called "The Place of all Possibility." It is beautiful and soothing and answers a lot of questions you maybe didn't know you had. Find it in the show notes, but learn more about it here with Rabbi Adina Allen, when I first saw your bio, all I could think about was my mother, because my mother's mother was an avant garde, like female artist, Jewish artist in the Chicago, like intelligentsia, Like in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and a reading about, you know, you growing up in your mother's studio, and then you told me you're from Chicago. And I was like, Oh my God, are we related? So, I mean, what was it like growing up, you know, when were you growing up in Chicago? What was the ambiance like? What was your mom's studio like? What was your mom like? Tell me everything.

Adina Allen  02:40

Oh yeah. I love starting with moms, and I love that I reminded you of your mom, and to get to start by talking about my mom. So I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, West suburb Oak Park, and I grew up in my mom's studio, and the studio was the biggest room in our house. It was between the kitchen and the outdoors in our backyard, and in this town of really, what did Ernest Hemingway call it, a town of broad lawns and narrow minds, which is not how I would describe it, but certainly an upwardly mobile, you know, manicured suburb, which was beautiful in many ways and hard in other ways. The studio was this like gorgeous, raw, messy, glittery queer in process, splattered place with like, the shelves were full of paints and tools and saws and, you know, broken shards of mirror and then a jar of little bones that had been collected and pebbled. And so it just was a place that felt really magical and alive

Hannah Gaber  03:40

and mysterious. There's like, a mystery to it too. Yeah, totally.

Adina Allen  03:44

And where you could just be fully yourself, be in process, and get to do that alongside other people. And I don't think I really appreciated how rare or, like, interesting or strange that was until I left. Was like, Oh, that was, like, really special. The walls were covered in paintings and masks. And you know, my mom and I would be in there, or along with other people, friends of hers or friends of mine, making art together.

Hannah Gaber  04:10

I love that. It's so funny, right? I mean, this is going to sound so like, this is not forced, I swear, but like there's such a nurturing almost, God, forgive me, womb like element there, where it's like, there you all were gathered in this warm, sort of mysterious, but soft, safe, dark, nurturing space, growing into like it feels normal, right? You think that this is just like what spaces are like in life. And then you leave, like you said, and you have a journey of discovery, and you're like, Oh, buddy. All right, it's not that way, everywhere,

Adina Allen  04:46

Totally. And I love that you said womb. I think so much of it was a place that felt like the feminine was really alive. I'm picturing, actually, this one painting that my mom had on the wall for a lot of my childhood that was like, Holly, you know. So the goddess with, like, skulls around her neck, and you know, this other naked female image, like female imagery, was definitely around. And it felt like this was like a place where feminine presence and energy could really be. And I was just actually talking to my mom about some memories about that studio, and she was like, really pointing out how it's also next to the kitchen, like it wasn't separate. It was a sacred place because it was also a part of the rest of the home next to the kitchen where food was being made a part of everyday life. And I think that made it also really powerful. And I definitely, when I left then came to see how special a space it was, but also just the difference between that and, like, the beautiful green lawns and perfect parks and all of the other things, I definitely could feel the the difference there between like the outside world and this like interior space we had in our home 

Hannah Gaber  05:47

That is so evocative and truly makes me reflect even on like I have the I have a picture on my bathroom wall, literally right now, like 510, feet from me. Of it's called some from antiquity, and my mother's mother was a printmaker and an illustrator, and we still have all these crazy copper plates, like, in my mom's attic, and it's like, we can't, we don't want to get rid of them, but like, what do we do? And, you know, and so, and this, this is a just thinking about, like, matrilineal heritage. It's so fascinating because this picture, and it's an artist's proof, so I have, like, the original, quote, unquote, and some of my cousins, you know, her art is, like, scattered among the family. And, you know, my sister hates a bunch of them, and some of them we all love. And like, this is the one that everybody loves. And it is a print, you know, very stylized, hand scribbled lithograph of all of these ancient goddess sculptures. And so this is, you know, in my grandmother's head, swirling around with whatever her ideas of, like ancient divinity and femininity and matrilineal, you know, fertility and motherhood and all this stuff. My mother is an archeologist, so it's just, like, it just comes down in that way. And it's, it's fascinating to think about that.

Adina Allen  07:08

Oh, I love that imagery of, like archeology and the layers upon layers, and then, like excavating them, and like even thinking of artifacts that are left behind, like the copper plates or the paintings that, you know, I didn't

Hannah Gaber  07:17

even think about that, dang All right. Well, cool. Thanks. Yeah. Next layer,

Adina Allen  07:23

One of the things, as you were talking about the Goddesses too, I was thinking about this enormous piece that my mom was working on during my childhood called the Sabbath bride that at the top has this phrase about the return of the Shekhinah, the return of the Divine, indwelling, feminine presence, to Yerushalayim, to Jerusalem, and all of these stories that came through. Of all these images, it's a huge piece, like many, many, many feet tall, that was just that was like an ongoing creation throughout my childhood. But it's also really interesting when I think about matrilineal, you know, my mom is a convert, so he there's not, like, a long lineage of Jewish I mean, maybe there is that we don't know about, but on that side, at least of ancestors that's being passed down and layered. It's, you know, she converted, she chose Judaism, and she tells me that she had a dream that she was going to have a Jewish daughter. Wow. But I do feel like even without that sort of, necessarily, like biological Jewish being passed down there is like these stories and images that like stream through her, and how much that has led me, led me on the path to become a rabbi and to bring together these two paths of like Judaism, Jewish spirituality and art and creativity that I was like surrounded by, not only with her, but she started a public art studio called the open studio project in Wicker Park in Chicago in the early days, before Wicker Park is what it is now, it was a community art studio with two colleagues, and all of them were Jewish, each from a different background, one descendant of Holocaust survivors, one had gone through different levels of like orthodoxy, and then my mom, who was a convert, and each of them had really distinct and powerful Jewish image, you coming through, but I don't even think consciously, that's what they were trying to do. And then interesting to see her open studio project then became my Jewish Studio project. So. 

Hannah Gaber  09:11

Oh my god, that's so crazy. Oh God, that really is like, and I, you know, it feels so similar and in in its own very specific and very unique way to, like, you know, my mom being an artist, being fascinated with antiquity, my mom becomes an archeologist. And here you are, sort of doing the same thing, but like, really, truly, picking it up and carrying it forward from what your mom created. I'm so fascinated that, you know, here you are, I guess you could say one generation, quote, unquote, into Judaism, which is natural innial, and yet you decided to become a rabbi. Did you ever feel a question of authenticity? Or in your education about Judaism, did you discover the whole like, Oh no, you have a Jewish soul. If you've converted, you've always been Jewish. You just didn't know or like, whatever the explanation is. Tell me more about that. Yeah.

Adina Allen  10:00

I mean, is there a Jew alive who hasn't felt some question about their authenticity? 

Hannah Gaber  10:04

Oh, God, that's an exce---Don't even get me started. Okay, good call. And

Adina Allen  10:10

no, it's a great question, though. And I had, you know, Jewish ancestry on my dad's side, and then I had this whole amazing side of my family that's Roman Catholic, like Irish, Italian Roman Catholic in New Jersey, that we would go visit and help celebrate Christmas, which I was very clear we weren't celebrating. We were there the Pope on the wall, and I'd be the one to help decorate the tree, and I'd lay out gifts for, you know, cookies for Santa. And I loved and I was never confused. I was like, This is so interesting and cool to have, like, an ability to move between cultures and to have relationships across cultures. So I always felt like that was really meaningful, and I felt really Jewishly alive. As a kid, I went to summer camp where we prayed in the woods and took care of animals. And that was really powerful as it is, for many kids who go to Jewish summer camp. And then I felt like this stiltedness in trying to, like, bring that experience back into, like, my daily life. So I think, yeah, I had that Jewish aliveness, but then had a hard time, kind of, like, finding it. And then in college, felt this call that I did not think was going to be there. I thought I was going to go into, like, forestry or environmental management, and suddenly felt this call of, like, you're meant to be a rabbi. I went to Tufts in Boston. I went to the rabbi at Hillel there, and was like, I've never set foot in Hillel. I've never been here in my four years. I'm a senior, and I think I want to be a rabbi, and I don't know what that means. And Rabbi, Jeff Summit, he's an amazing man, but that he didn't laugh at me, he didn't he was like, that's amazing. Like, you know what? There's this program that brings together environmental, you know, farming and Judaism. It just started. You might want to try that. And just like, gave me the tools, and like, kind of the next steps on my path without laughing at me. And I was like, I don't even know if I can be but he supported me, kind of led me on my path. 

Hannah Gaber  11:53

That is so cool. And I mean, I don't want to beat the dead horse. Oh no, that's not the right saying about the environmentalism plus Judaism thing, okay, whoops, we've talked about tikkun olam and Judaism's connection to the environment, you know, our whole lives, but also in many other episodes. So like, I love that there was a clarity, especially in cities, you know, Chicago, Boston, there's so much of the like, I mean, all over the northeast, right? I was giggling to myself when you were talking about your Catholic cousins. We have this joke, right? The New York Jews and the Italians, we look at each other, we're like, same, same, you know, it's the same thing. And it's like that cultural Judaism thing, right? Which is, like, so malleable and impossible to understand, and yet we all know exactly what we're talking about. Somehow, when we as, like, American Jews especially, sort of look at each other and we're like, oh, you know, yeah, you're Jew. Oh, you're a member of the tribes. I see you like, oh yeah, you're Jewish too. Yeah, you know, we're Jewish, which is literally where you know the name of the podcast comes from. There's just things we immediately understand about each other. I'm curious how perhaps the secular forces in your life, I don't know if that's even the right thing to call them, like, art. Is Art really secular? Oh, maybe it's a religious, but it's certainly not a spiritual. So I think that, like, that's what's so cool that you've touched on in your book, is that natural connection through the things that maybe seem secular to us, like education for example, like history for example, and art, you bring together all of these elements that seem maybe on the surface, that might seem secular or unrelated to spirituality, let alone specifically Judaism, and In your book, "The Place of all Possibility," you pull them together. And for me, at least, you made the connection between all these things very, very obvious. And I almost was like, oh, man, has been here this whole time. And I just wasn't well. I mean, I guess we all connect to art, to spirituality, but I did not think about things like text, study or history as like a spiritual practice, and you picked that up in rabbinical school. Is that correct?

Adina Allen  14:07

Well, one is just to go back to the like, we're all members of the tribe, or we have that, I think part of being the daughter of a convert and having all this non Jewish family, also, it gave me this, like insider, outsider perspective, and that, like my mom grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, which also, even then and now, has like, a very strong Jewish population. I think that's called up the hill, and they live down where it was not Jewish. But when I even Oh, my mom's from West Orange, people are like, oh yeah. And I'm like, no no. Like, I'm passing as you know. But I think having that insider outsider both gave me an ability to find this, like, depth and meaning in it, but also to like, be able to bring in outside elements, which is part of what you know is going on with my work. And then you asked about environmentalism. And so just to say, I think environmentalism and my work in the environmental movement led me both to the art and to Judaism, because of the deep like voice. Not void of spirituality, but in all my activism and all the work I was trying to do to make change, I got so burnt out. I'm sure many listeners can relate to this, and so overwhelmed, and this was whatever it was 20 years ago by what I was learning was happening to the environment, that I was like an intellectual, academic approach, at least for what I can contribute to the world is not what's going to do it. Papers have been being written 20, 3050, years before this that are all piled up on a shelf that no one's reading because we don't have a way to actually let that information enter our psyche and our soul in such a way to actually shift and change us to doing something different. We're not at a lack of information. We're at a lack of like and not even like desire. I think it's just like something has to actually be transformed. And so that awakening in college is what led me both to return to the studio. I did an internship with my mom my senior year long intensive class on the geopolitics of oil and water. I said, I need to intern with my mom and see, can art making, can this practice that I learned in the studio growing up in our house as a child, be a way to process the emotional component of intellectual work, such that something can actually be shifted and changed and transformed and opened in me, and at the same time it was coming into back into Jewish ritual practice, I was like, I think I need to celebrate Shabbat. I think I need to, like, pray like I think both of those were ways at, ways to soften, to open, to feel held, and a part of something bigger when you feel just completely shut down on every level. And then eventually those two came together in rabbinical school. 

Hannah Gaber  16:35

Wow, God. And what a timely thing to mention at this moment too, and I, and I'm reflecting here too, on like your mom was also an art therapist, correct? So she was very, very connected to, if not orbiting, the greater kind of capital T truth of art as a healing practice. And I love how you talk about that feeling of being held. And I think it's especially something right now that I going back even to your you know, we're joking, but are we joking about like we're all, I think, struggling with what it means to be Jewish at this moment, especially in the United States, especially as you know, Western Jews, period. And you know, I know that there are some people who I feel, I feel like, I feel that I look around me, and I see a lot of people who are like, I don't I don't know if ashamed is too strong of a word, maybe embarrassed, maybe like they just don't want to draw attention to their Jewishness. And on the other hand, I see people who are like, really reconnecting with that identity and feeling as though maybe if they have to make a statement, they want to make a statement, as opposed to feeling like I don't want to have to make a statement. I just want to exist as all of the things that I am and you know, not to pull us into a conversation about politics. I don't think that's actually particularly important for the purposes of this conversation. What can things like thinking deeply about art and prayer? For example, you said something really beautiful, the alchemy of the Divine. What can things like just reflecting on whatever our connection is to the divine? How can that provide us this healing space, this feeling of being held and maybe even bring the temperature down in the world around us as an individual practice?

Adina Allen  18:21

Oh, please, God. Well, first of all, I think so I first started coming back into this particular practice of sort of intuitive art making called the open studio process that my mom came through her that's now used all over the world, and that that I've combined now with Jewish tech study and explicit kind of Jewish spiritual practice as the Jewish studio process. It's really a way of using art making for introspection. The foundational rule of this process is to follow pleasure, which said another way could also be like, follow the energy. Follow where there's energy. There's always energy somewhere, and there you have the ability to follow it. I think in our culture were so cut off from, especially people who've been socialized female, but from pleasure. What is my pleasure? Is my pleasure wrong or bad? Am I entitled to it? 

Hannah Gaber  19:08

Yeah, let alone being able to follow it, 

Adina Allen  19:10

Let alone being able to follow it exactly. So what if we could practice that on a, you know, eight and a half by 11 inch piece of paper that doesn't really matter in the scheme of things, and start to practice, I really think of a lot of this process as a mode of like cross training to build the skills and capacities that we want to be able to take into other parts of our life. And I think bringing the two together, the Jewish practice and tech study part, maybe I was joking with you, but I often think about how we took the things that people have the most anxiety around Jewish you know, anything practice, text study, certainly, and then art making. We're like, let's do them together. See who wants to come.

Hannah Gaber  19:48

Don't be embarrassed. Nobody's gonna judge you. Do your best totally. And

Adina Allen  19:52

let's layer on, like, mothers and daughters. And, you know,

Hannah Gaber  19:55

no issues here,

Adina Allen  19:56

Totally no issues here. But I mean, that is where the title of the book came from, "The Place of all Possibility," because I, in my experience and what I've seen for other people, this mode of art making and this mode of accessing the mythic, spiritual religious imagination through Jewish text, both are pathways to the place of all possibility, and when combined possibility, abundance, energy, generativity opens up. It's like this whole other realm that we can enter, and I think that we really need that right now. I think the more as you were naming before, our imaginations are narrowing. The sense of possibility is narrowing. We feel tight, we feel constricted, we feel defensive, we feel angry, full of grief, whatever it is, however, we're experiencing this moment, or any moments that have been hard, just as Jews, but just as humans on this earth, the point of pleasure in this process is when we're in a constricted and tight space. Nothing can like, move right? It's jammed up. And so when we can access a state, even for a short amount of time, of pleasure, of openness, something can move to and through us that is beyond just our own limited human knowing that I believe and how I hold and you know you and others can hold it differently, but that that's God, like God can move to us and through us. The greater collective consciousness can shift and move through us.

Hannah Gaber  21:19

You've created this book, which is somewhat of a It's not somewhat it is a very practical guide. It literally is a like. Here are things you can do to experience some of that connectivity and to experience some of that inquiry. We've sort of like we've touched on it. It comes up in everything, because it is at the root of all that we do. But you mentioned that the power of inquiry is sort of innately healing. Are the words that you used, and I'd love to hear more about that and how it can help us learn to just live with and coexist with challenge and discomfort.

Adina Allen  21:55

I mean, I think somehow we think in our minds like we want to know, and if we know and definitively know, then everything's going to be okay, and we will feel better. And I actually think that would like be the death of us. You know what I mean, literally? It is often yes literally. And so I think a posture of curiosity, of not knowing, of inquiry that there's something to be found. I mean, that's where there's excitement and generativity, energy, growth and yeah. So I think both Torah and art making are ways to and then bringing those together are ways to practice and hone our capacity for inquiry. Of saying, like, I don't know exactly what this text means, and I don't know what it means for me today, and I don't know what's going to happen in a conversation at this moment in the world with you about this text, like, like you were saying that alchemy between us, something new that's never come before and will never come again, is going to emerge. And like, I think that's what gives us that feeling of aliveness and purpose, right? And similarly, with art making, like, whether you think you're an artist or not, or you've been told you're creative or not, all of us can play with body sound materials and use that as a means of inquiry to see like, what might emerge. I have no idea. And then, how does that allow us to approach our life like what might emerge in this conversation with my spouse that's really hard, or what might emerge, you know, in this difficult thing with my child, etc? So I think, what are the low stakes, pleasurable ways that we get to practice and hone these capacities that can support us in the rest of our lives, both individually and collectively?

Hannah Gaber  23:34

It also makes me it makes me think of the story of the blind men and the elephant. Well, there's multiple blind men and there's one elephant when one of them has, like the elephant by the tail and says, Ah, okay, I know what an elephant is. It is a it is a skinny, rough, hairy creature. I know what an elephant is. And the other, another one has its ear and it says, no, no, no, an elephant. An elephant is a wispy creature. It's thin. It moves with the breeze. That's what an elephant is, and the other, another one has the side of the Elephant Stone. No, no, no. An elephant is is hard, like a rock and huge like a mountain. That's what an elephant is. And of course, the idea is that none of us can see the whole picture. All of us are just the blind men with the elephant. Yeah,

Adina Allen  24:17

I love that. And I think about that, that there's a story from Midrash, from rabbinic texts that I bring in the book about when God spoke to us on Sinai at Revelation, where God appeared to us like a picture visible from all angles, and which means, like you exactly the same story, like you're able to see a certain vantage point, and that is Essential, and it's a piece of a greater whole. And I just think about that being with people right now, politically across difference, like different griefs, people are able to hold different perspectives. Like each of us has a certain capacity, and everybody's capacity is limited, and none of it is whole. And so like, we need each other. Together, and the only way we're ever going to get where we want to go is together. And so I think again, going back to inquiry, being able to be curious and inquire into what each other's holding, right, the weight that we're carrying, what we're able to proceed uniquely because we are who we are. And when all of those perspectives can come together, then a true picture can really be seen. Going

Hannah Gaber  25:26

back even to the title of your book, you know, "The Place of all Possibility," you talk very deeply about, the darkness is, is that place and how thinking, you know, just sort of tying it to that textural study. Now, in this case, right? Thinking about literally, you're talking about beret sheet, which is, you know, creation in the beginning, that it literally in the beginning, there was darkness. And so this darkness that maybe some of us are feeling now, or maybe some of us always feel, many of us, or it lingers, right? It Cath, it gathers in the corners of our internal home, and sometimes it spreads, and sometimes we sweep it, and sometimes we embrace it. But but a new way to think about that darkness, a re characterization of darkness as a place of of of creativity as a place of almost like gestation, again, man, this is a very Metro mother focused episode. Talk to me a little bit about thinking about darkness and void and chaos, which you delve into very deeply, and how those are actually, or could be thought of as Creative Forces.

Adina Allen  26:33

I'm obsessed with the opening lines of Genesis. I think they're so amazing. And I feel like I at least was not, like, sold a bill of goods, but just like that was never opened up. For me. It was like Torah started, if you're engaging in at all. It was like, Let there be light, and there was light, right? And so much of our society, you know, our culture, white supremacy, culture, maybe whatever, toxic positivity, positivity, all those things, right? Focused on light. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes, exactly like you said, I mean. And this is why myth and rich ancient wisdom can help like, hold us and give us like a framework to understand what we're going through now in a way that feels deeply rooted and held. And that's what I find in this story, as you said, so it begins barishit, Bara Elohim, many ways to translate that could be a whole other episode. But let's say, in the beginning, God created. So first of all, it's just that creativity and creating is the first thing that happens in Torah. It's what leads to everything else, and that we are made in that image of the creative force. So all, each and every one of us but Salim, Elohim, in the divine image, are created creative and so especially in a society that has certainly bred that out of us or taught us we're not. You know, that's reserved for the special elite few. No, it's all of ours. And that's when we're in that creative place in ourselves. We're in touch with the divine creative force. Breishi, baralahi are it's when God began to create the heavens and the earth. The Earth was tohuva vohu was chaos and void, and there was darkness on the face of the deep. There were these waters and darkness and chaos and void. And I mean what sounds more like a womb than that? I mean a cause womb, right? Wow. And that exactly what you're saying, that this is the place from which everything emerges. Light comes from the darkness, right? That's what was there first. And I think many rabbinic commentaries on this, you know, deride the chaos and void. They were meant to be swept away, cleaned up, pushed aside, so that the light and the world, the light could come in, the world could emerge. But I think in the text itself, it is much different. I think chaos and void, darkness and the depths are the beautiful, generative raw materials that God works with to create everything that comes from birdsong to Starlight to waterfalls to redwoods, and that it's only by working with those elements that what comes next can emerge. And so I think that's a beautiful model and invitation for us, exactly going back to toxic positivity or any of those things. And we can't. We know that, right? You can't sweep away, repress forever the chaos and void. It's there. It's going to emerge, not that we need to seek it out, but it's going to be there collectively, individually, and if we can bring our creativity, using the story as a model to that material. It has something of meaning and generativity to offer us,

Hannah Gaber  29:27

and not only nothing to fear from the perspective of like, what's in the dark is not a mystery of monsters and things you can't see. It's a mystery of not to get weirdly Nietzschean about it, when you stare into the void, you're staring into yourself. In that way, you're staring into your own potential. And I think that even when I think back on like the times in my life when I was the most depressed and the most, you know, struggling and and you know, I, like many people, that's been a thing that has come and gone. On for me my entire life. It's, it's very, very common. Of course, the thing I think I often struggled with the most was looking at myself in that way, and seeing all of the things that I'm capable of, all of the things looking at my potential and my consistent failure to be, all of the things that I could be. And so often, even that feeling of like depression, and of course, you know, mix it with some healthy adult ADHD, and you got a fire little combo. There it is, that feeling of like looking into the darkest parts of myself and of my life and of my feelings. What I'm seeing there is not nothing. What I'm seeing there isn't is an inaccessible, infinite it's the infinity that it could be, what I could be, what my life could be, that I can't touch and I can't get to it. So I mean thinking differently, even about darkness and void like that and and even in those times, I don't even think necessarily, quote, unquote, light. So to say is, what gets you out of that light is the result of what you do to get out of that, and what you do to get out of that is you wade into the darkness.

Adina Allen  31:11

Yeah, wow. That was so beautifully said. And just to bring in Torah to support the beautiful teaching that you just offered. The second word in Genesis, the second verb after Barah to create is that God, merafet, God flutters or hovers over the deep and just to invite in the idea of like, patience, of like, elongating time, of like, moving away from this culture of like, It must be done now, accomplished yesterday. I'm already laid like God's first act. And who knows how long it took, who knows what time was then, but like mereheth, this gentle fluttering coming into relationship with, starting to build a resonance with before any other action, quote, unquote was taken, and one of the root of that word, rush off another place that it's used in Torah is about a mother bird sheltering her yawn. I think hover can sometimes that word in English can feel like, you know, yeah. But this is like, gentle again. This like, it's like putting wings around, yeah. And to think about God doing that for us, and then us being able to do that for those darker places in ourselves, I think, just gives some space. And then just thinking about right each stage of the creative process, in Genesis, it happens in stages. Not everything isn't created at once. It's like, God does one thing, then it's like, day one keto, and it was good. And so just an invitation for all of us, of like, patience, time doesn't have to happen immediately and like each little thing to be able to give ourselves the gift of saying like, ketov, that was good for today.

Hannah Gaber  32:47

Oh my gosh. And what a nice message, too. For those of us who sometimes like if I did anything, it was a good day, there are plenty of people out there that like, if you managed to take a shower, it was a good day. Ketov, I love that it's, it's, and you're doing this, you're such a rabbi, you're doing this thing where you're making me think Jewishly about things that are not, you know, of the obviously inherently Jewish, you know, like the dark you in the very, very beginning of the book, as I was reading through it, the first thing that hit me, and, aren't you wise to begin with, this was your interpretation of the Shema, and I just found it such. I mean, you know, I was consecrated, I was bat mitzvahed, I was confirmed. I was a Sunday school teacher for eight years. I was, my mom was the head of the religious school at my synagogue growing up. It was my it was my after school job. It was, you know, I was the everything aide. I was pushing the snack card. I was subbing for the teachers, you know, all the things, fine, great. And so I was surrounded by all of the, like, normal, quote, unquote, whatever, trappings of like, very Jewish, you know, reform. So, like, you know, secular, ish Jewish, but not really. We all prayed in Hebrew. I think it's very weird. Now, when I go to synagogue and there's no Hebrew, it does feel weird. But anyway, that's a different conversation, kind of So, the Shema the watchword of our faith. It just, it's like the Shema is the watchword of our faith, okay? And, you know, it's Shema Israel, Adonai Lohan. I had cool hero Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is One, by the way, when I was a child, I thought it was H, E, R, E, O, Israel, which is kind of cute, because now that I'm thinking about it through your lens, I'm like, huh, but what you did for me, and the way you wrote about the Shema was again, peeling back those layers, just peeling back the layers of like the word Shema itself, right? It doesn't just mean, hey, listen up over here you and that's how it feels. It feels like a command. It's like, listen, Israel, you have a God. Yeah, this is what I'm telling you, and there's only one so, like, get it right, and that's how it kind of feels, unless you look at it a little more deeply. And

Adina Allen  35:10

it's funny that you were talking about Hebrew and prayer in English, because I do think Hebrew has something to do with it. I think that Hebrew has a language that can hold multiple meanings and itself, like, doesn't allow it to be collapsed into one thing. I think it really is important because, yeah, I that we need different interpretations at different times, and that's a word or a phrase can contain all those multitudes. Feels really important. And not to say everything should be in Hebrew. I think that can also be really alienating. But I think little bite sized pieces, and, you know, give some of the dictionary definitions and let each other play with them. We all have the capacity to do that. And I think we would get much more richness, because certain interpretations like I talk about in the book, right, they were written at a certain time during the Protestant station of religion, or for whatever good reason at the time. And now we need maybe something else. So I'm grateful to you know, I cite a number of rabbis who have peeled back layers and helped me to do that. And each of those words, right? Six tiny words, but there's so much in them, right? Shema, hear, listen, like, actually listen, not just with your ears, not even solely with your ears, but with like, all parts of yourself that can, like, receive Yisrael, meaning, yes, one who struggles with El, with God, and so just moving away from like Israel, or even the Jewish people, but like anybody who's a god wrestler, who's struggling with the divine of what it means to be human and alive on this planet, Adonai, right? That's the word Lord. But really the word that's written there is gun, hey, Vav, Hey, which is an impossible, right? Impossible conjugation of is was will be like the is was will be ness of existence that you know, Rabbi Arthur Wasko talks of as like, yeah, also like the breath of life. That's so different than Lord, right? Oh, God,

Hannah Gaber  36:54

what a tiny, tiny word Lord seems like now you know, and that's the whole thing, right? Like my, my my stepdad, who is a biblical scholar, has this incredible expression that I thought of when I read that passage in your book about like the yodeha Vahe literally encompasses the future, the present, the state of being, as well as the state of will be. And there's this, I think he said it was in German, and I'd have to look it up, but there's this great translation that he loves of this expression that is the is ness of the was. And I was like, oh that, oh yeah. And, and it's that connection too. I mean, you know, the renaming of Jacob after struggling with the angel into Israel, the quote, unquote Angel, which really the interpretations that I was raised in. And, of course, as we know, there's many, but the is that, was it an angel? Or are all in quote, unquote, angelic creatures God, or characterizations of God, it's the there's a single divine force which you also get at in your interpretation, which is so really, it's, you know, listen, you who struggles with God. The Lord is, was will be. And it is unified. It is one, and it includes you, not to steal the punchline, but

Adina Allen  38:11

beautiful. No, you did it great. I love hearing it in your words, yeah, exactly. And that, that which elohinu, which we call our God, is actually the oneness of all of existence, and what anybody else also is calling there, like it also connects, I think, across religious, you know, tradition, like there is one life force that flows through all of us. And I feel like the environmentalism, the environmentalist in me, is like, even just like, scientifically, that true, yeah. And then we're each whatever we're calling that we also need to remember is connected to the to this greater oneness.

Hannah Gaber  38:44

Yeah, it's such a deeper, beautiful interpretation. It gives me much, a much closer feeling to that prayer, which I have said, you know, literally, I have, no, I couldn't even tell you in the first time, which is the point, right? Like, there's should be interestingly, now I'm thinking about it like, God, you're such a good rabbi. Just by sitting here just thinking about the, like, the eternal nature of the Shema in my life, there was never a seam, right? It was always just like, Yeah, I know the thing. It's the prayer that we say. If I go anywhere in the world, any Jewish community, anywhere in the world, I can join them in that prayer, which is, again, some of the beauty of the Hebrew. But never have I really felt that it the Shema, and what it's about, which is really the only point of any prayer, right? The Divinity that it evokes, is mine. And when you take it apart, you know the Lord, you know the Lord, our God. No, it's the divinity. It's the infinity, the infinity. The only word we have that's even close to what Yod, hey, Vav, Hey, supposed to mean, in its entirety, is infinity. And it's pitiful compared to the the overtones. And it's the it's that this infinity. Yes, we know you, yes, you struggle with it, you should. And it's yours. It's still yours. It's almost like you don't even. Have to really get there. You don't have to believe it, per se, it's still yours.

Adina Allen  40:04

It's ours totally and I think exactly what you're doing right now just taking a little bit of text and getting to, like, struggle, wrestle with it, and then, like, find these different interpretations and ways that it intersects and connects to what you already know intuitively from your own inner wisdom. Like, I think that's what makes tradition come alive and makes us want to perpetuate it. And I think how we do a service to this tradition that we've inherited. And I think that's what you know, the ancient rabbis were doing. That's what Talmud is the result of. Like, all of this, like, proliferation of text was just like, we need to engage it. We need to eat it, digest it, wrestle with it, turn it over and over and, like, let new things come out of it. And I think somehow we've gotten to a place where we think either that it's only for elite people who have the like, you know, knowledge or privilege of getting to do that, but we can all do that. And I think because there is the Canon has gotten so big, right? Even a full Shabbat prayer service all in Hebrew, it's like, it's over. Well, it's an overwhelming, and I can say that as a rabbi, it's an overwhelming amount of words and liturgy. But what if we just start taking just small, bite sized pieces and really getting to, like, work it with our hand, like, right through our through talking, through discussion, and just see what wants to emerge. I think that's how it continues to live in us, and we let it inform and guide our life. But also, like, do a service to the tradition.

Hannah Gaber  41:33

And I'd like you to say more too about sort of the gatekeeping of the knowledge. For example, in so many Jewish spaces, it's like the interpretation of the actual text has been locked behind the gates of the learned. That's your quote. I wrote it down, but I'd love to hear you talk more about that, and how perhaps that's part of the secularization of American Jews, and why so many Jews are like being Jewish means eating bagels.

Adina Allen  41:53

Yeah. I mean, someone else could do the history better than I could, but I do think this is all of our birthright, and we need it, and I think we needed a special in these times that feels so divisive, overwhelming, polarized like that's when we need this mythic, ancient wisdom and understanding to help guide us and take us out of the sort of crucible of the day to day, and help us understand it at a different level. I mean, I feel really grateful that I got to go to rabbinical school as someone who, you know, grew up perform and is a daughter of a convert as a was a young woman when I went, like all the things, you know, at a class full of, you know, most of us were queer, trans, like people who would have been gatekept, right? Yeah, all got to become rabbis. And my classmates are all doing incredible things. And also, I think I felt that okay, the gates were open and we were allowed in. But then once you're there, you realize now that there's different people in the room. We actually also need new tools with which to do what we're meant to do here. And that's where this combination of this practice of art making and text study started to come together. Because I felt like the tools that the ancient rabbis used, right, like, really, really minutia, deep, you know, Hebrew, word play, or connecting things across the canon that you need, like, an encyclopedic knowledge. I'm like, Okay, I'm never gonna, like, went to school for six years. I feel very learned. Never. There's just never gonna be me.

Hannah Gaber  43:18

How is that possible?

Adina Allen  43:20

And also that task has been done. So, like, awesome. What can we do? What's our role? And it felt like what we each have is our own unique life experience, identities, the intuitive knowledge that's like, uniquely ours. And how do we let that come to the fore and get to mixed with this ancient tradition so that something new can be born. And I really found that beyond just the stimulating, exciting intellectual discourse of Harvard, of paired learning and Beit Bosch, the house of inquiry, of textual discussion, which is so quintessentially Jewish, I think, and enlivening, it amazing what happens when we then let that knowledge percolate down, drop into us, we're doing like a moving meditation with art materials and something is being like worked on us, rather than us so actively working on it. And rather than say it's not intellectual, we're going to only just do something creative. What if we bring those two together, the intellectual and the intuitive, imagine it, and start to reweave those strands of really who we are as human beings that I think since the enlightenment, have been separated and kept apart from one another. Interesting.

Hannah Gaber  44:23

That is a really interesting point too. This the separating of all of these elements that make us who we are and that are so innate. And that also, I think, goes back to your point about like, the separating of us from that feeling of joy, the separating of us from that feeling of deservingness, of like, oh, I deserve to be happy. And that actually touches on that protestantization of Western culture as well, that very much, you know, idle hands, or the devil's workshop all that stuff, where it's like, your worth comes from producing. Your worth comes from, what do you do for other people? Your worth only comes from, you know, being the hardest working person. Person on the block, but, but doesn't isn't there something in me that only exists in me, and that must be valuable too, even just for its rareness, as the great Viktor Frankl taught us that it doesn't you. You are inherently, absolutely priceless because only you carry the wisdom that you carry because of the life experiences that you have, because of your unique internal makeup, plus your external experiences, plus the things you've seen and read and learned and forgotten. Only you bring that value to this earth, and it is absolutely immeasurable, as they say, the world entire each life. It makes me think about how you mentioned, previously, you said something about how working with color, using your body gives you pleasure to sit with the things inside you that are hurting so that you can coexist with them again. That's your quote. I stole it from you. I was saying it back to you, but talk to me a little bit about, like, what is hevruta? And I thought it was so interesting that you called it technology. Tell me more about that. Yeah. Well, I

Adina Allen  46:10

think, you know, we have a number of practices in our society for how to sit with what's hard, not enough, you know. And I think therapy behind a closed door with a professional is one that is really important and powerful. And I think also, how do we get to do that together, like in a room with a bunch of other people, where it's not about me having to counsel you or hold all of what's hard for you and you holding all of what's hard for me, but just we get to be like aching, joyful, bumbling, whatever, human beings alongside one another in a room where we can feel each other, each touching in on what we need in the moment. And that's what I find in this sort of this process, the studio process, this studio Beit Midrash, this house of Jewish learning, combined with an art studio, like, what's able to happen there? Like, I don't need to know everything that's going on for you. You don't need to know it from me. We don't need to agree on politics or anything, but we each alongside one another, can tap into that place of creativity inside of us and let something come through that is needed. And us doing that together in a room, helps to create the container for each of us to get to do that. You know, different than when I do this practice, which is also powerful to do alone, but different. We did a program, and this is on zoom right. So using technology, with technology, 115 people all over the world, right, looking at one text together, and then going into creative process, each in our own green and then writing in response to it, and then reading pieces of what we've written to see what came through. I mean, it was extraordinary. And the text that we were looking at was about that command, Be fruitful and multiply, also from Janet's, looking at this specific interpretation, that's like, you know what? It's not about childbearing. It's about Torah. It's that the Torah wants to be fruitful and multiply. And when we bring like an open, curious stance to Torah and let it touch something in us. It like glistens and sparkles and multiplies out in the world in these ways that are generative and nourishing. And so I think also that that's what I want as a rabbi. I don't want to just hear myself talk, saying my things over and over again. We want to, like, be excited by each other, and you can feel even just what you've offered like, I feel like, excited. I'm like, Yeah, that's a new idea I hadn't considered before. Oh

Hannah Gaber  48:23

yeah, I'm smart. I know it's I know stuff, but that's a return on your investment, right? I mean, you're you've provided me with these ideas that I've never thought about before, and we're just exchanging it back and forth and back and forth. And I think that that goes exactly to how that idea of healing and creation are connected, and how we support each other in that I

Adina Allen  48:45

was just thinking of as you were saying that Lewis Hine, the gift must always move. I don't know it's a famous piece, but it may. I think about that often, and what you just said really touched on it to me. Like, the gift, the energy, it must always keep moving. Like, we don't have to hold it and and like, protect it and store it up forever, but like, give it away and it comes back to you. And I think that's what I feel in this practice, and that's what I feel when Torah is being generatively exchanged. And I don't know, you know who all of the listeners are, but just to say to listeners, like, since this is called Jewish, you know, like, sort of Jewish, or I don't know how I'm Jewish, or I'm kind of Jewish, like you are Jewish, and you're Jewish enough, and this tradition is here for you in whatever way you want to engage and find meaning. And that, I believe like Torah wants you. It wants your engagement, your energy, your ideas, what you have is something of meaning to offer, and the tradition becomes more alive and more meaningful for all of us with your engagement. And so just any way that I can remove any kind of gatekeeper from that, just offering that, and I just say the same about creativity. I think both of these things in our lives are things we've been told we're not. It enough. We've been shamed around it's not for you. It's not for you, yeah, and so just to say like you are creative, creativity is your birthright, and you need to be creative for your own health and well being, and the world needs your creativity.

Hannah Gaber  50:15

And you don't even have to not be struggling. You don't even have to, you don't even have to want it. It's still for you, it's still yours. Amen.

Amen! Yay! Thank you for writing this book and chatting with me, and you know, if I call you once a week for a session, how much does that cost?


Adina Allen 50:35
Do I'd love to talk to you.

Hannah Gaber 50:41
Thanks for listening to Jew-ish, produced, recorded, and edited by me, Hannah Gaber. If you like what you hear, please go ahead and leave us a five star rating and a review. I'd love to hear from you, but perhaps most importantly, give us a follow and tell a friend. The whole point of Jew-ish is to demystify whatever it means to be Jewish.

So, you don't have to be one to be here.  On that note, don't forget to check the show notes for links and a glossary of words that you maybe have never heard before. Or maybe have and never knew what they meant and didn't have a Jewish friend to ask. Until now.  We'll see you next time.  Jew ish is a Saymore production. Thanks for listening to Jew ish, produced, recorded and edited by me. Hannah Gaber, if you like what you hear, please go ahead and leave us a five star rating and a review. I'd love to hear from you, but perhaps most importantly, give us a follow and tell a friend. The whole point of Jewish is to demystify whatever it means to be Jewish, so you don't have to be one to be here. On that note, don't forget to check the show notes for links and a glossary of words that you maybe have never heard before, or maybe have and never knew what they meant and didn't have a Jewish friend to ask until now, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. Jew-ish is a Say More production.