Sunday, September 8, 2024 | 1–3pm
ADMISSION: Free for Members; $18 general (includes workshop and Museum admission); $28 special ticket (includes workshop, Museum admission, and book)
Cultivate your creativity through the lens of ancient Jewish wisdom at this inspiring workshop. On the occasion of the release of her first book, The Place of All Possibility, Rabbi Adina Allen will lead a mind-opening and hands-on session of creativity and spiritual exploration alongside her mother, renowned art therapist Pat Allen PhD, ATR (Art Is A Way of Knowing).
Rabbi Allen and Pat Allen will guide participants through engaging art exercises drawn from the teachings of The Place of All Possibility, a paradigm-shifting work that reinterprets the Torah as a contemporary guidebook for creativity. By drawing from Jewish sacred texts and the interpretive strategies of ancient rabbis, the workshop and book provide tools and teachings for employing creativity as a force for transformation. Through these tools, Rabbi Allen invites people from all traditions—or none—to rediscover their place in a world of imagination, abundance, and joy. Experience the workshop in The CJM's Yud Gallery, now transformed into a rainbow-filled space of wonder by the installation Leah Rosenberg: When One Sees a Rainbow. The Place of All Possibility will also be available for purchase—don't miss the chance to get your copy signed by the author!
For a longer conversation with Adina Allen, don't miss Adina Allen at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco (JCCSF) on Wednesday, September 4.
Pre-registration is recommended. All materials for the workshop will be provided. This event is free for CJM Members and $18 for general audiences. Book a special ticket for $28 to take home a copy of The Place of All Possibility.
Rabbi Adina Allen is a spiritual leader, writer, and educator who grew up in an art studio where she learned firsthand the power of creativity for connecting to self and to the Sacred. She is cofounder and creative director of Jewish Studio Project (JSP), an organization that is seeding a future in which every person is connected to their creativity as a force for healing, liberation and social transformation. Based on the work of her mother, renowned art therapist Pat B. Allen, Adina developed the Jewish Studio Process, a methodology for unlocking creativity, which she has brought to thousands of activists, educators, artists, and clergy across the country. A national media contributor, popular speaker, and workshop leader, Adina’s writing can be found in scholarly as well as mainstream publications, and her first book, The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom is forthcoming this spring (Ayin Press). Adina was ordained by Hebrew College in 2014 where she was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Adina is the recipient of the Covenant Foundation’s 2018 Pomegranate Prize for emerging educational leaders. She and her family live in Berkeley, California.
Pat B. Allen, Ph.D., A.T.R., is an author, artist, art therapist, and teacher who connects to the Creative Source through art and writing. Her two books - Art Is a Way of Knowing (Shambhala 1995) and Art Is a Spiritual Path (Shambhala 2005) - explore the borders between art, psychology, spirituality, and social action, as well as a novel, Cronation. Her artwork has been exhibited in a wide variety of juried and invited exhibits. Pat has worked in a wide range of settings over a long clinical career and in 1995, along with two former students, she founded the Open Studio Project in Chicago, IL. OSP became a laboratory to "wrestle art therapy to the ground" and explore what is the healing nature of art, actually? From this deep personal and communal inquiry emerged the Open Studio Process, an art and writing process that Pat has shared with thousands of folks worldwide. Currently, Pat is senior faculty at the Jewish Studio Project, a non-profit organization that was founded by her daughter, Rabbi Adina Allen. Adina has taken the work powerfully into the Jewish world and together with an amazing team of folks Pat and Adina are training others to iterate this powerful creative process in new settings.
Major support for Public Programs is generously provided by Grants for the Arts and Taube Philanthropies.