Each year, as Tisha B’Av approaches — our day of collective mourning — we carry both ancient sorrow and the ruptures of our own time. Through the poetry of Eicha and the remembrance of generations of suffering, we open to heartbreak both personal and historic. But just before we fully inhabit our grief, we hear Moses in parashat Devarim — beginning a long farewell, speaking across a river he will never cross. His body remains behind, but his voice reaches forward, echoing in the fragile immediacy of human speech to meet our moment…
Beyond classroom tools, the Jewish Studio Process fosters a model of leadership grounded in self-awareness, intentionality, and compassion. Fellows engage in trauma-informed practices like intention-setting and non-evaluative witnessing that create space for emotional exploration and spiritual renewal. This model invites educators to lead from a place of presence — what psychologist Richard Schwartz calls the “Self,” a centered space of creativity, care, and calm. It redefines teaching from content delivery to relational engagement: tending to learners, the environment, and something deeper many would call God. As one fellow put it, “The Jewish Studio Process is the most rigorous spiritual practice being offered in Jewish spaces right now.” Another noted, “The witness allows for our differences to be held together,” creating the conditions for pluralism, trust, and collaborative learning.
Jewish tradition teaches that the words of Torah are not static but instead are vibrating with divine energy. According to the Mishna, “Each and every day a divine voice goes out from Mount Sinai” (Pirkei Avot 6:2). This suggests that the revelation of Torah is ongoing, that the sacred words spoken at Sinai continue to reverberate throughout the world, if only we are attuned to hear them. JSP’s Jewish Studio Process offers a way of cultivating this capacity for listening to that voice from Sinai—a voice that we believe is available to all of us, in every moment.
This week, in parashat Shemot, we encounter Moshe at a juncture in his life when he must choose between continuing to trod a well worn path, or take the risk to turn aside, led by wonder, towards something beyond himself. As he asks himself what is before him, what may have at first seemed a scraggly shrub reveals itself as a being on fire with life, animated by holy becoming - a force that calls itself Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (Exodus 3:14).
In order to find out...what around us is yet to have its creative potential unlocked...we need to peer into the twilight – the murky, ungraspable space between day and night. We attune to this space by activating it within ourselves, tapping into our own inherent creativity in order to open our eyes to the world of the in-between so we might...draw out what is waiting for us at the world’s twilit margins. Pen to paper, brush on canvas, fingers working knitting needles or clay, wood or stone, we awaken something from its slumber, dormant from the dawn of creation until this moment. As we engage in the creative process, we ask the materials before us “what else can this be?”
Our holy objects represent how we are bound to each other, and to something vaster than any one of us: when we don a tallis, its fringes remind us of the invisible ways we are joined together; the mezuzot on our doorposts symbolize God’s steady presence when we come home, and when we leave.
The Israelites once depended on having a particular structure through which to meet the Holy One. Losing this familiar rhythm was hard, and left some people uncertain and anxious about how they could reconnect with each other and their guiding values. But on the other side of this loss…people began to find God any place or time they chose to act in godly ways.
A few weeks ago, my fellow chaplains and I learned with author and chaplain, Rabbi Elliot Kukla, about something called “ableism.” He defined ableism as a form of discrimination based on impairment. On reading this week’s Torah portion, our conversation lead me to ask myself, if the priests are supposed to model the highest aspirations of the Israelite community, wouldn’t [the] set of prohibitions [here] instead lead to an intolerant society, one that leaves behind, or sees as less holy those who don’t meet this exclusive set of physical standards?
Counting these 49 days may sound simple, but in my experience, it’s one of the most difficult rituals to actually complete. As I count, I notice how much I want to speed through challenging moments or hold onto pleasant ones. The 49 days of the Omer, unlike other periods in our lives, cannot be rushed or drawn out: we count 49 days. Then we stop. That is the practice.
