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What the Image Holds
What the Image Holds

Moses sets aside words. He doesn’t pray to God, or lecture the people, or explain what he is doing and what it means. Words would get in the way. They’ve been used to complain, blame, justify, take sides. Perhaps they would offer a sense of certainty, but it would be temporary, a promise he couldn’t keep.

An image can hold what words cannot. The serpent can be read as making visible not only the literal pain of the snake bites, but the deeper emotional and spiritual suffering that had been accumulating in the wilderness: the longing, the fear, the uncertainty. In a moment of both personal and communal crisis, the image meets the people inside their own experience of suffering and then draws them toward something shared – something larger than their individual pain.

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article, sermonAdam Lavittimagination, Healing, witness
Creative Practice Is Transforming Jewish Education. Here’s How.
Creative Practice Is Transforming Jewish Education. Here’s How.

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.

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articleAdam LavittJewish Studio Project, Educator Studio, creativity, education
Sacred Echoes: A Contemplative Approach to Torah Study
Sacred Echoes: A Contemplative Approach to Torah Study

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.

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articleAdam Lavittspiritual practice, creativity, trauma, transformation
Opening to the Twilight: Creativity’s Power to Activate Hidden Possibilities
Opening to the Twilight: Creativity’s Power to Activate Hidden Possibilities

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?”

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articleAdam Lavittcreativity, hope