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

Adina Allen. Ayin, $19.95 trade paper (198p) ISBN 978-1-961814-03-5

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)

exclusion from pewmates, and other forms of “church hurt.” Though he acknowledges that “the place that should be known for lifting burdens is too often known for adding to them,” Dobbins generally recommends staying within the church rather than leaving it (“Asking God to move in your life without [the church] is like asking a carpenter to build without a hammer or a surgeon to heal without a scalpel”). He offers advice for retaining faith amid crisis, harnessing “God’s Spirit” to forgive offenders when appropriate, and remembering that God has a plan (sexual abuse survivors are assured they’ve reached a “crucial turning point where [their] testimony is being shaped by God”). Despite the author’s positive intentions, the offensive tone, dizzying lack of nuance (he conflates the shame he felt after seeing pornography with the trauma of those who have endured “physical, violent, or even criminal” sexual abuse), and frequent contradictions (after devoting a chapter to encouraging readers to “stay planted” at their current church community, Dobbins writes that “the change we need is another church”) make this more of a harm than a help. Christians would be best off giving it a wide berth. (June)