This is an experience of Jewish worship as environment for encounter with self and one’s experience of God achieved through membership in a purposeful community. Structured as an interactive participatory exploration of traditional prayers with the emphasis is on being a member of an experimental prayer group in a trust-building communal setting. Previous knowledge of Jewish prayers is not a requisite.
The Jewish Ethnotherapy Experience – Making sense of your Jewishness!
Jewish Ethnotherapy is a two-fold approach: That of assisting the individual Jew to develop a positive image of himself or herself as a member of the Jewish people, and that of providing the individual with specific knowledge of their resources within the historical experiences of our people that he or she might find as supportive tools toward further self -discovery.
The Living Midrash Experience
Living Midrash is a mixture of traditional methods, dream-work, “here and now” therapies and psychodrama, with Hebrew scriptures and rabbinic tradition being viewed as part of our collective consciousness and thereby benefiting from these various ‘experiential’ approaches. Such openness to the collective consciousness enriches our own individual consciousness-expanding our own spiritual resources.
The Split Rock Thinking Experience – Strategies from a problem-solving people
“Just as the hammer splits the rock into many pieces, so a problem can be approached from many points of view, strategies and methods” (paraphrase of a Talmudic passage) Split Rock Thinking is a fundamental creative strategy that supports and is a short hand for a myriad of methods we can use to understand our Jewish Historical experience, i.e. Words, poetry, music, photography, film, dance drama, structured fantasy/imagery, dream and body work. Split Rock Thinking interweaves traditional interpretation technique with experiential methods to both better understand aspects of the Jewish people’s life coping skills and explore one’s own life situation.
Our Unfinished Stories
Our Unfinished Stories
Adding to the historical legacy of People of the story
Audience
Audience is the adult Jewish community, and especially the retirees, whether they still live in the “hometowns” or in retirement communities and managed are facilities. A significant percentage can be reached through Jewish media, and organizations such as Hadassah as well as synagogues around the country.
This is an age group that lacks a Jewish Life Cycle set of rituals beyond their marriages, spouse funerals, children’s marriage and those events celebrating their grandchildren. It is a cluster whose paradigm is unheralded in Jewish history – it is an age band that has witnessed the Holocaust and the Modern Jewish State of Israel, and the establishment of social security and pension plans. It is also a population that has paid their Jewish dues and would be receptive to value-add benefits from their global Jewish community.
It is also a
Vision
The Book
The book would be multi-faceted and interactive. Graphically and spiritually it is modeled after the topology of the Talmud page, and the Mikraot Gedolot which, that is to say, the “book” is itself a message about Jewish Creativity, and an invitation to all to add their unfinished stories to the people of the story.
The Message
.Ethical wills?? creative formats