j-lab – Searching the Jewish Experience for personal meaning, spirituality and creativity

The j-Lab

J-Lab is an experimental and experiential laboratory offering Jewish Experience Workshops  for all who are seeking more personal meaning, spirituality and creativity from their own lives

Why experimental and experiential? Experimental because as our lives and the world around us change, we are left with a sense that each of our days is an experiment. Experiential because structured experiences can offer us insight and awareness on intellectual and emotional levels.

Jewish Experience Workshops are opportunities to enter into aspects of Judaism and the Jewish historical experience as experiments in the search for personal meaning, spirituality and creativity.

J-Lab is based on the following principles:

It is the Future that is holy and the uniqueness of the individual that is sacred.

The Jewish Future will be strengthened by individuals who find solace and spiritual support for their uniqueness in Jewish communal activities

Judaism is the repository of the human experiences of the Jewish people as individuals and communities sought meaning to their lives.

The search for personal meaning, spirituality and creativity is most effective in the interactive group setting

The Jewish Experience Workshop

Behind or underneath each biblical story, each prayer in the prayer book, each ritual, and every life cycle event and period in Jewish history is a fundamental human experience or set of experiences. If we can allow ourselves to enter into that experience, no matter how apparently different or foreign it might seem from our own, we can gain perspective and enrich our own lives by expanding our experiential vocabulary.

Whatever one’s spiritual upbringing, “experimental” entering into Jewish historical and spiritual experience can teach us much about ourselves. Centuries of rich and varied experience can become creative resources we can “try on” to discover or rediscover important aspects of ourselves or the significant others in our lives.

The goal of the Jewish Experience Workshop is to enable  participants to ‘experimentally’ enter into the experience of spiritual texts and traditions without any pre-commitment to any ideology/theology. This workshop approach is based on the integration of Jewish Midrash -techniques  guiding the search for contemporary meaning in the ancient spiritual texts – with the insights and experiential techniques of educational and therapeutic innovations.

Through the use of structured exercises and imagery, guided fantasy and role play intermixed with traditional Midrashic principles, participants learn techniques to enhance their ability to enter into the vocabulary of Jewish experience, adding thereby to their own storehouse of spiritual resources.