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

God does not wait until the entire cosmos has been formed, or even until an entire ecosystem has been shaped, before beholding and proclaiming the goodness of creation. Instead, God takes the first opportunity possible to praise even this first, formative step.

It was this first act of merachefet — coming into resonance before taking any decisive action — that opened the doors to the creative process. Rather than a posture of avoidance or passivity, the act of fluttering in place takes discipline, coordination, effort, and focus. After encountering the jumble of primordial elements, rather than immediatel

Begin with a text that intrigues you. This could be from the Torah, Prophets, Psalms, Talmud, Zohar, or any sacred text from the Jewish literary canon. Start by reading through the text out loud. Maybe read it a few times. Hearing the words on the page spoken out loud can change how the words resonate within you, and open up new possibilities for i

state of not knowing, not yet understanding or being able to see clearly. There is chaos: jumbled confusion, questions, all that doesn’t yet make sense. And there is a void — an open space pulsing with energy.

As a species and as a society we’ve successfully cultivated our capacity for certainty and control, for separation and subjugation. Now, for our own sanity and the planet’s survival, we need to cultivate our capacity for uncertainty, for openness, for connection to each other and all that unites us. We need to reclaim our inherent creativity as the

we can call upon Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, the God who is always becoming. We can partner with, sing to, pray for, be guided, supported, and infused by that force that says that the way things are is not the only way things can be.

Praise of Tohu va-Vohu,” the psychologist and scholar Miriam Faust

numinous and sacred, is waiting to receive each one of us if we choose to become familiar with it.

ritualized container for us to safely enter, dwell within, and depart from refreshed and renewed.