As we enter the darkest season of the year, Jewish tradition teaches of the or haganuz, a hidden light revealed through presence and righteous acts. Legend says 36 hidden righteous ones—the Lamed Vavnikim—sustain the world. This Hanukkah, as we light 36 candles, we’re called to embody their spirit, revealing the light within ourselves and the world.
We are grateful to Rabbi Adina Allen for sharing her insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.
Rabbi Adina Allen is a spiritual leader, author, and educator who grew up in an art studio where she learned firsthand the power of creativity for connecting to self and to the Sacred. She is cofounder and creative director of Jewish Studio Project (JSP), an organization that is seeding a future in which every person is connected to their creativity as a force for healing, liberation and social transformation. Adina’s first book, The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom, was published in July 2024 (Ayin Press). She is also a national media contributor, popular speaker, and workshop leader, and her writing can be found in scholarly as well as mainstream publications. Based on the work of her mother, renowned art therapist Pat B. Allen, Adina developed the Jewish Studio Process, a methodology for unlocking creativity, which she has brought to thousands of activists, educators, artists, and clergy across the country. Adina was ordained by Hebrew College in 2014 where she was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Adina is the recipient of the Covenant Foundation’s 2018 Pomegranate Prize for emerging educational leaders. She and her family live in Berkeley, California.
We live in a world that demands results. (And those results must come quickly enough to match our impatience). We live in a world that keeps score. (How are we doing?) We live in a world that is always comparing. (Am I better or worse, smarter, more righteous?) We live in a world that measures success by how much money we make or how many people like us.
I want to suggest another way to live.
I’m all for doing what I can to relieve suffering; I’m all for being kind, creating beauty, and bringing my loving attention to what needs healing. AND YET, I may or may not succeed in fixing this world. And perhaps fixing it is not the point.
Perhaps it is our loving intention that matters the most, whether or not we get results.
My soul tells me, “What you do is but the vehicle for how you do it, and who you become in the doing.” There’s something about this that feels so true and yet so counter-cultural. It turns the idea of accomplishment on its head.
When I rest in the realization that I am intimately connected to everyone and everything, I just relax. The part of me that is wound up in the habit of struggle, just unwinds. And then, whatever I do or say or create… is not coming from fear or lack or judgment.
If I do or say or create from the fullness of my love, from the truth of my connectedness, then I will not be attached to the results. Even as I write these words, I am not trying to sell you anything.
This is a different way of living. I know because I’ve been “selling” most all of my life. And now I’m getting a glimpse, a real taste of this different way, and I really like it.
This state of not being attached to results, does not make me dull or complacent. My passion for justice, beauty, and kindness is not dimmed. That passion is, rather, purified.
My passion, cleansed of fear, allows me to explore the far reaches of my capacity and strength, learning from every mistake.
We are so conditioned to wrestle with God, or with meaning. We are so conditioned to try to solve the problem that is this world of contradiction and suffering.
What if we turned our wrestling into a dance? What if we leaned into this world as a mystery to be experienced, rather than a problem to be solved?
Each moment we are given an opportunity to cultivate and refine this loving intention. It is a stance towards Life that we establish deliberately and then maintain with the quality of our presence. It is a decision to not be ruled by fear.
Rabbi Shefa Gold is a leader in ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal and received her ordination both from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (z”l). She is the director of C-DEEP, The Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. She teaches workshops and retreats on the theory and art of Chanting, Devotional Healing, Spiritual Community-Building and Meditation. Information and resources at https://www.rabbishefagold.com/.
In times of darkness and struggle, what if the deepest divine connection is found not in the absence of hardship, but in the raw, authentic moments of longing and love shared with others? This teaching from Rebecca Schisler is an invitation to discover that the true power of the divine is always present—one breath, one moment, one prayer away—ready to be felt even in the most challenging of times.
Join Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell for a short teaching for Sukkot about how constant change means that there is always a possibility for hope.