The Place of All Possibility

Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom

By: Adina Allen

Narrated by: Adina Allen

• The Place of All Possibility taps into a deep current interest about how creativity and imagination can help us build a better world.
• Drawing on the Torah, and the subversive interpretive strategies of ancient rabbis, The Place of All Possibility offers new creative strategies for building a meaningful life—and for responding to our current crises of climate change, racial injustice, and more.
• The book reveals the spiritual underpinnings of creativity to help listeners access pathways to creativity in their own lives.
• The book will interest fans of canonical books on creativity like Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and Rick Rubin's The Creative Act.
• The book is designed not only for Jewish listeners, but for a broader audience seeking to draw on ancient wisdom to seed imagination, and employ the forces of creativity to transform our personal lives, communities, and ecosystems.
• The Place of All Possibility offers a unique perspective by connecting biblical thought to contemporary research about creativity and guidance for creative practice.
• The Place of All Possibility reframes biblical material in a way that allows easier contemporary access for progressive listeners of any background.
• The Place of All Possibility offers practical methods and exercises to help listeners cultivate creativity and creative practice in their lives.
• The author is a celebrated rabbi and Jewish educator, and founder of the Jewish Studio Project's regular programs. These programs reach approximately 30,000 people annually, and include trainings and classes for educators, clergy, executive leaders, artists, and activists.
• The Jewish Studio Project will also launch reading groups across the country using The Place of All Possibility for discussion and community-building.
• This book received grants from two major philanthropic groups within the Jewish world, The Covenant Foundation and the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, who will bring the book to their wide networks and work to make it a success.
• The author is the daughter of the well-known art therapist Pat B. Allen, whose book Art Is a Way of Knowing has sold over 40,000 copies and remains a foundational book in the field of art therapy. Pat B. Allen’s name will bring her fans and other listeners interested in art therapy to this book.

©2024 Adina Allen (P)2024 The Place of All Possibility

Critic reviews

"Rabbi Allen explores in her stimulating debut the 'immense potential of creativity' to cast 'ancient Jewish wisdom' in a new light . . . 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." —Publishers Weekly

"For most of human history, art-making was viewed as a way of honoring and dialoguing with the divine. But in a secular age, we often forget that our creative vision is not an individual possession; it is a verb that ties us into divine communion with our ecologies. In The Place of All Possibility, Rabbi Adina Allen offers us an answer to this desaturated worldview. She gifts us an updated, animistic view of Jewish mysticism and storytelling that generously 'beckons us to return to our depths, the chaos within.' Here is the creative spring that welcomes microbes and rootlets alongside dazzling angels and perplexing midrash." —Sophie Strand, author of The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine and The Madonna Secret

"This book is a window into the sacred methodology of the Jewish Studio Process, which invites us into a multidirectional process of discovery—of Torah and of self. In this time of so much heartache, when the world conspires to have us shut down, Rabbi Allen inspires us to 'make art about it'—to unlock the creative possibilities that call out from our ancient texts and traditions, and that reside in each of us. The Place of All Possibility is beautiful and heart-opening." —Rabbi Sharon Brous, author of The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World