June 2, 2015—Five pieces of theater in five cities in three years. This is the mission of the inHEIRitance project, a collaboration spearheaded by performer and playwright Jon Adam Ross and funded by a Covenant Foundation grant. Rooted in the stories of our biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, and with a process that includes text study, workshops, and the personal stories of Jews in different locations across the country, the inHEIRitance Project invites participants from around the Jewish world to engage...

Eliana Light’s life has always been filled with song. She grew up in a joyous Jewish home, where she and her family would sing all throughout Shabbat dinner each week. The daughter of a Conservative rabbi and a Jewish educator, Light loved going to synagogue and learned to lead services from a young age. As a child, she made up songs constantly, writing down her first Jewish song in fourth grade.Light never stopped songwriting, but by the time she was...

One of the most fulfilling moments of an educator’s life is when one’s students become their teachers. A decade ago I launched Dream Lab, followed by Beit HaYotzer/the Creativity Braintrust, a series of collaborations with Jewish artist-scholar-educators aimed at infusing the Jewish educational enterprise with creativity. Over the past four years, with the generous support of a Signature Grant, we created teaching laboratories at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where we are guided by the belief that Jewish learning,...

Beit HaYotzer/the Creativity Braintrust had not originally planned to host a public event this spring. “But we felt compelled to create some kind of vehicle to help people process their experiences of this time,” said Dr. Miriam Heller Stern, National Director of the School of Education and Associate Professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR).“The Omer is a time of loss but also of rebuilding and renewing,” she said. And as it happened, this April and May, the...

Last March, Darian Dauchan, an actor, musician, and writer, clasped his hands and looked out at the audience at JCC Harlem. “We want to start our show by apologizing,” he said from the stage. “We are not going to solve racism tonight.”The audience laughed because Dauchan was funny—and because hearing the word “racism,” they needed an outlet.“Very sorry,” echoed actor, playwright, and teaching artist, Jon Adam Ross. “And we’re not going to solve antisemitism.”“But what we are trying to do,”...