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Watch the video conversations about The Intercessor.
The Intercessor is a novel made of linked stories, each narrated by a different character. It asks how we make community. As the book unfolds, seven diverse members of the Jewish Renewal movement set out to refresh tradition to benefit the living, showing up in multiple worlds: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. They tell their stories of seeking love and healing, facing ethical and social predicaments, knowing when to join hands and when to walk their own paths.
This book is entrancing—from the first chapter on. It tells the story of people in love, in struggle, with heartbreak and hope—all combined with Jewish culture, values, tradition, history and current challenges. It helps us inhabit a world between rationalism and spiritualism, between history and mystery, between isolation and community. Through individual stories, it brings out our caring for each other and for ourselves, based on shared values from the past to face and engage the challenging future to make it a better one.
—Heather Booth, civil rights activist, feminist, and political strategist
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VISUAL ARTWORK
We Burn 2019
(oil on panel, 24″x24″)
In 2018 I began painting and drawing again after a hiatus of more than two decades. I knew from earliest childhood that I was an artist, and until I was 30 or so, I made my living painting and doing illustration and graphic design. The reasons I stopped were more political than personal. You can read all about them in What Was I Thinking?“an essay I published in January 2019. See my recent portraits here.
BRING A JEWISH ARTISTS RETREAT TO YOUR COMMUNITY!
I attended The Jewish Artists and Writers Retreat in Santa Fe, NM in December, 2017. I was excited to attend, and must say that my experience far exceeded any expectations I had for a content rich, personally meaningful experience. Our group of 9 did amazing personal work together, and through Arlene’s leadership became committed to continuing this work collectively as well as individually. Arlene led us masterfully through envisioning sessions that were intended to help each of us “see” what we truly want in our creative lives, and how our creativity intersects with and is inflected by our personal relationships to being Jewish. As a result of the group process and techniques she used to facilitate this personal work, we became bonded with each other in lasting ways. Journaling and participating in group art projects throughout the 3-1/2 days of the retreat was a great way to insure that we each came away with a record of our thoughts, feelings, and the techniques Arlene used to guide us toward our personal and collective hopes, dreams, and creative vision.
Terri Cohn, Fine Art Consultant & Appraiser, Writer, Curator, Art Historian
The Jewish Artists Retreat is an immersive, invigorating, uplifting multi-day experience open to any artist—visual, performing, literary, multimedia, or your own definition—who identifies as Jewish, regardless of personal spiritual practice or level of Jewish knowledge. The approach is pleasure and purpose aligned: fun, stimulating, mind-opening, and meaningful at once. Each retreat features discussion and dialogue; lively, interactive group study; hands-on art-making; opportunities to connect and collaborate; and deep exploration of participants’ concerns and aspirations. The retreat is an opportunity to discard constricting ideas about art, Judaism, or oneself, to emerge with greater clarity about aims, intentions, and identity. For more information–>.
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