In a television interview shortly before his death, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was asked if he had a message for young people. Watching live with my parents, I was a young person at the time, and Heschel seemed to speak directly to me when he responded: “Build your life as a work of art.” 

My rabbinate is an artistic practice. The spiritual community I serve in all its complexity is a creation under continuous construction. Art is not limited solely to what looks or sounds like fine art; and through this lens, our beit midrash, our dialogue project, our delivery of gemilut chesed — all are part of the artwork. 

At Or Shalom, where we are knitting together a congregation integrating new younger members with the older members who hold our community’s 40-year traditions, the arts are a great meeting ground. Much of our liturgical music has been composed by members. We’ve created a visual Megilat Esther for projection, sending out verses for illustration in any medium to all who want to participate. We spend at least one Saturday night in the cold months coloring and drinking cocktails. We collect brightly colored plastic recyclables and have an annual mobile making event on the eve of Sukkot; and while some hang the wild array others improvise a soup from the last garden vegetables of the season. Then we read the popular European folktale “Stone Soup” and eat our first meal in the sukkah. 

If we focus on art as a way of being, as process rather than product, the arts provide a great playground in the most serious sense of what “play” is. I suggested a motto for our congregation, “Or Shalom: Vancouver’s Spiritual Playground,” which we now sport printed on baseball hats, our one piece of swag. Community members enjoy announcing to the world that play is a thing we do in the name of our spirituality.

I’ve also framed opportunities for deeper arts engagement that consist of bounded structures and resources but without conceiving particular outcomes. For example, the Mincha service on Yom Kippur used to be naptime, an extension of the afternoon break, but now every year the greater Jewish community wants to know what Or Shalom has planned and we’re as packed for that service as we are for Kol Nidre and Neilah. This year’s Mincha was called “In the Belly of the Whale,” and it included a collectively written choral composition and libretto: I provided text study and engaged a guest composer experienced in leading folks through a cooperative songwriting process, and deep ocean recordings and a variety of whale song provided inspiration and raw materials for the composition group’s consideration. The result was a visceral, riveting contemporary supplication.

Inspired by text study undertaken by three cohorts of simchat mitzvah (what other congregations might call bar/bat mitzvah) students, we have two new Torah mantles and a new ark curtain in the making. Each group of young people designed their piece in collaboration with adult artist-members. The community is ceding our traditional blue velvet — even items contributed in memorial — to this developing collection of fabric art. At the same time as there is a sense of loss in retiring objects that hold history, the vibrancy of the new textiles delivers an exciting message: our youth are creating the Or Shalom of the future.

Anyone can come to our biweekly Heart-Centered Torah Study if they’ve read the weekly Torah portion (sometimes creative play requires coming into the studio with a ready palate). A member of the group comes prepared with a dvar Torah based on an aspect of the weekly portion that resonates with them in this moment of their journey, and a 20-minute free-write response follows. What is written and shared in this space is private —  safe space is essential here — but we also celebrate publicly spoken word as well. Inspired by a story slam at one of our retreats, we created “Koreh: Writers in the Sanctuary.” On four evenings each year, we alternate between curated readings and story/poetry slams on themes such as “Rest and Restoration,” “Roots and Families” and “Wandering and Return.” In exploring the connection between artistic expression and identity, we honor our writing and storytelling talent and deepen our spiritual friendships. More than any other program, Koreh has brought disenfranchised Jews back to the synagogue, and to say you’ve read in Koreh at Or Shalom is, at least locally, now resume-worthy.

With a desire to promote Or Shalom as an arts venue, we’ve consolidated what were one-off concerts into a three-concert series called “Lights in Winter,” klezmer/jazz/punk events held during January and February. It’s helpful to group events, name them and repeat them annually in the same season or at predictable intervals in order to increase participation.

Increasingly, lay partners are producing the programs I’ve described and proposing others. My load lightens as the vision is shared. The community’s embrace of what is possible as we play has also stimulated a desire to enhance our physical envelope, resulting in plans and fundraising for renovation of our space for learning and programs, as well as changes in our sanctuary furnishings to allow for more flexibility as an event space. 

Reb Nachman of Breslov taught that there are nekudot tovot, particles of goodness, in us all, and he noted that the task of the prayer leader is to discern the nekudot, the “notes” of goodness in each person in the community, and to create out of them niggunum (melodies) and harmonies. It is my task to deeply see the members of Or Shalom, offering individuals opportunities to sing their songs, loudly or softly, as we continue to become more and more complementary and harmonious in lived Jewish community. My teacher Reb Zalman Schachter taught: “Be practiced in your practice.” The more we exercise the muscle of art practice, the more curious and sensitive we become; the more facile in our expression, the more flexible in our thinking, the more connections we make. We surprise and delight one another as individuals, as community, as Jews and as spiritual beings.

Rabbi Hannah Dresner recently retired as the spiritual leader of Or Shalom in Vancouver, British Columbia, the oldest existing Jewish Renewal synagogue. Ordained by the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal, she came into the rabbinate after a university teaching career in visual and performance arts. She is a member of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Hevraya program and a member of the national mentor team of the Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI), directed by Rabbi Sid Schwarz.