It's Who You Know! The Podcast · Michelle W. Malkin: Nonprofit Jewish Professional

Processing Deeper with Rabbi Adina Allen, Co-Founder and Creative Director of the Jewish Studio Project

·45 min·3 clips

Allen says art making can function as prayer, text study, and a way to work through difficult issues.

Michelle W. Malkin opens with a warm introduction to Rabbi Adina Allen and the Jewish Studio Project. She mentions that the connection came through a mutual acquaintance. The tone stays curious and personal right from the start. The host also points listeners to the YouTube version so they can see the artwork behind Allen during the conversation. Allen begins by telling the origin story of the Jewish Studio Project. She and her spouse, Jeff Kazowitz, launched it with a trunk full of art supplies. They visited different Jewish organizations and offered workshops. What started as a small idea has grown into a staff of 13 people working across the country. Allen says the organization now works with a couple hundred organizations in a year. Much of that work is aimed at Jewish professional spaces. That includes staffs, boards, and fellowship programs. The episode spends time on the educator cohorts as well. Allen describes a West Coast cohort and an East Coast cohort. She links that work to the pressure educators are carrying after COVID, 10-7, and the election. The goal is not only support. It is also helping people tend to the inner fire that brought them into the work in the first place. Allen then walks through the creative facilitator training. It is a two-year intensive program. The project is in its fifth cohort. The fourth cohort is in its second year of training. There is also a facilitator network. That network helps people bring the work into their own communities in a way that fits local needs. Public programs round out the picture. Allen describes a growing online community that uses the process as both spiritual practice and communal practice. The host keeps bringing the conversation back to the larger Jewish communal implication. She asks what the long-term vision looks like if money were no object. Allen says the group is in a mini strategic planning process. The episode leaves that question open for now. That openness fits the conversation’s measured pace. It is less about a polished slogan than about how real institutions grow. The result is a clear view of a Jewish creative project that has moved from a car trunk to broad national reach without losing its grounding in practice.

As heard by us

A warm, steady look at art, leadership, and Jewish communal work.

Michelle W. Malkin centers the conversation on Rabbi Adina Allen and the Jewish Studio Project, tracing how a small art-supply trunk grew into a staff of 13 working across the country.

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Why you'd press play

You want a thoughtful Jewish leadership conversation grounded in art, process, and real organizational growth.

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