The Amen Institute
We’re creating an online Jewish community, spreading wisdom and Torah through art.
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J.A.W. Breakers Fellowship
The Amen institute is launching its first artist fellowship. We are looking for 30 impressive Jewish artists to honour as our Jewish Artists of the Week. If you want your art to be featured by more than 100 synagogues around North America, connect with a diverse community of talented Jewish artists, present and sell yourContinue reading “J.A.W. Breakers Fellowship”
Oreach Fellowship
The Oreach Fellowship is a one-year fellowship for rabbis of all denominations who seek to challenge the way they read and teach the Torah. We are in search of 10 rabbis who demonstrate a passion for teaching and a willingness to learn. Fellows will chevruta with 3 talented Jewish artists in their respective mediums throughoutContinue reading “Oreach Fellowship”
Color Commentary Art Exhibition
At the beginning of the year, Eli Weinbach, Hody Nemes, Emile Ackerman and Dvir Cahana, brainstormed how to create a space for Jewish religious creatives to gather, make art, and build community. With the support of the Harlem Moishe House and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and with Rabbi Bronwen Mullin’s guidance, we arrived at the ideaContinue reading “Color Commentary Art Exhibition”
Mission Statement
(From the founder of the Amen Institute, Dvir Cahana)
Everyone can learn to benefit from seeing things from new perspectives. Each new vantage point supplies a wrinkle of texture that had not previously existed. The art of Parshanut (rabbinic commentary) and Midrashic interpretations (subtextual elaborations), throughout millenia, have thrived on creatively turning texts on their head and bringing new voices into the conversation. These voices often have not included the artists of their respective communities, despite the symbolism and poetry of the Jewish canon being inherently woven in the tongue of creativity.
The Amen Institute seeks to empower artists – these long overlooked conduits of wisdom and instinctual probers – by integrating their creative lenses, with rabbinic guidance, into the exegetical process. The rabbis bring the 3000 year-old traditions of commentary, while the artists pair up with them to add new colors to those interpretations. All of which, we will harness and distribute to the wider Jewish community, which is so hungry for innovative Jewish content, thus forging unexplored pathways and facilitating new access points to push the tradition of expanding the Torah’s multiplicity of meanings into uncharted dimensions.
This website was supported by:
The Bronfman Fellowship
Mechon Hadar
The Montreal Jewish Museum
CLAL