What if we created a temple outside the synagogue, one that looks radically different, one that offered opportunities for spiritual fulfillment, community, and a connection to our ancestral and historical past?

In temple times, Judaism, like ancient Greek culture, provided communal catharsis through the practice of performance ritual. Rabbinic Judaism and halachic practice brought performance ritual into the home, but something was lost in the transition. We are taught that after the destruction of the Temple, prayer replaces sacrifice, but what replaces the Holy of Holies, that place where the Divine and human realms met?  From this longing, the Rabbinic Arts Company was born. 

We are developing a comprehensive program to train female-identified and non-binary artists (Rabbinic Arts Fellows) in a renewed and reinterpreted medium of Rabbinic Arts. Artists simultaneously engage in rigorous text study and a committed craft practice with an eye toward creating work from Jewish text. The Rabbinic Arts Company is both a place of study and a place of production, wherein artists have opportunities to workshop, perform, and publish their work.

Our ultimate goal is to build a center in the Catskills where Jewish artists study text, hone their craft, and through the creation of theatrical Midrash, performance liturgy, and new Aggadah, engage the disengaged Jew and introduce the general public to the life-affirming ideas foundational to Judaism. While study, creation, and community programs will focus on the Catskills, performances and readings may also be presented in other cities across the U.S.