Miriam Brosseau, CEO
When Rabbi Adina Allen approached Tiny Windows in late 2023, she carried more than a manuscript. "The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom" was the codification of the Jewish Studio Process: a reliable, replicable method for accessing humanity's inherent creativity through Jewish texts and wisdom.
"Working with the Tiny Windows team was an absolute gift," Rabbi Allen reflects. "They held the full arc of the campaign with such intention that I could focus on the heart of the work itself. Throughout it all, I felt encouraged, supported, and championed. Tiny Windows didn't just help the book shine—they helped me shine with it."
We’re grateful to Rabbi Allen for her wisdom and partnership, and honored to share an excerpt of “The Place of All Possibility” here.
The Tree of Life
Stories about the origin of the Torah reveal further guidance and insight about what exactly Torah is and how we might relate to it. In Jewish tradition, the primary metaphor for accessing Torah has been that of going up, or ascending. Moses receives the Torah from God at the top of Mount Sinai. Jewish practice evokes Moses's journey whenever a person reads aloud from the Torah scroll to a congregation: this is referred to as an aliyah, literally an “ascent.” While it is beautiful to imagine God speaking directly to Moses atop the mountain, this narrative of transcendent revelation presents serious ethical limits and calls out to be reimagined for our day.
In the revelation at Mount Sinai, Moses goes up the mountain in order to receive Torah from God, but he is not the only one to make this ascent. In fact, there are multiple trips up and down the mountain described in the text, taken not only by Moses, but by various people: seventy elders, Moses's brother Aaron, Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu, and others. Ultimately, though, it is only Moses who reaches the peak of the mountain and has a direct encounter with God.
That's the thing about mountains—the higher you go, the less room there is. In the story of Mount Sinai, it was Moses alone who received the Torah at the summit, while all those who had previously gone up the mountain, along with the rest of the people Israel, remained below only to receive God's word second hand. The text depicts a wild and cacophonous scene leading up to the moment of revelation: the mountain is covered in smoke; there is thunder and quaking. The people, anxious and scared, ask Moses to go up the mountain on their behalf, “lest we die,” they say, as they are terrified of the immediate encounter with the mysterium tremendum. I wonder, though, what might have happened if God was not imagined to be up in the sky, and if the path to Revelation wasn't up a steep mountain slope. Even had they been willing, many people wouldn't have been able to make such a journey—the very young, the very old, those with trouble walking, or those with asthma or fatigue. And at the apex, any who did make it up wouldn't have been physically able to fit in the small space at the peak. When the goal is the top, there is only room for one.
With the top-down revelation at Mount Sinai mediated through Moses, the question arises of whether the people consented to receive the Torah at all. Fascinatingly, there is a midrash that depicts the moment in which God “asks” the people to accept the Torah that explores this tension and might provide us with a more inclusive and accessible metaphor for revelation. In this Midrash, God rips Mount Sinai from the earth and holds it menacingly above the people, saying, “If you accept the Torah, good; if not, this will be your grave.”
As traditionally read, the midrash portrays God as threatening the people into submission. It is a brutal scene of coercion and violence, yet within it we can find the roots of a paradigm shift in how we might think about revelation and spirituality—one that invites us to drop in and down as part of the revelatory process.
The midrash riffs on a line in the Torah that says that during the revelation at Mount Sinai, “the people stood tachtit hahar.” Typically translated as “at the base” or “at the foot” of the mountain, the word “tachtit” can also mean “under.” Seeking an explanation for what it could have meant for the people to be standing “under” the mountain, the rabbis imagined the mountain uprooted from its place, the summit turned upside down and held as a weapon pointed straight down at the people.
However, the word “tachtit,” in the sense of the people being under the mountain, yields another possible interpretation, one which may perhaps be more life-giving and empowering than the image of God threatening the people into accepting the Torah against their will. What if instead of the mountain being held over them, we imagine that the people stood under the mountain—while the mountain was still in place on the earth? That is, what if we took “tachtit” to mean “under” in the sense that in the moment of revelation, the people went underground, deep into the earth? What if rather than striving for the clouds, they went digging into the mud, encountering worms and mycelia and tangles of roots—the entire life-supporting network that exists underground? In other words, rather than reaching towards the heavens, what if, instead, in the moment of revelation, adam—we humans—were rerouting into the adamah, earth? Perhaps there, held in the fertile darkness deep beneath the surface, we would have been less afraid, more able to hear the voice of God and receive the sustenance that is Torah.
Rather than revelation being something that happens far away from us, up and out of reach, disconnected from the messy aliveness of life on (and of) earth, rather than there being one special person to whom Torah was given while the rest of us waited passively, in this interpretation, we can imagine Torah as all of ours, available to all when we dig deep, perhaps get a bit messy, and connect with the vitality of existence.
A beautiful extension of this earth-based perspective is found in the poetic liturgy of Jewish prayer. Here, Torah is referred to as eitz chaim, a “Tree of Life.” In the context of a communal prayer service, every time the ritual reading of Torah is complete and the scroll is placed back in the ark, Torah is referred to by this name. To be a Tree of Life is to be ever-changing and always growing. Just as trees are fed by the energy of the sun, we feed Torah through the light of our loving attention. Just as trees move through many phases—growing branches, dropping leaves and sprouting new buds—Torah at times may seem sparse and bare, and at other times fruitful and fragrant. Just as we often think of trees as only what's visible aboveground, we are wise to remember that Torah is much more than what is visible on the page: it too has depths beneath the surface of the text, like the fertile darkness of the earth, and the wild places within our souls.
Reflection questions:
What stood out to you in this excerpt? What insights did it bring up, and what questions did it raise?
Rabbi Allen describes the biblical text and traditional interpretations of the revelation at Sinai as being a fearful moment. Why might learning something powerful, or something true, feel frightening?
What powerful and true things have you learned in the course of your own work? In learning them, were you able to, as Rabbi Allen describes, dig deep and find the “life-supporting network that exists underground”? What might that look like?
Would you describe your organization as being like a mountain, with a few at the top and many at the bottom? Perhaps you’re like a forest, a desert, or a rocky shoreline? What natural setting is the best metaphor to capture your organization?
Rabbi Allen describes our tendency to think about trees as only what’s above ground. What are the roots of the community you serve, and the roots of your mission? What are the unseen elements that make your impact possible?
What’s one thing you can take away from this learning to apply to your work?
Reference Sources
Moses receives the Torah from God at the top of Mount Sinai: Exodus 31:18
The people, anxious and scared, ask Moses to go up the mountain on their behalf, “lest we die,” they say, as they are terrified of the immediate encounter with the mysterium tremendum: Exodus 20:16
In this Midrash, God rips Mount Sinai from the earth and holds it menacingly above the people, saying, “If you accept the Torah, good; if not, this will be your grave.”: Shabbat 88a
The midrash riffs on a line in the Torah that says that during the revelation at Mount Sinai, “the people stood tachtit hahar.”: Exodus 19:17
Seeking an explanation for what it could have meant for the people to be standing “under” the mountain, the rabbis imagined the mountain uprooted from its place, the summit turned upside down and held as a weapon pointed straight down at the people: Shabbat 88a