Case Studies

The organization Tzedek Box approached me to create a product they could integrate into their programming. As their content reached more people and communities, their idea of having people craft their own box into which they put notes about good things they have done wasn’t enough - they needed an item participating communities could purchase for their members that would be a box but would also be customizable and personal.

The box I created packs flat, has a different interactive element on each side and was created in more than 8,000 copies distributed to 12 communities. It is accompanied by printable PDF templates with suggested notes to insert in the box, and it was acquired by the Jewish Museum of Berlin.

During the tightest period of the Omicron lockdown, Kol Haot brought me in to run a mini-artist-residency, with Pirkei Avot’s 48 Ways of Acquiring Torah as an inspiration. I decided to bring in 48 artists, each working in the beautiful studio for 48 hours, and each creating something based on one of the items on this list. The artists were completely diverse in terms of age, relation to Judaism, artistic medium, and more.

Several months later, I curated and designed an exhibit for the Jerusalem Biennale that both displayed the pieces but also gave the viewer a chance to experience creative quarantine. The online catalog is fun to visit and continues to be used as a teaching tool for various programs.

The Dallas, TX, community Shearith Israel has plans to build two large new playgrounds. However, the clergy wanted to make sure that this significant investment also included Jewish content, and I got to have the best job - creating fun educational moments on the playground using a series of printed graphic panels. The design contains trees and flowers made out of Hebrew letters, a Jewish values treasure hunt with related activity suggestions, a mosaic mural of Jewish traditions and a few other unlisted surprises hiding among the illustrated greenery.

During the first High Holidays of the pandemic, OneTable created online content under the title “Here For,” a development of the Hebrew word hineini. They approached me to create something craft-related that included Elul, the month of reflection preceding the High Holidays, but that anyone could join for as much or as little time as desired.

I created a series of shapes that could be cut out and decorated, one shape for each day, with each shape representing relevant spiritual ideas. Participants experienced this through PDFs containing templates of the shapes along with written explanations, and mostly through a series of seven videos. This was their most downloaded and accessed resource that season.