Throughout the fall 2024 semester, CSUN’s Jewish Studies Program offered a wide range of “campus and community peacebuilding workshops,” sponsored by the program. Concluding the semester, Professor Jennifer Thompson hosted “Peacebuilding Through Art-Making,” a session for an enjoyable way to process the challenging content covered by expert speakers and community leaders on Dec. 3 in Maple Hall. The event combined Jewish learning with art therapy best practices to inspire “breakthroughs in personal and organizational wellbeing.”

This is the first time the event was held, Thompson hopes it won’t be the last. Thompson, who is also the director of the Jewish Studies program, had previously used the art-making process in one of her internship classes before and decided to build it up after seeing the benefits with her students. In her class, art therapy is put into practice for her students to understand what they want for their careers and their lives. The method helps them think in a not so stressful way, according to Thompson.

“It came out of a combination of art therapy and sort of traditional Jewish ways of learning. The people who invented it include a Rabbi and her mom, who was an art therapist who pioneered this method of the open studio process,” Thompson said.

On campus, the method is intended to be educational, not spiritual. According to Thompson, the goal is to let outside work sink in all the way and actually think about everything students learn about in class. Many of the Jewish studies and Jewish history classes, heavy topics are covered by speakers or professors.

Among the speakers for her classes, experts who have worked with the Israel-Palestine conflict, for example, have come in to share personal experiences.

“I think there’s a couple different pieces to it. If you’re having strong feelings about what you’re learning, it can be a good thing, because it means you’re really learning and engaging with it,” Thompson said. “And when it’s hard to go through something, it is really important to let yourself sit with it and not try and push it down or ignore it, ‘cause it will come back in ways that you do not intend.”

During the event, all the supplies were provided, along with snacks and music. Thompson planned for it to be “pleasurable” and “fun” for the students, however different it might be from therapy. One of the rules established at the event was no commenting on the art. Students were not allowed to comment on their own work or on any others’ in order to keep them in the headspace and concentrated.

Before the actual art-making, Thompson prefers to have a conversation with the students in groups on inspiring Jewish texts that she selects in order for the students to have the opportunity to think about things differently than they have before. For this particular night, “Sefat Emet, Leviticus, Achrei Mot 2” was displayed on a screen while the students received their art supplies.

“In the workshops that we’ve had so far, the engagement that students and other students who have come have had has just been really earnest and wholesome,” Thompson said. “I’m just really pleased with that and hope that’s what we’ll continue to have next semester.”

The Jewish Studies Program plans more peacemaking workshops for the next semester, including some talks with Anthropologist Natasha Zaretsky and Filmmaker Judy Korin, though dates are still to be determined.

“I want [the students] to take away that just first of all, they enjoyed the experience and might be willing to do it again,” Thompson said. “And if anything deeper than that happens, then it’s a bonus. The text study that we did is about improving yourself in order to be able to improve the world, and realizing that you can’t just put it off. The world needs us to step up.”

Afterward, students were free to take their artwork home to help remind them of what they felt and thought during the process, to relax during finals week and to keep in mind what they learned.

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