Lishma: Holding What Holds Us: Creative Explorations with Treasured Objects with Sharoni Sibony

A family ring. A faded recipe card. A well-worn concert t-shirt.  An old pair of candlesticks. The objects in our lives are rarely just things — they might carry stories of ancestry, migration, rupture, and resilience. They might be explicit or implicit Jewish objects, somehow connected to the stories we tell ourselves about our relationship to Jewish community(ies). What stories live inside the objects we hold dear? What happens when we claim an object as part of our story?

Using Jewish texts, creative process (creative writing and mixed-media art), and structured witnessing, we’ll transform our ordinary and inherited objects into works of art that surface hidden narratives and soulful meaning. Together, we’ll consider how objects root us in lineage and we’ll contemplate what else could they be and what other stories we could write them into. No previous art experience required, but please bring a couple of treasured objects to class.

Sharoni Sibony is a lover of metaphor, an educator, artist, creative facilitator, and Jewish community organizer. She has been a lecturer for over 15 years in various venues across the Toronto community and beyond and has worked and volunteered in Jewish adult educational programming and event management through organizations that include Kolel at the Prosserman Jewish Community Centre, the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, Ashkenaz Festival, Holy Blossom Temple, Limmud Toronto, and the Ontario Jewish Archives: Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre. Following her fellowship in the ATIQ: Jewish Makers’ Kollel in 2021, she trained for two years as a Creative Facilitator with the Jewish Studio Project out of Berkeley, CA. Her artistic explorations most recently explore the relationship between chronic illness, ritual, and rest.