You can find this and other episodes on the podcast's Youtube channel, @TheGenesisJewishPodcast

I've been thinking lately about the tension between individual artistic expression and the weight of tradition and communal forms in Jewish life—and that's precisely why I was so eager to speak with Holly Goodman. Holly is a writer, teacher, and longtime contributor to The Oregonian. She is also an Art/Lab alum.  Her work has appeared in literary magazines, newspapers, and web journals over the course of three decades, beginning with early journalism in Columbus, Ohio.  She also participates in Tom Spanbauer's Dangerous Writing workshop as part of her ongoing development as a storyteller.  And she is, like me, a deadhead - something that is relevant to the theme of individual and collective expression, as you'll hear in our conversation.

Holly and i discuss how the "vertical" and "horizontal" dimensions of writing—that is, the spiritual, essential core of a piece and the narrative structure that carries it—mirror the challenges of threading one's own voice through inherited communal frameworks. We get into the ways that craft and convention, which we might think of as constraints, become tools to open more space for expression. Holly's experience as a non-visual reader—a person who doesn't "see" scenes so much as feel the rhythm and music of language—has shaped both her teaching and her writing and we talk about the textual and the visual. In our dialogue, we move from the classroom to Jewish ritual, from reading Torah to listening for the "dissonant ideas" that push conversation forward, and ultimately end in the metaphor of the Grateful Dead: individuals improvising in relation to a collective. Enjoy my conversation with Holly Goodman. - Rabbi Josh

\Show Notes:----------------------------------

* Art/Lab: www.artlabpdx.org

* Internet Arhive: https://archive.org

* Some Great Dead Shows: https://blog.archive.org/2014/05/14/top-ten-grateful-dead-shows-on-the-internet-archive/

* Tom Spanbauer: https://tomspanbauer.com/