Marcy, a facilitator and business owner from Chicago, came to JSP’s Boston Studio Immersive in 2026 curious what it might feel like to sit on the other side of the room for once. After 25 years spent leading others through creative work, she rarely got the chance to simply participate.

Walking in, she felt like an outlier, with many Jewish educators in the room: "I had a moment of, uh-oh, am I in the right place?" But that feeling didn't last. As she got to know the group, she realized the room held more range than she'd assumed, and that everyone, regardless of background, had something to offer: "That was very cool, to notice that everybody brings something."

She began to see her own expertise as its own kind of contribution. That sense of belonging carried into the part of the immersive she'd worried about most: Jewish text study, something she’d been disinterested in for most of her life. "I avoid it," she said of her relationship to text before JSP, "because I just don't understand." At the immersive, paired one-on-one instead of lost in a larger group, text stopped being something to get right and became a doorway into personal reflection rather than a test of knowledge. "This was the first time I actually participated in text study and enjoyed it.” That reframing rippled outward. Marcy left the immersive lighter, not exhausted, and newly aware she'd joined a network, one she quickly put to work back home in Chicago, where she is preparing to host a JSP Creativity Circle for her Synagogue, in which she will facilitate others’ building of a positive relationship to Jewish text study and creativity.