About

Adina Polen is a visual artist, spiritual educator and founder of Atiq: Jewish Maker Institute, an applied arts yeshiva. Atiq partners with organizations around the country to bring sacred art making into a wide variety of contexts, and in March 2019 launched a community maker studio based in Berkeley, CA.

After earning her BA in Music from Barnard College, Adina studied art and design at the Bezalel Academy and Hadassah College, and Jewish text at Pardes and Yakar, all in Jerusalem. In addition to her work on Atiq, Adina has channeled her love of cross-pollinating Torah and arts into her work as a Counselor/Educator on the Nesiya Institute, as an Artist Educator at the Brandeis Collegiate Institute (BCI), and as a Maker Specialist for Edah Berkeley. Growing up in an observant family in Everett, a small industrial town outside of Boston, with parents who invited all manner of guests for Jewish Holidays and gatherings in order to construct a Jewish spiritual community, Adina has been steeped in the do-it-yourself ethos of the Chavurah movement, Jewish Catalogue style creativity, and the teachings of Hassidut, from her earliest days. Adina lives in Berkeley with her husband and three young kids, where she improvises her way through the days. She believes that multi-sensory creative opportunities for spiritual quest, meaning making, and improvisation sustain us as individuals, and strengthen our communities in the most textured and layered ways.

Adina's work centers around the idea that our work in this world is to create with the wisdom that arises from our bodies and souls in collaboration, as well as from the wisdom of our ancestors and our ancient traditions; that process of creating, and the creations that manifest as a result of that collaboration connects us to ourselves, each other, and the Source of all existence.