Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Hanina: “Scholars increase peace throughout the world” (and what is the scriptural proof of this?) for it is said in Isaiah: “All your children shall be taught of Hashem, and great shall be the peace of your children” (but the text says “children,” not “scholars”!) So do not read banayikh (your children) but rather bonayikh (your builders) and scholars are the true builders of the ideal of peace!

What do these interpretations have in common and what can we learn from them? How do we increase peace in the world? What are the qualities of builders, children, and those who really understand have in common for this goal? What is new here that we do not already know?

As in any real teaching, there is nothing new, but perhaps something we already know but need to see more clearly.

Perhaps those with knowledge, those who really want to build something, need to somehow be like children. But, if so, what kind of a child quality are we looking for here? Is it of a 2 year old, 5, 10, 15? Is it naiveté or curiosity, ignorance, or wonder, optimism or hope? What can those who are younger offer those who are older?

Perhaps it has nothing to do with age. Perhaps, instead, it is the relationship of a child to a parent. There is some interesting research on this subject. If you’ve ever read an introduction to psychology text you may remember studies about monkeys and attachment. Before the field of psychology had strict ethics oversight, psychologists conducted experiments where they separated infant monkeys from their mothers to see what effect this would have. They also compared these infants, to those raised with mothers, and to infants raised with cloth dolls in the shape/size of a mother. What they found was that those raised with the dolls were much less healthy than those with a mother, and they clung onto their soft/comforting dolls for dear life. The ones raised in isolation were even more sickly, and sometimes died in infancy.

On the other hand, modern research (supported by my parents’ frequent reminders) tells us that parents generally, and naturally, love their children much more than children love their parents. Perhaps there is something about the act of intense and prolonged caring and giving which creates a very intense bond. As teenagers, we may feel bored or annoyed by our parents, as adults we may move away with a desire to explore the world by ourselves. However, our parents miss us more than we often remember.

It’s an odd combination; we are dependent on our parents for each morsel and day of food in the first years of life. Shouldn’t we naturally, fully, and overwhelmingly feel thankful? And yet, in the end, our parents’ love for us may appear stronger, and we need to remind ourselves to call and visit when we loose ourselves in our adult lives.

This is something to think about both as one heads of to a year abroad, and as one is about to return home. As I am coming to a close of a year of learning Torah and a visit home I am thinking a lot about how can I actually direct my studies to something concrete in the world? How can I learn to be a better son to my parents, how can I support them as they struggle to take care of my grandmother who is recovering from hip replacement surgery and dealing with Parkinson’s? How much time and how do I spend it with my parents, with my grandmother, and how do I do that while also continuing my studies and work. How do I apply what I have tried so hard to learn to build something productive outside myself in all the places I walk?

Perhaps a child (in relationship to a parent) is a reminder to us of the kind of caring that is necessary to do tikkun in this world (as opposed to simply ruling over it as some translations render it in Genesis). This is some kind of form of caring that is both natural (our parents gave us life after all), requires hard work, and some subduing of independence. For those of us privileged to live in the developed world, our parents, communities, the world, life itself, and what some call G-d, have nourished and sustained us each and every day of our lives. Sometimes we may even remember this and feel thankful. At the same time, as we grow older we encounter challenges, pain, disappointment, and suffering. We see the imperfection of the world and struggle to maintain our optimism and child-like love for life. We almost have no choice but to learn.

However, I want to say something very strongly, and with some sadness: knowledge is very far from constructive in and of itself. We can see this most blatantly with the development of nuclear physics: both power plants, maybe good; and the atomic bomb, possibly genocidal. Our creation myth also describes this process in the very first days of Genesis where ingesting from the Tree of Knowledge, lead to pain and suffering (though I would also say necessary maturity, responsibility, and growth).

So how do we ingest knowledge in a way that makes fertile ground to grow? As a child to my parents I am pained by their pain. There is nothing like watching one’s parent cry. In a similar way, we need to have some openness to be pained by the larger human community. As a child to my parents, I am aware of how much has been gifted me, and also how much hope invested in me. The same is in relationship with my teachers, friends, and maybe in relationship to the gift of life itself. I feel responsible, and it really matters. There is so much to be fixed in the world, and so much to be appreciated.

Consequently, to really build the world up (and not just with sky scrapers), there may be many qualities we need to revive from our childhood: curiosity without fear; love without holding back; the ability to ask relevant questions in the face of those who do not want to answer (why, why, why?); hard work and openness to the possibility of improvement without being limited by past failures (just watch a child learning to walk); and the ability to do this from a place of wonder (like a child exploring the world) because no matter how much we have already seen the reality of each day is unknown and can be laded with possibility.

A few weeks ago, I was innocently walking down the hallway when I heard a phrase that will always strike fear into my heart – “Naomi, can I see you in my office please?”

Dean Bernstein called myself and a fellow student, Ben, into his office to speak about putting together some programs focused on life after Pardes.  There were some interesting ideas tossed around – programs focused on teaching prayer skills, informal education, “coming out” as halachic Jews to our friends and family, etc.  After a few brainstorming sessions, a survey, and asking around for assistance, the first of our sessions happened last Thursday during lunch.

Tamara, one of the students in the Educators program, offered to lead a session called “Learning Outside of the Mazda Dealership” focused on individual study and learning outside of Pardes.    For those of you missing Pardes, or looking for a way to get a little more Talmud in your life, here are some tips and tricks from our session:

Learning Talmud Outside the Mazda Dealership…

Tips for Finding a Study Partner

• Speak to as many people as you can about learning together – family members, friends, coworkers, people you interact with on a day-to-day basis – a lot of people are interested in learning Talmud\TaNaCH and are also looking for someone to study with.
• You don’t have to be in the same place to maintain a chevruta – you can study together over the phone\Skype.

Individual Learning

• Most of us are used to the chevruta\shir model, but it’s not the only model for learning – you don’t necessarily need a chevruta, or to learn in shir.
• ArtScroll is NOT CHEATING (ask Zvi Hirschfeld)
• Jastrow talmud dictionary is available online (google Talmud dictionary)
• Buy a copy of the Frank dictionary!
• The internet is a fantastic resource – shiurim, podcasts, and live feeds available

For someone who has done a lot of independent study, what is the best way to structure your time?

• It depends on the person; Shabbat can be a great time for learning.
• Alternate Jewish and non-Jewish books
• Sign up for a daily halacha\Torah e-mail (like the URJ 10 Minutes of Torah project)
• Many shlichim in North America are partially supported by a religious movement, so they have time to dedicate to studying – ask one to study with you!

Where can I purchase less-expensive sfarim in America?

• You can buy used sfarim online (jewishusedbooks.com, discountseforim.com)

Sometimes, the best way to learn is to teach – maybe leading an informal discussion group

DAF YOMI
Many communities have the custom to learn a double-sided page (daf) of Talmud daily. This practice is known as DAF YOMI (”page of the day”). It’s a great way to keep up with your Talmud individually while feeling part of a larger community of learners!

RESOURCES
User-friendly books:: Artscroll & Steinzaltz editions of the Talmud
http://dafyomi.org/
http://www.dafyomi.co.il/sanhedrin/insites/sn-dt-002.htm
http://www.ouradio.org/daf

TOPICAL STUDY
http://www.webyeshiva.org/shiurim.php
http://www.onlineshiurim.org/shas.shtml
http://www.vbm-torah.org/
http://www.jtsa.edu/Conservative_Judaism/JTS_Torah_Commentary.xml
http://www.aish.com
http://www.mechonhadar.org/yeshivat-hadar1

The Beit Midrash is usually filled with students on Wednesday evenings for Night Seder, but last night, the learning was all for the sake of raising money for Haiti – a beautiful sight.

Donations will be accepted until the end of next week – to support Haiti via Pardes, go to http://action.ajws.org/goto/pardes

-Lauren

Unlike some other traditional Jewish learning institutions, Pardes does not aim to encourage particular religious practices or beliefs among its students; rather, the Pardes faculty aims to empower students in Jewish textual study skills so that they may develop their Jewish identities in empowered, personal and educated ways.

—–

In this context, the Pardes ‘Self, Soul & Text’ course was particularly meaningful for me, as the class featured a unique experiential component: we not only studied Jewish spiritual practices through text – we also engaged in these practices during class & on our own. The class also incorporated multiple opportunities for students to reflect upon their impressions of their experiences with one another.

We studied the writings of Chassidic masters, Kabbalists, and Jewish philosophers on sundry spiritual practices, including prayer, various meditations, ‘hitbodedut’, mindful eating, story telling, and others. Visiting spiritual professionals also came to our class to teach us about their areas of specialization: my favorites were Diane Bloomfield of Torah Yoga; and mussar teacher ChasyaUriel Steinbauer of the Mussar Institute.

I enjoyed some units greatly, and others left me untouched — the design of the course is such that students are given exposure to multiple spiritual practices in Jewish tradition so they can experiment with these, and find those that resonate most with them. As somebody who davens 3x every day, I found the units on prayer and Tachanun quite helpful; and this quote from Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook struck me deeply:

“Prayer is most true when it expresses the idea that the soul is continually praying… At the moment of actual prayer, the perpetual prayer of the soul is revealed… Prayer beseeches the soul to convey to her its role… All of one’s efforts to learn Torah and acquire wisdom are in order to enable the concealed prayer of the soul to be revealed…”

—–

I connected with other practices and ideas that Rabbi James Moshe Jacobson-Maisels taught us, and I also developed a broader understanding of traditional Judaism from his class.

For me, the idea of so many rabbis exploring so many different avenues towards the Divine is powerful. Not only did I learn about existing Jewish spiritual practices through the ‘Self, Soul & Text’ course, but I also began to feel that with proper kavana (intent), one could reach for G-d in limitless ways, and… perhaps some people are already reaching for the Divine in personal ways, without describing it as such.

(Interestingly, the writings of some rabbis left me with the strong impression that they felt that their own practices were the most effective vehicles for connecting with the Divine. I don’t think they were all open-minded about one another’s practices.)

A classmate once pointed out to me that my journaling is much like the Chassidic ’story telling’ spiritual practice, which we explored, and her comment rather shifted my perspective. I’ve been writing about my impressions of my life for some years now, but last semester I came to appreciate that this may be a means of spiritual expression for me… and now I maintain this kavana whenever I put my thoughts to keyboard.

“It’s been a month since our trip. During our intense 5 days I felt numb much of the time. But since then I have been thawing, thinking and feeling, and the process is far from over.

I keep trying to come to grips with the SCALE of what happened. It’s unbelievable – hundreds of thousands, millions of people rounded up, moved, transported, trained, marched, shoved, shaved, gassed, shot, shoveled… I keep trying to get perspective on the numbers – half a million in the Warsaw ghetto, that’s my entire home town of Fort Worth, all crammed into an area the size of Efrat…700 gassed at a time, that’s nearly three times the number of kids in our daughter’s high school, gassed en masse in 10 minutes…simple Jews like Levi’s grandfather being transported, transported and transported again to 13 different camps…

I especially can’t make sense of the Hungarian experience – how could it be possible that an army could march into a country, round up and dispose of a country’s entire Jewish community in 7 weeks?

It’s surreal, it’s the definition of surreal.

There is one truly real thing I can tell you: the Shabbat after our return was the best I’ve ever had. Sitting in our beautiful living room in our loving community in Israel; sitting down to a Shabbat table loaded with the best of everything; looking at my beautiful teenage children sleeping on the sofa waiting for their beautiful friends to drop by; I just cried, thought what a gan eden we live in and how truly lucky we are.

Much of what I’ve reflected upon has been inspired by R. Levi Cooper, and I’m particularly appreciative of his emphasis on the wealth of Eastern European Jewish culture before the Shoah. We spent much of our final day touring the Jewish sites of Kraków, Poland because he did not want to end our trip at a concentration camp (we’d been at Auschwitz all day the previous day). He wanted us to leave Poland remembering the glory of Ashkenazi culture before the Shoah.

For me, it worked.

—–

Last night, I attended a men’s Rosh Hodesh celebration hosted by two lovely human beings that I study with at Pardes. I’d never attended such an event before, and I didn’t really know what to expect (I’m not sure anybody else did either), but I had a wonderful time.

We were lucky to have our classmate Ira play guitar and lead us in song, and Ayal lovingly encouraged us to share words of Torah with one another, which many did. Our group included new students and older students, as well as the medic from our Negev Tiyul. A friend later commented to me upon the level of “authenticity and Jewish love” at Josh & Dave’s Rosh Hodesh event; I wasn’t the only one affected. “It was good to sing and dance with you last night,” he wrote.

I often have difficulty feeling celebratory when it’s expected of me. Earlier that day, students had been dancing around Pardes in celebration of Rosh Hodesh, and I had felt uncomfortable, but at the men’s Rosh Hodesh event that night, I suddenly wanted to sing & dance in celebration of the month of Adar – and I did.

—–

After touring Jewish Kraków, before boarding the bus for our next destination, a friend with a strong kesher (connection) to his Ashkenazi roots said to me, “I can imagine having lived here: I can imagine having been myself, living in this Kraków that we learned about today. I relate to this.”

And I said, “I don’t relate to this at all. I have pieces of Eastern European, Israeli, and North American Judaism swirling around within me, and don’t think I would have been the same person back in the Kraków of centuries past. My pluralistic Modern Orthodox Judaism didn’t exist back then. I would been raised under different influences. The shuls of Kraków are beautiful, and I stand proud of the tremendous Jewish culture that once flourished here, but… this isn’t my Jewish culture.”

—–

I’ve been enjoying Bible Raps music clips recently because somebody at Pardes sent out a link to their Purim video (Bible Raps was started by a Pardes alumnus, btw). Listening to this reflection of a 21^st century American Jew’s passion for Jewish education has resonated powerfully with me: the fusion of Jewish learning and modern U.S. pop culture feels… authentic. It feels like a fusion of… pieces of myself.

—–

I’ve been taking classes on halakha (Jewish law) at Pardes this year, and loving them. Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1520-1572) of Kraków has been one of my teachers this year, and having the opportunity to visit his shul in Poland was very special for me. Out of eternal honor for this Gaon (Torah giant), his chair at shul remains empty throughout the year.

Once, R. Isserles lived and taught. Once, he was a pillar of his Kraków community; he donated his home to the community as a synagogue; he subsidized students of Torah with his own resources; and he was one of the greatest Jewish scholars of Europe.

Today, I connect to R. Isserles through his texts. Centuries later and on different continents, I apply this Gaon’s teachings as best I can to my life in modern, Western society… which is very different from the life he knew.

And increasingly, I think… I cannot save the Judaism lost in Europe to the Shoah, as much as I appreciate it, as much as I am inspired by it, but I can be a part of Judaism today. I can’t be a part of R. Moshe Isserles’ shul or community, but I can build Jewish community at my own shul.

In a previous post, I wrote that I feel… it matters. It matters that Jews visit Poland. It matters that Jews visit the sites of Nazi terrors. It matters that Jews visit the remains of Jewish Eastern Europe. But I also feel… that Jews must continue to live as Jews to honor their ancestors. I also feel… that Jews must continue to live as Jews… today.

Please check out our promotional video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLUxr8Bgal and donate at http://action.ajws.org/goto/pardes

Thanks for your support!

-Lauren

It’s not often that I find myself able to unequivocally utter these words.  But every once and a while, a day comes along that is so good that there is nothing left to say.

Today was a good day because it was the second day of Rosh Chodesh Adar – I happen to be a huge fan of Rosh Chodesh celebrations, and Pardes has particularly lovely ones.  I chose to spend my morning at the Kotel, celebrating Rosh Chodesh with the Women of the Wall. My experiences with Women of the Wall have been mixed, and I have talked about them before, but a few things happened this morning that I want to highlight.  There was a very large group of women today – larger than I’ve ever seen before – and on top of that, there was a large group of men davening with us; they stood behind the women’s section of the prayer plaza in the main Kotel plaza.  The police, who have been so antagonistic in my prior Women of the Wall experiences, formed a barrier in front of us today to protect us from a group of Haredi women who were shouting at us (incidentally, one of the women who shouted at us kept saying “if your mother knew where you were!!!!”  I really wanted to tell her that my mother knew exactly where I was, and that if she had been in the country, she would probably have been standing right next to me).  Looking around me this morning, I was able to see the growth of Women of the Wall, and also to have a little bit of hope that things may get better.

Today was a good day because it was a beautiful day.  In an absolute miracle of weather and in defiance of everything I know about the month of February, the sun came out today and it was glorious – 80 degree weather, a beautiful breeze, sun shining down over the city.  I opened every single window in my apartment this afternoon and did my best to let the sunshine in.  I walked with a friend from the Kotel back to Pardes, where we arrived just in time for community breakfast, and a skit from some of our fellow students in the Pardes Educators Program.  We sang and laughed in celebration of the onset of Adar and the coming of Purim, and we enjoyed a wonderful meal.

Today was a good day because it was the 8th annual Pardes Yom Iyun Shel Chesed, in honor of Ben Blutstein and Marla Bennet, z”l.  Ben and Marla, students in the Pardes Educators Program, were both killed in the July, 2002 bombing at Hebrew University.  I don’t know very much about Ben or Marla – but what I have learned in the past few weeks has given me a picture of two wonderful people that the world is incredibly unfortunate to have lost.  After the bombing, the  Pardes community entered a year of mourning, a process which eventually produced the annual Yom Iyun Shel Chesed.  Every year, Pardes students are asked to spend one day devoted to bringing a little bit more chesed, or kindness, into the world.  We spent our morning studying in honor of Ben and Marla, and then spent our afternoons out in the world, doing various beautiful deeds.  A large group of students volunteered harvesting oranges for Leket, another group volunteered for Save a Child’s Heart, we ran a Gift of Life bone marrow donor registration drive, and more.

The group that I volunteered with spent two hours gardening at a local community garden called Gan HaHursha.  Spending today, such a beautiful day, with my fingers in the dirt and my lungs full of fresh air, was incredibly refreshing.  We moved mulch and compost, helped fix stone borders, and pulled weeds.  For me, this was familiar work – my family has had a vegetable garden for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been moving mulch since I was old enough to hold a big shovel.  The sites and sounds and the rhythm of the work all felt like home.

Seeing a community so engaged in social justice on behalf of the memory of two people that most of us never knew was very emotional to me.  It was obvious from the first time we heard about the Yom Iyun Shel Chesed that it was an important Pardes tradition, but it wasn’t until this morning, when I heard my fellow students speak about Ben and Marla, and this afternoon, when I saw my friends swabbing their cheeks in order to register as bone marrow donors, and moving mulch to beautify a garden that will only be our community garden for another few months, that I was able to see how fully the community embraced the idea of chesed, and giving back.  It was a very moving thing to see, and left me feeling full of pride towards the Pardes community.

Today was a good day.

Auschwitz I (the main Auschwitz camp) has been turned into a museum.

I have photographs of the museum displays at Auschwitz I… photographs of human hair and human hair woven into cloth, of spectacles, frames, and lenses, of tallitot (plural form of tallit), of bowls, plates, and cups, of prosthetic limbs and canes, of suitcases with names written on them, of shoes and children’s shoes, of broken children’s toys, of shoe polish and brushes…

The remains of Auschwitz II-Birkenau (the extermination camp) have been preserved, but not restored.

I have photographs of a cattle car sitting outside of Birkenau, of our group’s march from the railroad to the camp’s front gate (the path the prisoners were forced to march), of a guard tower and views of the camp from its windows, of the prisoners’ quarters, of barbed wire fences, of crematorium remains, of the building where those prisoners marked for work were sheared, showered and tattooed, of crowded holes in long cement blocks that served as latrines for the prisoners…

—–

I’m not yet sure how to emotionally process a single murder, let alone the systematic murder of millions. Beyond this, I also have difficulty thinking of any human beings as… a separate race; as… non-humans; as… vermin; as… a plague. I have difficulty relating to the idea that a person could convince hirself that a fellow human isn’t… human.

The “Jewish Question” was a point of major discussion among the Nazis, which ultimately led them to decide upon the “Final Solution”.

I recall speaking with one of my friends during our trip about the difficulty that we shared with processing the Nazis’ evil. We discussed “racial anti-Semitism”, relative to religious anti-Semitism. Racial anti-Semitism predates the Shoah, but the Nazi manifestation of this bigotry was unlike any other. The Nazis claimed that one couldn’t leave behind Judaism because being Jewish was woven into one’s DNA.

“Imagine,” said my friend, “that somebody today were to begin a discussion on the subject of the ‘Hindu question’… it’s utterly absurd… so how then did the ‘Jewish question’ come to be taken seriously? How did it come to be… so popular? How did it come to be… so accepted? How did people convince themselves that Jewish human beings were not human beings?”

—–

It’s important to understand that the Nazis de-humanized the Jews gradually. First came the Nuremberg Laws, stripping the Jews of their citizenship rights. Then the Jews were herded into overcrowded ghettos, away from the non-Jews of Europe: out of sight… out of mind. The Nazis then implemented Operation Reinhard, systematically exporting Jews from the ghettoes to their deaths at extermination camps via cattle car.

I encourage you to click on that link about the cattle cars; it illustrates the ikar (core) of the Nazis’ strategy of de-humanization:

“There was no water. There was no food. There was no toilet, no ventilation. Some boxcars had up to 150 people stuffed into them. It did not matter if it was summer, winter, boiling hot or freezing cold. And an average transport took about four and a half days… The longest transport of the war, from Corfu, took 18 days. When the train got to the camps and the doors were opened, everyone was already dead.”

Imagine having no room to move for days on end, stuffed into a cattle car. People would defecate, and women would menstruate where they stood. People died in these cattle cars, freezing to death, starving to death… those who remained alive in the cattle cars had to stand among the corpses. When they arrived to their slaughters at the Nazi extermination camps, they were weak and ill; they were dirty and smelly… their dignities had been stripped from them; all part of the Nazis’ strategy of de-humanization.

The Nazis’ process of de-humanizing the Jews was insidiously gradual, taking place over a period of ~10 years. They consciously stripped the Jews of their humanities, step by calculated step.

—–

We value our privacy today; and where more so than in the restroom? The prisoners at the Nazi camps were granted no such privacy.

At Auschwitz II-Birkenau, shivering in the frigid night cold, looking down upon the crowded cement holes that served as latrines for the Nazis’ prisoners, I had difficulty imagining what it would have been like to have been stripped of the most basic of human dignities.

Standing there, overwhelmed by four incredibly time-intensive days of cold, snow, wind, walking, busing, learning, seeing, praying, talking, thinking… I began to better appreciate what Rabbi Levi Cooper meant by ‘de-humanization’.

And I couldn’t stop shivering.

MAJDANEK

Breathe deeply my dear

  Breathe

We have long since been forgotten

  Breathe

They will not remember

The guard tower watches over us

  Protecting

The city pulses nearby

But we are already dead

  Breathe

The light brushing of blue

  on the walls

  on the ceiling

small, crisp, cool sky

Visions of poppies, peonies, lilies

  springs first blooms

The chimney looms over our last home

Ashes burn the sky

Why the charade? 

Why the antechamber to hell?

Are their hearts too soft?

Can they not just throw us into the pits?

Yes, their hearts are the Devil.

They do not do the work themselves

Our fathers, our brothers do the work for them

Breathe deeply my dear

  Breathe

One last breath

So glorious it was to live

Why did they not tell us?

Why did we not know

  that every moment

    could be

       would be

          the last

Were the words buried in those ancient texts

  that only only old men understand?

And here we stand

naked

before our sisters

before evil

before God

Breathe

  It was a miracle