These and Those

Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem

Archive: June 2016

Two Yerushalmi Poems

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Sarah Marx

This blogpost was originally published on the author’s personal blog, Ramblin’ Maidel. Inspired by Jerusalem, as always, and its characters, and its millennia of liturgical music. The Electrician’s Psalm Unhemmed Creator, spinner of the world, Today beneath Your power lines a man Crouched down, his battered palms burnished like leather, His skin limp with the Continue Reading »

Yom Hashoah Reflections

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Sarah Marx

We were in the middle of the street, ten or fifteen students huddled together on the median, when the siren began. People got out of their cars and stood, leaning on their bumpers, staring at the sky. All around us, on the sidewalks and in the shop windows, they froze in place. No one moved Continue Reading »

Being B’nai Yisrael

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Sarah Marx

For someone so easy to dislike, Yaakov is well-loved. His mother deceives her husband and eldest son in order to secure his destiny; Lavan takes him in for more than a decade and sees him as a worthy opponent; his wives’ adoration for him is almost painful to read. This pattern of veneration continues beyond Continue Reading »

The 103 Worlds

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Sarah Marx

At Thursday’s Pardes open mic, I shared a version of the story (midrash? heresy?) below. Tonight, I wasn’t sure whether or not it would be appropriate to post it on the blog — after all, I can hear fireworks and gunshots in the distance, and I feel as though I should be writing about that Continue Reading »

Ha’azinu and Music and Community (and me)

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Sarah Marx

In the last week, hovering on the edge of Rosh Hashanah, I’ve heard and sung songs that shook me to my core. In the coming weeks, I’ll be faced with many more – liturgy for the High Holidays, its passion and fear barely contained by the melodies’ majesty, or zemirot sung around the Shabbat table. Continue Reading »

Davening in the Details

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Sarah Marx

For a place so much associated with desert and stone and sun, Jerusalem is full of blue. My morning walk to school is painted blue, in both broad and slender strokes: the giant turquoise sky, or the thin stripes of the Israeli flag, or the joyful cerulean paint on someone’s shutters or garden fence. Even Continue Reading »