Tag Archives: Hebrew school

[Student Profile] Marty Flashner

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Marty (R) with Dennis Prager

Originally hailing from Boston, Marty Flashner has a wife and three kids, a law degree, an MBA, and worked for almost thirty-three years with Ernst & Young, one of the largest professional service firms in the world, including running the firm’s tax practice in Connecticut for the last ten years. Yet, for all this career success, Marty now wants nothing more than to leave an impact in his local Jewish community.

He characterizes his early experiences with Judaism as “kind-of mixed.” In third-grade, he rebelled and stopped going to Hebrew school, thus ending his formal Jewish training in childhood. “It was actually much later in life that I really started reading the Chumash and studying it in a more rigorous way,” he said. This study drove a desire to become more involved in his Jewish community, so he began volunteering for a number of different Jewish charities, including his temple, the UJA Federation of Greenwich, CT, and even Continue reading →

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[Student Profile] Ben Gurin & Sydni Adler

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sydben

Sydni Adler (Year ’13) and Ben Gurin (Year ’13) met during the Summer of ’10 in Washington DC, as participants on the Mechon Kaplan program of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Together with their cohort, they took classes on Social Justice and Judaism, and each interned for an NGO; Sydni worked on campaign finance reform at ‘Common Cause‘, and Ben worked at ‘Jewish Funds for Justice‘. Over the course of that summer, the two of them gradually became best friends, as they found themselves constantly gravitating towards one another.

Unfortunately, the young duo had a geographic problem: Ben was a Midwesterner, a third generation legacy student at Indiana University; and Sydni had grown up on the West Coast near L.A., and attended college on the East Coast at Swarthmore. For several months after their Mechon Kaplan summer had ended, they spoke by telephone daily, even though “they weren’t in a relationship”, and then Ben came to California to check out HUC in L.A during Fall Break in October. He visited for several days with Sydni and her family, and then asked her out while she was behind the wheel on the perilous 101/405 Interchange… to which Sydni responded, “Could you just give me 10 minutes?” Continue reading →

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[Student Profile] Bruce Shaffer

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Bruce Shaffer was raised in an assimilation-bent household in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Northwest Detroit, fairly typical of what he saw around him. His curiosity for Jewish learning and Jewish text was seeded at his Hebrew school. There was no core of professional Jewish faculty – Bruce’s teachers were mostly Yiddish-speaking European refugees, and he had very little understanding of what they’d been through despite the featured Holocaust newsreels he’d been shown at his Jewish summer camp. Bruce still remembers a Mr. Plofkin with his baggy clothing and foreign accent, always carrying a piece of apple in one pocket, and a paring knife in his other.

“I remember Mr. Plofkin in level hey Hebrew class asking me, ‘What’s your Hebrew name?’ ‘Baer,’ I responded. He said, ‘That’s not Hebrew – that’s Yiddish,’ and Mr. Plofkin began calling me Baruch. In later years I’ve grown to appreciate that; and I continue to strive to become my Hebrew name.”

By his high school years, Bruce’s family had moved to the suburbs.

“My friends were still mostly Jewish – all the ex-pats from the city. That remained the case at the U. of Michigan, but as the times-were-a-changin’, the social pool, too, was expanding and certainly by the time I moved back to attend Wayne University Law School, I was hanging out with a broader range of people from the diverse student population of an urban school.”

After completing law school in the mid ‘70s Bruce moved to Continue reading →

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[Student Profile] From 19 to 91

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Pardes Summer Program students Annabelle Jaffe, almost 91, and Jacqueline Cohen, almost 19, are decades apart in age and live in different parts of the globe. But they both brought to Pardes lifelong involvement with their local Jewish communities and will leave Pardes with renewed commitments to Jewish life in their hometowns.

Annabelle Jaffe and Jacqui Cohen

Annabelle Jaffe is the oldest student in the 2012 Summer Program. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and her Orthodox family sent her younger brother to yeshiva, but “girls didn’t necessarily get a Hebrew education,” in those days, she said. Her formal Jewish education began at 11 when she was invited to visit a friend’s Talmud Torah class at a Conservative synagogue. “I fell in love with it,” she recalled during a recent interview in the Pardes Beit Midrash. The class met after school five days a week, and by high school Jaffe was studying Talmud and Mishna. The United States entry into World War II ended her plans to travel to Israel (then British Mandate Palestine) for a year of study after high school.

She enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, studied Perkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) with her grandfather and taught in the Hebrew school at her shul. She also met and married a young Army Air Corps biochemical engineer, Louis Jaffe. Annabelle finished her bachelor’s degree in education, and taught high school history and English. When her principal suggested she consider becoming a counselor, she earned a master’s degree in counseling at George Washington University. July 1, Jaffe officially retired from 50 years as a counselor in the Montgomery County, Maryland, school system. Alongside her public school career, she taught Hebrew and Judaic Studies in local Hebrew Schools.

Jacqueline Cohen may be younger than Annabelle, but she also has been continuously involved with her local Jewish community. Jacqui, as she prefers to be called, is the youngest student in the Summer Program. She was born in South Africa, but grew up in Adelaide, Australia. Her Modern Orthodox parents, Mark and Justine, are leaders in the Adelaide Jewish community and at their synagogue, the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation. Jacqui attended Jewish primary school, but the small Adelaide Jewish community of about 1,000 can’t support a Jewish high school. Jacqui felt that lack left some gaps in her Jewish knowledge, and came to Pardes because she wanted to continue and improve her Jewish education in a supportive setting where she wouldn’t be made to feel out of her depth.

Both women are halfway through the Pardes Summer Program, and they both say it is challenging and rewarding in the way that only Torah study can be. Annabelle is taking an introductory Talmud class, “Better to Die than to Sin?” with Jennie Rosenfeld and “The Law and Philosophy of Maimonides,” with Rabbi Reuben Godner as well as “Judaism and Conflict Resolution Studies,” with Rabbi Daniel Roth. When Jaffe goes back to the U.S., she isn’t going to let retirement get in the way of working. She plans to be a substitute counselor in the school system as well as a substitute Hebrew teacher at her shul, Ohr Kodesh in Chevy Chase, Maryland. And she is already making plans for next summer. “I think I’ll come back [to Padres] next year,” she said. “This program is good for the young and the old… I’ve learned so many new things.”

Jacqui is spending her gap year in Israel, in a program for training youth movement leaders. The program includes studying Hebrew and Zionism, visiting Poland, and two months on a kibbutz. For the program’s options period, she chose to study at Pardes. “Pardes is welcoming and open,” she said. She’s also in Rosenfeld’s introductory Talmud class, and studying “Women and Judaism” with Tehama Goldman-Brash, “Jewish Leadership Dilemmas,” with Marc Rosenberg and “Judaism and Human Rights in Israel and Beyond,” with Rabbi Gideon Sylvester. She especially appreciates the openness to questioning and the self-motivated approach to study. “One of the things I love is looking at a piece of Talmud – that moment when I finally understand the Mishna and Gemara – I find that fantastic.”

She will return to Adelaide to be a leader of JAZY – The Jewish Adelaide Zionist Youth, created to include all Jewish young people in Adelaide’s community, from secular to Orthodox. Jacqui will combine her JAZY leadership with studies in commerce at university, but she hopes to transfer to Melbourne where she can also study Jewish education. Pardes has given her new styles of learning and teaching, she says. She wants to introduce chuvruta-style learning to JAZY, and also looks forward to using her Pardes-enhanced teaching skills. Now, “I have something I’ve learned and can teach … not just something I’ve looked up on the Internet.”

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[Student Profile] Tamar Landau

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Tamar views her Jewish journey as a work in progress, or, as Zvi Hirschfield suggests, that of a Gemara sugiyah.  As a child growing up in Los Angeles, she went to Hebrew school three days a week and was ‘that kid’ who loved it.  Perhaps Jewish education’s emphasis on modern Hebrew at the time made the difference.  Nevertheless, her Jewish identity flourished and, all the more so, when she first went to Israel during the summer after 10th grade on the ‘L.A. Ulpan.’  She returned a typical American Zionist teen, complete with Tzahal cap and more colorful language.

Throughout high school, she continued post-Bat Mitzvah studies, was involved in Jewish teen leadership programs run through the local Federation, and coordinated the “Jewish Awareness Club” at her public high school.  In 12th grade, she traveled again to Israel where she lived with families and spoke in Israeli schools about life in the U.S.  Her study of Hebrew coupled with her willingness to use it helped a lot during that and subsequent trips to Israel.

At U.C. Berkeley, she continued studying Hebrew and participating in Jewish and Zionist activities, which included co-leading the Progressive Zionist Caucus with her friend.  Junior year came and Tamar headed off to Haifa University to study.  After finishing the summer Ulpan, she jumped on a boat for a quick Greek island vacation before starting classes.  Unfortunately, Continue reading →

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[Student Profile] Kyle Lebell

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Kyle was raised in Berkeley, CA to a father who had rejected his Jesuit upbringing and faith altogether, but remained knowledgeable through his work as a publisher of religious books, and a Jewish mother who did not have a strong traditional upbringing.  While Judaism as such did not play a positive, central role in her early life, God and spirituality certainly did.  Her mother taught her the Shma as a blessing to allay her fears, and she still instinctively recites it when appropriate.

Attending bi-weekly Hebrew school a half-hour drive away from home during her primary school years, Kyle felt that: “Judaism was a building I attended Hebrew school in.”  Nevertheless, her mother did not abandon the hope that Judaism would play a central part in Kyle’s life, and her efforts paid off.

While attending a private high school — education was and continues to be one of the highest values in the household — Kyle participated in the New Jewish Film Project, bringing together Jewish high school students from the Bay Area to create a film to be shown at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in the summer of 2002.  They created a documentary, Not Another Jewish Movie, about what it was like growing up Jewish in the Bay Area, and it was screened widely. Continue reading →

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[Student Profile] Shanee Michaelson

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Shanee recalls the family gatherings of her childhood with great fondness. Jewish holidays with her mother’s family were full of warmth and love, and they all still lived nearby in the Los Angeles area, having emigrated from Iran together. In the USA Shanee was given opportunities that her mother hadn’t received in Iran, and so she became the first woman in their family to attend a Jewish day school and read from the Torah for her bat mitzvah.

Hebrew was Shanee’s favorite subject, and language study came easily to her so she minored in Spanish literature at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), while studying psychology and sociology. The young woman also joined the UCSD Israel Action Committee, and brought an increased awareness of Israeli culture to her university through campus-wide Israeli movie nights and dances. She also twice attended the AIPAC conference in Washington, DC, as a student delegate.

After college, Shanee’s Jewish involvement manifested in her work as a Hebrew school teacher, which she pursued even as she attended law school at the University of San Francisco. It was a challenge for her, having had no training, but she found that she enjoyed teaching and working with children – a theme that would unexpectedly recur after she completed her law degree.

Tragedy soon struck the young woman when her mother was diagnosed with cancer after her law school graduation, and Shanee became her mother’s primary caregiver while she worked for the State Bar of California and then at a small law firm. After her mother passed away, Shanee took a poetry class in the evening at the University of Southern California (USC), and was offered a teaching assistantship, which would cover her tuition. Shanee accepted, and began taking classes such as screenwriting, poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

In 2008 Shanee completed her Master’s degree in creative writing, and decided to take a summer vacation to Israel. She’d only been here once before – on a Birthright trip – and Shanee wanted to visit some Israeli friends and explore the country on her own. After a week in Jerusalem and another week in Tel Aviv, Shanee began to feel that she never wanted to leave… but she ultimately returned home to be near her family.

Recalling her love of teaching, Shanee found work at an international school in San Diego where her grandmother, aunt and uncle were living, and moved back there. In San Diego, she started attending services and classes at Chabad, and started to get excited about Jewish learning. Eventually, another student mentioned Pardes to her, and the idea of an open, pluralistic beit midrash in Jerusalem grabbed her imagination.

Once again, tragedy struck unexpectedly when Shanee’s grandmother passed during her stay in San Diego, and she felt the loss acutely. After two years of teaching, Shanee applied to study at Pardes during the summer of 2010, but she ultimately delayed her trip when a legal project came through for her. Shanee soon moved to Washington, DC to work at a Jewish preschool, and then attended the 2011 Summer Program at Pardes – studying with others in the educators track. “Three years ago, I fell in love with Israel,” she says, “That summer, I fell in love with Jerusalem.”

After three weeks at Pardes, Shanee knew she would have to return to continue her studies in Jerusalem - there was so much to learn! She felt incredibly drawn to Israel, and returned to America only to save up enough money to study at Pardes in Spring 2012. Now having returned, Shanee continues to enjoy the challenging conversations and wide ranging perspectives of the Pardes community, and finds herself delving into the Tanakhic texts through Pardes’ Intensive Tanakh Track (ITT).

In the near future, Shanee looks forward to hosting other Pardesniks at her Purim seudah1,2 next week, and in the long run… well, Shanee’s now thinking of moving to Israel!

 
  1. Seudah: festive, celebratory meal(see: Seudat Purim)
  2. Shanee’s seudah will have a creative theme! Please bring a poem, story, song, or joke to share!
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2011-2012 Pardes Fellows (3 of 3)

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Let’s meet some more of this year’s Pardes Fellows! 

Kalie Kelman

Kalie is originally from Phoenix, Arizona, and before arriving in Israel, she was completing her undergraduate degree in American Studies at George Washington University (where she also directed a hip hop dance company!). In the fall of 2010, she was gearing up to begin an M.A. in Media and Public Affairs at GWU, but at the last moment she decided to come study at Pardes. 

“The thing I love most about Pardes is the drastic range of ideas and opinions on politics, religion, and everything else under the sun… The ‘safe space’ that is cultivated at Pardes makes for a warm community with educators who are accessible and receptive to students.” 

Kalie’s ‘Fellows Project’ focuses on working with the Pardes director of development – to help meet Pardes’ fundraising goals, and on a personal level,  she is hoping to learn a lot more halacha and Jewish history, and hopes to strengthen and develop her relationship with God. She also hopes to make some new friends and grow closer with her mentors in Israel. 

In the future, she is hoping to work in development or communications/PR for a Jewish non-profit in either Israel or the US… and Kalie’s future plans also include a husband & family at some point :)  

Victoria Raun

Vicki hails from California, and before coming to Pardes she was the receptionist at Congregation Beth Israel in San Diego. She holds a BA in American Studies from Skidmore College (2010) through the University Without Walls program; and before becoming the CBI receptionist she worked as a U.S. Air Force and civilian journalist for three decades.

Vicki deeply appreciates the sense of community at Pardes, and her ’Fellows Project’ is to provide greater opportunities for Pardes students to interact with, & learn about Israel. She aims to help new students adjust comfortably to living in Jerusalem, and her personal hopes for next year are to continue her improvement in Hebrew and to focus on text study. This year, Vicki has made Aliyah, and her long-term goal is to make her home in Israel, get a job and find a way to make a positive impact upon Israeli society through volunteer work.

Daniel Shibley

Daniel calls Washignton, DC his home, and he lived in NYC for a year as a fellow at Yeshivat Hadar before beginning his studies at Pardes in 2010. Shibley completed his B.A. in sociology with a concentration in Jewish Studies at Clark University in Worcester, MA, and throughout his college career, he taught religious school and advised Jewish youth groups. This year, Daniel’s ‘Fellows Project’ is to organize Shabbatonim and tiyulim for Pardes, which bring the entire community together even beyond the Pardes beit midrash.

“I like guacamole, and I don’t understand why Israelis use that fan thing to light their BBQ.”

Shibley is also preparing himself for rabbinic school, and is using this year as a mechina program, while developing his Hebrew language skills. His long-term goal is to provide access for those who seek to understand the texts of their Jewish tradition.

You can find Daniel’s writings on his two blogs here:

  1. Shibbles’ Eyes
  2. Tussling with T’fillah (thoughts on prayer)
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[Student Profile] Louis Sachs

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Over the course of many consecutive summers as a camper at JCA Shalom in Malibu, Louis learned about Judaism “without realizing” it. He first attended camp as a fifth grader, and returned year after year until the summer after his first year of college (as a camp counselor).

“I did USY for six years, and went to Hebrew school through 10th grade, but the biggest influence upon my Jewish identity was definitely JCA Shalom.

Camp was the first time I felt connected to a Jewish community – first time I went to a Shabbat service… it really changed the way I felt about Judaism in general – it made me want to go to Hebrew school!“

When Louis began college at UC Berkeley, his older brother suggested that he join Alpha Epsilon Pi – the international Jewish fraternity. “After all,” he said, “if you’re going to hang out with other Jewish students anyway, you might as well join ‘AEPi’.”

Louis became president of his fraternity, and his chapter ran several fundraisers for Shaare Zedek Medical Center, successfully raising more than $7,000 for the Jerusalem hospital. Additionally, the young man was inspired to organize an Israel advocacy event at UC Davis after visiting Israel with Birthright during Operation Cast Lead, and brought his AEPi chapter together with other Jewish student groups to present “the good that Israel brings to the world.” Israeli professors spoke out at the AEPi house that day, and the Israeli Consulate General arrived from San Francisco to discuss Israeli current events on campus.

Beyond his fraternity, Louis contributed to the Jewish community in multiple ways during his time at UC Davis. He worked at Hillel, interfacing with donors and doing graphic design for their capital campaigns; and he worked at a reform temple throughout college, advising the NFTY youth group, teaching Hebrew school, and developing a unique shabbaton program led by high school students that he personally trained during the school year.

Towards the end of college, Louis began to consider the possibility of becoming a non-pulpit rabbi, and his family’s rabbi suggested that Pardes would be great for him. Louis applied to the Year Program, and it just so happened that on the day that he received his acceptance letter, he also happened to receive an e-mail from his friend Sam Blumberg (’10, Educators ’10-’12) telling Louis come to study at Pardes with him.

“I really love the Pardes environment – so many people from so many different backgrounds – there are so many different streams and expressions of Judaism that I encounter at Pardes on a daily basis!”

Next year, Louis returns home to California to begin his rabbinical studies at AJU, and he’s been in correspondence with the U.S. Navy about training to become a military chaplain. “It would be a great way to support Jewish men & women in the armed forces, and work with people of other faiths,” he says, “I really enjoyed being a religious studies major and – becoming a chaplain would give me the opportunity to learn about other religions and foster interreligious dialogue.”

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[Student Profile] Merissa Nathan Gerson

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“… now I better understand what I was looking for… I didn’t know what to ask for – I didn’t know what it looked like – I didn’t realize I could trust Judaism, but at Pardes I’ve realized that everything I was looking for exists in Jewish texts.”

As a young woman growing up in Washington, DC, Merissa was heavily involved in race dialogues, and later came to feel that her complex Jewish identity was ‘swallowed up’ by her identity as a white person. In college, Merissa continued having difficulty articulating her Jewish identity, and felt uncomfortable at the WUSTL Hillel. Her group of mostly Jewish friends were unified by common interests – by music, culture, and their love for the outdoors – more than by Judaism itself.

Merissa’s rooted, deeply internalized Judaism stood on the pillars of culture, ancestry, and family, with Holocaust memories at its base. Her father had grown up in DP camps in Uzbekistan, and her mother’s father had fled in the ’30s from the devastating pogroms in Germany before the eruption of WWII. They were a family of proud, committed Jews, coming together for Shabbat dinner every Friday, and celebrating it once a month with other families from the Adas Israel Hebrew school. She came from a strong Jewish community.

During her senior year of college Merissa studied abroad in S. Africa, and fell in love with a Rastafarian who believed in the tenets of Judaism. He believed in gratitude for all things; believed that nature was an element of G-d; and believed that one could see blessings and spirit in all of creation. Abroad, Merissa found the space to explore her own spirituality. Eventually, she found herself driven to go on a personal ‘spiritual search’, which took her to Israel after college graduation.

When Merissa returned, she moved to Martha’s Vineyard, and began attending Shabbat services every week while working as a farmer… marking the first time that she had ever regularly attended shul on her own convictions. For years to follow, the adventurous spirit moved from place to place and from job to job – working as a Hebrew school teacher, lamp maker, waitress, writer, etc. – and made a point of finding a shul that spoke to her everywhere she lived.

In 2006 Merissa moved to Boulder, Colorado to study at Naropa University for an MFA in writing and poetics. As she sought inner peace, her work came to focus on her family’s Holocaust history and how trauma would resurface in the body. She also began regularly having conversations about Judaism as she explored the shuls of Boulder; and she discussed spirituality with monks and yogis, even as she studied Jewish mysticism.

After traveling for several more years and participating in multiple writing residencies around the country, the young writer eventually realized that she needed more Jewish knowledge for the sake of her work. As she neared the end of her residencies, Merissa again felt spiritually drawn towards Israel. She found work at an African refugee development center in Tel Aviv for the summer of 2010, and then applied to Pardes for the year upon the recommendations of her friends and family.

Among her most powerful Pardes experiences, Merissa recalls her visit to the town of Zamosc during the annual Pardes Poland trip… the town where most of her father’s family had been murdered by the Nazis. For this child of a Holocaust survivor family, the trip was particularly meaningful.

Beyond this, the young seeker found a supportive, spiritual community among her classmates in the Pardes Self, Soul & Text Track, and learned much about Jewish spiritual practices with Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels. Of course, Merissa can best describe her own impressions… and her recent, beautiful writings (1, 2, 3) for Lilith Magazine reflect some of her personal growth and Pardes experiences!

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