Tag Archives: Masa Israel Journey

I’m compact!

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From my blog:

abg

i shaved this face and it was actually really difficult. electrical razor, you are not my friend.

Thanks to MASA Israel, I’ve had the chance to confirm for myself, in excruciating and extensive detail that Israel is a pretty small country. Like, really small. Usually we mean that the landmass of Israel is teeny (smaller if you, like me, are disinclined to include the west bank as Israel; but that’s a really troublesome issue so LET’S NOT GET BOGGED DOWN!); or that there is a very small populace.

The population of Israel is pretty small. With a population of 8.018 million as of last Tuesday (it’s only in Hebrew, sorry!), I hear a lot of stories about running into a friend of a friend anywhere. A college friend’s father served side-by-side with our Hebrew professor’s late brother, z”l.

But that’s not what I want to talk about! We’ll get to Israel, nation of bulbul, at a later date. Today, I want to just quickly tell the story of how I got an electric razor and a scale and a wicked discount.

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Group 15, or why the Masa Israel Leadership worked out

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[x-posted to bensongoldberg.com]

A couple of weeks ago, I snuck out of Pardes, and instead of learning Torah, I learnt community organizing, best practices, and how to laugh again. It was fun, it was a refresher, and I made some amazing friends. Here’s what I took away from it:

Group 15 finding an example of Hebrew

Masa Leadership Summit’s Group 15

“Honestly, you were just a bunch of left-overs. And that’s why you’ve been put together.”

The task for Group 15 at the Masa Israel Leadership Seminar (MLS), more than anything else, was to overcome this origin story and become a true community. We were British, Australian, Western Canadian, and scattered from across the Western States. We went back to small towns, or isolated communities, or simply disorganized ones. We had no natural backstory, no shared history other than that we were Jews and we were there. We’re here. In Israel.
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Tuesday!

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From my blog:

After months of putting it off, I finally made it down to Ein Gedi last Friday. I went with some friends from college park, and we left at 4:30 am to drive down to the hike. As we were passing the dead sea on the drive down, I looked out the car window and watched the sun rise over the mountains of Jordan with the rays reflecting in the water; definitely one of my better sunrises. The hike itself was great…we went for about 7 hours and climbed 600 meters, from the 200 meters below sea level to 400 above, and got to see some incredible views. We then made it back to Jerusalem just in time for Shabbat, with about 20 minutes to spare. Definitely a great way to spend a Friday.

Then this week, last night I attended the MASA opening event with thousands of post-high school and post-college Jews from all over the world, here on over a hundred different programs. It was really an amazing sight to see all of these people just like me who had made the decision, for any of a zillion reasons, to come here for an extended period of time, and being in the same room with all of them was definitely special. And another highlight was that the Idan Raichel Project performed, and they were aaamazing. So good live and such great music. And tonight, I went to the auditions of a local showing of Hairspray. I should clarify…I didn’t actually audition, but for my community service project for Pardes, I will be working 1:1 with an 18-year old Ethiopian fellow, Rafael, in order to help him learn the songs (in english) for Hairspray, and the auditions were tonight so I came to help him fill out forms and provide moral support. Definitely a nice break from learning all day, and also a good way to rep my Baltimore pride (Since I think Hairspray is based there?).

And then to the learning – in my meditation class this week, we are focusing on seeing the Divine in everything, and one way to do this is through the experience of eating, since it contains a lot of our pleasures and desires, and we all have feelings on the matter. So the key to meditating on food is essentially to become very present and aware of every single step of the process, and go very slowly. More practically, this involves really honing in on the texture, feel, smell, and appearance of the food/bite, and then eventually putting it in your mouth and just letting it sit on your tongue without chewing, just feeling its texture with your mouth, and then eventually starting to very slowly chew, possibly with taking breaths in between, and then eventually swallowing. Needless to say, I had the most dramatic peanut butter banana experience of my life earlier tonight, which turned into a 30 minute sensory bonanza.

And one more thing, an idea I picked up on from a teacher recently and I’m still working on, is taking an hour (ideally, less if you can’t) every day that is dedicated to being unplanned, and then seeing what you decide to do during that time and analyzing it afterwards. My unplanned hour today became cleaning out/exploring a cabinet in my apartment that hadn’t been touched since we moved in 3 months ago and had a lot of stuff left over from the former residents…including a guitar case, a bag of coals, and a bunch of pretty intriguing recipes on index cards. Ima head out now but hope all is well and if you’re reading from the northeast, stay inside! It’s hurricaning out there!

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Meet the Fellows 5773

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Amir Zinkow

Amir Zinkow is from Columbus, OH, via St. Paul, MN, via San Mateo, CA. After graduating from The Ohio State University in the fall of 2010, he flitted off to Uganda with an AJWS Volunteer Summer Program. After two weeks back in the States, he came back to the same time zone as Uganda, to Israel, where he was a participant in Otzma, a 10 week Masa program. In trying to find a way to stay in Israel and get on track to go to rabbinical school, Amir decided to attend Pardes, where he fell in love with studying Talmud and Halakha. He hopes that a second year immersed in study will help him achieve his goal of becoming a Posek who doesn’t necessarily follow halakha.


For his fellows project, Amir will be working with Robby in the fundraising department. So don’t be surprised when he asks you for money. Amir believes in the Pardes ideal and vision, and loves the idea that studying Jewish texts is not exclusive, and can be for anyone. He looks forward to furthering this vision and having the opportunity to learn with a diverse group of people for the second year in a row.


Amir is the Irving Weinstein Memorial Fellow this year!


Derek Kwait

Derek Kwait never spent longer than five consecutive weeks outside of his native Pittsburgh area prior to fulfilling his dream of studying at Pardes last year. After attending one year of film school at Point Park University in 2007-8, he transferred to the University of Pittsburgh in fall 2008. He graduated in 2011 with a degree in writing with a fiction concentration and minors in Film Studies and Jewish Studies– the prestigious Triple Crown of BS. His subsequent life-changing year at Pardes was largely made possible by a generous scholarship from his beloved synagogue, Young People’s Synagogue. He spent the past summer as the mashgiach at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, so if you have any questions about kashrut during the year, he will be happy to direct you to Rav Meir.


For his fellows project, Derek will be ruining any claims Pardes still has for being a non-coercive institution by running the student blog, “These and Those,” which last year, boasted a record average of 200 hits per day (on average, only 198 of these hits were from spammers, plus another one from Derek’s mother looking for his posts). Derek hopes to build on last year’s success by editing the words “Kim Kardashian” and “sex” into every blog post for as long as he is the editor.


While he is very excited for another year of learning at Pardes, Derek is most looking forward to reading your blog posts.

Laura Herman

Laura Herman is originally from Toronto, Ontario. Before coming to Pardes last year, Laura spent three years working at Hillel. One year at the International Center in Washington DC and two years on campus in Toronto. Laura is enthusiastic about diverse Jewish communities and recently discovered her love of text study. She feels that being at Pardes is the perfect place to blend these two passions.

Laura is planning on helping out with Pardes recruitment during the upcoming year and wants as many people as possible to experience the richness of Pardes. She knows first-hand how invigorating it can be to spend a year in Israel and would like to help others have this experience.

When Laura is not learning Gemara at Pardes, you can find her roaming the shuk or at different cafes in Jerusalem. If you ever need to know the best place to get fresh fruits and vegetables, Laura is the person to ask. She’ll only ask that you repay her in mangoes.

Laura is one of the Marla Bennett and Ben Blutstein Scholarship recipients this year!

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Alumni Impressions ’11-’12

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Now that the new Pardes school year is about to begin, we’re feeling particularly nostalgic about these posts on the Masa Israel Journey Blog written by a few of our ’11-’12 Pardes alumni… they’re really touching:

  1. Jacob Siegel, “Homeland and Home”
  2. Derek Kwait, “Symbols, metaphors, and preparing to come home”
  3. Andrew Lustig, “Lost in the Rhythm”
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Radical amazement on Pardes’ end-of-year Shabbaton

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This past Shabbat Pardes had a tiyul and Shabbaton to the Galil. Prior to the tiyul, while briefly skimming the itinerary, I imagined that this Shabbaton would be the same as every Shabbaton I have been on since middle school. Hike, daven, eat, daven, eat, eat, daven.
 
Though I was excited, I certainly did not expect anything extraordinary.  In retrospect, suggesting that the weekend surpassed all of my expectations would be an egregious understatement.
 
What made this Shabbaton so unique was not its itinerary; Continue reading →
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Lost in the Rhythm

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I came to Israel – to the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies – 10 months ago, so that I could study and become familiar with Jewish text. I wanted very much to live a ‘Jewish life.’ I just didn’t know what that entailed or meant.
 
Judaism, for me, has been like a dance. It wasn’t so much fun when I didn’t know the steps. There was very little spiritual fulfillment. It was frustrating and confusing.
 
But as I started to learn the steps I started to lose myself in the rhythm. The movements took on meaning. And that has led to very special experiences and insights. 
 
Part of this learning process is and has been happening through Torah study, in many of its very different permutations, at Pardes.  
 
Chumash class, of course. Talmud, of course. But there’s also Self, Soul, and Text. And Modern Jewish Thought. And Jewish Meditation. And the Social Justice track. The Peace and Conflict class. 
 
The other part of this discovery is happening through thinking hard and honestly about Continue reading →
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My Documentary: Finding Israel

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When I‘m not busy studying Torah at Pardes, this is what I‘m working on! Check out the website for our documentary project, and check out our promotional video:


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Yom HaZikaron

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Last week, I attended MASA’s Yom HaZikaron ceremony (טקס) with some other Pardesniks.  It had been six years since I had commemorated Israel’s two Memorial Days — for fallen soldiers and victims of terror since the founding of Israel and Holocaust Remembrance Day — in Israel, when I was a participant on March of the Living as a high school student.  I don’t remember connecting especially with Yom HaZikaron that year, especially in contrast to Yom HaShoah, whose importance was especially magnified then as I commemorated it by walking from Auschwitz to Auschwitz-Birkenau to mark the march that those imprisoned in Auschwitz were forced to endure.

This year, however, was different.  MASA deserves a lot of credit for creating a program that was meaningful for its specific demographic: young North American Jews living in Israel on various short and long-term programs.  After getting beyond some of the glitzier moments of the ceremony, the core was devoted to a series of mini-documentaries detailing the lives, and tragic deaths, of a number of IDF soldiers.  Most were victims of the Second Lebanon War, and many were American, again to help the audience relate.  The stories were raw, made even more so (again, in contrast to my last Israel Yon HaZikaron experience) by the fact that many of them were killed in battle before reaching their 23rd birthdays, which I celebrated a couple months ago.  As a seventeen-year-old living in Canada, the notion of going to war and being killed, of knowing friends who were killed, seemed a world away; living in Israel for a year, with friends who are making aliyah and planning to serve in the IDF, changes the picture drastically.

I identify as a pacifist, and see all war as inherently bad (though, at times, war can be justified).  Having spent a year in Israel and having the opportunity to commemorate Memorial Days which mean something, my pacifist leanings are only strengthened, as there is nothing like living in a country where every family has been touched by one of the many wars or terrorist attacks that have occurred in this young country to hammer home the notion that war ought to be avoided at all costs.

(This post was cross-posted to the MASA Blog!)
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2012 Poland Trip: A Journal Entry from April 18, 2012 (Erev Yom YaShoah)

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Being in Israel has taught me how to prepare. No, not how to properly pack bags, or take provisions for a hike – both of which are useful skills in this country, but how to prepare mentally. I noticed this immediately when I arrived. Pardes began as the month of Elul started, a time when traditionally we as Jews begin to self-reflect and learn in preparation for Yom Kippur. After a month of doing so, I experienced the most meaningful Yom Kippur of my life. All because I prepared.

For Pesach this year, a friend of mine decided to organize a communal seder because his mum was visiting. He asked each of the 10 people who attended to prepare by researching one part of the seder and to share what they learned with the group. We used this as the basis for our question asking and conversation at the seder, and were there engaging in lively discussion until 3 in the morning. Our preparation served us well.

Today Continue reading →

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