Tag Archives: courses

[PCJE Dvar Torah] From Desert to Dessert: a Shavuot Reflection – by Tani Cohen-Fraade

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482032_653224635726_553887523_nIn Rabbi Meir Schewiger’s Parashat ha-Shavuah (weekly Torah Portion) class, while learning Sefer Shemot (Book of Exodus), we spoke about the desert as a place where one goes to prepare for Torah study. When B’nei Yisrael (Children of Israel) leave Egypt, they flee through the desert and are on the run until they get to Yam Suf (Red Sea) and cross to safety. Even after getting to Har Sinai (Mt. Sinai) and receiving the Torah, they still spend another 40 years in the desert wandering and preparing to enter into the Land. On the festival of Shavuot, we celebrate Zman Matan Torateinu (our receiving of the Torah at Sinai). We have just finished counting the Omer, the period of time from Pesach up to Shavuot and while we have now received the Torah and have celebrated this by a long night of learning and Torah study, B’nei Yisrael is still in the desert. For the rest of this year, leading up to the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) and Simchat Torah, we will continue to follow them as they travel through the wilderness in preparation for their entry into Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel). I liked the idea of the desert as a place for preparation and when I thought back over the last few years of my life I began to like it even more.

In the fall of 2010, I had been living and working at home in Connecticut, teaching in the Jewish community for a year after graduating college and I was ready for a change. I volunteered with the Kibbutz Program Center and after consulting with friends of friends, was placed on Kibbutz Yahel in the very south of Israel, about a 40 minutes north of Eilat in a region called the Arrava. Arrava means wilderness and this was exactly what I found when I got there. This was the absolute middle of Continue reading →

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Dr. Micah Goodman: “What the Israeli elections teach us about Israeli society”

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mgJust a couple weeks ago, Dr. Micah Goodman of the Ein Prat Academy visited us at Pardes to address the student body at shiur clali.

His insights into Israeli society were stimulating and refreshing. His analysis, based on the election results, that Israeli society is moving towards Jewish pluralism and openness was inspiring and very much complemented what I have been studying in my Modern Jewish Thought class. In that class, we have explored the tension between the particular and universal aspects of Judaism. Micah pointed out that as more secular Israelis learn Torah, Continue reading →

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The Big Fat “R”

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From my blog:

I am presently having an odd experience of disconnect. The premise is this:

Reality to the left. Brain to the right. Keep reading for further explanation.

Reality to the left. Brain to the right. Keep reading for further explanation.

Bad things keep happening to me. In the grand scheme of life, they are not terrible things: no death, no serious illness, no natural disasters. But sometimes the little things seem even more powerful, especially in a world of rampant individualism and competitive goal fulfillment (but I can only speak for myself. I can’t say the same for you because I’m too busy maximizing my own potential).

Without getting too specific (it’s tempting, but I have to keep in mind that this blog is public), let’s just say that all of the bad things in the past week can be lumped together into one category: Continue reading →

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Eretz HaQedoshah

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I shared these words with the Pardes community at
Community Lunch last week before my (temporary!) departure:

My experience here in Israel and at Pardes has been breathtaking. I feel the following verse playing itself out here for me in terms of things I’ve done, places and people I’ve seen, delicacies I’ve tasted:

אנכי ה` אלקיך, המעלך מארץ מצרים, הרחב-פיך ואמלאהו:

I am Hashem Your G-d, who brought you up from the land of Mitzrayim, open your mouth and I will fill it. (Tehillim 81)

I’d like to publicly thank Hashem for all the good and all the experiences he has provided me in my life thus far. I’d like to pay a deep hakarat hatov to Rabbi Landes, to Falynn, Meesh, Donna, all my teachers, and especially to you all who have welcomed me with open arms, with warmth, showing personal interest in my experience and having good times inside these walls and outside.

Parashat Terumah is about crafting the radio with which we converse with G-d. Following this, G-d will dwell in us (WeShakhanti Bethokham). We human beings are an integral component in that radio transmission process. We have to work hard to fashion ourselves – work hard on ourselves to Continue reading →

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Social Justice class heads South

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Last semester, Meesh Hammer-Kossoy’s Social Justice class made a visit to Lakiya, a recognized Bedouin village, and Sderot, a city well known for its 12-year history as a target for projectile strikes from Gaza.

In Lakiya, we visited Sidreh-Lakiya Negev Weaving, a nonprofit that advocates for Bedouin women and their families by providing economic development and educational opportunities. A young Bedouin woman spoke to us about Bedouin life. I was impressed by her determination, intelligence and attachment to the land where she lives. I also heard her anger about policies of Israel towards Bedouins and Palestinians. We also had an opportunity to view and buy woven crafts from the weaving shop.

At the main police station in Sderot, we viewed a sobering collection of missiles that have fallen on the city. A representative of the Sderot Media Center arranged several encounters with local residents that gave us a sense of the psychological toll of living with daily danger. Last, we visited a small urban kibbutz and heard from a member who expressed discomfort with oppositional framing of the conflict between Israel and its Palestinian residents and neighbors, despite his family’s close calls with missiles. In Sderot, as in Lakiya, we heard the residents’ deep attachment to the ground on which they live.

Our class visits to Lakiya and Sderot help me understand the complexities of contemporary Israeli life. When I return to Montana, I can express a Zionism that is nuanced by an appreciation of many voices in Israeli society, a view informed by hearing personal accounts from many perspectives.

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do not make your self afraid at all, the world is a very narrow bridge

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From my blog:

The important thing to remember is to not make yourself afraid at all

Somehow this song, always comes back to me. In times that i least expect it….

I first came across this song at Jewish sleep away camp, singing it on the top top of my little lungs

Kol Ha’olam kulo
Gesher Tsar me’od.
Veha’ikar – veha’ikar
Lo lefached -
lo lefached klal.
The whole world
is a very narrow bridge -
And the main thing to recall -
is not to be afraid -
not to be afraid at all.

But I am not sure I really understood the song. Continue reading →

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What’s in a (Jewish) name?

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From my blog:

With the tenth of February just around the corner, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been in Israel for a month already. I have big plans for my time abroad, and while I’ve mostly been happily consumed with Jewish studies at Pardes, I feel like there’s still just so much for me to accomplish and experience in the short months that I have here this time around. Either time really does fly by too quickly when you’re enjoying your life, or I’m just not taking the initiative to make it all happen in the allotted time that I have to be a Jerusalemite, until that distant, undetermined date of aliyah arrives. More than likely, it’s a bit of both.

Now that I’ve returned to Jerusalem, several of the things that I had planned to do or decisions I’d planned to finalize have crept up on me and now stare me in the face as they remain unresolved. Moving abroad for five months takes some serious planning, and hopefully I’ve learned a thing or two from my previous trips abroad, like how to not run out of money; turns out, you need the stupid stuff to live on. For me, most planning involves crossing things off of lists that were hastily made in a late night panic after unsettling nightmares that remind me that things need to get done–things to shop for, things to not forget to pack, and things to take care of before leaving the country and find you should have done too late, such as notifying your bank that you are leaving the country, and will use the ATM while you’re gone, so please, please, please, don’t Continue reading →

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[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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Dear Marla and Ben:

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lhDear Marla and Ben:

I feel connected to you even though I never knew you. The moment that you were killed was a powerful moment in my own personal narrative relating to Israel. I was scheduled to come to Israel for a semester of high school in the fall of 2002. All summer, I was worried about the situation in Israel. It wasn’t clear if the program I was going on was still going to run and people I knew were dropping out because they didn’t feel safe. After the bombing at Hebrew U, the program was officially cancelled. I was disappointed, but mostly very concerned for the sake of the State of Israel and all of the people living there. Luckily, it only postponed my journey to Israel by a semester and I was able to come on the spring term instead.

Last year I came to Pardes after working for three years at Hillel. I came for a lot of reasons, but the main one was that I wanted to invest in my own Jewish development. My long-term desire to work in Jewish communities was not a driving factor. I simply desired to learn Jewish texts. Continue reading →

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Soul Surviving in Jerusalem

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From my blog:

It appears that I may have two souls.

My first soul isn’t sure how it feels about this. Previously, it was always the center of attention, benefiting from activities that are “good for the soul” – like yoga, baking and writing (note that I said soul, not souls). Now, however, it appears that the love might have to be shared – or maybe it has been shared all along.

According to Kabbalistic thought, each person has an animal soul (הנפש הבהמי) and a pure soul (הנשמה הטהורה). The animal soul is concerned with “me” and “now,” while the pure soul is concerned with “me & others” and “now & later.” The animal soul tells me to fly down the hill on my bike at 30 miles per hour because it’s fun. The pure soul tells me to use the brakes because I still want two legs when I’m done with the bike ride.

I learned this soul concept whilst in a class entitled “Relationships” at Pardes. The first relationship we are covering is the relationship between us, and, well, ourselves. After we discussed the division of soul into animal and pure, we discovered that the pure soul has five “voices”:   Continue reading →

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