Tag Archives: personal growth / transformation

[Alumni Guest Post] Developing Myself

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Robyn (Year '08, PEP '10) is a third-year teacher.
She teaches High School Judaics at the Emory/Wiener School
in Houston, where she will continue in the fall.

EWSbcf436My name is Robyn Miller. Typically, May is not a good time to ask me about my life as a teacher. I’m about to finish my third year of teaching, although in many ways it’s been like my first (as I moved from elementary to high school teaching after year two). In May of my second “first year” of teaching, my primary goal is to make it to the finish line without permanently scarring anybody. However, with three weeks left to completing my Pardes commitment, it’s a great time to reflect on my experience as I start to think about what’s next.

Three years ago, I was terrified to have my own classroom. I didn’t feel I had the stamina or the knowledge to produce a year’s worth of lessons. Still, I had a commitment to fulfill, so I had to make the best of it. There were a few things I knew for sure: 1. Absolutely no middle school, 2. High school would be a heck of a lot of work, and 3. I wanted to live somewhere warm. So I started Continue reading →

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אחד – ONENESS

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From my blog:

Am I awake or asleep? Maybe a dreamlike state in between the two.

I leave my apartment 4:45 am to continue my journey

But all I am thinking about is my bed, snuggling between my warm blankets, head on my pillow. But then I thought of the people who used to walk, to travel for days, weeks during THIS day to get to the Beit haMikdash (the Temple) and I figured I could suck up the half an hour walk to the Kotel.

I didn’t even have to really pay attention to where I was going, I followed the people, each person coming from his/her home, learning center, dressed all differently, to walk to the same place.
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[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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Holy Arithmetic

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One

An outlander arrives in J-town.
Not my first time and G!d-willing, not my last.
In a newish role: student, not teacher!
The book is open.

Minus one

Disequilibrium: distance from home and life partner,
Jitters, does anyone understand who I am?
Do I understand who I am
In this novel circumstance?

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Irony’s Revenge: The Post-Modern Shidduch Date

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Jewish Dating Tips #1: If we call ourselves single, we make ourselves lonely—A single is a person shipwrecked on an island. Adam HaRishon, the first man was single. Nobody else has been single since. When you feel alone and single, make your life more meaningful. Start appreciating those around you. Use the most precious gift an unmarried person has – your free time – to help others.

Black yarmulke? Check. White shirt? Check. Black pants? Check. Black Shabbos shoes? Check. Tzitzit out? Check. Sense of self?….As I walk down my street, telling a lie with each footstep, I feel the stares and the subtle resentment of each passerby as they rightfully judge me as something I’m not. I never thought of t-shirts, jean shorts, colorful knitted kippas, and tiztizit, as a statement of who I am before, but in this moment, I long to be me again. Or at least to get to my “date”’s house sooner where they get it.

When I arrive, she’s in the bathroom putting the finishing touches on her costume. From the back, I can already see the difference. The vivacious girl known for wearing clothing so loud that if it actually covered more of her body, everyone within a 10-yard radius would be in danger of becoming blind and deaf, has transformed herself into Frumma Blahstein for our “date.”

“Call me Shua,” I say, arms behind my back and avoiding her gaze as though making eye-contact were signing a ketuba kesuba.

“I’m Nomi,” she says, doing the same (I guess). “Laura, take our picture! Derek, let’s make this as awkward as possible!”

“It’s Shua, and that won’t be hard,” I say. We settle on a position on either side of a plant and look anywhere but at each other. “This is going to be so much fun!” we say, almost in unison.

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The Reason that my Tallit Belongs at the Kotel

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Reflections on Rosh Hodesh Sivan with Women of the Wall, 5773 – 2013

Throughout the year I have studied here in Jerusalem, I have learned that the Wall has its own identity crisis. It is part of a larger structure that was built and carried, lost, built again and then destroyed, and built again, and built over again and destroyed again. There are more stages in between of deeper and deeper details. The figurative symbol of complete purity, it was more often an embodiment of utter corruption. The man who inspired the design of the particular Wall before which we stand today was a gifted, paranoid maniac, maddened by grief and riches and conflicting loyalties. The Temple itself, and the Wall it became, changed owners and took on ideologies of shocking variance over the centuries. And yet here it still stands, a testament to physical stability, containing all of its tumultuous history behind the serenity of its stones.

On the first Shabbat I was in Jerusalem, I walked with a group of very new friends into the Old City for the first time. I knew nothing about it except that it was the last of the Temple, a remnant of a Judaism from long ago, one with which I had trouble relating, but that it was “supposed to”, maybe, inspire a surge of feeling within me. Perhaps a feeling of closeness to the Divine? Perhaps an intense unification with the Jewish people? Perhaps bafflement or even, perhaps nothing? I was curious, and determined not to judge whatever feeling arose. Continue reading →

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What A Pardes Student Thinks About on Mother’s Day

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What A Pardes Student Thinks About on Mother’s Day

(if they hold by it)

I think about you most when I’m walking around Jerusalem. It is so beautiful- tiny curved streets with antique stone houses. Everything is a little bit smaller and closer together (perfectly sized for me) or maybe it all just seems little and quaint because every building has to be uncovered by your eyes from all of the amazing plants. Tall thin trees, tropical flowers in huge bushes full, palm trees, vines in full like trees themselves all covered with flowers I’ve never seen before.

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Walking down the street you’re suddenly overcome by some new fragrance. It’s half amazement at the smell and half curiosity that makes me stop in my tracks and investigate the new color/ shape/ feel of some completely unique flower. I always think how you would love all of the flowers, and I like to imagine in those moments that if you were here you would Continue reading →

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[Alumni Guest Post] Ready!

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Sarah Margles (Year '02, PEP '04) reflects upon preparing
for Shavuot... what does "readiness" mean?

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I remember when I first started at Pardes, I would spend much of Fridays getting ready for Shabbat – shopping, cooking, cleaning. When the siren went to light candles, my roommate would inevitably yell out, while running from the bathroom in a towel, “But I’m not ready!!” When we speak of Jewish holidays, we often say things like, “The holidays are so early this year,” or “I love it when Pesach is late.” There is something about readiness that seems integral to our Jewish experience.

Shavuot has a lot to teach about readiness. In Shmot 19:11, as the people are getting ready to receive Torah, God tells Moses to tell the people to go prepare for God will arrive on the third day. But Continue reading →

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[Alumni Guest Post] To my amazing friends

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Shira Abramowitz (Fall 2012) sent us this postcard
from Cape Town, South Africa!

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To my amazing friends over in Talpiyot,

Chag Sameach! (Although I understand it may not still be Pesach once this reaches you!)

Just want to send some love & gratitude to your incredible community – I think about you all so much as I travel around the world, and can’t thank you enough for everything you gave to me over the 4 months of fall semester. From amazing life lessons to challenging contexts, to lifelong friendships… Continue reading →

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Discovery at Pardes (a Fond Farewell)

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Giving my farewell at Pardes last Thursday... It's been an amazing 2 years.

Giving my farewell at Pardes
last Thursday…
It’s been an amazing 2 years.

Here is a written version of the davar I gave last Thursday:

This week we transition from the book for Vayikra to Bamidmar. the first event recorded here is a census taken of all mahane Yisrael (the camp of Israel). Even though the goal here is to know how many adult males are among B’nei Yisrael (children of Israel), individual tribal units are maintained in the counting, each tribe taking its own census. On top of this, each person is counted le-gulgilotam (by his head) – that is, as an individual.

In a drash by Rav Meir Kahn, he relates: “There is no evidence of a nation-wide melting pot creating a homogeneous entity, which suppresses any expression of non-conformity. Bnei Yisrael form a harmonious society, not a uniform one.”

I could not think of a better analogy for Mechon Pardes. Continue reading →

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