My Modern Jewish Thoughts

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Naomi Bilmes

From my blog:

The most challenging course I am taking at Pardes is called “Critical Issues in Modern Jewish Thought.” There is no Hebrew involved. There is no Aramaic. I don’t even have to memorize birth and death dates of famous Jewish thinkers. What I do have to do, however, is think for myself. And it’s hard.

Cynthia Ozick, American-Jewish author and essayist

During each session, we alternate between group discussion and silent reading. We read philosophers such as A.J. Heschel, Mordechai Kaplan, Rav Soloveitchik, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, and Cynthia Ozick. We covered topics such as the nature of God, the authorship of the Torah, the authority of Halahkah, and post-Holocaust theology. At the end of each unit, a few students volunteer to give a presentation: as a class, we generate a series of questions that the presenting students have to answer. Next week, I will be presenting on the topic of Feminism in Judaism. Today, while preparing to speak about this topic, I found myself spending many thoughts and minutes on each sentence; this is a tough issue that I care about greatly. It inspired a good deal of personal reflection, and Continue reading →

The Big Fat “R”

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Naomi Bilmes

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.

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 →

Script for “Who is a True Canadian?”

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Stuart Matan Lithwick

Hello everybody!

Here is the script for the great Canadian Purim shpiel that I put on, along with all of my other fellow Canucks, this year! Enjoy

Stuart

Who is a true Canadian?

Cast Members: Stuart Matan Lithwick, Annie Matan Gilbert, Daniella Adler, Rachel Rosenbluth, Cait Power, Ruth Wicks, Avi Spodek, Derek Kwait, and Laura Herman

Characters: Crowd, Announcer, Ahace Veroce, Nicole Vashette, Maurice Duchai, Danielle Estaire, Frank Wilson, Jennifer Baker, Bobby-Sue Dixon, Mary Smith, Rachel Finkel

Scene 1:

Characters: Crowd, Announcer, Ahace Veroce, Nicole Vashette

Background: Crowd cheering… Ca na da! Ca na da! Ca na da!

Announcer (in a bad French Canadian accent): Ladies and gentlemen! Do you think you are a true Canadian? It’s not just anyone who can live up here! Let me introduce two people who put the nads in the name Canada and make us proud. Your true Canadians. From the beautiful province of Quebec:

Ahace Veroce AND Nicole Vashette

Continue reading →

The Magic Touch

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Naomi Bilmes

From my blog:

Sometimes, a simple touch can make all the difference.

Hugging one of my best friends.

In the Jewish world, some girls don’t touch boys. Some girls touch some boys. Some girls touch only one boy, and everyone hugs their mother. As a part of this world, I have become especially attuned to the presence and absence of human touch.

In high school, I thought nothing of it. I hugged my friends (girls and guys) and high-fived with abandon. The one time I was asked to go out of my comfort zone was when playing Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank. Every knows about Anne and Peter, and my director had the specific idea that the kiss had to be long – very long. Continue reading →

My two loves: Torah and Theater

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Leah S.

My life in Israel this year has been amazing. I’ve been so lucky to make new friends, learn new things, and experience everything that is Israel.

Most of my day is spent at Pardes, where I’ve had to opportunity to learn with faculty and peers about everything Jewish, from the tefillot in the siddur to Masechet Ketubot. But most people don’t know what I do most days of the week after 5 o’clock, where I am transported to a entirely different world.

Continue reading →

[Student Profile] Rob Murstein

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Bogo

Rob Murstein comes from a ‘very liturgical’ family; they attend Shabbat services every Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon until havdalah. Rob’s father is a regular Torah reader at shul, his brother studied chazzanut with their cantor, and Rob himself read Torah at shul for the first time when he was six years old; and then again at age seven when his brother and sister became b’nai mitzvah. The Mursteins also enjoyed their long Pesach seders, reveling in singing Birkat Hamazon.

At age 11, the young man began to study Chumash, Mishnah and Gemara with his rabbi, which whetted his appetite for Jewish learning, and he increasingly grew to wonder about Judaism beyond his affiliation with the other members of his family’s Boca Raton country club. Rob’s five summers at Camp Ramah Darom also gave him exposure to many empowered, inspiring staff members; and sharpened his sense that there was something more to Judaism that he wasn’t finding in his home environment.

Then – not long after Rob’s bar mitzvah – Continue reading →

[Student Profile] Avi Strausberg

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Bogo

After graduating from Northwestern University in 2005 with a major in theater, Avi Strausberg (2010-2011) started a non-profit theater company called the ‘Hometown Theater Project’, and continued acting and directing in Chicago for nearly three years before she found herself becoming antsy.

“I wanted to be some place beautiful, and I became interested in organic eating & farming — so I moved to New Zealand to farm and manage an organic grocery store!

But after about a year in New Zealand, I realized that I really missed having a Jewish community… and then I heard about ‘Adamah’.”

In the Fall of 2008 Avi joined Adamah, and found exactly what she had been looking for. She lived in, farmed along with, and celebrated Shabbat with her new Jewish community, and even started exploring the texts of the siddur and Tanakh on her own.

After completing her three month Adamah program, Avi felt that she wanted to continue Jewish text study, and she spent the Summer of 2009 learning at Elat Chayyim before moving to NYC to begin a prestigious, year-long fellowship at Yeshivat Hadar. As one of 18 Fellows, Avi learned a great deal at Hadar. She developed her Talmud study and shaliach tzibbur skills, and she became inspired to study towards the rabbinate.

At Yeshivat Hadar Avi also met her girlfriend Chana Kupetz, another Fellow, who had come from Israel to study Torah for the year after completing her Israeli Army service. After being accepted into Hebrew College for rabbinical studies, Avi deferred to live and study Torah in Israel for a year, and she selected the Pardes Year Program for its diverse student body.

At Pardes, Avi can be found leading the egalitarian minyan as its gabbai, and grabbing volumes of Talmud off the shelves of the beit midrash with her chevruta. In Talmud class, Rabbi Zvi Hirschfield pushes Avi to become an independent Gemara student, and she finds herself greatly appreciating the skills that she learned from Leah Rosenthal at dissecting and clarifying Amoritic texts… some day, she’d like to integrate her new text skills with her passion for theater and the arts.

“I’d like to synthesize text with the creative energy of the arts to create deeper connections with the material, and make it more relevant and more personally meaningful. This was my vision for the Haiku Torah Project, which I began on Simchat Torah.”

UPDATE: Avi received the Wexner Fellowship for next year!

פקודי, pekudei

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Avi S.

in this week’s parsha, פקודי, the משכן is finally built. thanks to the work of bezalel and his team of craftsmen, the tabernacle, the priestly clothing, and all of their accoutrements are constructed exactly as God commanded through moshe. God then instructs moshe to set up the משכן on the 1st of the 1st month, with its tables and breads, its altars and incense, its lamps and lavers exactly in the proscribed locations. sure enough, the 1st of the 1st month of the 2nd year rolls around, and the Torah then details the work of the lone artist moshe setting up the משכן exactly as commanded.

the solo work and the precision required strikes me as a theatrical production, finally culminating in the finished piece, the house of God, center stage. piece by piece, he builds the house from discarded objects, old car parts, worn tires, thought to be without beauty or holiness. however, once annointed with oil and consecrated to God, these objects come together to form the holiest of all places, the משכן. as moshe stands back to admire his work, or cowers somewhere off left in awe of what the israelites have together created, the cloud of God takes its place over God’s new house, a fire blazing within. moshe and the audience look on in some mix of reverence, fear, devotion. the stage is enveloped in silence. or an increasingly dramatic piece of classical music plays from an old boombox in the corner.

as one way of envisioning the work of moshe and the setting up of the משכן, i appreciated looking to the opening stage directions of charles mee’s play, “the house of cards.”

The piece plays out at a very slow, dream-like pace.
The setting is beautiful, exquisite.
A live tree is to one side.
Elsewhere is a woman with a cello.
A man builds a house of cards throughout the entire piece
so that the house of cards becomes a vast, elaborate structure. (charles mee)

—

he enters alone,
tentatively, he begins
work of precision.

a mounting tension,
as pieces come together,
his purpose realized.

may we find holiness in our work and purpose in our hands,

avi

[Student Profile] Samahra Zatzman

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Bogo

Samahra (Spring ’11) first found the words to describe her passion for ‘bridging communities’ as a York University student upon receiving the annual ‘Partnership and Outreach’ award from UJA and Hillel of Greater Toronto for activism as Hillel ‘Tzedek’ Chair.

After completing her B.A. Honors in theater and B.Ed. in education, Samahra continued to pursue cross-cultural education as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of the Ashkenaz Foundation. She developed the ‘Ashkenaz in The Schools’ program, as well as the ‘Campus Representative’ program, striving to create exciting community education opportunities, even as she began to plan the next leg of her own education: a semester of Torah study in Israel.

While planning her journey, Samahra came with Pardes alumna Deb Cole (’09-’10) to hear Yaffa Epstein teach at ‘The House’ in Toronto. Afterwards, they stood in the chilly evening air, speaking about her yearning for Torah study, and Samahra made mention of her interest in cross-cultural dialogue and education.

“My dream is to ‘bridge communities’ through the arts so when Yaffa told me about the ‘Peace & Conflict Track’, I knew I had to come! It was hard to leave ‘Ashkenaz’, but I wanted to ground my vision in Jewish tradition, and Pardes is davka the place for bridging complicated worldviews!”

Now at Pardes, Samahra’s fascination with Rabbi Daniel Roth’s ‘Peace & Conflict Track’ grows, even as she finds herself being drawn into intense, interdenominational discussions of theology in Rabbi Zvi Hirschfield’s ‘Critical Issues in Jewish Thought’ class. Not one for labels, Samahra is continuously discovering that various faith statements of different Jewish denominations speak to her.

A humanistic Zionist at heart, Samahra has now visited Israel four times on educational and volunteer programs, and she is particularly excited to maintain her commitment to social action as a Pardes volunteer for the Sulha Peace Project – working at the grassroots level to ‘bridge communities’ here in Israel.

“I think my exploration and learning at Pardes will deepen my understanding of Jewish tradition, and empower me to better understand others – I’m always keeping in mind the ‘rodef shalom’ concept – always ‘bridging communities’!”

Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies

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