These and Those

Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem

Turkey 2017: Hitting the Ground Running

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Jesse Nagelberg

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We’re here! After weeks of meeting, planning programs, and discussing the history, politics, and culture of Turkey, we finally flew to Istanbul this morning to start our six-day journey exploring the city and working with the Jewish communities here.

Once we landed, we hit the ground running with visits to the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, the Basilica Cistern, the Blue Mosque, and the Grand Bazar. (Check out Pardes’ Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for pictures from all of these sites!) After our afternoon of sight-seeing, we got back on the bus and made our way (through A LOT of traffic) to the Jewish Day School to eat dinner with and run a program for some of the madrichim of Aleph, the local Jewish youth movement.

While there are so many details of the day I could choose to share here, I can’t help but share the results of the program we ran with the Aleph madrichim, which centered around this question: How can you express how you feel about Shabbat? We looked at the text of the Lecha Dodi, learned about the origins of the prayer, and discussed how Rabbi Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz so poetically expressed his love for Shabbat. And then we challenged each discussion group to create their own expression of their feelings about Shabbat. And what we came out with were four entirely different, but equally creative, inspired, and thoughtful representations of affection for Shabbat.

Enjoy the different creations that came out of tonight’s program!

Jesse Nagelberg
Year Program 2016-2017