Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on June 3, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
From my blog: Stu and I spent our last afternoon in Jerusalem running errands. One of those errands was a final visit to the Kotel to put a note in the wall. Stu collected prayers from family members and hand-copied them from emails, even including typos so each person’s prayer went in exactly as written. Continue Reading »
Posted on May 8, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
From my blog: This piece was an assignment for the Hartman Rabbinical Students Seminar. We were asked to choose one poem or song that we studied and one other piece of text that we studied, share a line or a paragraph from each and a reflection on it. Ever the overachiever, I ended up weaving Continue Reading »
Posted on May 2, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
Wednesday morning, at our weekly Creative Shacharit, I led a Kohenet style davenning. This means that the liturgy of the service follows the arc of a traditional shacharit service but is often not traditional liturgy. This particular service is compiled from chants and prayers from the Kohenet siddur and from my own writing and repertoire. Continue Reading »
Posted on April 28, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
Today at Pardes, we had the honour and the pleasure of dancing our new sefer Torah, (donated in honour of a recent Bat Mitzvah) around the school. We heard lovely divrei Torah from Pardes student, Dr. Aileen Heinberg and from Rav Landes. There was some mention made of the fact that a Hachnasat Sefer Torah Continue Reading »
Posted on April 13, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
From my blog: The following snippets were written as part of a Storahtelling exercise to help us get to know the characters/voices with which we are teaching Torah. We are working with some verses from Parshat Vayera, Genesis Chapter 21, verses 8-10. In character, we were asked to answer the following questions: My biggest regret Continue Reading »
Posted on April 2, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
Among the many blessings I have experienced this year is the Ayeka course facilitated by David Bogomolny. I share here some of my favourite take-aways from the course (handily preserved in my writing exercises and reflections.) This module was about bringing God back to the conversation. I felt like it gave me a place to Continue Reading »
Posted on April 2, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
From my blog: Thanks to The Velveteen Rabbi for alerting me that http://wordxwordfestival.com/ is having a 30 poems in 30 days contest. (I don’t think there are prizes but they do publish poems on their website, if you submit them.) I have subscribed to http://3030poetry.com/ for the daily prompts and have begun! I can’t guarantee I will write a poem a Continue Reading »
Posted on March 14, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
From my blog: This piece is a response to a prompt by Melila Helner Eshed in a class at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Stories within stories Clamping shut and Breaking open With sharp, jagged edges That draw blood And push me back So I stay at arm’s length But inside, if I stretch the skin Continue Reading »
Posted on March 13, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
This Rosh Hodesh was my second time attending Rosh Hodesh davenning at WoW. Last month, I was glad to check it out and feel like I was part of something important but between the cameras and security, I struggled to feel like I was davenning. This Rosh Hodesh, two amazing things happened. 1) I got Continue Reading »
Posted on February 21, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert
This fast comes in contrast with the feasting of Purim to come. In the Purim story, Esther asked Mordechai to ask the Jews to fast for three days. Some texts say this is because they were preparing for battle and others say this was to invoke God’s help and protection. There are two Hebrew words Continue Reading »
