Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on October 26, 2011 by Barer
It has been a week since Gilad Shalit was released back to Israel as part of the prisoner swap Israel made with Hamas, freeing 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the soldier who had been in captivity for over five years. Trying to collate the different sources and viewpoints on this momentous event in modern Continue Reading »
Posted on October 25, 2011 by Barer
[Sorry for the delay; cross-posted from my blog] With the conclusion of Simchat Torah we are embarking upon reading the Torah from the beginning once again. For my own study, I have moved ahead (or behind, depending on who you ask) two generations to study the commentary of the Rashbam on the Torah. The Rashbam Continue Reading »
Posted on October 18, 2011 by Barer
For most of college, I yearned for a strong cultural connection. My freshman year, I went to Cost Rica, and so I became fascinated with Central America. I started learning Spanish, and it was all very interesting but it wasn’t something to which I could personally connect. Then sophomore year, I took a class in Continue Reading »
Posted on October 18, 2011 by Barer
Better late than never, as they say. Words of Torah are timeless, so I hope this is just as meaningful now, even though it was given at the year-opening Shabbaton by Pardes Fellow Kalie Kelman: I guess I pulled the short straw, so I’m giving the first d’var Torah of the weekend. But I promise Continue Reading »
Posted on October 4, 2011 by Barer
Judaism, one could argue, is obsessed with marking time as sacred, normal, or anywhere in between. At this time which Judaism demarcates as particularly sacred — we are in the middle of the Aseret Ye’mei Teshuva, the Ten Days of Repentance — it is hard not to be caught up in the spiritual fervour that Continue Reading »
Posted on September 22, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha is a short one (though on non-leap years it is read in conjunction with the next parsha), that reads more as a concluding statement on all of the activity of last week’s blessings-and-curses-filled parsha than anything else. A number of famous refrains are in this parsha, most notably the idea that the Continue Reading »
Posted on September 8, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha contains a panoply of laws, customs, and rituals, in no readily ascertainable order. Given the mixed nature of the parsha, a theme is harder to come by than in most weeks. I want to focus on a repeated phrase appearing in connection to a number of the negative commandments that I think Continue Reading »
Posted on September 6, 2011 by Barer
Having recently returned to studying at Pardes I have noticed that there are two basic types of Jewish pedagogy. There are countless Jewish texts, from the Torah to the most obscure commentaries, but regardless of the source being drawn on, a teacher can choose to present an idea or set of ideas in one of Continue Reading »
Posted on September 1, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha, Shoftim, contains the famous passage extolling justice. “Justice, justice you shall pursue, so that you shall live and inherit the land that Hashem your god has given you.” (16:20, emphasis mine). While this verse is so often quoted as if it contained only the first five words, it is important to note Continue Reading »
Posted on August 18, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha continues with a lot of the same themes as the preceding two, including the second paragraph of the Shma which talks about the agricultural importance of keeping the commandments, as if the Israelites fail to do so, the land that they have come to rely on (which is explicitly differentiated from Egypt Continue Reading »
