These and Those

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

Archive: January 2012

Sh’mot, Pardes, and I

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Derek Kwait

(X-posted from my home blog, Yinzer in Yerushalayim) Last year on Parshat Sh’mot, I gave the following speech at Young People’s Synagogue where I announced my intention to apply to Pardes for the coming year. As it turns out, once I got to Pardes, I spent most of the first semester in Chumash studying Parshat Continue Reading »

Week 18: True Piety

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Derek Kwait

After getting over Hevron, the subject on everyone’s minds and lips all last week was the craziness in Beit Shemesh. I was going to write this blog post with a lot of complaints about how more people aren’t speaking out against this behavior, but since I could have attended the protest and did not, perhaps Continue Reading »

Week 17: Chanuka

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Derek Kwait

(X-posted from my home blog, Yinzer in Yerushalayim) Menorah at the Jerusalem Great Synagogue   This was actually my second Chanuka in Israel, I was here on Birthright in December 2008. So the menorahs on the streetlights, the Chabad menorahs in every public square, the impossibly delicious-looking sufganiyot* everywhere, and the total lack of anything Continue Reading »

Week 16: “Emotional Education”

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Derek Kwait

(X-posted from my home blog, Yinzer in Yerushalayim) Nearly all of Pardes went to Hevron in the West Bank Sunday. It spent the rest of the week needing therapy. I think I faired better than most, however, because I went into it knowing what to expect and I got it in spades: It is by Continue Reading »

Mikketz, Chanukah, the Holocaust, and Dreams: a D’var Torah from 2009

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Derek Kwait

At my shul back home, Young People’s Synagogue, members take turns giving the d’var Torah each Saturday morning. This is one I gave for Parashat Mikketz/Shabbat Chanukah on December 19, 2009 about the parsha, Chanukah, and the Holocaust. For what it’s worth, these themes repeated themselves again this year when we began learning about the Continue Reading »

Week 15: Exoduses

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Derek Kwait

On Sunday the 11th, the Social Justice Track went on a tiyyul to South Tel-Aviv to explore the situation of refugees and migrant workers in Israel. Refugees in Israel are mostly asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their native Sudan, Darfur, and Eritrea. While walking through South Tel-Aviv, it is easy to forget you are still Continue Reading »

Week 14: Things I Love About Israel

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Derek Kwait

(X-posted from my home blog, Yinzer in Yerushalayim) (In no order) *People here really look out for you. I know I’ve written about this at least twice before, but I really can’t get over it: Last week, when I went to pay utility bills at the post office, when I finally got to see the Continue Reading »

Week 13: Something New and Different

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Derek Kwait

(X-posted from my home blog, Yinzer in Yerushalayim) Americans living in Israel typically celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday night for Shabbat dinner, as the old joke goes, there is second day of Yom Tov in the Diaspora. Since the tiyyul made celebrating on Thursday impossible for most of us, my friend Michael (pronounced מיכאל, “Mee-kha-el”) treated Continue Reading »

Week 12: The Negev Tiyyul

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Derek Kwait

We went to the Negev just as Jerusalem was starting to get really, really depressing. Every day last week was so incessantly rainy and cold, like a Kennywood day in Pittsburgh, that a trip to the desert was just what I needed to re-energize myself and feel excited and alive again. The tiyyul was about Continue Reading »

MOVEMBER UPDATE: WEEK 3

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Derek Kwait

My current ‘stache ranks somewhere between Hulk Hogan and Wilford Brimley. SUPPORT THE CAUSE!!!