These and Those

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

Archive: December 2017

Learning to love my sons’ radical disobedience

Posted on December 24, 2017 by Rabbi Aryeh Ben David

This article was originally published in The Times of Israel. Click here for the link. We, religious Jews, are caught in a searing conundrum. On the one hand, we want to raise strong independent kids who make their own decisions; on the other hand, we are crushed when their choices are different from the ones Continue Reading »

#MeToo: Power, Agency, Voice and Consent in the Book of Genesis

Posted on December 21, 2017 by Jamie Bornstein

In light of the #MeToo campaign and the ongoing soul searching that we are doing as a country about sexual harassment, I have shared some thoughts below on Parashat Vayera, the fourth Torah portion of Sefer Bereishit, the Book of Genesis. In this Torah portion there is a very jarring string of sexually charged scenarios, Continue Reading »

Don’t let the light go out: Growing up Jewish in northern Vermont

Posted on December 10, 2017 by Saskia Swenson Moss

This post was originally published on The Times of Israel. Click here for the post. What makes Jewish identity stick? In Johnson, the small Vermont town that I grew up in, there were hardly any Jews. None of our neighbors was Jewish. There was no synagogue, no Jewish community center, no Jewish summer camp. Even Continue Reading »

End of Year Thoughts

Posted on May 11, 2017 by Rachel Dingman

I looked back on a blog post I wrote in 2014–my first summer here at Pardes. The blog post was titled “I’ve been saying watermelon a lot”. This phrase comes from an amazing Shabbat meal I had at Yaffa Epstein’s house. Everyone started singing and I looked around filled with confusion. Yaffa said “Sing along, Continue Reading »

Pardes is Like the City Walls

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Shoshana Raun

Do you ever have a day when the supermarket line is too long, bicyclists have taken over the sidewalks and you are fed up with seeing cats everywhere? I do, probably too often. But some days, I’ll be doing something routine – walking to a movie or riding on a bus – and suddenly the Continue Reading »