Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on March 2, 2014 by Yisrael Ben Avraham
Is it just me, or does the opening of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas sound a lot like the Torah’s ingredient list for the incense offering? We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored Continue Reading »
Posted on June 2, 2013 by David Bogomolny
Here is the reflection I shared at Community Lunch last week- One of the many things that I tell people when discussing Pardes is that I wanted to study here before I ever knew that Pardes existed. As a college student I started wearing a kippah publicly before I had any idea what halakha was Continue Reading »
Posted on May 27, 2013 by Derek Kwait
At the end of last year, I gave the world “The Kwait“ the necessarily abridged First Edition of The Practical Dictionary of the Pardes Lexicon. Now, as my Pardes experience comes to a close, I present this still necessarily abridged Second Edition, to be known as “The Kwait Shayni.” This edition, like its predecessor, is Continue Reading »
Posted on March 6, 2013 by Naomi Bilmes
From my blog: I am presently having an odd experience of disconnect. The premise is this: Bad things keep happening to me. In the grand scheme of life, they are not terrible things: no death, no serious illness, no natural disasters. But sometimes the little things seem even more powerful, especially in a world of Continue Reading »
Posted on May 19, 2012 by Derek Kwait
(X-posted from my home blog, Yinzer in Yerushalayim) One of the unadvertised perks of Pardes is that after studying holy texts in their original in the Beit Midrash for a whole year, no matter how advanced your Hebrew level, you come away with a black-belt in using dictionaries. Yet I have noticed that for all Continue Reading »
Posted on May 29, 2011 by Tamara Frankel
Dear Friends, This afternoon during my Tanach class I took a poll of students and staff asking the following questions: have you spent (significant) time in the desert? If yes, how did it feel? How would you describe your experience(s) there? The reason I took this poll is because these questions have followed me as Continue Reading »
Posted on May 23, 2011 by Tamara Frankel
Dear Friends, This week’s parsha, Parshat Bechukotai, has prompted me to return to the subject of Israel and explore my relationship and understandings of this place as a reality and an ideal. There is a bizarre word in the parsha, which funnily enough I’ve encountered countless times before reading the parsha this week, as it Continue Reading »
Posted on May 19, 2011 by The Director of Digital Media
A Testimonial by Avigail Hurvitz-Prinz About a month ago my Talmud class did an exercise where we shared our reasons for studying Gemora. Everyone had their own reasons, and my list came up to a total of 21 reasons as wide ranging as “intellectual challenge” and “to have a sense of the Rabbinic world” or Continue Reading »
Posted on February 8, 2011 by Pious Antic
Rabbi Yitzhak Frank gave a lecture on Aramaic grammar at Pardes last week. The casual reader of this blog could be forgiven for failing to leap out of his chair in excitement after reading the above sentence. I, however, was simply giddy when I walked into the beit midrash and saw Rabbi Frank standing there Continue Reading »
Posted on May 2, 2010 by Naomi Adland
Well, we seem to have taken a bit of a vacation here at These and Those, but I think it’s high time that the blog gets back in action. A few weeks ago, I was innocently walking down the hallway when I heard a phrase that will always strike fear into my heart – “Naomi, Continue Reading »
