Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on January 21, 2013 by David Bogomolny
Sydni Adler (Year ’13) and Ben Gurin (Year ’13) met during the Summer of ’10 in Washington DC, as participants on the Mechon Kaplan program of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Together with their cohort, they took classes on Social Justice and Judaism, and each interned for an NGO; Sydni worked on campaign Continue Reading »
Posted on January 17, 2013 by The Director of Digital Media
A thought about halakha by Jeremy Sorgen (Spring ’11): When one cooks for another, one cooks with love. Cooking becomes an act of devotion and the food tastes better because it is made with a key ingredient: care. One must strive to do everything this way, that is, as a means of expressing love. Devotion Continue Reading »
Posted on January 16, 2013 by David Bogomolny
One Aspect of Halakha that is Particularly Meaningful to Me “Anyone who identifies as Jewish today only need go back three or four generations to find observant Jews in their family. And from there an unbroken chain of Jewish living that goes back more than three thousand years. Not that everyone has always been observant. Continue Reading »
Posted on January 16, 2013 by The Director of Digital Media
Sara Brandes (Year ’01, Fellows ’02, Elul ’05) shares her Pardes reflections: I met my friend, teacher and fellow Pardes alumna Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer during the summer before I arrived at Pardes, as a participant in the Brandeis Collegiate Institute. Inspired by her teaching and hungry for more, I sought her out. When I told Continue Reading »
Posted on January 12, 2013 by Andrea Wiese
From my blog: “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. I know this sounds naive, Continue Reading »
Posted on December 26, 2012 by Avi Benson-Goldberg
(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) At Pardes, it is easy to look at our faculty and see inhumanly perfect beings. This is an unfair assessment. Don’t tell Rabbi Eliezer I said this, but sometimes kavod rabbeinu (respect for our teachers) can go too far in making it impossible to see something of ourselves in Continue Reading »
Posted on December 22, 2012 by Adam L Masser
The Torah presents an idealized world in Eretz Yisrael. It describes an agricultural society with certain egalitarian features and a strong ethic of taking care of each other. Everyone has an inherited plot of land, sufficient to support a family. The Israelites are even told by G-d to trust that there will be enough food Continue Reading »
Posted on December 17, 2012 by Adam L Masser
Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, an Orthodox rabbi and the head of the Petah Tikva hesder yeshiva. The prominent Zionist Orthodox rabbi proposed re-evaluation of certain religious frameworks. He is particularly focused on issues where ultra orthodox halachic rulings determine civil law in Israel. In recent remarks, he said it is necessary “to re-examine the framework of Continue Reading »
Posted on December 14, 2012 by David Bogomolny
We spent last Shabbat with a friend and his partner. He is a Jewish convert who is currently not halakhically observant, but his Jewish identity is very important to him, and his attitude towards Jewish tradition and halakha is very respectful. His partner is a woman whose father is halakhically Jewish, but she is not halakhically Jewish herself. Therefore, she must go through Continue Reading »
Posted on December 5, 2012 by David Bogomolny
Fixed prayer is a salient element of halakha (Jewish law). Jews committed to halakha pray 3x every day (morning, afternoon, evening), and for many it is challenging to find meaning in the mandated, daily recitation of standardized liturgy. A couple of years ago, I took a class that explored various spiritual practices in Hasidic and Continue Reading »
