These and Those

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

Tag Archives: marriage

[Student Profile] Stu Jacobs

Posted on February 21, 2012 by David Bogomolny

“I’m very adamant about a pluralistic model of Jewish practice.” -Stu Jacobs In 5th grade, a teacher inspired Stu Jacobs to explore and gradually start keeping more mitzvot, and throughout his youth the young man strived to connect to and practice a new mitzvah every single year. His teacher had said that ‘he didn’t have Continue Reading »

A virgin and a widow walk into a bar. . .

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Naomi Zaslow

Tonight, my Night Seder chevruta – the amazingly talented Daniel Shibley – and I finished all 13 chapters of Ketubot in Mishna Masechet Nashim. To celebrate, we both gave short dvar’s, and had a small siyum (party). When Shibley initially asked me to give a dvar on what we had learned over the last few Continue Reading »

חיי שרה

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Barer

This week’s parsha, with bookends describing the death of Sarah and the other descendents of Avraham and the descendents Yishma’el, deals mainly with the mission of Avraham’s servant to find a wife for Yitzchak. Reading the text, I was struck by how repetitive the story is. First, Avraham tells his servant what to do in Continue Reading »

כי תצא, ki tetse

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Avi Strausberg

    parshat ki tetse brims with examples where the men make decisions that crucially impact the women, while their opinions are completely absent from the equation.  in fact, their voices have been so successfully silenced, that often unless you were looking for them, you might not even notice they were missing in the first Continue Reading »

ראה, re’eh

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Avi Strausberg

this week’s parshat re’eh teaches a bit of the old mixed with some of the new.  the old:  don’t worship other gods.  this is something pretty fundamental to our covenant with God that we’ve covered several times over in other places of the Torah.  however, the bit of the new: don’t worship אלוהים אחרים אשר Continue Reading »

מסעי

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Barer

This week we wrap up the book of Bamidbar (Numbers), chronicling the journeys the Israelites undertook in the desert.  The final verses bring us back to an episode first encountered a few weeks ago, the daughters of Tzelophchad.  This time, spokesmen approach Moshe and the elders on their behalf.  They worry is that, once the Continue Reading »

[Student Profile] Katie Greenberg

Posted on March 22, 2011 by David Bogomolny

This profile is in honor of Katie Greenberg‘s upcoming wedding to Matan Glazer on March 31st. From all of us at Pardes, we wish Katie and Matan… 🙂 מזל טוב ובהצלחה 🙂     Katie (Summer ’06 & ’07, Year ’09-’10, Fellows ’10-’11) and Matan met at Kibbutz Ketura while Katie was on the Young Judea Year Course, Continue Reading »

[Student Profile] Kara & David "Bookie" Bookbinder

Posted on November 25, 2010 by David Bogomolny

Although they both hail from Los Angeles, Kara and David only met in college at UC Santa Barbara. As a child, Kara attended Christian Science church every week with her mother, but she became skeptical about religion as a teenager, and came to identify herself as culturally Jewish. David was raised in the Conservative Jewish movement, Continue Reading »

Random musings about celebrations

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Lauren

Celebration #1:  Tu B’shvat For me, it feels like Tu B’shvat in Israel all year round because of the multitude of dried fruits all over the place, but during January, they really hit their peak.  It’s time to go back to the fresh fruits, in my opinion… I’m ready for springtime.  Nonetheless, I attended two Continue Reading »