Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on November 28, 2011 by Lauren Schuchart
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” -John Muir Last Tuesday through Thursday, my school went on a tiyul (trip) to the Negev desert. The pictures can tell the story. (The detail is better in the ORIGINAL Continue Reading »
Posted on November 25, 2011 by Barer
One of the things that stayed with me after spending most of my four months in Chumash class last year at Pardes studying this week’s parsha is how important it is to consider Yitzchak’s mindset as he blesses his sons. This is someone who probably had a very rocky relationship with their own father, and, Continue Reading »
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 »
Posted on November 10, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha is chalk-full of troubling stories, from the Akieda, arguably the most challenging section of the Torah, to the destruction of Sdom and Amorah, to the episode of Lot and his daughters. What caught my attention while reading the parsha, though, was a subtler play on language related to rhetorical questions. There are Continue Reading »
Posted on November 3, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha contains many famous and thought-provoking stories, but I would like to focus on what I see as an emerging motif in the Rashbam, where he criticizes his grandfather’s reading of a verse before offering an alternate interpretation which he sees as sticking more closely to the pshat, the simple reading of the Continue Reading »
Posted on October 31, 2011 by Anton L. Gershteyn
PLEASE NOTE: If you are about to read this article, please listen to the two songs linked here: (First Song, Second Song) because a major part of this article is based upon your audio experience. As in many classic Jewish texts, much of the meaning is found in the footnotes (they are actually the most Continue Reading »
Posted on October 28, 2011 by Barer
The end of this week’s parsha, like last week’s, details the lineages leading to the main protagonists of Bereishit, mainly those of Noach’s children. Unsurprisingly, for those who know the story that comes next, the lineages rush through the generations in between Noach and Avram and then slow down just in time to talk about Continue Reading »
Posted on October 25, 2011 by Barer
[Sorry for the delay; cross-posted from my blog] With the conclusion of Simchat Torah we are embarking upon reading the Torah from the beginning once again. For my own study, I have moved ahead (or behind, depending on who you ask) two generations to study the commentary of the Rashbam on the Torah. The Rashbam Continue Reading »
Posted on October 4, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
this week’s ve’zot ha’bracha, in which moshe blesses each of the tribes individually and makes his final good-byes, marks the closing parsha of our yearly torah cycle. he then hikes up to the top of mount nevo where God shows him the entirety of the land that was once promised to abraham, isaac, and jacob. after Continue Reading »
Posted on October 2, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
the language of parshat ha’azinu seems to be in a poetic world of its own, amidst the torah verses that surround it. a prophetic moshe, nearing the end of both his journey and his life, spews forth a mixture of his own words with God’s in another rage against the people’s disobedience. according to moshe, Continue Reading »
