These and Those

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

Tag Archives: Shoah / The Holocaust

Reflections on Gniewczyna, Poland

Posted on February 27, 2018 by Doug Russ

A few weeks ago, while on the Pardes trip to Poland, I and our group visited the hometown of my paternal grandfather, William Russ z”l. It’s a small village named Gniewczyna, located in Southeastern Poland. My grandfather grew up there with his two brothers and parents – one of the twelve Jewish families in a Continue Reading »

Post-Poland Reflection

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Nate Goldman

From our trip to Poland, we definitely had our share of sad sights. Through the five days of our tour of the country we visited countless ghettos, camps, and graves. The stories about life as a Jew during the Shoah were tragic and horrifying. Other stories, like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, seemed heroic. Seeing Schindler’s Continue Reading »

[PCJE] We Return

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Samantha Vinokor

Under the night sky, lit only by stars, we return. None of us have been here before, to this town trapped in time, and yet our presence here is a return. We come as a memory of what once was, confronting the sky, the trees, and the houses with each footstep. On a footpath in Continue Reading »

Volunteering & “La’asok b’Divrei Torah”

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Deborah Renert

Every morning when we recite Birchat haTorah we say “Blessed are You, HaShem our G-d, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us “la’asok b’divrei Torah.” It has always struck me that this blessing could have utilized clearer wording if it were meant to refer specifically to studying Continue Reading »

Honoring my Ancestors

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Eva Neuhaus

Most of my family on both sides was killed in the Holocaust and those who were left scattered all over the globe. I spent many years feeling that in order to honor my family members who were murdered, I had to suffer as well. There was a certain threshold of delight past which it felt Continue Reading »

[PCJE Dvar Torah] Emulating my Grandparents

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Ariel Eliach Forman

This week’s Parsha, Parshat Kedoshim uses the literary device of an “inclusio”. It starts and ends with the same line. דַּבֵּר אֶל-כָּל-עֲדַת בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם–קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ: כִּי קָדוֹשׁ, אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.   and ends with: וִהְיִיתֶם לִי קְדֹשִׁים, כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוָה;   In the middle, the parsha talks about all the ways and laws Continue Reading »

My SermonSlam on ‘Amalek’

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Candace Mittel

My Trip to Germany

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Benjamin Friedman

“Without a profound simplification the world around us would be an infinite, undefined tangle that would defy our ability to orient ourselves and decide upon our actions…. We are compelled to reduce the knowable to a schema.” -Primo Levi The above quotation by Holocaust survivor Primo Levi says something profound yet simple about human nature Continue Reading »

Spiritual Stolpersteine

Posted on January 21, 2014 by David Bogomolny

oh no. My plane on the runway at Ben Gurion International Airport, I’d just realized that I’d forgotten my tefilin (phylacteries) in Jerusalem. calm down. you’ll deal with this. think about it — lots of people in the group will have their tefilin with them… My internal voice of reason was reassuring, but I felt Continue Reading »

shabbos medicine

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Eva Neuhaus

i am convinced that judaism contains within it all of the spiritual technology we need to heal the wounds we have experienced in the history of our people. i notice the survival patterning in my body–my inability to stop running and striving and lurching forward for fear that i will die–how hard it is for Continue Reading »