Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on April 29, 2012 by Derek Kwait
(X-posted from my home blog, Yinzer in Yerushalayim) Since the end of Pesach, the whole city has been snowing Israeli flags. Every morning, more and more of them turned up, sticking out of car windows, strewn across balconies, suspended from buildings and streetlights, pocketing rearview mirrors—flags everywhere a flag could fit, all in preparation for Continue Reading »
Posted on April 22, 2012 by Laura H.
There is a great deal of contrast in the types of graves we are seeing in Poland. Today, we went to Belsec, where even in the mid-1990s, there were still bones visible on the earth. The memorial there is cut into the shallow hill of the camps – into the mass grave. We spoke about Continue Reading »
Posted on April 21, 2012 by Laura H.
Today we went to Majdanek. I walked around the camp thinking a lot about why I came back to Poland. I had a hard time focusing on what was around me and found myself intellectualizing, rather than feeling things. I pictured much of the imagery from Survival in Auschwitz to try to visualize camp life. Continue Reading »
Posted on March 27, 2012 by Lauren Schuchart
(The second in a series of 5 posts detailing my heritage trip to Poland… originally posted on my blog) ___________________ Gone Now are Those Little Towns “Gone now are those little towns where the shoemaker was a poet, the watchmaker a philosopher, the barber a troubadour…” –Antoni Sionimski, “Elegy for the Jewish Villages” Tykocin
Posted on January 29, 2012 by David Bogomolny
“What influenced me the most was how my parents acted toward others. Both of them were my role models. Both were black sheep… I like black sheep :)” After escaping from Hungary during the Holocaust, Carolina’s grandparents didn’t affiliate themselves with the Jewish community of Venezuela, and raised their children without much Jewish tradition… so it came as Continue Reading »
Posted on January 22, 2012 by Leah Stern
Hi Pardesians and World, On Friday morning at 4:30 AM, I arrived back from Poland with my fellow Pardesians. Though we are happy to be back in Israel and are looking forward to the coming semester, we continue to process and ask questions about our experience in Poland. The first experience I would like to Continue Reading »
Posted on January 12, 2012 by Soffer
Originally posted here. This week we begin the book of Shemot. What is fascinating about how most students learn this narrative is that before even reading the text for the first time, they have already been taught the outcome. Inevitably, the tragedy of Jewish enslavement seems less severe, because the student understands slavery is the Continue Reading »
Posted on June 26, 2011 by Daniel Weinreb
1: General view of the Shrine of the Book – the white dome representing the Sons of Light, the black wall representing the Sons of Dark. One of the interesting aspects of Israel has been, and continues to be, the ineducable element of tragedy and conflict here, meaning the Shoah and the tension of ongoing Continue Reading »
Posted on June 1, 2011 by David Bogomolny
“… now I better understand what I was looking for… I didn’t know what to ask for – I didn’t know what it looked like – I didn’t realize I could trust Judaism, but at Pardes I’ve realized that everything I was looking for exists in Jewish texts.” As a young woman growing up in Washington, DC, Merissa was heavily involved in race dialogues, and later came Continue Reading »
Posted on May 22, 2011 by Jean
When Job’s three friends heard about all these calamities that had befallen him, each came from his home…. They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance… they broke into loud weeping; each one tore his robe and threw dust into the air onto his head. They Continue Reading »
