Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on October 31, 2014 by Jeremy Borovitz
And the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you” Bereishit 12:1 It all seems a little bit redundant, doesn’t it? Why couldn’t Abram have just been told to go forth, or go forth from his land, Continue Reading »
Posted on March 28, 2014 by Jessica Jobanek
The Talmud teaches, “Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh” (Shavuot 39a) — all Israel is responsible for one another. I have rarely felt this more profoundly than on March 16, Shushan Purim, when I joined several of my fellow students here in Jerusalem in reading portions of Megillat Esther over Skype for the Jews in Crimea. Continue Reading »
Posted on January 22, 2014 by Jeremy Borovitz
The bus dropped Tamilla and I off in the middle of nowhere, a stop by the side of the road with fields of something green to the left and fields of something yellow to the right. It took another couple minutes for us to lug away the bags of stuff filled with clothes which I Continue Reading »
Posted on December 17, 2013 by Avi Benson-Goldberg
Nataliya Naydorf read from the Torah last week for the first time. Then there was a terrible snowstorm. She assures me the two are not related. She’s used to the snow, of course, because Nataliya hails from the former Soviet Union (FSU). Her country of origin literally doesn’t exist anymore. I roll this thought around Continue Reading »
Posted on December 10, 2013 by Jeremy Borovitz
This is going to be very long, but here are my thoughts on Ukraine: I was sitting at my mother’s desk, obsessively scanning my news feed and hitting refresh on the Kyiv Post’s homepage, when I realized I had to go to Ukraine to see it for myself. I lived in Ukraine for nearly three Continue Reading »
Posted on November 14, 2013 by Jeremy Borovitz
I’ve been suffering for some years now from a self prescribed disease known as “Shtetl Nostalgia.” Perhaps unique to 4th generation Ashkenazi Jewish Americans of the Galician frontier, it mainly consists of an intense longing for a time and a place that I never knew and that wasn’t nearly anything like I imagine. Yet I’m Continue Reading »
