Winter in Jerusalem. Haze settles down on the hills — a mixture of moisture and fine dust. The city looks moody and atmospheric, a backdrop for a movie in which people have lots of intimate and ultimately despairing conversations. The wind picks up, blowing the white furniture on your mirpeset into the corner and covering …
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Chanukah in Jerusalem
Winter in Jerusalem. Some days warm and sunny, with the deciduous trees turning yellow and dropping their leaves, like October in Vermont. Other days (like today) chilly, extremely windy, with heavy rain showers and occasional rays of sun. Yesterday the air quality was officially rated bad — with lots of humidity and dust, or “fine …
A break from being a student: Gazelle Valley, Israel Museum
After my day of being in the Old City, and in particular my visits to the Western Wall and the Church of Holy Sepulchre, I decided that I needed a day without so much religion. I set off over the hill for the Gazelle Valley — Emek HaTzeva’im. This small nature reserve is located in …
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A break from being a student: some sights in Old Jerusalem
One of the better aspects of Pardes, for me, is the efforts they make to expose their students to a wide variety of ideas and opinions about what it means to be an Israeli and what it means to be a Jew. I have found these lectures, discussions, panels, and educational trips to be uniformly …
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We’re off to the see the Rabbis… Day 2
Our second day of the “Rabbinic Seminar” began with a tasty breakfast buffet at Kibbutz Daliya. (For more on what an Israeli breakfast buffet consists of, please refer to my post from August 30.) Then we climbed back on the bus and set off for Tzipori. In his old age, when his health was not …
We’re off to the see the Rabbis…or at least to follow in their footsteps (Day 1)
The flood of new information and experiences that I have been soaking in have made me dawdle and delay about my blog posts. How am I ever to convey all that I am learning? We’ve had a number if interesting speakers at Pardes, we have gone a couple of tiyyulim, we heard a panel speak …
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WOW! Women of the Wall
On Rosh Hodesh Cheshvan, I had the option to attend services at Pardes. It was billed as egalitarian, but in order to satisfy the needs of all, they had made it unpalatable to many. The initial email was inviting. It read in part: ” We are really proud that this is a space that Pardes has …
Tiyyul laPeriferia: Part 2 B, working for peace on the Gaza Border
As I write this, rockets are raining down on S’derot, N’tiv HaAsara, and the whole region proximate to Gaza, as far north as Tel Aviv. How ironic that I happened to put off until today the account of our final stop on the tiyyul in late October, to Netiv HaAsara and a wonderful woman there …
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Tiyyul laPeriferia, Part Two A: Sderot and the Gaza Border
Our trip to the “periphery” took us from the Bedouin town(s) of Lakiya across to the town of Sderot. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Laqiya/Sderot/@31.5301928,34.5524799,12.61z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x15025fd4cbf7a083:0xe2e3b39e8c2cb837!2m2!1d34.866219!2d31.324884!1m5!1m1!1s0x15028152b5bc422b:0x9eca44351ad2130a!2m2!1d34.595581!2d31.522694!3e0 We were met by a woman named Orgenia (sp.?) who works for the Sderot Media Center. (https://sderotmedia.com/) She took us on a tiyyul around this small and surprising vibrant town, which has clearly decided to …
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Tiyyul laPeriferia: Part One Lakiya Bedouin community
Beyond our studies of Tanakh and Talmud, Pardes is endeavoring to give its students a taste of the complexities of Israeli life, the political conundrums and the conflicting points of view. They have a difficult task — one I know some of my fellow students would say they are not completing adequately. But then — …
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Nine months in Israel 