Pardes

A quick summary of what happened between the last entry and the start of Pardes classes: My second roommate Natalie arrived, and Tobie left, so the apartment finally felt like ours. I opened a bank account, and we signed out lease and paid the first three months of rent. Probably none of this is terribly exciting to read about in a blog, but they all felt like significant steps towards really truly living here.

Now, on to Pardes: on the first day, we had an “opening circle” in which we all introduced ourselves and said “something about ourself that’s not on our resume”. It took over 2 hours, because there were so many of us—but I enjoyed it. While I didn’t really remember anyone’s name or what they said, it gave a really good sense of the makeup of the student body, and who exactly I’ll be studying with for the next year. There’s some pretty awesome and unique people here—it was a little intimidating actually; it reminded me a little of the talent show during freshman orientation at Wes, when I realized how incredibly talented my classmates are.

Definitely the best part of Pardes is the people, both the students and the teachers. The students are very inclusive and friendly, and come from a wide range of Jewish backgrounds-- it’s a great environment to learn in. The inclusive, open atmosphere actually reminds me a lot of Wesleyan, except with a greater diversity of opinions (a.k.a. not everyone's liberal, which is refreshing). We had a shabbaton/retreat the second weekend after classes started, which was really incredible. Lots of spontaneous singing and dancing (:-P :-P), long conversations, an early-morning hike, kavanah-filled davenning, and of course, learning. The teachers are so, so enthusiastic about what they do, and they’re great. A few of them even stayed up super late at the shabbaton having conversations with students, and then still got up at 5am to go on the sunrise hike. Most (it not all) of the teachers are Orthodox and many are relatively right politically, but they have also all committed to teaching the diverse student body that is Pardes--and therefore to teaching students who often hold radically different opinions from their own--without proselytizing to us.

Here are my classes themselves, for those of you who are interested in such things: from 8:30 until 11:45 I either have Chumash (Bible) or Mishna, depending on the day. Then there’s a short, one-hour class before lunch; I’m taking a class on siddur (the prayerbook) and one on personalizing prayer. In the afternoon, I have either Rambam (Maimonides) or Social Justice. In every class, we break up into Hevruta, or learning pairs. The idea is to work through a text with your Hevruta partner, and to challenge each other, so that by coming up with counterarguments to each others’ opinions you both come to a deeper understanding of the text. Then the class comes together to discuss the text. It’s definitely a different experience for me to be discussing Torah in a classroom setting—though I guess that’s something my friends who went to Jewish day-school are very familiar with!

My only complaint is that I'm so busy with my classes that I don't have a ton of time to experience the rest of Jerusalem--I feel like I'm spending all day in a building with Americans (and a few Brits and Australians) speaking English all day, because I am!