Entering the Pardes - A Student's Experience - PresentTense Magazine December 2006

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Entering the Pardes - A Student's Experience

Entering the Pardes - A Student's Experience
December 2006

By Elliot Asher Singer

A week after we began our Torah study, the college-age kids at Pardes, a modern yeshiva in Jerusalem, went dancing. This wasn’t just ballroom or jazz standards – it was the rabid leaping and twirling to heavy break-beat drum and bass; its endless songs, which took our minds to strange places, are perfect for the kind of dancing where you can let loose the stress and confusion of the week until the earliest hours of the morning. Moving our bodies in ways we didn’t think we could do to sharp, hypnotic beats can’t happen in the company of strangers. But – with just a week of knowing these people, I knew that I wasn’t the only one who felt incredibly intimate with people whom I’d normally call strangers.

I remember looking at the ten people loosely forming a circle in the club. To my left, I noticed my study partner in the major course on the Book of Exodus, who is the same age as I am and a believer in the direct influence divine revelation upon Jewish law. A few days ago, I had proudly revealed – speaking from the depths of my own thoughts – that there was absolutely no way anyone could believe in the Jewish God we had been learning. What followed was an irately, sometimes tearily, intellectual debate. At points I thought the argument verged on personal attack – more than once I thought, “How dare she challenge a critical piece of how I relate to Judaism.” We parted awkwardly after class, feeling a strange distrust for someone with whom we were learning the holiest Jewish book. But now this, just days later, this insane dancing? Indeed, we were dancing together in our circle of friends – the two of us, who had just spent a week together arguing and upsetting one another by challenging some dependable life philosophy, were seeing each other in a way people rarely let others see: She was bouncing to the bass line, and her eyes closed. Only now am I beginning to understand what an exotic experience Pardes provided me.

When I turned to my right, mid-spin, I bumped into a guy starting law school in the fall. Earlier in the week, he challenged my right to call myself a Jew since I didn’t wear a kippah when I studied Torah. I desperately tried to respond as best as I could, I remember – and he, the same – but nothing was resolved after the confrontation, which ended by nearly telling each other to go to hell. Tonight I saw him in the club, grooving hard, perhaps slightly awkwardly. He saw me doing the same, and we smiled that strange smile of respectful recognition that can only be experienced when two thoughtful Jews disagree but can still love each other.

A few days before, we were total strangers, cautiously eyeing one another, scoping out learning partners and friends. We were full of judgments and curiosities about why someone would want to spend their summers studying Torah in one of the most unique yeshivas in Israel. On that first day, 110 people crammed into the Beit Midrash , a stuffy study hall lined with beautiful volumes of Talmud and philosophy, responsa and prayer books, to tell each other without fear or irony our name, hometown, and – not a favorite hobby, nor musical group – our secret desires for coming. What people said seemed to be either too bland (“I want to try every restaurant in Jerusalem!,” or “I want to be able to buy a computer speaking only Hebrew”) or too irrelevant “(A friend of a friend told me to check Pardes out,” or “I’m rich but I still want to study our Torah”) to be the entire story. I thought to myself, “What is really behind these people, if it’s fair to assume there’s something deeper with a little digging.” Besides, the hours of serious study that Pardes demands of its students, even with the relaxed summer schedule, is far too demanding to attract people who weren’t fully devoted to some personal wish. Slowly I found myself getting to know my fellow students. What I found there were mature minds offering up ideas, even if just over coffee and pizza, about the controversial parts of our religion. From that moment, I knew their ideas, in tandem with mind, were leading me to a much more soulful relationship with the tradition. In this way, we helped each other along answering the questions that we really wanted to get out of Pardes – in effect, sharing the secret after all.

But the Pardes community did not only celebrate and kibbitz together; we grieved and prayed together as well. If this community really was something more than people in physical proximity, then what comes to mind is the terrible day when, after announcements about trips to the shuk marketplaces and dance parties later in the night, one of our Rabbis announced that a couple expecting their first grandson would be returning with news that the baby was a stillborn. Some who didn’t know the family paid no mind, but others, who knew how excited they were about an impending simcha, took the news hard. We wondered how such injustice could happen to such good people, how the loving God we knew from text study could be so unmerciful. We banded together and gave each other the kind of warmth and support that only a dedicated community can provide.

These are only three examples, but the point, the very creed and mission of Pardes, is clear. What that institution emphasizes the most – and what sets it apart from places like it – is its diverse community. While this diversity while frustrating because of the inherent lack of total intellectual coherence, retrospect tells me that Pardes’s diverse community embodies the richness of what it means to be part of Judaism. What I came to learn is that Jewish learning is so much more than a study of books. I, in fact, do like studying books, but I also love to dance. Rather, this Judaism can shape the way we think and the way we live our lives – and the only way to do so is to live with all the opinions before deciding upon one. Life happens beyond the hallowed walls of the Beit Midrash, far away from the mountain of pages and the arguments they cause. The most gratifying piece of Pardes was, perhaps, finding the unity that in fact did lie behind the overwhelming diversity. Common ideals – intellectual engagement, compassion, refraining from judgments, and supporting the suffering – the things that give our lives meaning – were alive in this strange and beautiful group. They were alive over open tomes of Talmud and during lunchtime chats. Tonight I felt them alive in our rhythm and movement as I closed my eyes and let the pulsating music move me.

Elliot Asher Singer attended Pardes in the Summer of 2006

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