Life At Pardes - Pardes Moments
Confessions of a Pardes Groupie
I first came to Pardes in the summer of 2000 after graduating college. After one month of intense learning, I began to delve into studying the laws of Shabbat, women and mitzvot, Chumash and Mishnah. That session uncovered a yearning inside of me to learn more about my Jewish heritage and traditional practice. I left Jerusalem that summer knowing not when I would return to Pardes or to my new found skills of learning traditional texts but I always held my experiences deep within my heart. My one summer at Pardes introduced me to life-long friends, one who within a few months of returning to Boston, introduced me to my husband over a Shabbat meal. But more importantly, my one summer at Pardes awakened in me the desire to learn more.
Four years have passed and I find myself back here in Jerusalem, once again at Pardes; asking the same questions, delving into those same sources. Only now I view the world as a different person, through different eyes. Now as I look at the sources, I see through the eyes of someone with a graduate degree, a husband and a stronger commitment to Judaism.
I remember my first day of Pardes this year, sitting in the Beit Midrash awaiting introductions by faculty and staff, making new friends and beginning to reconnect to my Jewish self. The most striking part of my day was the moment when Dean David Bernstein told a room overflowing with new faces to look around the room at all of the books in the Beit Midrash. He said that these books were our heritage, our traditions and regardless of our denomination, our level of observance or our upbringing these books, these Sifrei codes, belonged to each and every Jew.
It is that moment that I carry with me everyday when I enter the door at Pardes, my little non-coercive environment in the holiest city in the world. Whenever I am overwhelmed with Hebrew grammar or frustrated when I do not understand the complex commentaries of Rashi, I reach inside my pocket and pull out my Get Out of Jail Free Card and remember to give myself the time and patience to begin anew. I am simply a Jew, walking humbly inside the walls of this sacred school, retracing the footsteps of my people and once again I have come home.
Jennifer L.
Boston, Massachusetts
BA Brandeis University
MA Tufts University
Pardes Summer Program 00
Pardes Year Program 05