They are leading and creating organizations and businesses of all kinds, responding to humanitarian crises, writing novels, educating at all levels, creating works of art, and so much more! In celebration of Pardes’s 50th, we are highlighting 50 standout alumni whose accomplishments exemplify the rich texture of the Pardes community worldwide.
This week we’re celebrating a special group – individuals who not only studied at Pardes but continue to play an active role in supporting our mission. This week’s spotlight are our alumni board members, faculty, and staff.
We are especially proud that so many of our faculty, staff, and board include studying at Pardes as part of their Jewish journey!
ALUMNI BOARD MEMBERS
ALUMNI FACULTY MEMBERS
ALUMNI STAFF MEMBERS
Many of our alumni board, faculty and staff had wonderful memories to share from their time as students at the Pardes Beit Midrash.
Joshua Chadajo – Executive Director, North America
(Year ’01-’02)
I remember sitting in Levi Cooper’s Chumash class near the beginning of the year. We were learning Shemot. He asked us what we thought a particular passage meant. One of my classmates gave an answer, and Levi responded, “prove it to me using the text.” I found that response very powerful, as it allowed tremendous room for creativity while at the same time demanded intellectual integrity.
Deborah Denenberg – Board of Directors, North America
(Year ’79-’80)
While I cherish every memory about Pardes, here are a few from outside the beit midrash.
I attended in 1979, and we took a tiyul to the Sinai Peninsula. We slept on the beaches, took two-hour “shomer” turns in the wee hours, and inhaled the expansive beauty of the dessert. I remember a sand hill with a steep slope that one could race down. Though it seemed daring, each footstep landed with a stabilizing, three-foot plunge into the soft sand. I have never had the experience before or since. I remember the co-ed basketball game on Friday mornings (some teachers demurred). And I remember comedy. Tzvi Wolff would have his halacha class in stitches though his own expression remained neutral, like a wonderful straight man. We followed Levi Lauer around in groups, learning and laughing…he was our Pied Piper.
Pardes was in a cold, rented stone building then, and Levi was seeking a new place for his growing school. Finally, he made a discovery—a non-descript building, in our neighborhood, set off from the street. He went to take a closer look. Next, a massive security guard surprised and confronted him. That building housed the Shin Bet!
Rabba Yaffa Epstein – North America Faculty
(Kollel ’03-’05, ’13-’14)
I feel so privileged to be an alumnus of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. So much of who I am and so much of my Torah comes from the incredible teachers, colleagues, staff, lay leadership, and students of this makom torah – a place that teaches all Jews that they have a place in the world of Torah.
One of my favorite memories as a student at Pardes was when the faculty would have “Open Faculty” meetings – where they would have a faculty meeting in front of the students, and discuss the issues they were grappling with openly. That level of transparency and integrity taught me so much about how to be a teacher of Torah, how to be a leader. How to trust one’s students to be able to handle nuance and complexity.
In today’s world, where we talk about one another rather than to one another – Pardes remains a beacon of hope that we can deeply disagree, and still love one another, learn Torah from each other, and build a beautiful and thriving Jewish community together.
Jessica Fain – Board of Directors, North America
(Year ’09-’10, Shana Bet Fellow ’10-’11, Summer ’12)
While studying Torah at Pardes was the highlight of a lifetime, I will never forget the Shabbat hospitality shown to me by so many teachers. I visited many of their families, saw the ways they were raising their children, saw the love in their marriages, their commitment to their communities and by extension, to all of Am Yisrael. I ate delicious food at their tables and prayed meaningfully in their shuls. It brought their Torah to life and allowed me to lead the Jewish life I had always imagined.
Jackie Frankel Yaakov – Director of Leadership Gifts
(Year ’11-’12)
Sharing one special Pardes memory from my time at Pardes as a student, seems almost impossible. As each and every day that I came into the beit midrash as a student was eye opening, challenging, and intellectually and spiritually blissful. From Levi’s kaleidoscope of Tanach and Hassidut secrets revealed, to Meesh’s decoding of Aramaic and Rabbinical conversations, to Elisa’s trope classes leading to my first public leyning for the Purim Megillat Esther reading, to bringing the text to life throughout Israel while hiking the Banias River with Meir, to hearing the cave story of David’s cut cloak corner in the Ein Gedi terrain with Jamie, to touring Rav Kook’s home with DLK, to experiencing the Menachem Begin Center and its history with David Bernstein. Each and every moment solidified my Jewish journey and aliyah.
I am, and the family I have built in Yerushalayim are, forever grateful. Thank you, Pardes and every person who works tirelessly and with derech eretz each and every day to make this possible for the next student/world.
Mark Freedman – Chair, Board of Directors, North America
(PLS ’14-’16, ’19, ’22-’23)
Celebrating the dedication of a new Torah at the Summer 2023 PLS was an extraordinary experience. The dancing, the singing and the prayers brought every chapter, verse and letter of this new holy and sacred scroll to life in such a visceral manner. The ceremony embodied the spiritual and transformational power of Pardes.
Rabbi Dr. Meesh Hammer-Kossoy – Director of the Year Program, Faculty
(Year ’91-’92)
My year as a Pardes student was probably the most formative year of my life. To start with, I forged relationships with an extraordinary group of peers. I met my husband. Together with a group of women, we started a Rosh Chodesh group that is still meeting 30+ years later. It is impossible to overstate the power of a stable group of female friends who have been sharing Torah and life regularly through thick and thin throughout my adult life.
There were so many remarkable people in my year at Pardes. I can name just a few in my Gemara class alone– famous rabbis: Avital Hochstein (president of Hadar Israel), Amy Kalmanofsky (dean of LIST at JTS), Josh Katzan (Mishkon Venice). Plus prominent community leaders: my havruta Ayala Levin-Kruss (JDC, wife of long time faculty member David), businessman Glen Schwaber, and lawyer Joel Wine z”l. Back then we were just a bunch of young grads trying to create a meaningful Jewish life.
From a Torah perspective, Pardes gave me the tools to get in on the ground floor of the movement of advanced Torah scholarship for women. Meir Schweiger’s literary approach to learning Mishnah and the chance to dive into rishonim in Gemara left a significant mark on my derech limmud to this day, alongside of my other inspiring teachers Dov Berkovits, Joseph Leibowitz, Kalman Neuman, Melila Hellner-Eshed. As director, Levi Lauer’s demands for excellence in Torah and interpersonal work are tropes that I aspire to integrate into my own leadership. His demand for a Torat Hessed has guided me to prioritize volunteer work at every stage of my life. Meir’s insistence that there is meaning in bowing to the community remains a guiding light.
Rabbi David Levin-Kruss – Adjunct Israel Faculty
(Year ’90-’91)
I was at Pardes during the Gulf War. Talk about a bonding experience. Huddled up in protected rooms, sometimes with fellow students, we became very close to each other and also closer to our teachers than we may have in a “normal” year. Very few students left, so there was a strong feeling of camaraderie. Along with anxiety, of course. The war finished near Purim, and it was an unforgettably happy one with lots of catharsis.
I was in Leah Rosenthal’s class, which was amazing, and Leah is a Talmud and pedagogic hero to me to this day. Years later one of my hevrutot, Rabbi Sue Fendrick, and I returned in our fifties to Leah’s class and learned with her for a morning. You can go home again!
This was not my first time in Leah’s class. I had studied with her in night classes while I was in the army. Anything eventful happen in that class? Let me think… ah, now I remember! I met my wife Ayala. Married nearly 30 years. Thank you, Leah. And, yes, we did study Kiddushin.
Rabbi Reuven Margrett – Director of Digital Content, PCJE
(Year ’90-’91)
I recall fondly the Hassidut class with Rabbi Levi Cooper that always started with a niggun before we dived into the text or idea of the week. The texts spoke to me, but even more so it was the environment and openness to questioning that helped guide me (and all of us) in my Jewish journey. It is something that I carry with me as I craft my own learning experiences for others.
Rabbi Jessica Minnen – North America Faculty
(Year ’05-’06)
I came to Pardes in the fall of 2005 with no background in Jewish learning or practice. I was 24 and in the midst of a “quarter-life crisis.” I knew that I wanted to do something meaningful with my life, but I felt like there were huge swathes of myself, most notably my Jewishness, that I didn’t understand. I remember walking into Meir’s class on the first day — we were studying Shemot — and spending an hour talking about the first two words of the first verse. My jaw was on the floor. I couldn’t believe the depth and richness. I couldn’t believe that this, Torah study, was part of being Jewish. I had no idea. It clicked for me then, with those two words. This is amazing and this belongs to me.
That was 18 years ago… and I never looked back.
Haley Schulman – Director of North American Programming and Education (Summer ’15-’16)
I first came to Pardes for the 2015 Summer Program, which I attended as a member of the Hillel Professionals cohort. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but I was excited to give immersive Jewish learning a try, and especially to engage in this “Talmud learning” thing I’d heard so much about. I signed up for the introductory Talmud class with Nechama Goldman Barash. In the very first class, Nechama sent us off into small groups to discuss the question “is a hot dog a sandwich”, and to take notes on the conversation to bring back to the class. My group had a lively conversation with a wide range of opinions and approaches to the question, and we dove much deeper into it than I would have ever expected. When we came back together, Nechama helped us identify the similarities between our approaches to the question and how that approach related to the Rabbinic debates recorded in the Talmud. I fell in love with learning Talmud that summer, a love that’s stuck with me ever since!
Rabbi Haim Shalom – Director of Israel Studies, Faculty
(Summer ’03, Year ’03-’04, Hourly ’04-’05)
One of my favorite memories from Pardes as a student was the incredible warmth of the teachers and the way they would go out of their way to make the class comfortable expressing themselves and bringing their whole selves to the study of Torah. I developed close relationships with many of my teachers and they were based on a number of moments. One of my Pardes teachers, Rabbi David Levin-Kruss, would go on to be the meseder kiddushim at my wife and my wedding.
But the memory that best illustrates my positive memories of my first stint as a student was from Rabbi Levi Cooper’s halacha class:
Levi and I had built up a bit of a shtick of joking with each other in class – something he knew would make me more passionate about his subject. With each student he found a way to help them connect. So, at one point we were discussing the intricacies of basar be-halav and in particular how we arrived at the prohibition with regard to chicken. In attempting to elucidate a point I was making, I mentioned a “Chicken Kiev”, which it turned out most people in the class had never heard of. As I explained the dish (garlic butter cooked inside a breadcrumbed chicken fillet,) I managed to earn myself the nickname, “The Chicken Kiev” – used like how great rabbonim are called by their most famous work. So for a couple of days, I was referred to as “The Chicken Kiev” in Levi’s class.
Libby Werthan – Board of Directors, North America
(Summer ’02, ’08-’10, PLS ’99, ’01, ’05, ’10-’14, ’18-21, ’23)
My special moments at Pardes are traveling from the Heart and Soul of Pardes (the beit midrash) via the Mind (the classrooms) to the warmth of its Tummy (the heder ochel). Every time it make that trip, I am embraced by the wonderful people who make up Pardes.