Igor Ustyuzhyn

For me, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem) is  Israelis’ attempt to implement three ideas taken from the book of Isaiah:

  1. Your citizenship is not an obstacle:

Let no foreigner who has attached himself to YHWH say, “YHWH will surely exclude me from his people.”

  1. Your body is not an obstacle:

Let no eunuch say, “And I, I am a dried-up tree.”

  1. The more knowledgeable you are, the more tolerant you are:

The wolf lives with the lamb,

The panther lies down with the kid,

Calf and lion cub feed together

With a little boy to lead them.

The cow and the bear make friends,

Their young lie down together.

The lion eats straw like an ox.

<…>

They do no hurt, no harm,

On all my holy mountain.

For the country is filled with the knowledge of YHWH

As the waters swell the sea.

 

Igor Ustyuzhyn is a philologist who was raised and educated in the former Soviet Union, the largest and, paradoxically, the “narrowest” country in the world ( according to the mathematician R. Meir Schweiger, the gematria for both     סססר    and  מצר’ם        is 380).

Igor was denied access to Jewish intellectual and spiritual heritage in his country of origin and was very lucky to find a very rare combination of spirituality, critical thinking and cutting edge scholarship at  Pardes .

He helps Chef with the coffee station, Joanne with mail and R. Meir with books.