Maxim Delchev (Experiential Educators Program)

I heard about Pardes a few years ago at the Limmud Conference in England together with my colleague. We saw the Pardes stand, but I wasn’t so interested in the program. But my colleague (who is smarter than me) took around 50-60 of the leaflets from the stand. Every morning over the following months I found a Pardes brochure on my desk. She told me that she will stop putting them on my desk once I apply. And that is how I applied for Pardes, and I will be forever thankful to her for that persuasion.

Because I never had a proper and structured Jewish education, I always looked for what was available to me – I took a book or a web-article and read. Next day I chose another one. That is not real learning. It is chaos. So, what Pardes is giving me is that it is organizing my Jewish journey so I can not lose myself. In the morning, I am reading the Mishnah or the Talmud about the Megillat Esther in my Talmud class and then in Halacha class, I see how we put that knowledge into practice. Later on in my Midrash class, I see even more possibilities of understanding Purim. At the end of the week, as educators, we are learning how to transmit that knowledge of Purim in our community so it will not stay just between the walls of the Beit Midrash. You can easily say that that is the goal of every Jewish educational institution and Yeshiva. And that will be correct. But Pardes is also giving us a variety and diversity of people. I am learning as much from the book in front of me and from the people around me – teachers and students.

Our tradition teaches us that the Torah has 70 different faces. Here at Pardes, you can see all of them and even more around you through the text and through the incredible community.

Maxim was born at the end of the 80’s in the lovely country of Bulgaria. He grew up, together with his Jewish community, which was revived after the end of the communist regime, he witnessed and in the last 11 years actively helped the Jewish life to grow from nothing. Maxim is an Educational director for the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria “Shalom”, a member of the board of the “Religious Council of the Israelites in Bulgaria” and is currently a recipient of a Yesod Jewish Learning Scholarship for his studies at Pardes.