Michael Schulson

“About once a week I look around the beit midrash, full of Jews learning from each other, teaching each other, and arguing with each other, and experience this enormous pang of joy at learning in this one-room schoolhouse. I’ve spent most of the past decade around scholars and writers, but I have never been in a place where people deal so viscerally with texts–hold them, kiss them, debate them, bemoan them, and make them alive.
“Being at Pardes, for me, means being surrounded by great teachers. Some of those teachers are rabbis (or rabbi-doctors!). Some of them have not yet started college. Some of them are my age. All of them are curious Jews, whose myriad ways of imagining Jewish life make the tradition seem bigger, deeper, stranger, and richer than I ever imagined it could be.”

I was raised by New Yorkers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I spent most of my free time hiking, climbing, and reading. I graduated from college in 2012 with a degree in religious studies and moved to Durham, N.C. I’ve spent the past six years working as a freelance journalist, writing a lot about religion, science, technology, and politics.