Thursday, September 6, 2012

סוף השבוע הראשון שלי בפרדס

For anyone who does not read Hebrew, the title is, "The end of my first week at Pardes". Wow! What an amazing week. Great people, great programming, challenging but rewarding work. The one thing that I need to change is the amount of time I spend sitting during the day, it is way too much. My back hurts because of it. I also need to work on my posture, which will probably alleviate the pain. 

So, I should start at the beginning. Last Thursday night, was a meet and greet for new students and my birthday. It was great to finally start meeting people, especially those I had spoken to before. Everyone is really nice. A bunch of people just finished ulpan that day and came right to Pardes from Haifa with all of their belongings. When one of these people heard it was my birthday, she ran to her bag and pulled out a birthday candle and stuck it in a flat pretzel. Sincerely, one of the nicest things someone has done for me literally minutes after meeting. On Friday night, I ended up eating dinner at the home of one of my teachers. I could be wrong, but I don't think there are many schools where this is a regular occurrence, but at Pardes this is.  On Saturday there was a huge potluck lunch on the Tayelet (Has Promenade) for Pardes Students. On Sunday morning (we have class from Sunday through Thursday afternoons) we had the opening circle. Every single person associated with Pardes introduces themselves to the community, this took about two hours. This was very long, but I am glad we were able to do it.  Most of the first day was orientation, but we did have one class. There are also evening classes offered (more like after school activities). I decided to finally, actually learn how to read torah (one of the evening classes). This is one of the ways I am challenging myself this year.

I think the thing that will be most difficult for me is the style we use to learn. I am not talking about Chavruta (working with a study partner or two). I am talking about being giving a text and being sent off the Beit Midrash (literally meaning house of learning). In my limited experience with studying Jewish texts, I have been given a list of key terms and concepts to aid our understanding of the texts. If you don't know much about traditional Jewish texts, they are in Biblical Hebrew, Rabbinic Hebrew, and Aramaic. As you might imagine, learning in these languages requires a lot of trial by error, I usually understand the big picture of what we are learning, but get smaller details wrong. It is only the first week so I am hopeful that after a couple of weeks I will be  used to learning this way. 

The most important thing is that the teachers are inspiring and for the first time I am actually excited about learning Jewish texts. As much as I am feeling challenged I am also having a good time. Shabbat Shalom!

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