Reflections on Pardes

It's Saturday night in Gwanju, Korea, a "small" city of 1 million people, and I'm going to post about Pardes. We left there more than 10 days ago, but it's time to reflect on it.

First off, Pardes in a non-denominational adult education "yeshiva" (or institute of Jewish education). The people in our program ranged from 18/19 to grandparent. Most were either 18-24 or 55+. We were one of the few people in the middle of their careers. And I was one of the few mid-career people who was not a teacher or a Hillel professional (for obvious reasons, few people can take the time off to do this program).

Pardes' faculty is generally very diverse, though overrepresented by Orthodox-trained people. There are some faculty members who would identify themselves as Conservative/Egalitarian and, I'm sure, Reform. The professors during our "semester" were mostly Orthodox, but they represented a broad spectrum within that category, from very traditional to much more feminist to post-modern, almost. It is difficult to describe those categories here, but I'll provide one example. One of the teachers in a male Orthodox rabbi. When the egalitarian minyan had only 9 people one day (a minyan is a prayer group and needs 10 people or men, depending on the views of that specific community), he joined in to serve as the 10th member. When asked why, he stated that he believed in Pardes's mission and that required the egalitarian minyan not to fail for being one person short when he was there. This is not the prototypical Orthodox line, but rather new aged. Other faculty members, who would all consider themselves Orthodox, debated the role of women in society and Judaism from very different perspectives.

Pardes prides itself on being non-coercive, open and without an agenda. I don't necessary know if I agree with that. I believe that it is open but I think it has its agenda and it is trying to assert it. I don't mean to suggest that that is a bad thing, only that it is a thing. To me, Pardes is like the Jewish education equivalent of a campus Hillel. Their goal is to bring diverse Jews together to do Jewish things - in this case, to learn. In addition, Pardes, and to a large extent our teachers in particular, sought to charge us to take our learning skills back to our homes. There was no outreach, no attempt to make us more religious or change our actual practices, but only to encourage us to be more involved in education. In fact, one of the most common criticisms I heard from some of our classmates was that Pardes didn't provide answers. It didn't teach us how to do X or be more Y. Instead, Pardes taught how to navigate the books to find the answers. This wasn't what everyone was looking for. But for Seren and I, having gone to Pardes to be more educated and not necessary to change our practices, this was perfect for us.

It would be naive to say, however, that we did not change. In one of my classes, we read three diverse Jewish philosophers, each ostensibly representing a movement, but not fitting into that movement really at all. The Reform representative was Judith Plaskow, a contempory feminist. I believe that she is a professor at Manhattan College. She is not a Rabbi. Her thesis was that Judaism texts often ignore the female perspective, and therefore modern interpretator may add their own folk backstories (called "midrash" in Hebrew) as past rabbis have done (Midrash often add color to stories and provide the lessons within them where the full story is lacking in the text).

I posed the question to the professor of what does Plaskow want. She was a radical feminist and some of her writings were so radical that they seemed to support a nuclear option of destruction and rebuilding of Jewish texts. I couldn't imagine that this is what she really wanted. His answer, though, I think captured what Pardes meant for me and I think Seren too. He said that Plaskow doesn't believe she will change the world or re-make Judaism with a blank slate. But, her arguments will force the reader to look through a new lens as they read a text again and that rereading will be done for the first time. We won't be little Plaskows, but we will read the text with her ideas in mind and therefore read them in a new light.

Seren and I didn't leave Pardes with grand plans to make large changes in our lives. However, we will forever approach Judaism, and our lives, have spent time at Pardes and will look at life through that lens. Therefore, although nothing may change, everything changes.

I don't think that this is so different than anything else in life. Every new experience affects our approach to the world; how we lived yesterday affects how we see tomorrow. Having eaten Korean food for these last few days, I will never see a juicy, grilled hamburger the same again. And, boy, I could really go for one of those right now.

Love,
Craig