The Marilyn and Sigi z”l Ziering Pardes Community Education Omer Program Video Recordings

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The Marilyn and Sigi z”l Ziering
Pardes Community Education Omer Program

Rabbi Alex Israel

Alex teaches Bible at Pardes and is the Director of the Community Education Program and the Summer Program. Alex was born and raised in London. He holds degrees from London School of Economics, the Institute of Education London and Bar-Ilan University. Alex studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion under Rav Aharon Lichtenstein and Rav Yehudah Amital, and gained Rabbinic ordination from the Israeli Rabbinate. Alex has taught for twenty years in many top Jerusalem Yeshivot and Midrashot. He is also a volunteer for Tzohar – a group that seeks to bridge the gaps between religious and secular communities In Israel. Alex lives with his wife and 4 children in Gush Etzion.

Rabbi Mike Feuer

Mike teaches Striving for the Divine, Rav Kook and Jewish History at Pardes. He has learned Torah in a number of Jerusalem area institutions, including Yeshivat HaMivtar, the Mir Yeshiva and Sulam Yaakov, where he studied for smikha (rabbinic ordination) and served as Educational Director. Mike’s teaching is a mix of rigorous analysis and a passionate love of the poetry found in Torah. Since making aliyah in 2001, he has been the program director of a post-high school yeshiva, taught history, Jewish thought and Bible in several Jerusalem yeshivot and midrashot. Today, as a consultant, spiritual counselor and creator of the Jewish Story podcast, Mike is driven by the power of story to shape our world.

The Temple Mount
In Tanakh, Mishna and Halakha
Rabbi Alex Israel

Foundational Zionist Thinkers
Alkali, Hess, Herzl, Nordau, Jabotinsky, Ahad Ha’am
Rabbi Mike Feuer

Har Habayit, Haram Al Sharif, The Temple Mount, is one of the most contentious pieces of land in the entire globe! We shall examine it from several perspectives:

Class 1: Tanakh: When did Jerusalem become holy? Under what circumstances? Is the sanctity divine or is it “man-made”? Why was the Temple built there? What do the different renditions tell us about the role of this place?

Class 2: We will study Psalms sung about this place, prophecies, representing hopes, dreams and disappointments.

Class 3: How is the site of the Temple viewed in the Mishna and the Midrash? Is it the Jewish “National Mall”? Or maybe the universal “navel of the world”?

Class 4: Where did the Temple sit, and can we identify its gates and layout in the current reality? Does Halakha allow Jews to ascend the Temple Mount?

Class 5: Recently, Jews have begun visiting the Temple Mount. What is the state of the current Rabbinic debate? From Rabb Shlomo Goren to David Golinkin, from Natan Sharansky. Rabbi Moshe Lichtenstein and Rabbi Melamed, we shall gain a window into the debates that underlie how we might relate to this sacred site.

The personalities and ideas that founded the State of Israel and the debates they fostered.

Class 1: The Torah of Zion; Heralds of Zion – An introduction to the precursors of Zionism, with an emphasis on its religious antecedents.

Class 2: Moshe Hess – From Class to Nation; Moshe Hess was a foundational thinker in the development of Marxism, but he is known in the history of Zionist thought for his book Rome and Jerusalem. This class explores the tension between the particular and universal which lies at the heart of Zionism.

Class 3: Leon Pinsker – the end of assimilation; This time we explore the formation of Eastern European Enlightenment within the Pale of Settlement, along with the rise of nationalist thought across Europe. Add to this the resurgence of antisemitism within Russia and you have the context for Leon Pinsker’s work Autoemancipation.

Class 4: Theodore Herzl. Along the way will discuss assimilation, antisemitism and the major events which led up to the birth of Zionism as a political movement. The central question of the class is – what made Herzl the father of Zionism?

Class 5: Political and Cultural Zionism; introducing the personalities of Asher Ginsberg and Max Nordau. The primary question on the table is – how do you shape a new Jew?

Class 1