The Pardes Approach

Pardes has a Jewish Service Learning track in the making. It's very new. The first and only time it was offered was last fall. It is the Pardes Social Justice Track. Here's the description:

We all want to build a better world, but how should that world look and how should we get there? The Social Justice track combines the study of social issues such as the environment, gender and minority welfare, through classical and modern Jewish texts. In addition, students will be learning about the state of the field and specific challenges in Israel with the help of guest lectures from the governmental and non-profit sectors and field visits. The track is aimed at giving current and future activists the tools to use Jewish text to inform and inspire their work.

The theme throughout the course was connecting text to real problems in Israel. The students weren't required to do any actual hands-on service, but they visited and heard from agencies in Israel that work on certain issues, ie the environment and poverty. I spoke with a student who took the class who said it was much more of a text-based class than a hands-on learning experience. She said she would have preferred more service work. I think the track is going in the right direction, but needs to incorporate service time. Without service students feel much more powerless in the face of social problems. Without a service element students don't see that they are capable of fixing the problem. They don't get inspired to act in the future. They may not know how to act on the issue. It's one thing to talk about social justice, but what really gets people motivated and impassioned is service work itself.

This is difficult to do in a setting like Pardes, which is so focused on building students' text literacy and learning skills, however I feel that it fits in with Pardes' goals and certainly with the student body. Many students at Pardes are in the middle of rabbinical school, about to enter or are already rabbis. Many care deeply about social justice causes, are involved in or lead programs in their home communities or want more experience and knowledge about how to lead such a program for their communities. Students also care deeply about Israel not as an abstract idea but as a real country and homeland with problems. Providing more service opportunities fits in with the personal and professional goals of the students.

Once a week many students dedicate an hour or two to volunteering with an agency. Aside from Peace Players, I like to go to a soup kitchen on Fridays and for the first time today I went to a meals on wheels program in Mea Shearim called Avot Ezra. I enjoy these experiences, and generally feel positive about the work I'm doing. But they are totally disconnected from my learning at Pardes. The service feels random and thrown in. At the beginning of the semester Pardes staff says it's important that we interact with Israeli society during our time here, that we contribute in some way to the outside community. Aside from that speech, we did not have any learning sessions on service or the different opportunities.

A couple months ago Pardes had its annual Yom Iyun Shel Chesed. It was a wonderful day. We volunteered at different organizations for a day. I went with Leket to some orange orchards and picked fruit for the hungry. Prior to the service we had a short program about two Pardes alumni who died in the 2002 Hebrew University terrorist bombing. Speakers said it was in their honor that we would do community service today. One said that the way to respond when light is diminished in the world is to bring more light into the world. It was beautiful, but I didn't learn anything about hunger in Israel or the work Leket does. I chose Leket because it was a lovely day and I wanted to spend it outside. That shouldn't have been the basis of my choice. The agency rep who took us out to the orchards spoke for a few minutes but didn't really have time to go into any depth because we had a lot of work to do. I did feel good after the service. I knew that what we picked would go to soup kitchens and food banks to feed the hungry. But I didn't really have a concept what I had just done.

Every Tuesday we have a community lunch. Sometimes during lunch we have a speaker. Speakers have been writers, entrepreneurs and yonce a representative from a social justice agency. The agency was calling on the Pardes community to collect household items for Ethiopian immigrant families. The speaker talked to us about the disparity of wealth in Israel, the challenges Ethiopians face here and what we can do about it. Then he gave instructions for what we could do to help. This was inspiring but lacking in Jewish content.

There are a lot of pieces of JSL here and my hope is that Pardes can bring these pieces together in a cohesive program. Judaism is all about connecting our beliefs to our actions. They should be in sync with each other. What good is Torah study without acting on the Torah's directives, and what good is action without a basis for it?

"Im ain kemach, ain Torah; im ain Torah, ain kemach." If there is no flour, there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour" (Pirke Avot 3:21). This teaching can be understood as saying if there is no earthly action, there is no higher learning, and if there is no higher learning, there is no earthly action. Like flour, service sustains a community. But without guidance (Torah) our actions are not substantial, they are not flour.