This year’s companion looks at the High Holiday season through the prism of our relationships: with others, with God, and with ourselves. Bring meaning, inspiration, and depth to your holidays and the upcoming year.
Jewish calendar, High Holidays, Self & spirituality, Reflection, Teshuvah
In November 2022, OpenAI – a non-profit organization – released a free preview of ChatGPT. This triggered widespread interest in generative AI and leading to the ongoing AI boom. By March 2023, OpenAI released a new model – GPT-4 –…
Self & spirituality, Hasidut
The notion of a women serving as pontifex maximus, the bishop of Rome, sovereign of papal states, and the visible head of the Catholic Church – seems incongruous. Yet a legend first recorded in the thirteenth century identifies just such…
Self & spirituality, Hasidut
The Passover Seder night is all about the faculty of speech. We talk, explain, pose questions and offer answers, discuss, and recount the story of our people. Indeed, the Hebrew word for Passover, Pesah, is a portmanteau for peh sah…
Self & spirituality, Hasidut, Jewish prayer
Rabbi Yitzhak of Radziwiłłów was active as a hasidic master in the early nineteenth century. His father, the maggid (preacher) Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel of Złoczów (1731-1780s), was a hasidic leader in the early days of nascent Hasidism. Each of Rabbi…
Self & spirituality, Spirituality
The Battle of the Vale of Siddim – or as it is known in Jewish tradition: The War of the Four Kings against the Five (Genesis 14:1-17) – was a result of longstanding tensions in the Jordan River plain during…
Self & spirituality, Hasidut
In 1933, Rabbi Yisrael Bekmeister (1877-1954) published a twenty-page collection of hasidic tales. The collection included a fascinating tale that speaks to assessing the past year, as we approach the High Holy Days. **** Bekmeister’s slender booklet included fifteen tales…
Self & spirituality, Reflection, Spirituality, Jewish calendar, High Holidays, Yom Kippur
A 1907 collection of hasidic tales by Rabbi Yisrael Berger (1855-1919), Eser Orot, offered a bevy of tales about Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdyczów (1740-1809). Rabbi Berger was one of the key transmitters of hasidic tales, publishing a tetralogy that…
Self & spirituality, Reflection, Spirituality
Likkutei Tefillot is one of the fascinating books in the hasidic library. Written by Rabbi Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov (1780-1844), it does not fit neatly in the classic genres of hasidic writing. The work, as we have it today, is…
Self & spirituality, Jewish prayer, Reflection, Spirituality
The following article was published on April 13, 2020. Many people obsess over counting the Omer. “Did you count yet?” “What was last night?” “Don’t forget to count!” In fact, this obsession has roots in Jewish, and specifically hasidic, tradition.…
Self & spirituality, Hasidut, Jewish calendar, The Omer
Derek Kwait on rushing through Selichot year after year without it changing him — and how reframing the service as “cultivating heartbreak” finally opened the door to real teshuvah.
Jewish calendar, Elul, High Holidays, Self & spirituality, Personal transformation, Teshuvah
With God While Eating Dov Ehrman was born around 1860 and grew up in the hasidic cultural milieu of Hungary and Galicia. He lived in Perbenyik, Hungary (today Pribeník, Slovakia), and visited the hasidic masters of Belz, Sighet, Munkatch,…
Self & spirituality, Hasidut
Take live online courses with our world-class faculty, from Tanakh to Talmud to Text Skills and beyond.
Explore the diverse array of books authored by Pardes teachers.
Use our search tool to find the Pardes program that fits your schedule.