What makes a house into a home? And what might Jewish tradition teach us about the spaces in which we build our lives?
Recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people around the world found themselves confined to their homes, Home Is Where the Torah Is brings Pardes Torah directly into that experience. Across six episodes, Pardes teachers explore different dimensions of home and ask what physical space, relationships, hospitality, memory, and holiness can teach us about creating a true Jewish home.
The series was created at a particularly meaningful moment for Pardes: while teachers and students were learning from their own homes, plans were moving forward for a new physical home for the Pardes community in Jerusalem.
Pardes faculty approach the idea from different textual and spiritual directions. Rabbi Michael Hattin, for example, explores the tent of Sarah and Rivka and the connection between the Jewish home and the Temple, while Rabbi Dr. Meesh Hammer-Kossoy considers the windows of the beit midrash. Each episode is followed by a conversation led by Rabbi Leon Morris with architect Matti Rosenshine, connecting the Torah being explored to the thinking behind Pardes’s new building.
Together, the series asks listeners to think beyond walls and architecture. What values make a space sacred? What does it mean to welcome others in? And how can the spaces we create become places where Torah, community, and human connection can flourish?
