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Pardes Learning Seminar

A Thoughtful Encounter with Jewish Text, Ideas, and Community

The Pardes Learning Seminar (PLS) invites you to explore classic Jewish texts and enduring ideas in a setting of depth, reflection, and connection. Guided by Pardes’s renowned faculty, you’ll engage in havruta study, dynamic conversation, and shared inspiration.

You’ll join a community of thoughtful professionals, retirees, communal leaders, and seekers—who share your love of ideas and your belief in Pardes’s mission to keep open, accessible Jewish learning thriving. You come to learn, reflect, and connect, but also to stand with Pardes as a partner in sustaining a Beit Midrash that welcomes every voice and nurtures vibrant Jewish life.

Experience how Pardes transforms text study into an encounter with purpose and possibility.

Winter Pardes Learning Seminar 2

Winter Pardes Learning Seminar

January 18–20, 2026 | Online

Tuition: Sponsorship Level: $500 | Standard Registration: $360 | Young/Community Professional: $250 | Student: $150

Step into the rhythm of Jewish time through Sacred Seasons: A Journey Through the Jewish Year. Join Pardes faculty and fellow learners worldwide for three days of engaging havruta study, rich discussion, and personal reflection. Accessible, inspiring, and entirely online, the Winter Seminar offers a deep learning experience from the comfort of home. Each holiday calls us to pause—to step beyond the rush of daily life—and to encounter holiness in moments both timeless and immediate. Together, we will journey through the sacred rhythms of the Jewish year—Shabbat, festivals, and fast days—discovering how each invites renewal, reflection, and connection. Along the way, we’ll see how the turning of the seasons mirrors the unfolding of our own lives, with their cycles of birth and growth, commitment and loss, resilience and joy.

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Summer Pardes Learning Seminar 2

Summer Pardes Learning Seminar

July 5–9, 2026 | In Jerusalem 

Tuition: Sponsorship Level: $2,500 | Standard: $1,800 | Early bird 10% discount until February 15th

Spend five immersive days in the heart of Jerusalem exploring Bible vs. Talmud: A Friendly Competition in Text and Tradition. Discover how the Written and Oral Torah have shaped Jewish imagination and life through guided learning, havruta, and interactive workshops and educational trips with Pardes faculty. Designed for learners who value depth, connection, and discovery in an intimate setting.

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Why the Pardes Learning Seminar?

For over two decades, the Pardes Learning Seminar has offered adults from around the world a window into the Beit Midrash—where classic Jewish texts meet modern questions in a spirit of openness and inquiry. Each seminar reflects Pardes’s signature approach: rigorous learning, havruta study, and deep conversation in a warm, thoughtful community.

Whether online or in Jerusalem, participants experience the intellectual vitality and spiritual depth that have made Pardes a home for meaningful Jewish learning for more than 50 years.

Meet the Director of PLS: Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash

Nechama made aliyah from Philadelphia over 20 years ago after graduating from Stern College. She has studied at the Matan Institute’s Advanced Talmud and halakha programs, Bar-Ilan University and Nishmat’s Yoetzet Halacha program. Nechama is a certified bridal teacher and a sex educator through Yahel and the Eden Center.

Nechama teaches contemporary halakha and Talmud at Matan and Pardes, as well as Talmud and women and halakha in Torah V’Avodah (TVA). She is an active member of Beit Hillel and participates in interfaith dialogue through Roots, based in Gush Etzion, close to where she lives with her family.

Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash

“I am thrilled I participated in PLS Summer Program. The seminar ignited my mind, my heart and also my soul. It’s a must for anyone seeking wisdom and community!”

Yosef Fraga
Summer ’24

“The Winter PLS is a unique opportunity to learn Jewish texts with terrific teachers, feeling as if you are in the Beit Midrash in Jerusalem from the comfort of your own home in the States”

Mark Cohen
Winter ’25

“If you want to engage and struggle with Torah, learn from world class faculty and from people with different perspectives, and feel the power of being together, there is no better place to do that than with Pardes at the Learning Seminar in Jerusalem. The summer Learning Seminar provide these opportunities as well as to breathe in the cadence of living in Jerusalem (even for a short while).”

Jeff Hurok
Summer ’24

“…it is a luxury to learn in an atmosphere that empowers participants to seek knowledge and information that will enable them to make their own decisions about their spiritual and religious lives.”

Dr. Stephen Donshik
PLS
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