Pardes In the Press
That Link to My Ancient Forefathers...
By Marissa Feinman, Jewish Community News
My morning Chumash class just celebrated the landmark of concluding the third parsha of Genesis, Lech Lecha, a phrase made familiar to me in my youth through the lyrics of Debbie Friedman. During our culmination festivities, we focused on one of the main themes of the parsha, "the land that I will show you." Three times, God speaks to Abraham promising him great nations as descendents and in chapter 17 verse 8, "I assign the land you sojourn in, to you and your offspring to come, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting holding." The covenant that God creates with Abraham is directly connected to this land.
Before this year I had only been in Israel for 10 day periods of time on Taglit-Birthright Israel. While those experiences were wonderful, I never built a strong connection to the physical land. During my year here at Pardes, I’ve spent a lot of time in a classroom learning about my tradition. Despite the fact that I know people in other parts of the country, I just can’t seem to leave my comfortable community in Jerusalem. When Pardes organized a tiyul to the southern Arava, I jumped at the opportunity to get out and see some new sights. Tiyul technically means trip in Hebrew, but has the special connotation of an outdoor adventure in Israel.
Our tiyul took us to the Great Rift Valley that lies on the southern half of the Israeli-Jordanian border. This fault line has created a mismatched geological landscape. The looming, red, 480 million-yearold volcanic rock mountains on the Jordanian side of the valley face the Israeli Negev’s 30 million-year-young sandstone/limestone desert ranges. We spent approximately 10 hours hiking in the Eilat Mountains over the course of the 3 day trip. Each night we retired to our kibbutz guest houses exhausted and happy from our time spent soaking in the sunshine and good company.
I challenged myself the second day of the trip and joined the longer hike which lasted around 5 hours. I was surprised to find that after many years of claiming I did not like hiking, I enjoyed the physical challenges of scrambling over boulders, squeezing through narrow passes and easing my way down the mountainside. At one point we stopped to hear about the biblical copper mines we were traversing and it made me think about my personal connection to the land. Although I still have mixed feelings about the modern day state of Israel, my bond with the physical land goes back centuries. That link to my ancient forefathers, the earth I’ve walked on the last 8 months, can inspire awe in me.
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Photo: View from the top of a hike in the Eilat Mountains. |
Marissa Feinman is studying at the Pardes Institute in Israel. She received a scholarship from your Jewish Federation for this program. She will be one of two guest Israel correspondents, reporting from Israel, both her experiences and what she sees going on there, until her return in Summer 2009.
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