In addition to directing and teaching the Social Justice Track at Pardes, Dr. Meesh Hammer-Kossoy teaches Talmud and is the Director of Admissions. Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies is a co-educational bet midrash dedicated to teaching Torah to Jews from across the religious spectrum.

Mesh Hammer-Kossoy describes the social justice program she directs at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, an open bet midrash in Jerusalem for adults.

“There are two kinds of Jews” said a student of mine as she explained why she was enrolling in my class, “those who do social justice and those who speak Hebrew.” Very dark humor indeed, especially given that the mission of the Jewish People is so clearly spelled out in the Torah: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations are to bless themselves by him? For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is just and right, in order that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.” [Genesis 18:17-19] God’s path is justice and righteousness, and it is only by following and actively inspiring others to pursue that path that the descendants of Abraham merit their chosenness. The expression tzedakah umishpat is a virtual mantra in the Bible, appearing more than forty times across the books of Prophets and Holy Writings. Moses, too, was chosen only after three acts: first, protecting the Jew being victimized by his slave master, second, intervening in conflict between Jews, and finally fighting for justice even amongst non-Jews. Let the nay-sayers say what they will about the term tikkun olam – the Torah has a very clear message about the imperative of social justice activism.

The Social Justice track at Pardes, now in its fifth year, attempts to bridge the chasm between what my students called “Hebrew speakers” and “justice doers” – to help educate people who will be involved in social justice and tikkun olam informed by Jewish learning. The course examines the issues of our day by combining traditional text study with expert lectures and field trips. As a Jerusalem-based bet midrash, we focus on understanding the challenges specifically as they face the State of Israel. The program has trained approximately a hundred graduates many of whom now occupy lay and professional positions in Jewish leadership, education, and NGOs armed with text, vision and a sense of empowerment. The track is built on four major tenets: the relevance and imperative of Torah to the real world, the complexity of truth, trust in the student, a belief in the redemptive power of change.

Torah study is rooted in an understanding of the real world

This Social Justice Track is built on the foundational assumption that the Torah has something deep and important to say about the great questions of our day: “Turn it over and over, as everything is in it (Avot 5:22).” Because Torah is relevant, it makes demands on us: “study is great because it leads to deeds” (Kiddushin 40b). Torah study is at its best when it changes who we are and what we do as human beings.

The judge only has what his eyes see (Sanhedrin 6b). Both capital and civil cases demand a thorough investigation (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:1). Just as the bet din won’t pass judgment unless it understands the facts of a case, so too, we need to understand the reality which Torah is addressing. For us, that often means lectures from outside experts, as well as field trips.

Take, for example, our pre-High Holiday environmental unit. This year we opened with a lecture from Dr. Jeremy Benstein, of the Heschel Sustainability Center, entitled “Blue, White and Green,” introducing the environmental challenges in Israel. Students asked about the many technological advances in Israel: desalinization, electric cars, solar panels, etc. Dr. Benstein told us about them all, but also proposed that these solutions lull us into complacency about our current unsustainable model of unbound consumption and growth. Two years ago, we brought that message home by visiting Better Place (the electric car company founded by Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi, www.betterplace.com/) and Hava veAdam environmental farm(built on the foundation of sustainable agriculture, www.havaveadam.org/eng/index.html), two opposite models of environmental solutions and debated their potential for changing our world.

Before Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, we read Lynn White’s classic critique (www.wiser.org/resource/view/fcb560a6557d0e425bfac20e7fce74df) of the Judeo-Christian anti-environmentalism tradition. Students acknowledged White’s accusation that the Torah commands humans to “conquer and dominate” the earth. They also noted, however, that the command to conquer is tempered by the command of Shabbat, as well as a second narrative of creation which charges humans to “serve and preserve” (translation from Benstein’s The Way Into Judaism and the Environment, p. 15). Before Yom Kippur, we look at Jewish attitudes towards consumption. Is less more? Ramban, Leviticus 19:2, argues just that. Similarly, Rabbi Isaac Arama (Akeidat Yitzhak 67) suggests that the sukkah is designed to teach us about the merits of the simple life. On the other hand, we have been commanded to enjoy fully whatever gifts God has bestowed upon us (Baba Kama 91b). Thus our Torah learning sharpened themes that arose in our field studies. The lectures and trips as well as the Torah learning are each compelling educational endeavors on their own. However, when used in concert, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. The Torah is understood in new ways and the study of the real world gains a greater religious imperative.

Torah study is nuanced

Advocates of tikkun olam are frequently dismissed for shallowly imposing their liberal agenda on the Torah. Hillel Halkin (“How Not to Repair the World,” Commentary, July 2008) sharply expresses the argument in his review of a stereotypically liberal tikkun olam publication:

They represent the ultimate in that self-indulgent approach, so common in non-Orthodox Jewish circles in the United States today, that treats Jewish tradition not as a body of teachings to be learned from but as one needing to be taught what it is about by those who know better than it does what it should be about. Judaism has value to such Jews to the extent that it is useful, and it is useful to the extent that it can be made to conform to whatever beliefs and opinions they would have even if Judaism had never existed. (p. 24)

In most cases, students choose my class because they already feel strongly about issues of social justice. Who is not happy when they find that the Torah reflects some of their most profoundly held beliefs? However, sincere study demands that we give a sincere hearing to sources that challenge us as well as sources that resonate with our preconceived values. When we are successful, we come to understand that the truth is more complex and nuanced than we had earlier assumed.

We opened our unit on economic justice by examining the question of the responsibility of the government for creating a safety net for the weakest strata of the community. Just as the presidential debates were being conducted, we too held our own debate about the size of the ideal government. Ours was rooted in a close study of the core texts about tzedakah, shemittah and yovel from our classical sources. Students achieved their own understanding of the wisdom in our tradition both “entitling” poor to basic food security as well as the advantages of direct, voluntary, and small scale giving over a impersonal national governmental model. The questions of how best to help are complex and nuanced, and our tradition helps us to ask more sophisticated questions about creating economic justice.

As Hillel Halkin suggested, it is imperative to understand “the world’s complexity…the fact that repairing almost anything can involve breaking something else… There are few cost-free solutions to anything” (pp. 26-27). Ultimately, however, it is a religious imperative for us to find the best possible solutions to our problems. My students always find the Torah to reflect deep values of which they can feel proud. At the same time, they strive to see the complexity of truth and to use the Torah to sharpen and challenge their ideas rather than merely confirm their previously held assumptions.

Trust students to see complexity

As someone who uprooted herself and left her family and home to be part of the Zionist dream, Israel is something that I feel very strongly about. Similarly, having dedicated my life to learning and teaching Torah, I wear my love for Torah on my sleeve. It would be absurd to pretend that I do not care what my students think at the end of the class about the topics dearest to my heart. However, as a teacher I trust my students to follow the path of Jacob, “to struggle with God and man, and prevail” (Gen. 32:29). My experience is that honest exploration of difficult Torah texts and realities in Israel enables students to come out with a more durable love for both Torah and Israel.

For my students, all of whom have had fine secular educations in universities and many of whom have non-Jewish family members as well as friends, perhaps the most emotionally charged issue in relating to both Israel and the Torah is their relationship to non-Jews. Our track has heard from a range of experts and visited widely in Shiloh and Sderot, East Jerusalem and Unrecognized Bedouin villages. There are moments of darkness as well as light for some of my students. We have studied Rav Shmuel Eliahu’s ban against those who rent their homes to non-Jews as well as Ben Azai’s declaration that the core value of Torah is that all human beings are created in the Divine Image. I don’t think it is fair to expect someone who has a non-Jewish father to feel comfortable with a halakhah which prohibits drinking wine touched by a non-Jew. But we strive to understand where those laws are coming from and to contextualize them within the Jewish canon and history.

We make space for processing these experiences. Often I am struck by how, once empowered, the students learn so much from one another. Students raise almost every important point on both sides of an argument, and very often they are able to hear things from one another in ways they couldn’t have possibly accepted had they come from me.

I do not fear that my students will come out of the class with complaints about Israel or Jewish tradition. I know that they will. One indicator of Jewish engagement is an ability to identify things one doesn’t like about being Jewish. My experience is that in order to have a meaningful love affair with Torah and the State of Israel, my students need to have a complex relationship. Talking to nationalists and peace activists in Samaria has empowered my students to care more about these issues. For years, students have been sending me links about issues we have studied in class which suddenly have more significance and resonance for them than they had before. I have learned to dampen my natural inclination to whitewash Jewish tradition and defend the State of Israel, and instead to trust my students to develop robust and sophisticated relationships – and I have been duly rewarded.

Inspiration is in human potential to change

There is profundity and strength in nuanced relationships, but I try to temper trust and honesty with inspiration. By definition, a class in Social Justice involves facing a lot of injustice. Students struggle with the sad reality that one in three children in Israel live in poverty, that the State of Israel has a long way to go in order to achieve its explicit commitment to offer equality without regard to religion, race or sex, and that much of the fine legislation passed in Israel goes unenforced.

However, Israel more than any place I know was built on dreams. David Ben Gurion famously said, “If an expert says it can’t be done, get another expert,” and “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” In a country as small as ours, it is uniquely possible to make miracles happen. Through our work in the track, my students meet modern day heroes such as Eliezer Jaffe, founder of the Israel Free Loan Association, Joseph Gitler, founder of Leket (an Israeli food rescue network, www.leket.org.il), and Sari Revkin, founder of Yedid (an Israeli association for community empowerment, www.yedid.org.il). As immigrants from North America they found an imperfect Israel, and rather than throw their hands up in despair succeeded in making a significant contribution to Israeli society. In the words of one of my students, “There is something special about meeting someone who has just cinched his place in the World to Come.” As Heschel said, “What we need more than anything else is not textbooks, but text people.”

Students also share their own inspirational encounters with the class. With my help and guidance, each student prepares one devar tzedek in which they share a Torah value close to their heart as well as their experiences in creating or witnessing that value in action. The presenting students gain important practice in research and public speaking. The class is enriched by a deeper appreciation of each individual in the class, as well as the incredible potential of humans to make a difference.

Conclusions

Five years of experience directing and teaching the Social Justice Track at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies has been a source of strength and inspiration for me as a teacher, a Jewish leader, and an Israeli. The opportunity to self-consciously reflect on Torah and contemporary justice issues has sharpened my commitment to both. As we understand the complexity of both Torah and the social-political reality of the State of Israel, I am inspired by the depth and timelessness of Torah. I am also inspired by the ability of my students to grapple with difficult issues as well as to dedicate themselves to making a contribution. I have no doubt that the Jewish People and the world as a whole are better off for it.