San Diego (special) --  Rabbi Danny Landes, director of the Pardes Institute for Jewish Learning in Jerusalem, will run the equivalent of an academic marathon in San Diego between Jan. 28 and Feb. 2. 

The Orthodox teacher will make four presentations at a regional CAJE conference here; serve as keynote speaker for the Agency for Jewish Education's Festival of Learning, and also will meet with local graduates and supporters of the Pardes Institute; with students at the High School for Jewish Studies, and with Hillel students at San Diego State University.

That's quite a schedule for someone who describes himself as once having been an indifferent student at best prior to meeting a teacher who turned his educational life around.

The late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who taught at Yeshiva University (in New York) "was known by his students as the Rav, the master," Landes told HERITAGE in a recent interview. "He had probably the greatest students in the world; people who were themselves professors of Jewish thought, prominent, and they always came back to his class. 

"It was exciting, the fact that he was incredibly brilliant, incredibly insightful. More than insightful--he saw things that nobody else could see. He made you part of the process. He worked off students' suggestions. He was challenging, and it was incredibly hard, but you knew that together you were creating new ideas.

"That always for me has been the ultimate model" of what education should be, Landes said.
But Landes also added components from his own life to his teacher's work. While attending Yeshiva University, he met in small, underground study groups with students from the Conservative Movement's Jewish Theological Seminary, and from the Reform Movement's Hebrew Union College. 

He had been introduced to many of these students in marches and other demonstrations protesting the Vietnam War, and they mutually decided that Jews ought to be able not only to protest together but to learn together.

Today, as the leader of an institute where students of both genders from across the Jewish spectrum study and debate difficult Jewish texts together, Landes says such an academic discovery process can break down barriers between adherents of Judaism's varying movements and help to forge greater Jewish unity.

"When you have Reform and Orthodox students who are poring over a page, and they start from their own position, but they have learned a little bit to trust each other, and they are arguing it out, all of a sudden the Reform student says 'I really see your point' and the Orthodox student says 'you know that might be true, but I have begun to see your point.'

"What often happens is that people go back to their own positions, but they go back to their positions transformed; their positions are more crystallized, deeper, and their positions are less exclusivistic. Each side is less politically correct, more sensitive..."

Accordingly, Landes said, although he has prepared notes for each CAJE presentation, he hopes and expects that through student questions and participation--even challenges--the discussions will go into unexpected directions where both teacher and the students will be learning together.

"I like to 80 percent know where I am going and the other 20 percent sometimes becomes more important," he said.

The Jan. 28-31 CAJE (Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education) meeting, to be held at the Radisson Hotel in Mission Valley, will find Landes leading four discussions: 1) "Discovering Judaism's Essentials"; 2) "Torah, Sexuality and Family;" 3) "The Poetry of Rav Kook" and 4) "It's None of My Business, But -- What Jewish Texts Teach on How to Offer and Accept Criticism."

Landes said that he developed three major areas of Jewish interest over the years since leaving Yeshiva University for Los Angeles to help in the development of Yeshiva University's West Coast branch and the development of the neighboring Simon Wiesenthal Center. Following those tasks, he went on to become a pulpit rabbi at B'nai David Judea in Los Angeles, before
accepting the Pardes Institute directorship in Jerusalem.

His favorite three study areas include:

1) Bible study that focuses on midrash--"the attempt to derive imaginative potentialities lying within the text. This is highly creative, but at the same time, it has a certain rigor," he said. "It is crucial for people to reconnect with the Torah--that they be able to fuse themselves and meaning together."

2) Talmudic ethics -- "The issue of how do you criticize someone; the issue of lying...like when do you tell the truth? When not? Truth-telling in cases of people who are ill. Truth-telling if you are going to wreck a family. Do you tell someone you are in love with about an old affair? What and when?

3) Jewish mysticism--"People today have a fantastic desire to connect with a higher spiritual practice, to see how that can be done in a Jewish way. Jewish mysticism is different than other forms. I have studied other forms and how people can become mystically aware of their own connection to God and do so in a way that is true to their Jewish roots."

While the regional CAJE conference at the Radisson Hotel will be an intensive experience for people from San Diego, Orange County, Las Vegas and other nearby areas, the Festival of Jewish Learning--intended to occur at various venues throughout San Diego County within the context of the work week--will be less intensive and more accessible to most San Diegans.

Barely will the CAJE conference have concluded when Landes will meet Feb. 1 over breakfast with the board of San Diego County's Agency for Jewish Education. At noon that same day, he will make the formal opening presentation for the Festival in the conference room at the AJE offices at 4858 Mercury Street in the Kearny Mesa area of San Diego. His topic will be
"Seeing God's Face; Hearing God's Voice." That same evening, he'll address the High School for Jewish Studies on "Love, Israel, God, and Hebrew."

"Each one I am really looking forward to tremendously," Landes said. He said he was particularly interested in meeting with the bureau's board because "they have tremendous responsibilities" and deserve "to be given back." The intellectual stimulation generated in such meetings, he said, can be a great boost. Being with students--whether at the High School of Jewish Studies, or on Feb. 2 at Hillel -- "is always the best" because such sessions can become free wielding. 

"I am not going to attempt to give a speech. This is really going to be a beit midrash, worshop, seminar model. I really want people to hear each other's voices, and hear their own, and see that they can talk Torah, and see that they also can take a punch, accept criticism."

Landes also will be meeting with the local branch of American Friends of Pardes, which was established after San Diegans Ruth Gold, Bryna Haber, Julie Potiker, Laurayne and Sandy Ratner, and Gloria Stone went to Jerusalem to participate in an intensive Pardes seminar for about 30 students.

The American Friends of Pardes will use the occasion of Landes' visit to launch on Jan. 28 a six-session course over six months during which faculty members from Pardes will come to San Diego to lead similar kinds of seminars on Feb. 25, March 11, April 22, May 27 and June 10.
Landes said the Pardes sessions, to the extent possible, will try to re-create the feeling of studying at the non-denominational institution in Jerusalem.

"The core of Pardes is a large room in which all of the sacred books are present, in which there are tables and chairs, and you walk in and see some young women with kippot and some young men with kippot, some men and women without, in all manners of dress, coming from all manner of backgrounds--Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist- studying with each other in a shared search for meaning," Landes said. "And the meaning is to be found in the study of hard texts.

"Students will come, generally for a year, and they study day and night. There are no grades, no degrees, no credits--although in a pinch when we have undergraduates we can arrange for credits. But the whole point is study for its own sake. Just the other day, a wonderful student, a Yale Phil Beta Kappa, said 'I never had such rigorous study that was also so much fun.' It is a lot of fun. You go in. You see humor. You have--thank God--the best teachers in Israel. They're a diverse lot, terrific people."

Study sessions involve about 80 students in the main room, with smaller rooms nearby available for breakout sessions. While people elsewhere may think of studying as people very quietly sitting in a library, painstakingly poring over books, at Pardes "the beit midrash is where we have 2-3 students who at a pretty loud voice are reading to each other, arguing with each other, asking each other questions and banging it out. It is sweet and it is different."

The institute is located in a multipurpose building whose other tenants include a Mazda dealership and the Ministry of Health. Students live wherever they wish to in Jerusalem, following the dictates of their individual life styles. Although faculty members maintain close friendships with the students--and will check in on them in times of personal emergencies--"we try to do maximal
care and minimal interference in people's lives," Landes said. 

"It is very sacred at Pardes that we do not interfere with how the students live their lives. If they want to be permaenently devoted to every point of Jewish law--wonderful, that is fine! If they don't want to observe anything, they are students, they can make their own decisions, and there is no penalty for that in the least."

While Landes was at B'nai David Judea in Los Angeles, students who had attended Pardes began to hear about an Orthodox rabbi who wanted his synagogue to be--in his words--"both Orthodox and klal Yisroel. 

"All sorts of rabbis spoke from the pulpit and were accorded full honors," Landes explained. "It was an Orthodox synagogue, yet feminist, in an Orthodox way. It means sometimes having separate liturgies for the women... Having women speaking from the pulpit, which other Orthodox synagogues didn't do....Women having special celebrations... Women dancing with the sefer
Torah at Simchat Torah....Women on the board."

The Pardes alumni found that they could challenge Landes, even during his sermons, and that instead of resenting it, Landes welcomed their input. "I was giving a major Yom Kippur sermon-an appeal--and in the middle of my talk, I look down and there is this quizzical look, so quizzical, from someone new in the synagogue, and she sees I see her and she stands up and
says, 'you know , rabbi, I don't think you read that verse right.' I said, 'what do you mean?' and she said that I emphasized one thing but should have emphasized another, and I looked at her and said, 'Do you study at Pardes?' She blushed; it was true.Everyone there kind of roared. Was it appropriate for her to do that? No. Was it great? It was. It changed my sermon -- and I
raised a lot of money."

When Pardes was looking for a new director about four years ago, Landes was excited by the challenge. His wife, Sheryl Robin (who retains her own last name), a writer and psychologist, also was excited about moving to Jerusalem. Their daughter, Hannah, today studies Talmud at a feminist Orthodox high school, where she often meets with Palestinian students. And their
son, Isaac, "all boy, is a sixth grader in a Jewish public school."

His children are in love with Israel, he said. "They have fantastic friends; they love Israel; my daughter is thinking about which branch of the Armed Forces she will go into. It is a different kind of life, very challenging, Israel is not easy, but it is enormously fulfilling."

There is a sense, also, for Landes of having returned home. Able to trace his family lineage to King David, himself, as well as to the great biblical commentator, Rashi, Landes now can say that 11 more recent generations in a row, including himself and his children, have lived in Israel.

"My grandfather was sent by Rabbi Kook to Chicago to do certain things, and he helped build a Jewish community there," Landes said. On his mother's side, rabbis named Sacks, Rivlin and Frank all were Jerusalem notables. "Among those three family names are at least eight streets in Jerusalem named for them," Landes said proudly.