Eternality and Expansiveness in Our Approach to Shabbat
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This past Shabbat, our second in a row in-person together as a community, we studied the weekly parashah (Torah portion) as we always do, probing its depths for meaning, asking what eternal meaning its words lend to our own lives, informing us, pushing us, causing us to think. This week’s parashah was called va’ethanan, which means […]
Reflections on the Donkeys in Our Lives
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This gives me the opportunity to reflect on the Bat Mitzvah celebration and teaching by our own Hannah Davidson. This past week’s parashah (Torah portion) was Balak. Balak was the name of the King of Moab, an ancient kingdom in present day Jordan, who encountered the Israelites as they marched through the wilderness on […]
Our First In-Person Shabbat—Recognizing the Role of Unpredictability in the Universe
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar What a day this past Shabbat was. It was the first time we gathered as a whole community on Shabbat since March 7, 2020—by my count seventy-one weeks of Shabbat in exile from our beautiful, sacred sanctuary. Now, as we know, in exile doesn’t necessarily mean “lesser than.” Wow, did we hold some beautiful […]