Reimagining Hebrew School as an Immersive Shabbat Experience
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This week, in lieu of a D’var Torah informed by this past Shabbat’s Torah discussion (though this past Shabbat featured an engaging conversation about one of the most challenging, tantalizing texts in our canon: Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, love poetry traditionally read on the Shabbat of Passover because of […]
God’s Vulnerability and Bringing Forth Sparks of Light from Egypt
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This past weekend we held two Shacharit (morning prayer) services accompanied by Torah study sessions, one for Shabbat, as we do every week, and one on Sunday, which was the first day of Passover. (Recall that in Judaism “days” start in the evening; thus the Saturday night Seder kicked off the first “day” […]
Preparing for Passover: Symbolically and Literally
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Pesah is almost upon us. My wife Caroline and I hunkered down in earnest today, seeking to do our best to rid our home of hametz—the leavening agent from which we free ourselves during the Passover holiday. Freeing ourselves is, I suppose, a generous way to look at this: it elides the immense […]
A Bat Mitzvah Teaching On Persecution—And Its Tragic Resonance Today
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This past Shabbat we celebrated another sacred rite of passage in our community. Margot Englander, like Samuel Marion before her, had her Bat Mitzvah celebration scheduled for just a couple of weeks after the whole world changed in March of 2020. Like Sam, with grace and dignity, Margot shifted gears, held […]
A Bar Mitzvah Scheduled for the Week It All Went Down
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This past week we celebrated the Bar Mitzvah of Sam Marion. Similar to the many retrospectives circulating in the news this week about one year ago when everything changed, Sam’s Bar Mitzvah was originally scheduled exactly one year ago this past week. A mere 48 hours before his Bar Mitzvah celebration […]