Jewish Wisdom on Character and Leadership Amid Political Change
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Yet again, I write in response to unfolding developments in one of the most eventful months in electoral politics in modern American history, with reverberations for the Jewish community, for Israel, and for the world. Never in modern history has a sitting president, eligible for another term of office, […]
The Power of Hope: A Cornerstone of the Jewish Experience
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar There’s one part of my previously emailed d’var torah that I kind of want to take back. In it, I shared the truism that “hope is not a strategy” (juxtaposing it to the notion that “neither is despair”). It is true that hope is not a strategy: if you […]
Independence and Responsibility: A 4th of July Message from Rabbi Kamesar
Independence and Responsibility: A 4th of July Message from Rabbi Kamesar by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar I write this on the cusp of the 4th of July, the date commemorating the establishment of the United States of America through the ratification by the Continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence, a mere three blocks […]
Balancing Compassion and Critique: A Yom Kippur Perspective on Israel
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Dear Friends, I’m sometimes reminded of the adage about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, that it has the capacity to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. That is, some of us go through life and are so hard on ourselves; day in, day out we find ourselves […]
Making Sense of the World
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar What follows is the D’var Torah I delivered this past Shabbat on how theology can sometimes help us make sense of the world: Are you there, God? It’s me, Nathan Kamesar. One of the questions I ask week after week, and really moment after moment is, where is God in this? […]