Building New Worlds with our Torah
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar One of the core features of the Bar Mitzvah is when a student offers his own teaching, his own D’var Torah—words of Torah reflecting his interpretation of his Torah portion after a period of wrestling with it. As Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman put it, “This is the core of […]
Finding God in Alienation
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Dear Friends, About a month after October 7, my wife Caroline, stretching to find something with which to introduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and, more precisely, a pathway through it to a better future — to our daughters Lila, 4 (and a half, she would want me to say), and Nina, […]
Thank you, and upcoming events
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Dear Friends, I want to start by saying thank you. Thank you so much for your collective response to our call for contributions at the end of the year to help us meet this community’s needs. We exceeded our ambitious goal of $45,000 and it makes such a difference in our […]
A Different Kind Of Hanukkah
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar You all think you know the story of Hanukkah, don’t you? You think it’s about that little vial of oil that was only supposed to be enough to keep the temple menorah lit for one night and yet lasted for eight. Or perhaps you say, not so fast that’s the myth […]
Three Really Hard Incidents in Philadelphia This Week
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Dear Friends, The reverberations and fallout from the October 7 massacre persist. Of course within Israel—victims and hostages and their families, soldiers and their families, and really every citizen of Israel experiencing their world turned upside down; for residents of the West Bank and Gaza, increased violence all around them, the […]