Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of Remembrance: Reflections on a Challenging New Year in Israel
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This Shabbat is a special Shabbat known as Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of memory. Now, that can encompass many features of Jewish, and human, existence, but Shabbat Zachor, at least on the face of it, refers to a very specific, and somewhat challenging, memory. It comes from a few verses in the Book […]
What Covenant Can Mean To Us • Boundaries, People!
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar I want to share the D’var Torah I delivered this past Friday night on the week’s parashah, on the eve of our student Alex Howe’s Bar mitzvah: I was drawn to a very specific part of this week’s parashah, this week’s Torah portion. Perhaps you’ll be able to sense why. First […]
Refugee Shabbat • Song of the Sea
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar I know I say this to all the B’nei Mitzvah students, Yul, but you really have a special parashah. So much so that your shabbat has a special name—Shabbat Shirah, the Shabbat of Song. Named, of course, after Shirat Hayam, the Song of the Sea—the most visibly noteworthy part of the […]
What Can the Plague of Darkness Teach Us?
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This week, during Shabbat morning’s Torah discussion, we studied the ten plagues, and in particular the plague of darkness. The conversation centered around how to understand what took place during the plague of darkness and what the Torah is trying to teach us in its description of it. To represent our […]
Rest as a Form of Sacred Offering
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar There is a phrase that comes from the silent amidah, the silent standing prayer at the core of our worship service on Shabbat that has become something of a mantra for me as I seek to navigate Shabbat each week. That phrase is found on page 49 of our Lev Shalem siddur, second […]