Hallelujah: Breaking Open
Yom Kippur 5783 By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Time for another song lyric. This one comes from a song by Jewish Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen that has been, as one writer put it, “repurposed and reinvented by other artists so many times, that it [has become] a latter-day secular hymn”—and not even really all that secular. […]
Nose to the Grindstone / Head to The Stars: Cultivating a Relationship with the Beyond
Kol Nidre 5783 By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Philadelphia’s own Tariq Trotter, lead MC and singer of the hip hop band, The Roots, one of the more successful musical acts to come out of Philadelphia in recent memory and current house band of The Tonight Show, composed one of my favorite song lyrics. It’s a simple […]
L’Hayim: 18 Jewish Touchstones to Help Navigate the Years Ahead
Rosh Hashanah 5783 By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar It’s been a rough year. Years? Decade? Century? We’re weary. How much longer is this pandemic going to last, we wonder? How many times do we have to turn on the news and encounter another attack on our democracy, or our personal autonomy? How many images of a […]
A Bat Mitzvah Teaching on Curses and Blessings
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This past Shabbat we were treated to the celebration of Josie Chrismer becoming Bat Mitzvah. Josie’s Bat Mitzvah parashah portion was Ki Tavo, one of the final portions of the entire Torah. Ki Tavo means “when you enter” or “when you arrive,” the context of which is Moses advising the Israelites what rituals that she undertake […]
What “Open House” Really Means
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar We’ve affixed the term “open house” to tonight’s celebration. I helped generate that label, but I have to ask the question, could there be a more generic term than “Open House?” Realtors use it when showing off a house for sale; private elementary and high schools use it when trying to […]