The Heart As Agent For The Divine
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar In a few moments, we’re going to sing the beautiful words and haunting melody of Ahat Sha’alti from Psalm 27, a psalm which tradition teaches that we chant every morning and every night from the beginning of the month of Elul, the last month of the Jewish year, through Rosh Hashanah […]
Three Steps Forward
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar I’d like to share the D’var Torah (teaching of Torah) I delivered this past Friday night, on the eve of celebrating a young person in our community, Isaac Hohns, becoming Bar Mitzvah: People like to talk about the experience of playing Jewish geography — seeing whether someone Jewish whom you’ve just […]
A Call To Love With All Our Hearts
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar This past Shabbat, we read the Torah portion in which the Sh’ma is found — perhaps the central liturgical moment in all of Jewish life. The Sh’ma is found in Sefer D’varim, the Book of Deuteronomy, during a speech in which Moses is addressing the Israelite people at the end of their journey together. The People […]
What I’m Wrestling With — Israel, Gaza, and Antisemitism
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar When I have the time and space, I try to share with you my own personal wrestlings regarding two interrelated dynamics that have weighed heavily on our hearts for almost 21 months now: (1) war in Israel, Gaza, and around the Middle East, and (2) antisemitism as it shows up in […]
Israel and the Region Under Fire; A Prayer for Long-Term Peace
by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar I write on the heels of a head-spinning week in the news: in the span of seven days, we had an American president deploy US Marines to an American city, raising alarm bells among legal observers around the country; in response, millions demonstrated peacefully under the aegis of “No Kings;” and […]