Identity, Israel, and Shared Humanity
Dear Friends, Each week I reflect, professionally, on a couple of fronts: for Friday nights, I try to write in a spirit that reflects the spirit of Shabbat—a poetic sensibility angled towards Shabbat as a palace in time, a foretaste of the world to come, where we indulge in transcendent possibilities, on giving respite to […]
Navigating Adolescence and Jewish Identity
Dear Friends, This past Shabbat we invited students from our 7th through 10th grades of our Hebrew School up to the bimah to lead parts of our Friday night service. (Each grade from 3rd grade and above is asked to lead parts of the Friday night service on two specified nights throughout the year). Those […]
Pesah, Protest, and Poetry
We just got finished celebrating beautiful, if painful, Passover Seders in our homes and in community.
I wanted to begin by sharing the words with which I opened our Seder here at Society Hill Synagogue, with over 150 people across the generations crammed warmly in our social hall:
Jewish Insights on Regret
Would you rather hear an audio recording of Rabbi Nathan Kamesar giving this D’var Torah? Listen here! Sparks of regret. It’s hard to imagine a span of a life not including many of these. A life. How about a year, a month, a week? There are some philosophies which suggest “no regrets.” Never have regrets, […]
Everybody comes to meetings more tired than they used to.
Would you rather hear an audio recording of Rabbi Nathan Kamesar giving this D’var Torah? Listen here! Scrawled out on a notepad on my desk there is a note which says, “everybody comes to meetings more tired than they used to.” It was an observation made by Rabbi David Teutsch in the context of a […]