The Golden Calf and the Red Cow walk into Shabbat…

by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Our staff has been monitoring news coverage of the attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Temple Israel community. We have been notified by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Community Security Director and the Secure Community Network (SCN) that there are […]

What It Means to Remember Right Now

by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar It is distressing to witness a significant part of the world at war. At the center of the current conflict is the clerical regime governing the Islamic Republic of Iran — a regime that has fomented death and destruction throughout the world for decades, and whose supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, […]

A Still, Small Voice

by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar Here is the D’var Torah (teaching of Torah) I offered this past Friday night, as a prelude to a gorgeous teaching from our semi-annual Scholar in Residence series, this time with Rabbi Michael Cohen on Overcoming the Asymmetry of the Sensational: A Better Future for Israelis and Palestinians: When I heard […]

Count Me In – the Half-Shekel Legacy

by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar There is so much coming up at Society Hill Synagogue! We’ve got a Scholar-in-Residence Shabbat this weekend that I am really looking forward to, with Rabbi Michael Cohen from the Arava Institute; we’ve got all of our Purim festivities March 1, 2, and 3, and if you can believe it, it […]

Rain, Dew, and the Nourishment We Need

by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar For obvious reasons, I’ve been thinking a lot about the weather over these last couple of weeks. Perhaps it started when I spent an hour and a half shoveling snow to get our car dislodged, finally understanding the Philly practice of sticking a lawn chair in a street parking spot to […]