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 […]
Earthquake Response
By Rabbi Nathan Kamesar What a devastating week it’s been around the world. The numbers of dead and missing coming out of Turkey and Syria as a result of the earthquakes there are overwhelming. At the time of this writing the death toll has surpassed 15,000, with many more injured, missing, stranded in the cold. […]
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 […]