Rabbi Kamesar’s Teachings

Since the last time I composed a D’var Torah (effectively, sermon) to this community, on June 16, the following seismic events have taken place: in chronological order, An earthquake struck southeast Afghanistan killing approximately one thousand people; The Supreme Court limited the ability of states to pass legislation

Not every Torah portion has us hanging on the edge of our seat with cliffhangers or narrative tension. In fact, while considered a holy document, the text of the Torah can oftentimes feel quite… mundane. So it was in this past week’s portion, Naso, whose title

Dear Friends, I can’t believe—or, perhaps by now I can—that I’m writing about gun violence for my weekly D’var Torah for the third time in four weeks, this time for a mass shooting that took place in, essentially, the synagogue’s literal own backyard, and thus, effectively, many of your own

Some weeks, in our exploration of the weekly Torah portion, we react to the events of the world immediately around us. Other weeks the Torah portion raises themes that apply to our lives or our Judaism on a more subtle, ongoing basis. This past Shabbat

This week, for my weekly email to the congregation, I was planning to share the remarks I delivered this past Friday evening at TGIShabbat, when I spoke about the racist massacre in a Buffalo, New York grocery store on the basis of, according to some

A couple of months ago I underscored the idea, using Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s famous turn of phrase, that Shabbat is meant to be a palace in time: immune to the whims and vagaries of the weekday rhythms, the trials and tribulations we encounter on

In our Saturday morning Torah discussion last week, held weekly from approximately 10:30-11 am as part of our Shabbat service, having recently been enriched by the additional, weekly participation of our Hebrew School students, we discussed Parashat Emor, the Torah portion known as “Emor,” Hebrew for

I don’t need to tell you that the revelation of the draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization sent shockwaves through our national environment. The opinion, if the final version holds true to the draft’s core holdings, would overturn a 50-year-old precedent bearing on among

I’m left still feeling the high of Friday night’s celebration of the generosity that led to our synagogue expansion. Members from every chapter of this community’s history came together displaying firsthand what intergenerational Jewish community looks like. Those who have been part of this community

Dear Friends, Today is the due date for for our little one, and while there are no immediate signs that they’re going to arrive on schedule, I’m beginning approximately one month’s worth of parental leave starting tomorrow. (Going with a fixed date regardless of when

Those who are regular participants in Friday night and Saturday morning services with us might have intuited by now that the emphasis of my Divrei Torah, my teachings from torah, tend not to engage directly or explicitly with the headlines of the week. This is not

This past Shabbat during services, we collectively studied Parashat Tetsaveh, the Torah portion known as Tetsaveh, which means “You [Moses] shall instruct.” The portion falls in the last third of the Book of Exodus as Moses remains with God at Mt. Sinai, gathering instructions for the Israelites with

This past week during Shabbat services, we discussed the weekly torah portion, Terumah. Terumah means “gifts” and it refers to the gifts that the Israelite people were called upon to bring so that, collectively, they could facilitate the construction of the mikdash, “sanctuary,” from the word for holiness, or,