• Beyond Doctrine: Embracing All Jews as Family

    We now feel separated and divided, but in many ways we are more unified. Families who never made the effort to get together are now uniting over Zoom.   Here at Kesher Israel each week we have been asking our members to teach as part of the new Voices of Kesher program -an opportunity to…

  • The Balance We Must Uphold as a People

    This Sunday we will observe the fast day of the 17th of Tammuz, which commemorates the siege of Jerusalem leading to the destruction of the Temple.  The Talmud says that the Temple was destroyed due to baseless hatred among Jews.  This is hard to avoid, for as one great thinker said, “We see anyone more…

  • Understanding Bilam’s Spiritual Failure

    In this week’s parsha, Balak, Balak the king of Moav realizes he will not be able to defeat the Jewish people in war and that he must reckon with them on a spiritual level.  He hires Billam, a Midianite prophet, to curse the Jews.   Bilam tells God about the Jewish people, that they came…

  • Moshe’s Prayer for Compassionate Guidance

    In this week’s parsha, Pinchas, Moshe begins to prepare for the succession of his leadership:  “Moses spoke to the Lord, saying, “Let the Lord, God of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community.”” Moshe’s wording is strange in many ways.  This is the only place in the Torah where the verse, “And…

  • Beyond Rebuke: Transforming Hatred into Compassion

    We are now in the midst of the period of the Three Weeks, a sad time during which we mourn the destruction of both Temples.  The Talmud writes that the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people exiled at this time due to sinat chinam, baseless hatred. In fact though, all hatred is forbidden, as…

  • Learning from Moses and Yehoshua

    This past week we read in the Torah of Pinchus, someone who stands up to fulfill what is written in Pirkey Avot (The Ethics of Our Fathers), “In a place where there is no one, stand up and be someone”.  He is the classic zealot for God.  Several paragraphs latter when God tells Moses that…

  • Beyond the Familiar: The Call to Expand Our Horizons

    In this past week’s parsha, Balak, the Torah surprises us.   The normal scene completely switches and focuses not on the Jewish people but instead on prophets of other nations who have a relationship with God but who have not heard of the Jewish people.  For these people, the Jewish people are but a curiosity…

  • The Journey That Shaped a Nation

    In the second of this week’s Torah portions, Masei, the Torah writes, “These were the travels of the Israelites who came out of the land of Egypt, according to their hosts, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.  Moses wrote down the starting points of their various marches according to their travels, as directed by…

  • Vows, Leadership, and the Road to the Land

    In this week’s Parsha, Matos-Masei, the Jewish people stand on the bank of the Jordan river.  They have engaged in battle with the nations on the eastern side of that river, have survived the spiritual onslaught of the Moabites in last week’s parsha, and now they are poised to enter the land.   In these…

  • Nostalgia and the Value of Today

    This week’s second torah portion opens with Moshe reviewing all of the 42 stops that the Jewish people made in the desert over their 40 year trek from Egypt to Israel.  We know where they have been, why recount them?  Remembering the past is a familiar feeling to us.  It can come with regret or…

  • The Intersection of War, Community, and Personal Needs

    In the second of this week’s two Torah portions, Ma’asey, the Jewish people stand on the banks of the Jordan River poised to enter the Land of Israel.  They are commanded to make war with the people they will encounter there and to, “Drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy…

  • Balancing the Needs of the Community and the Individual

    In this week’s Torah portion, the Jewish people stand on the banks of the Jordan River poised to enter the Land of Israel.  They are commanded to make war with the people they will encounter there and to, “drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their molten images, and…

  • From Sinai to the Desert: The Struggle with Desire and Growth

    In this week’s parsha, the Jewish people have started the walk from Mount Sinai to the land of Israel and the people begin to complain. “We remember the fish, which we ate for free in Egypt; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, onions, and garlic;  But now our soul is dried up; there…

  • Shavuot and the Depth of Torah Study

    A few days ago, on Shavuot night at Kesher Israel, over 100 people stayed up all night learning Torah and eating great dairy desserts.   The night began with an innovative debate between two of our longtime members, both immensely accomplished individual thinkers.   The debate was over Korach, and consisted of the prosecution and…

  • Spirituality in the Gritty Reality: Lessons from the Spies

    In this week’s Torah portion, Shelach, the Jewish people have completed the short trek from Mount Sinai to the Land of Israel.  God tells them to send the heads of each tribe as spies to spy out the Land of Israel.  After 40 days the spies return. Ten spies bring a bad report of the…

  • Is the Torah Moral?

    In this week’s Torah portion, Chukat-Balak, the Torah presents the chok (mitzvah who’s reason we can not know) par excellence, the Parah Adumah, the ashes of the red heifer as a procedure for removing the ritual impurity caused by being in contact with a dead body. Is this classic chok, (or for that matter all…

  • Physical vs. Spiritual Counting

    In the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, the Torah relates that on the first day of the second month, God tells Moses to count the Jewish people.  This is the third time in the Torah that the Jewish people are counted, as Rashi (Rabbi Shlomoh Isaac, 11century French Torah commentator) says, “They are…

  • Sacred Intentions, Dangerous Actions

    In this week’s Torah portion, Korach, we are told of a challenge to Moses and Aaron’s leadership in the desert.   Moses and Aaron’s cousin Korach and 250 leaders of the Jewish people come to Moshe and Aaron and say, “The whole people are holy and G-d is in their midst, so why do you…