Rabbi Nathan's blog

I recently listened to a fascinating radio program that focused on a person who was able to listen to and follow four symphonies playing at the same time! This carries multi‐tasking to a new extreme!

This idea of holding and following multiple pushes and pulls at the same time also reflects a bit of our current reality. On the one hand we are still in the midst of a pandemic in our country and are still contending with systematic...Read more...

This month we begin the Joseph saga at the end of Genesis. Joseph, forced by unforeseen circumstances, immigrates to a new land where he starts off at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder (as a slave) and manages with unseen Divine intervention and some of his own gumption to wend his way into the halls of power. A quintessential “court Jew” (before that term existed) Joseph both mediates and enforces Pharaoh’s power and...Read more...

This year, October is our time of new beginnings. We immerse ourselves in the holidays and begin the new year. We begin a new cycle of Torah reading. We have spent many hours together in community, working hard to create a spiritual container for both more somber reflection and active joy. And we emerge, hopefully, refreshed - albeit a bit more tired - ready to start anew with a fresh slate.

As we prepare ourselves to move through...Read more...

When King David had Uriah the Hittite killed on the battlefield so that David could take Bathsheva to be his wife, the prophet Nathan told the king a parable of a rich man who takes a poor man’s only sheep and slaughters it to entertain his guests. After hearing the story “David burned with anger against the man” and said “the man who did this deserves to die!” Nathan the prophet responds, “You are the man!”

The...Read more...

As we move into September and the Jewish month of Tishrei, we enter into our most liturgically intensive time of the Jewish year. This can be a dizzying few weeks, moving from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to Sukkot and Simchat Torah. This is a movement also from the solemnity and humility of the Yamim Noraim (the awe-filled days) to the celebration of the joyfulness and abundance of Sukkoth and Simchat Torah.

Our ancestors' metaphors...Read more...