IKAR Podcasts

The Torah warns us against someone - maybe even someone very close to us - who might come try to entice us to worship other gods! But when we look a little closer at the commentators, we begin to wonder if the real enticement might be coming from… a higher source.

This is a recording of Rabbi David Kasher's Parsha class from August 18, 2022

The legends of the magical Clouds of Glory.

Stories from Rabbi Kasher’s early prayer days. A rabbinic list of ten types of prayer. And a prayer reframe from the Sfas Emes.

How knowing God is a revelation of ourselves.

Tisha b’Av is a day of communal grief-- we fast, lament and hold the memory of the greatest catastrophes the Jewish people have endured. The danger in revisiting the tragedies of generations past is that our rituals foster a distorted self-perception, a feeling of eternal victimization. Instead, we must remember because grief is an expression of love, because there is an urgent moral message in the stories of our suffering that we must hear today, and because we are drawn again and again, through our collective grief, into community.   

Who does Moses remember as his greatest enemies?

If Moses speaks for God and the People of Israel, what happens when he decides to speak for himself? 

What’s the first step of a spiritual journey? According to the Me’or Einyaim (18th century Hasidic Master), it’s not a grand gesture or a dramatic departure. Instead, it’s the recognition that we’re disconnected, spiritually dehydrated and yearning for something more. Once that realization is acknowledged and felt, the journey has already begun. We’ll find the water we need.

Moses has a problem. This is an edited down recording of Rabbi David Kasher's weekly Parsha studies class from July 28, 2022.