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Scholarly, Conservative Jewish Teachings on God, Prayer, Torah and Kabbalah with Rabbi Nadav Caine (ravnadav)
This year's traditional teaching on a Law of Passover (per the tradition of Shabbat Hagadol). For a download of the text I'm referring to: h...
The Iran War began at Purim (about Persia, now Iran) and now we're at Passover with Persia yet again as we are required to read Malachi. The...
There is a loss that takes place between the end of Exodus, with the people donating materials and building the tabernacle in small groups e...
This is a Drash on Parashat Tetzaveh, an Exodus portion about the priestly clothing that usually elicits shallow reflections on clothes. Ins...
For parashat Terumah, the Rabbis pair a Torah reading about Terumah, donation from the heart, with the account of Solomon's building of the...
The 2nd Commandment says not to make a chiseled thing part of our worship, yet the 10 Commandments actually are a chiseled thing! In this po...
My remarks from a local rally.
Drawing on the book "(Un)kind: How 'Be Kind' Entrenches Sexism" by Victoria Smith and Ellen Scherr's essay "The Neuroscience of Why You Sudd...
At the end of Genesis, Joseph centralizes the agricultural system of Egypt, saving the country from collapse due to upcoming years of bad cr...
My Kol Nidrei 2025 Sermon on how our phones are amplifying the centrifugal force of the pull of our individual lives, sacrificing the centri...
This is a revision of a podcast I released several years ago. It focuses on Isaac as the patriarch of Imposter Syndrome. In my own life, I'v...
I relate the debate from Bereishit Rabbah to This American Life episode 550.
Most of us have been avoiding the painful conversations with friends and family over Gaza. Why? It seems like we have no common frame of ref...
Miracle may be the most misunderstood concept in Judaism. While some Jewish sects officially (like Chabad), and most Jews unofficially, cons...
In this long section of the Torah, where Miriam and Aaron are disciplined by God for challenging Moses, where Moses tries yet again to resig...
Rabbi Irwin Kula reminds us that when we engage deeply with Torah, it can serve "as our mirror" which illuminates our inner complexities, st...
We have grown accustomed to seeing Ethics and Holiness as virtually the same thing. I show that in order to properly understand Heschel's in...
The vast majority of work on Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel is academic: summaries, clarification, footnotes and so on. In this series of clas...
There are two New Years on the Jewish calendar (in addition to the new years for trees and for flocks): Rosh Hashanah and First of Nissan (a...
We often fail to appreciate the virtues of the Shepherd period of Judaism, which preceded the Israelite period. In this dvar Torah, I focus...
If you want to understand the crisis in education, look no further than Natalie Wexler's "The Knowledge Gap," one of the most important book...
The plain sense of the brief Tower of Babel story is that dividing people up by their own languages is a curse that prevents cooperation (ev...
Using the text of Genesis chapter 24, Talmud Bavli Ketubot 82b, and the Conservative Movement responsum by Rabbi Pamela Barmash, I try to co...
How do the ideals of progressivism become the idols of antisemitism? As a rabbi in one of the most progressive cities in America, I try to u...
As a Conservative rabbi in one of the most progressive cities in America, it's been an incredibly painful year of feeling unable to ask for...
This dvar Torah uses the amazing article by Rabbi David Golinkin on the history of the halakhah and the practice. It can be found at: https:...
It is commonplace to hear today's Israel-Arab Conflict portrayed as an example of Settler-Colonial European Jews settling in the nation-stat...
Scholarly, Conservative Jewish Teachings on God, Prayer, Torah and Kabbalah with Rabbi Nadav Caine (ravnadav)
As Purim became a holiday of tremendous festivities and lightheartedness, the Rabbis knew that the end of the Megillah in Chapter 9 has a du...
The most influential rabbi you've never heard of? Based on an episode of the RadioLab podcast ("Relative Genius") and a biography in the Jew...
In the second verse of Parashat Beshalach (the flight from Egypt and the crossing of the Sea of Reeds), the Torah states that the Israelites...
The focus of the American and international conversation about the Hamas attack and its aftermath has been "Ceasefire or No Ceasefire" by wh...
As a Dvar Torah for Vayigash (Joseph's revealing himself to his brothers following Judah's speech), I explore the mitzvah of redeeming our c...
PART TWO of this Yom Kippur 2023 sermon, in which I share the result of my personal and rabbi experiences of the last 15 years: that the lon...
In this Yom Kippur 2023 sermon, I share the result of my personal and rabbi experiences of the last 15 years: that the longer we live, the s...
Using the stories of Avraham, Sarah, and Hagar in Vayera, I voice what it's like to have utterly different experiences of the Gaza conflict...
In Deuteronomy, we are commanded to keep Shabbat as restfulness. Many are unaware that this does not just involve practicing the Shabbat obs...
Drawing on the traditional meaning of the Kol Nidrei --"All Vows"-- prayer, plus the Mishnah and Talmudic tractates on the Nidrei (Nedarim:...
My Second Day 5784/2023 Rosh Hashanah Sermon explores the New Year's resolution ("neder" as in "Kol Nidrei") in Biblical, Talmudic, and Cont...
My Rosh Hashanah 5784/2023 (first day) sermon examines the understanding of God's image as multiple genders in Jewish theology, mysticism, a...
As we begin the journey to High Holidays, I look at Matot the end of the Book of Numbers, where God is fastidiously concerned that we get ri...
Parashat Beha'alotkha begins with a memo to all the Israelites that doubles down on the top down hierarchy of Aharon and Moshe at the top, a...
The longest parashah of the Torah's is Numbers' Naso, which begins with the theme of the tabernacle of roving ritual performance, like a tra...
The Rabbis are understandably preoccupied with why the Torah was given bemidbar Sinai, in the wilderness of Sinai, rather than in the Land o...
In this teaching, I note how there are two sorts of social legislation that emerge out of the Holiness Code of Leviticus (as well as other p...
In honor of Lag B'Omer, I succinctly recount the Jewish mystical practice of embodying God's attributes during the period of Counting the Om...
Hope you're not having an Ecclesiastes month....
Drawing on many articles, from the New Republic to Thomas Friedman, I use Nachmanides' commentary on a verse from the Golden Calf account, t...
Using Rabbi Jane Kanarek's 2019 CJLS (Conservative Movement) halakhic responsum, I explain the complex development of Jewish head covering f...
I've always wondered why we repeatedly pray to God to be willing to grant us Shabbat, etc. What does it mean to be willing, or to be capable...