Ikar Los Angeles

As we prepare to bring our oldest to college, I feel for Moses, struggling to say goodbye to his own children, poised to enter the Promised Land on a part of the journey they must take without him. Somehow, amidst the confused, rambling contradictions of his farewell speech, Moses helps b’nai Yisrael remember what matters most, and reminds us just what we need to hear as well.

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.

The last stop in the itinerary of the Israelites' desert journey has a very strange name. And a heartbreaking story.

The Legend of Serah bat Asher. And a commandment we too often overlook.

This is a recording of Rabbi David Kasher's Parsha Studies class from July 21, 2022

It's one of the most difficult problems in theology: does God know everything we're going to do, or do we have free will? This week, we consider an answer by Judaism's most deterministic thinker: Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner, the Mei HaShiloach, and a response by his most illustrious student.

Recovery and Bilaam’s addictive tendencies.

If Bilaam is really so bad, that brings us back to our original question - what is he doing in the Torah? What are we reading this bizarre story at all???

The Red Heifer. Supposedly the greatest mystery of the Torah. Our Sages have puzzled over it for centuries. But isn’t this just a distraction from the main events of Parshat Hukat: the deaths of Miriam and Aaron!

Every June, we turn our attention and love to the LGBTQ+ community at IKAR. For many years we have taken the opportunity during PRIDE month to stories from LGBTQ+ folks and their family members. We're excited to share a compilation of the past three year's stories.

This week, the Angel of Death showed up twice.