David Cardozo Academy

04/06/2026

Dear friends,

This page will soon be merged with our main page: https://www.facebook.com/Rabbi.Nathan.Lopes.Cardozo/

We would also like to announce the completion of our new website: https://cardozoacademy.org/

Happy learning!

The Cardozo Academy seeks to restore the relevance of Judaism as a force of authentic, non-dogmatic religiosity, capturing a lifetime of exploration, contemplation, and dialogue by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo.

23/07/2024

As we enter the three weeks of mourning for the catastrophes that led us into exile, I offer a prayer for our current reality.

PRAYER FOR OUR SOLDIERS
Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Lord of the Universe
We, the People of Israel
Come to You in humility
And pray for your help

Once more, our soldiers are asked to defend our
People and
Our Holy Land
Against cruel enemies

We ask You to have mercy on them and
Help them to watch over our people
With clean hands
And with a heart filled with mercy

Let our people have the strength to
Remain in good spirits
To live in unity and walk in Your ways,
The ways of Justice and Truth.

Bring home our sisters, brothers, and children
who have been taken hostage.
Do not leave them any longer in the hands of our barbaric enemies.
Let us find the hiding places of these evil people and bring them to justice.

Return all the citizens in the North and the South to their homes
Give them the strength to rebuild their communities
And their lives
Give peace of mind to their families.

Remove the evil spirit from our enemies
Let them realize the wickedness of their actions
Stop the manipulation of their children
Who are taught hate for us in their schoolbooks

O God,
We are the children of Avraham, your servant,
Who prayed for the evil people of Sedom
With the hope that they repent and live a decent life
So, we beg you
Let our enemies repent
Force them to understand that
We wish only to live in peace with
All our neighbors

O Lord,
You have commanded us to live in a land
That is little more
Than an island in a sea of chaos,

You have commanded us to send Your holy Word
to all the corners of the world
But we are surrounded by nations
That deny us the right to live in even the smallest corner of the world
Who wish only our deaths

Give the Arab nations leaders
Who are men of justice, who care for their people
Who do not wish to bring their own brothers to despair
And unbearable pain
With the intention of harming us.

Now, after thousands of years exile, tortures, pogroms,
Expulsions and Holocausts
We have finally found our way back to our small homeland
Which You promised to our forefathers
But once more our dreams of peace
Have gone up in smoke.

We wish for our Arab neighbors
To live their own lives.
We were prepared to make sacrifices
For their welfare as no other people ever did,
Offering them land, peace, prosperity.
But once more we pay the price for our belief in peace.
Once more we feel betrayed by our hopes.

Oh Lord,
Help us to counter the evil intentions
Of those who distort the truth
And to portray us throughout the world as evil
In order to deny Your existence and Your ethical demands.

We hate war as no other nation,
We abhor the need to bear weapons
We shudder at the sound of our own artillery
The roar of warplanes and tanks.

We are the people of the Book
The Book which demands holiness,
Kindness and integrity
Our heroes are not the generals or the marshals
But our prophets and our sages
Men of righteousness

God, our soldiers have been fighting
for months and months and many of them are exhausted
Give them the strength to continue to fight for our nation
Until peace will be accomplished

Let us sanctify Your name in life,
Not in death.
Heal all our soldiers
Who have been wounded
And bring comfort to the families of those we have lost.

Give us the chance once more to teach Your ways
To all those who seek You.
Let the blessing which You gave to Avraham come true,
"And through you all the families of the earth will be blessed"
For this is our hope.

11/06/2024

Some thoughts on Shavuot.

Shavuot is one of the three Pilgrimage Holidays mandated by the Torah, and yet the text tells us very little about the holiday or how it is to be observed. Even the date on which it is celebrated is left undefined, leading to intense debate among rival factions during the Second Temple era.

In fact, this controversy was part of a much larger debate which threatened to split the Jewish nation along sectarian lines. The split hinged on a major difference of opinion over the nature of Jewish society and its foundation texts: Is the Torah a fixed text, unchangeable for all time, or is it a living document meant to be reinterpreted in the light of changing circumstances?

Full text below!

Shavout is an enigma among Jewish holidays. Its transformation from harvest festival to commemoration of the Giving of the Torah is a lesson in nation-building.

03/05/2024

Imagine that civilization was going to be destroyed within five years, and that you were tasked with deciding what literary treasures to preserve? That is the background of the Tanakh that we have today. The Talmud records the bare bones of discussions where scholars fought for the inclusion of those writings that were dear to them, often against ferocious opposition from their colleagues. Amazingly, of all the possible things to include, the famous Rabbi Akiva chose a collection of b***y wedding songs! What lay behind such an odd choice?

Imagine that civilization was going to be destroyed within five years, and that you were tasked with deciding what literary treasures to preserve?

18/04/2024

As Pesach approaches, there is something very important that we must understand. It is that the wicked son in the Haggada is in fact the wisest and most honest of the four sons. Why? Because he is the one who is asking the most important question of all!

The wicked son in the Haggada is in fact the wisest of the four sons. Why? Because he is the one who is asking the most important question of all!

29/02/2024

This week's parashah tells us of the giving of the Laws to Moshe on Mt. Sinai, and it's aftermath. But what exactly is Divine Law? And do human beings have any say in what the Law is to be? An incident much later in the Torah hints at the dynamic relationship between the Children of Israel and the Laws of God.

What exactly is Divine Law? And do human beings have any say in what the Law is to be? The incident of the Daughters of Tzelofchad hints at an answer.

19/02/2024

God has made two unconditional promises to the Jewish people: one that we are eternal, that we will not disappear; and the second that He will ultimately redeem us. Unfortunately, He has also warned us that a certain kind of irrational hatred will be our lot throughout the generations.

God has made two unconditional promises to the Jewish people. But he has also warned us that we will be hated by the nations throughout the generations.

04/01/2024

This week's Thought to Ponder is by Calev Ben-Dor. In it, he explains how Moshe Rabbenu's inability to countenance injustice ultimately led to the greatest tragedy of his life.

Moses was a warrior for justice, but his inability to countenance injustice was also the source of Moshe's greatest tragedy.

07/12/2023

The sudden rediscovery of Jewish identity in Israel since the start of the war has led me to understand a verse in the Torah that I never really understood before. In this verse, God promises peace in our borders under certain conditions.

Due to all that we have experienced in the last weeks—the trauma of the attacks and then the incredible new awakening to what it means to be a Jew—perhaps we need to reconsider this verse.

This war has led me to understand a verse in the Torah that promises peace in our borders under certain conditions.

29/10/2023

This week's Thought to Ponder is by Calev Ben-Dor.

We have come to believe that for Jews, the diaspora was a place of danger while Israel of safety. But the fact the biggest murder of Jews in one day since the Holocaust took place in Israel is simply unfathomable.

We are still trying to come to terms with this tragedy, still struggling to create order out of chaos. Where was the army? Where was—or is—the government? Where was God?

In this week’s parsha, L**h L**ha, God speaks to Abraham and tells him to leave his birthplace on the long walk to freedom towards the Land of Israel.
But why Abraham? What was so special about him? Why did he merit to be the father of a nation?

The Midrash Rabbah brings an interesting answer to this question: Avraham saw the chaos in the world and asked “can it be that there is no one guiding the world?”

Judaism begins in dissonance. It begins with questions, with confusion.

We—Israel’s citizens and Jews around the world—are riven with cognitive dissonance as to how such a tragedy could have happened.

And yet, it is precisely through our anger and confusion that the divine-human interaction takes place. God’s response provides the strength for the individual to continue despite the destruction they have witnessed. It provides him with resilience amongst the pain and grief.

The fact the biggest murder of Jews in one day since the Holocaust took place in Israel is simply unfathomable. Where was God?