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February 28, 2025 - 30 Shvat 5785 Parashat T'rumah - It's In The Details
Dear Friends, Participating in the Mitzvot of Mishloach Manot and Matanot LaEvyonim (the sending gifts of food to friends & people in need) is an important Purim tradition. The deadline to participate is next Friday, so please return your form to the synagogue soon. If you need another copy of it, please scroll down. Hunger has no season, so we are joining with Jewish Federation of Northern NJ, again this year, to participate in their March Mega Food Drive. When you go shopping, please add an extra, non-perishable food item or two into your shopping cart and bring them to the synagogue. We have blue bags set up in the social hall in which you can place the items. Let's see how quickly we can fill up the bags! We would like to thank Gary Miller for sponsoring this Shabbat’s Kiddush luncheon to honor the memory of his parents, Betty Gips and Robert Miller. Honoring one’s parents is an important Mitzvah, so please join us at the Kiddush table to share in Gary’s Mitzvah and consider sponsoring a Kiddush to honor or celebrate a person or event that is meaningful to you. In a previous Rabbinic Reflections piece, I shared a teaching about the Kipah, how its placement on top of our heads is there to remind us of both our potential as well as our limitations as human beings. There is a lot we can do, but only so much by ourselves. Very much in that vein, I strive to be self-aware, to know what I know, as well as to know what I haven't yet learned. And while I endeavor to be a work-in-progress, to push myself beyond my comfort zones into unfamiliar territory, one thing I simply don't seem to be, is very handy. I'm proficient at keeping a clean and organized home and workspace and I can do basic things around the house like hanging pictures, changing light bulbs, and plunging toilets. But, I'm far from a DIY guy. Even relatively straightforward building projects, like our kids' Ikea furniture, take way longer, and cause much more frustration than they probably should. When I read through this week's portion, Parashat T'rumah, with its incredibly detailed commandments for constructing the Mishkan (Tabernacle), I feel like I'm reading an instruction manual for a product I can barely visualize and whose steps I don't clearly understand. In reading through these many paragraphs, I admire the visionaries who could both plan and execute this intricate strategy, even as my eyes begin to glaze over. We all know how the tiniest misstep at any place along the way is likely to derail the process in such a way that previous steps will need to be undone in order to remedy the mistake. Each part is contingent upon everything before it being done just right. And yet, somehow, perhaps miraculously, our ancestors nailed it (pardon the pun). Chapters and chapters of gathering materials of gold, silver, copper; crimson, blue, and purple yarns; fine goats' hair and twisted linen, to be fashioned into an altar, lampstand, ark, all the utensils required for sacrifices, not to mention the enormous Tent of Meeting itself, in precise shapes and measurements - it all, somehow by the end of the book of Sh'mot, comes together perfectly. Perhaps they were inspired by the reward they'd receive from building this Mishkan, namely that God would have an earthly (and portable!) space in which to reside among the Israelite people throughout their wanderings in Bamidbar (the wilderness). Whatever the case, I am in awe that such a project could be so successful thousands of years ago. And the answer, to me, is that having this vivid blueprint with such granular instructions, such unparalleled attention to detail, is precisely what enabled it to become a reality. We all know the two expressions on the opposite sides of the same coin, that both God and the devil are "in the details." For me it serves as a poignant reminder that how we do something, the way we go about trying to bring something to fruition, is almost as important as what we're actually trying to do. Sometimes even more so. We can do the right thing, like checking in on our family and friends, visiting the sick, or getting things done at our work; but if we aren't fully present and attentive, if we're folding our arms and speaking defensively or aggressively, then we can't fully, properly do what we intend to do, what we know we should do. If we aren't paying attention to the details, we severely limit the potential we know we have within each of us, even more than that which the Kipah reminds us of. I know we all often feel like we don't have time for the details and the "finer print" of our lives, but in so many cases, the details matter so much. Either God or the devil can be in them. It's up to us which one. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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