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March 8, 2025 - 8 Adar 5785 Parashat T'tseveh - Coming Home
Dear Friends, Purim is next week and we will hold the Megillah reading on Thursday evening at 7PM. It’s more fun if you show up for the Megillah reading in a costume, but either way, we hope you will join us! 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! As the lover of music that I am, it will come as no surprise that one of the best choices I've made in recent years concerns the preset stations on my car radio. When we moved to the suburbs 10 years ago and I knew that I'd be spending more time than ever driving, I splurged for SiriusXM Radio because I need my music in the car and I can't stand commercials. "80's on 8" was one of my favorite channels, until I realized that I actually really don't like the overwhelming majority of 80's pop music. As a huge fan of Phish and jam band music, I decided to do a deeper dive into the Grateful Dead, the band that changed everything and inspired countless musicians and bands. I swapped out "80's on 8" for the Grateful Dead channel. And I've never looked back since. Not only have I gained a much deeper appreciation for the catalog, talent, and reach of the Grateful Dead in my years listening to them, I also have acquired a better understanding of what they are and mean to their devoted fans. Simply put, for DeadHeads, tuning into the station and listening to archived shows is like returning home. It's an anchor, a constant, to keep coming back to; a way to be reassured and re-centered, to feel comforted and restored. The song "Franklin's Tower," and so many of its lyrics, speak directly to this: "I'll tell you where the four winds dwell
This week's parasha, T'tzaveh, begins with the commandment to have a Ner Tamid, which we've come to understand as an "eternal light." This is why virtually every synagogue has a light near its ark that is supposed to be always lit. It occured to me that the eternal light symbolically, and our synagogue literally, are for the Jewish people what the Grateful Dead, staple songs like Franklin's Tower, and the lyrics themselves all speak to. With everything in our lives and our world that is constantly in flux, ever-changing and seemingly in chaos, we return to Shul, to Jewish tradition as that constant, that feeling of coming back home where, as Robert Frost famously said, "When you go there, they have to let you in." Of course, "home" takes on more and different meanings as we've seen both wonderful and devastating moments in our Israeli hostages returning home. Our tears flow for joyful reunions and crushing sadness with each image and video we see. Between those who thought they'd never see their home again and those who never will, with shattered hearts, we come to appreciate even more deeply and profoundly our homes, actual and spiritual, wherever we are blessed to have them. Like the eternal flame of the Mishkan and our sanctuaries, may we always feel blessed to have a home - personally, spiritually, and Jewishly. May we cherish every moment we have to share there. And may the 59 hostages, still in Gaza after more than 500 days, be returned to their families, to their homes, so that they too can be restored and revived. Today. Amen. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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