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August 16, 2025 - 22 Av 5785
Dear Friends, The High Holidays are now just over a month away, so please remember to send in your reservation forms, so we know you are coming. If you have misplaced the ones we sent in the mail, you can scroll down in this message to find them or you can download them from the synagogue website. If you have any friends, neighbors, or relatives who aren’t yet sure where to attend services, please share our information with them and encourage them to join us. We would love to have them Daven with us and enjoy a meaningful holiday experience. We are trying to make ourselves more visible online so that when people look for a synagogue, perhaps for a place to attend High Holiday services, they will find us. The next time you are using your favorite search engine, please look up the synagogue and add a review. It is quick and easy and it will be a big help to us. Tomorrow, our Kiddush luncheon is being sponsored by Marj Goldstein to celebrate and honor the memory of her late mother, Gertrude Gluckman Tunick. We thank Marj for her generosity and encourage you to join us at the Kiddush table after the morning services. We have arrived at that somewhat strange part of the summer. Halfway through August, knowing that Labor Day and the fall are just two weekends away, we still have a few days of summer to spend quality time with our family and friends. For parents with summer camp kids, all have returned home or will this weekend so that the "in-between" period is in full swing. It's a natural point for reflection, looking back on what the summer has brought us and what we've learned from it, but with some time left to squeeze in what we may have hoped to accomplish but haven't gotten to just yet. It is also a very natural point of reflection for our ancestors in Parashat Ekev, hearing one final, elongated exhortation by Moses to remember where they have been, what they have experienced, and the wondrous, steadfast miracles done for them by God. One might sum up the message of all D'varim in a couple of verses from this portion, Deuteronomy 8:11 and 11:8. The first reads: "Take care lest you forget the Eternal your God and fail to keep the divine commandments, rules, and laws which I enjoin upon you today." The second reads: "Keep, therefore, all the Instruction that I enjoin upon you today, so that you may have the strength to enter and take possession of the land that you are about to cross into and possess, and that you may long endure upon the soil that the Eternal swore to your fathers to assign to them and to their heirs, a land flowing with milk and honey." In essence Moses is saying: God has done everything for you and given everything to you, so that you are now fully equipped with both the map and the detailed guidebook to make it all successful and worthwhile. If you recall and put these words into practice, keeping them in the front of your mind at all times, you, your loved ones, and your people, will flourish. After reminding the people of just some of their trials and tribulations, Moses says, "And now, O Israel, what does the Eternal your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the Eternal your God, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve the Eternal your God with all your heart and soul, keeping the Eternal's commandments and laws, which I enjoin upon you today, for your good." Take the moment, at another crossroads in your lives, to learn from where you've been so that you can go forward wiser and stronger than you have ever been. This time of year - in the Torah's and our own personal calendars - calls upon all of us to do so. Soon we will be in the month of Elul, entering into our period of Cheshbon Ha-Nefesh, the accounting of our own souls. We look back on the year that is nearing its close on the Jewish calendar so that we can move forward in life and the world - God willing - a little bit closer to the best versions of ourselves. I hope and pray that the remaining days of summer will be opportunities for such reflection for all of us. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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