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November 7, 2025 - 17 Cheshvan 5786
Dear Friends, Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey (JFNNJ) is championing two important initiatives and I hope you will join in supporting them. The first, and most pressing, is the emergency food drive. As you have surely been hearing in the media, the Federal government shutdown has impacted the payment of SNAP benefits to the many people across the country that rely on them to put food on the table. This is exacerbating existing food insecurity for many people, so we ask you to bring nonperishable food (and personal care) items to the synagogue to help those in need. Second, this week at the annual New Jersey Education Association convention, there was a presentation titled “Teaching Palestine.” According to reports, the presenters and materials promoted inaccurate extremist views under the guise of professional development for teachers. We must ensure that those who teach our children receive professional development that is factual, balanced, and free from bias, so JFNNJ is calling on the State to hold hearings to examine why this session was approved. Please see below for more information on these two efforts and I thank you for taking action to help. This Shabbat, our Kiddush luncheon is being sponsored by Doris and Ed Cohen to honor and celebrate the memory of Doris’ mother, Muriel Tandet. We thank Doris and Ed for their generosity and hope you will join us at the Kiddush table tomorrow, right after morning services. ********** Thirty years ago this week, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated after a rally for peace in Tel Aviv. I remember where I was when I found out he had been killed, recognizing even in the moment that this was both devastating and cataclysmic. I knew right away that I would remember that moment for the rest of my life, and suddenly drew comparisons to November 22, 1963, when John Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas. Both Kennedy and Rabin had hoped to forge peace in a tense and frightening world. Both had risen to power with visions of brighter and better days for all. The tragic murders of both not only ripped beautiful lives from this world, but also crushed their dreams and aspirations, which so many of us shared. Thirty years later, so much has changed, and so much has not. Leaders have come and gone, political landscapes have shifted in all directions and back again. One might have hoped that, after so much division and violence, that humanity would have learned to focus on what we share rather than what separates us. One might have hoped that we could learn from the lessons of recent and general history, to join forces and find ways forward that benefit as many people as possible. And yet, the end of another election cycle reminds us that we still have a long way to go. The political attack ads may mercifully have concluded, but we know it is just a brief respite of months before we ramp up to next year's midterm elections. What will we do in the meantime? How will we conduct ourselves? Thankfully, we have Avraham Avinu (Our Father) as a model to look towards, most especially in Vayera, this week's portion. Despite Abraham's physical pain from self-circumcision, despite his extreme discomfort at the hottest time of day, and despite his spiritual frustration at not being able to have a child with Sarah, Abraham sits at the entrance of his tent. He sees travelers near his tent and runs out to meet them where they are, inviting them in to take a load off, rest their weary bodies, wash their feet, and have a bite to eat. He could have been consumed with his own anguish, physical and mental, and lost the capability to connect with others. But he doesn't. Rather than recoil inward, Abraham looks outward, to his fellow man, and to God. This reflects his admirable, undying hope that all that he is going through in the moment will help strengthen himself, his family, his people, and his world. And being open to these connections, both human and divine, is how he puts into practice what he believes, how he puts out into the world what he wants to see in it, and what he wants to be a part of. And this is why, to this day in our tradition, the Chuppah, the very canopy under which we dedicate ourselves to the holiest of connections two people can share, is open on all four of its sides, just like Abraham's tent was said to be. It teaches us that, almost no matter what the question is, - elections, campaign ads, marches, protests, and counter-protests - the answer is openness to each other. The answer is situating ourselves, both figuratively and literally, in places where we can speak with and hear each other, at the gates of hope. About those gates of hope, Reverend Victoria Safford wrote the following, and it's one of my favorite passages: “Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope — not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of ‘Everything is Gonna Be All Right.’ But a different, sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.” This is what we learn from our tradition and from Avraham Avinu. In the coming days, weeks, and months, may we plant ourselves at the gates of hope, and there commit to doing God's work through sharing and listening. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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