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January 2, 2026 Parashat Vayechi - The Strength of Connection
Dear Friends, We would like to thank Anna Vinokur & Yuri Klarvit for sponsoring this week’s Kiddush in honor and memory of their mothers. We thank the Anna and Yuri for their generosity and hope you will join them (and us) tomorrow morning at the Kiddush table! As I write this article, we are packing up our apartment in Tel Aviv and about to head to the airport. Our family has spent a wonderful week and a half exploring Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and a little bit of Haifa. We have been blessed to spend planned time with family, and the best of unplanned run-ins with friends from all over our life back at home. We have forged new connections, strengthened familiar ones, and re-established ties that had been dormant for decades. We spent last weekend in Jerusalem with Tali's aunt and uncle, whom we had been blessed to see just the month before for Thanksgiving, and saw cousins of mine in Tel Aviv, whom I hadn't seen since my first year of rabbinical school in 2003! We wrote notes for the Western Wall, climbed the hills of the Bahai Gardens, did a graffiti tour of Tel Aviv, and ate tons of shawarma and falafel. We bought Tefillin for Jonah, a Tallit for Gabriel's Bar Mitzvah next January, a Mezuzah for our home, and, of course, Hebrew t-shirts of our favorite teams. We even attended the first Hapoel Tel Aviv Euroleague basketball game back at their home arena since having to play their games abroad during the war! We walked and walked and walked, and walked some more, enjoying parks, playgrounds, and tossing a football on the beach. And, yes, we stayed up until 3 AM Monday morning local time watching our Eagles eke out a win over the Bills. And as I reflect on our first family trip to Israel, and my first in about 13 years, I feel like a hole in my heart and soul has been filled. It had pained me, almost physically, that I hadn't been here in so long. Now that part of me feels complete and whole once again. I am eternally grateful for this opportunity, and thankful to all of you for giving me the time to spend for this wonderful experience with my family in the Holy Land. And (not "but"), I am very excited to return to our home, to sleep in my bed, and to spend Shabbat with all of you once again. As I'm sure you know and have experienced for yourselves, it is wonderful to travel with loved ones, and it's also wonderful to come back to our lives in the States. It is, in the end, all about connections. And I am very much looking forward to seeing all of you this Shabbat morning! Wishing you a very happy 2026, and that we'll see each other very soon! Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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