Shabbat Shalom to the Sha’are Shalom family,

Thank you to all the volunteers who helped make our annual presence at Loudoun Pride so interactive and meaningful. We met so many people at our table, and we heard positive comments about our presence there all around the festival. Thank you to Chen-Sarah and all the shlichim (Israel representatives) who visited Pride. 

We continue to mourn with the Nissen family on Allen’s recent passing – may his memory be a blessing. 

Looking ahead to Tisha B’av, the summer holiday that commemorates the saddest days of Jewish history, we will be hosting the evening service at CSS this year in partnership with our friends at CBE. Please save the date – Wednesday, July 22, at 8:15pm.

Our Torah reading this week takes us into the Promised Land for the first time. God instructs our ancestors to choose one leader from each tribe to scout the land. While they return with various fruits and overall good impressions of the land, 10 out of the 12 scouts proclaim to the people the natives and their cities are too strong. Once again, the people doubt God’s ability to enable them to settle in the Land where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived. Joshua and Caleb attempt to stop the ‘viral’ bad news, but God decides the generation that just came out of Egypt is not the generation that will enter the Holy Land.

For each of the 40 days the scouts were in the Land, God gives the people 1 year of wandering resulting in what will be a 40 year peregrination through the wilderness until a new generation is ready to finally enter the Promised Land.

This week’s portion teaches about the power of messaging and perception. So often perception, rather than reality, defines how we think of things. Of course, it’s difficult to know the reality of anything until we experience it. That’s the limitation of our senses and our ability to judge. At our best we may still make incomplete judgments. As we know from baseball, even an amazing hitter only connects 4 times out of 10. 

The issue for the Israelites is they doubt God’s power to help them get past what they perceive as insurmountable odds when clearly God has done so before. They give in to fear and allow fear to determine their future. 

We also live in a world in which there’s sadly been an effort to put fear in the hearts of Jewish people and communities all over the world. And despite this effort, we continue to meet, pray, study together, and celebrate. Fear is helpful insofar as it helps us to stay alert, but let’s do our best not to allow any fear and intimidation we may feel to deter us from striving to be the inclusive, positive, and meaning-seeking community we can be.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Tow

Dear Sha'are Shalom community,

In honor of Sue Aft's lifetime of giving love and filling the world with kindness, Rabbi Bruce and I talked about what she would want us to have as a lasting legacy to all she meant to Bruce, their family and friends, and all who knew her.

She would want all of you to receive a hug to remind you that there are caring people. So, I wanted to give each of you a hug and hope that 2026 will be a year of love and kindness for you and those you hold dear.

We started handing out one 'hug' per family on Sunday during the Chanukah party. We'll continue to hand them out as we see you in the near future.

Rabbi Bruce Aft & Rabbi Neil Tow