05/22/2026
Reminder: starting this week and continuing through the summer, our Shabbat evening service begins at 6 pm.
As this message reaches you, we are still wrapped in the holiness of Shavuot, our minds lingering at Sinai, hearing the echo of revelation. As the sun sets tonight, our community will move from the holiness of Shavuot into the holiness of Shabbat and begin Parashat Naso.
One of the remarkable features of Parashat Naso is its repetition — this is what makes it the longest parashah in Torah. Over and over again, the Torah recounts the gifts brought by each tribal leader at the dedication of the Mishkan. The offerings are identical and the wording is nearly identical. Seventy-two verses repeat themselves with only the names and days changing. To a modern reader, it can feel excessive. Why not simply tell us once and move on?
But as our tradition teaches, nothing in Torah is superfluous.
In Bamidbar Rabbah, the Midrash teaches that although each leader brought the same external offering, each one carried entirely different intentions in their heart. One connected the offering to creation. Another to the patriarchs and matriarchs. Another to Torah, covenant, kingship, humility, or the hope for peace. The gifts may have looked the same to the outside world, but spiritually they were unique — each person infused the act of giving with their own memory, experience, and soul.
Throughout these past seven weeks of counting the Omer, our congregation reflected on one hundred Jewish Americans whose lives helped shape this nation over the past 250 years (check out our Facebook and Instagram for the full count). Scientists, artists, athletes, activists, teachers, rabbis, musicians, writers, judges, visionaries, and dreamers. What strikes me most is not simply what they accomplished, but how differently each person carried their Jewish identity into the world.
Some carried Jewish values through public service and the pursuit of justice. Others through creativity, scholarship, healing, protest, storytelling, humor, and acts of communal responsibility. Some expressed their Jewish identity loudly and proudly. Others carried it more quietly, woven into the texture of their work and the choices they made. Yet taken together, they formed something larger than themselves — a collective offering brought by generations of Jews who found in America the freedom to imagine, build, contribute, and belong.
Like the leaders in Naso, they remind us that no two souls bring exactly the same gift.
We stand together, but we do not do so identically. We pray from the same prayerbook, sing the same melodies, and read the same Torah, yet each of us stands in the moment carrying different memories, questions, griefs, hopes, and longings. Revelation becomes meaningful precisely because we bring ourselves into it.
Perhaps this is why Naso follows Shavuot every year. Revelation is not meant to flatten us into sameness. Torah is not meant to erase individuality. Rather it sanctifies it — holiness emerges not despite our differences, but through them.
As Shavuot gives way to Shabbat, Torah reminds us that there is no such thing as a meaningless offering when it carries authentic intention and an open heart.
May this Shabbat bring rest after revelation, gratitude for those who came before us, and the courage to bring our own unique gifts to the sacred work of Jewish life and to the unfolding story we are still writing together.
Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom.
