Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg left her chambers for the final time in the waning minutes of 5780. Learning of her death two hours before our Erev Rosh Hashanah services felt like a punch to the gut. What a devastating loss to our nation.

In the last week or so, congregant Carolyn Weinstein sent me a moving video about a WWII colonel from Tennessee, Roddie Edmonds. Given the era and where he grew up, the army was the first time he had met Jews. As things transpired, many Jews served under his leadership. He and his unit were captured by the Germans, and spent the last days of the war in a POW camp.

Let me begin by sending you my prayers and blessings. I sincerely hope that you are safe. It seems we are faced with one trial after another, and these fires are just the latest challenge. Just this morning, I was taping shut our basement door, which is probably original to our 73 year old home. After all that time, it doesn’t form the tightest seal, and smoke was infiltrating. The masking tape seems to have stopped most of that.

One of the most successful ad campaigns of all time is Coca Cola’s “It’s the real thing.” While the actual line appeared in Coke’s branding materials dating back to the 1940’s, the more modern ad concept was launched in 1969 and revisited in the 1990’s and again in 2005.

Last Sunday, CNS held its second Town Hall meeting by Zoom. These meetings are an innovation by Glen Coblens, whose presidency is already being defined by the importance of, as he puts it, over-communicating during this unprecedented time. The topic we addressed was our changed High Holiday celebrations, which seems particularly important given how many changes we will see this year.

There’s an interesting commandment in this week’s Torah reading. In Deuteronomy 19:14, we are commanded not to move landmarks. “You shall not move your countryman’s landmarks, set up by previous generations, in the property that will be allotted to you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.”