Just the other day I came across a large brown envelope that was full of letters. There must be close to maybe a hundred different letters that I have collected over the years, and for some reason decided to keep.

There were letters to my parents, and from my parents. There were letters from my friends in Israel, and some random letters to other people. There were letters to my girlfriend while I was in the army, and many more that I had to really try hard to remember who they are.

And it dawned on me. It’s something that we have all completely stopped doing: writing a real letter.

I don’t mean firing off an email or sending a quick text message on your phone. I mean sitting down with a piece of paper and a pen, and with intention, write.

Why write a letter to somebody overseas when you can just send a text, and even attach a letter to a WhatsApp message?

Back then, when I wrote all these letters, I didn’t do those while standing in line in the grocery store or scrolling through something on TV. I actually had to sit down, make the time to write.

I had, like many of you, to think about what to write, kind of structuring the whole letter before I sit down because, as you know, there are no backspaces. If you messed up, you crossed it out, or you crumpled up the paper and started all over.

And when I finished, I folded it up, put it in an envelope, wrote an address, stuck a stamp on it, and dropped it in the mailbox. And did you notice that there’s not too many mailboxes on the street corners any longer? Yeah, those are gone too.

And then you waited. Sometimes for days, maybe weeks, to get a response. Today we expect a response right away, instantly so to speak. If you send a text message, you expect somebody to respond to you, and you start wondering, “What’s wrong?” when they have not responded.

But back then, hey, you had to wait. Waiting was part of the process. You have to wait, be patient, and hopefully the letter, the mailman have delivered it, somebody read it, and somebody is finding the time to sit down and writing you back.

There was something warm and beautiful about that. A handwritten letter wasn’t perfect, but you could see the person’s handwriting. You could almost hear their voice as you read it. Years later, you could pull up that letter out of a drawer, and suddenly the person was with you once again.

Today we talk and converse with others more than we ever did. Text, email, and the rest. Happy birthday, thinking of you, see you later tonight. How many of us are going to keep 10, 15 years worth of texts? No, no, we won’t. But we did keep letters.

I still like to write birthday cards or condolences card, and sometimes just a sticky note with a lot of text on them, handwritten and personally delivered. There is something magical about that. It’s the intention. There is a real value in taking the time.

Music and poetry were not written in a hurry. Someone took the time and the intention, sat down in front of a blank page searching for the right words or notes. And that’s why some decades later we are still listening.

So tonight we will hear songs that were written with that in mind, with that intention. Songs that have become letters to us all.

Let’s open an envelope and begin the journey from East to West.