Abraham's Epic Origin Stories - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

but uh you know these stories they've been capturing the the imagination of jewish children for thousands of years and inspiring the parents that are telling them these stories who are faced with the same challenges that avraham was faced in his life and so the first story is um is about avraham when he just he first began to think right and this is the way maimonides describes it in his magnum opus right in the mishnah torah if you've heard about he said like this after he was weaned meaning avraham while still an infant his mind began to reflect day and night he thought and wondered how is it possible that the celestial sphere should be continuously guiding the world without something to guide it and cause it to revolve for cannot move of its own accord he had no teacher or mentor because he was immersed in ur qasdim an aura of the chaldees among foolish idolaters his father and mother and the entire population worshipped idols and he worshipped with them he continued to speculate and reflect until he achieved the way of truth understanding what was right through his own efforts it was then that he knew that there is one god who guides the heavenly bodies who creates created everything and besides whom there is no other god so that's what maimonides says now i remember learning the actual logical deduction that he made and it was so fascinating to me i've reviewed it so many times of my in my life and i should say here that i really spent some time looking for the actual source that this was the logical deduction i couldn't find it but nonetheless you know take it or leave it i think it holds up so avram was was a boy as we said he was just starting to consider into using his cognition and he looked at nature bravely and fearlessly and he was reflecting on it and he was just seeking truth with such fervor that he didn't let the fear of the consequences of the conclusion to which he would come you know cloud his thinking or obfuscate the way he was thinking about things okay so he looked at nature and he realized that it was finite and therefore trying to make it tighter here he realized nature was finite and therefore something had to have created it and what would have created the first finite thing people worshipped the stars but they were finite also the only thing that could create the finite world outside of the finite is the infinite and if something is infinite it definitely definitionally it lacks nothing so the only reason for this infinite being to create the world is to give so we can i want to hear from you your thoughts about that deduction if you want to share them because there's a lot to discuss there but that's how he came to the understanding that a single infinite god created the world in order to give and bestow goodness to the world and you see at the beginning of his journey it was his intellectual and philosophical quest for truth that led him to hashem and by the way it was very much the same for me when i was a kid i remember just reading books and arguing and arguing and i was like i came to the conclusion that what is the greatest service of god was intellectual honesty being true to that which you know is true and seeking truth no matter where it will possibly lead you i remember when i started learning about the torah and the sabbath i was learning about it in order not to keep the sabbath i've shared this with you about the sabbath i didn't want to keep it but the more i studied it the more it resonated is true to the deepest level and then i was stuck there keeping the sabbath walking three miles through the miserable humid armpit heat of houston texas because i had to study it to figure out that it wasn't true anyways so that's where abraham started but nonetheless we see that eventually he graduated or evolved to the to the level from the level of intellectual understanding to a greater level of relationship with the divine that we see in chapter 15 when hashem says to avraham genesis chapter 15 that one shall not inherit you he's talking about eliezer of course i had to start somewhere only him that comes forth from within you shall inherit you and he took him outside and said gaze now towards the heavens and count the stars if you're able to count them and he said to him so shall your offspring be and he trusted in hashem and he reckoned it to him as righteousness so now this teaches us his children at a certain point we need to retire the intellect and and let it go and just trust in hashem even if we cannot possibly fathom how any sort of salvation can ever arrive for us or even if from our very limited human perspective we can't possibly grasp where redemption would come from that's what right that's what king david said israel write a song of a sense let my eyes look towards the mountains where will my help arrive from he didn't know where his help would come from but we don't need to understand simple faith is arguably abraham's most beautiful legacy sir of mayor shapiro of lublin he taught another abrahamic quality from that same verse and i really enjoyed this one i read i wanted to share with you now now listen to the verse carefully right gaze now towards the heavens and count the stars if you were able to count them and he said so shall your offspring be sir shapiro taught that although it's impossible to count the stars avraham was instructed to do so by hashem so he immediately started counting and when he did hashem said this is how your children are going to be meaning that when the children of abram are given a commandment or led in a certain way it doesn't matter if it seems totally impossible they're going to count the stars they're going to count the stars even if it's impossible if intellectually it seems that there's no way to fulfill it doesn't matter when god tells us to do something we do it without calculating whether it's a realistic achievement or not we leave the how in hashem's hands and i believe that doing so would be reckoned to us as righteousness right we just go into the sea until we're about to drown how is it what's going to happen here where's the redemption and then god will part the sea okay so now the next two stories are often told separately but in reality they are they're interconnected and i'll tell the stories exactly as the great rev ellie mello biederman tells them and as as i told them to dwash my little delicious dwash just the other night i know i'm not supposed to show any pictures but it's really you can blame jeremy send an email to jeremy at the land of israel.com and say ari's not showing pictures of dvash because of you i hope you're happy jeremy that's an exact quote anyways i was i was telling her the story the other night and although she did not understand a word i really think she enjoyed the experience just based on how zealously she was pulling on my beard okay so here it goes the midrash relates that uh terah manufactured and sold idols and one day he had to go somewhere and he asked his son avraham to send the uh to to tend to the idol store that day and a customer entered requesting to purchase an idol and avraham asked him how old are you and the man replied that he was about 60 years old and avraham said woe to someone who is 60 years old and bows down to an idol that was just made today and the man left and he was embarrassed and he recognized the foolishness of his faith then a woman carrying a bowl of flour came into the shop and she said to avram sacrifice this to the idols and she left so avraham he had it he took a hammer and he smashed most all the idols in the store except for one one big idol and he placed the hammer in the hand of that remaining idol the largest one and his father taylor returned to him and he demanded who did this right his entire inventory was destroyed and avrum replied i'll tell you the truth a woman asked me to give a bowl of flour to the idols and all the idols wanted the flower and they began to fight and one said i should eat first and the other said give it to me first and it was a big mess and then this tall idol grabbed a hammer and broke all of the smaller idols and tara replied why are you lying to me these idols don't know anything they can't do anything and abram responded do your ears hear what your mouth is saying listen to what you just said if they don't know anything and they can't do anything why do you worship them right so tara was enraged and he brought abraham his own son to king nimrod who would most likely execute him right so nimrod ordered to avram bowed down to the fire and avram replied why not bow down to water because water puts out fire so nimrod said fine bow down to the water and avrom said why not bow down to the clouds because the clouds actually carry the water and nimrod said okay bow down to the clouds and everyone responded but why not bow down to the wind because the wind blows the clouds and numero he said okay so bow down to the wind and avraham said so why not worship a human being because he actually carries the wind within him and nimrod said you're speaking foolishness i worship fire and i'm going to throw you into the fire and let the god who you bow down save you so um avraham's brother haran by the way he was present and he wasn't certain which side to take in this whole thing and so he said to himself if avraham is saved from the furnace i'm gonna say i'm with avraham and if nimrod wins then i'm gonna be with nimrod right it makes sense and um so so what happened so they uh they threw avraham into the burning furnace and he wasn't burnt he was saved and then they asked haran whose side are you on and he replied i'm with avraham so they threw him into the furnace and his innards were burned he was burned to death as it states actually in the torah the terror caused kharan's death that's what it says and so this is sort of the back story to that and that's how but we also learn that although he wasn't on the level of avraham he still had the courage and deserved merit for taking that stand and it was a reward for that our sages say that kharan merited to have the mashiach descend from him messiah descended from him right through his son lot uh right through moab to ruth to king david to the final mashiach and it's just i i just like explaining that because hashem doesn't let a good deed or even a good motivation even if it's incomplete and it's imperfect he doesn't let that go unrewarded as the masks are coming off and much of the world is turning not only against israel but yes against the jewish people if you feel different if your love for israel is growing deeper and stronger if you're thirsting to cleave to the nation of israel and to the god of israel if you're thirsting to learn authentic torah from jews in judea then the land of israel fellowship is for you hundreds of individuals and families from around the world come together on zoom every week in what can only be described as a fellowship of love friendship of learning and praying and belonging a fellowship really unlike any other it's more than just a movement it's a family to learn more about the land of israel fellowship click on www.thelandof.com backslash fellowship or send an email to fellowship the land of israel.com love and blessings from judea you