Are we Noah's or Abraham's? - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

so uh so i want to just catch you up on a little bit of a micro thing we're not talking about world changing things but really in some ways we are because i just finished giving a tour here at the farm like just now now this was a group of gap year girls you know that just finished high school before they go to college at such a critical point in their lives uh jeremy and i always say that we would do anything just to be able to speak to every single one of these kids at this pivotal fork in the road in their lives anyways this was a group of chabad girls from around the world and my friend moshe who you're going to meet soon he said they're a tough crowd that they're uh they're very tired but i'm telling you they were so lit up there were tears in their eyes there's something about this place and and you know they were there it's a group of jeremy was talking about the uh can you hear me now better people are saying you couldn't hear me okay people are talking about the laboratory um he's the founder of now he was one of the most influential can you hear me jeremy you can't hear me can you hear me now it was better before now it's good again okay that's that's a shame i don't know why anyways the laboratory he was one of the most influential jews in world history um and the fact that he's still really alive because the sages of israel say that the righteous are more alive after they leave this world than while they're in it and without the rebbe i wouldn't be in this world my parents met in khaba they were introduced by a chabad rabbi my father and my mother um you know my the foundational principles that the rebbe taught china reminded me of this over shabbat was that the torah was not just given to the jews that were gathered at mount sinai but to all generations that it's just as applicable today as it was then and so the the rebbe taught something about this week's torah portion that and it just built on something that's been percolating inside of me for years now one of the things we see about abraham's life both what we read in the text of the torah itself and the stories from the midrash and the oral torah that we shared in last week's fellowship is really about this this clash that you see between avraham avinu and the world around him and i was recently discussing some of the uh the modern atheists and agnostics of our day and how they claim all you really need to do is be a good person and but what they don't realize is that these quote-unquote obvious principles that you just need to be a good person you don't need god for that's in a post-abraham world that in today's world we're standing on the shoulders of giants and abraham was the greatest of all of them and the teachings of these biblical spiritual giants have so permeated humanity that that it's just these principles are from that divine revelation from god the very god whose existence they're denying but really before abraham a city like saddam was more the rule than the exception now one of these uh illuminating clashes between abraham and the world around him took place in this torah portion now for the second time avraham travels to a land in which sarah is coveted by the king and to protect his life avram says that she's not his wife but she's a sister and so we find in chapter 20 of this week's torah portion that avi melech this king takes sarah and hashem comes to him in a dream and warns him that he will die everybody will die and avi well wakes up terrified and gathers people together and tells them what happened and here's what it says genesis chapter 20. this is what avi malek says to abraham what have you done to us how have i sinned against you that you brought again upon me and my kingdom such a great sin deeds that ought not to be done you have done to me and avi said to avraham what did you see that you did such a thing so that was a reasonable question posed to avraham but here this is how he answers look how he answers below chapter 21 verse 11 and avraham said because i said there is no fear of god in this place and they will slay me because of my wife avraham doesn't address the you know all the details of the minutia of everything that happened in the accusations against me he simply cuts to the profound core of the issue there's no fear of god in this place abram recognized that there was a moral code in this kingdom but it was their own moral code in avi melik's kingdom adultery may be strictly forbidden they would never do that but murder well that's okay because in their own relativistic moral code where there's no transcendent or authoritative god in the world they're their own gods and their own code is their own code so murder yes and like adultery no so where there is no fear of god it's just obvious everything goes the highest level of immorality can be codified and institutionalized like we saw in stone where lupe was actually violating the law by welcoming guests into his home such a thing was like actually legislated it's hard to even imagine such a thing but such a society loses all blessing and it's destined for doom and i remember growing up i couldn't imagine such a society but nowadays i think you are probably thinking the same thing that i am it doesn't feel like such a stretch to imagine such a thing and i believe that the same word would have emerged from avraham's mouth when looking around at the world today and i'm sure that i don't need to connect the dots for you you don't need to look further than america and western civilization as a whole to see what a society looks like that is losing its fear of hashem on the one hand these these unnatural psychological illnesses and and biblical sins like real evil sins are not only frowned up they're not frowned upon they're not declared vices but they're upheld and they're declared as the highest virtues they're taking their vices and they're making them into virtues the greater the moral decay the more it's champions it's enshrined in school curriculums and in culture and society and if you rise up and speak against it if you even just protect your own children from being force-fed this immoral relativistic evil then you're the sinner right you're the bigot you're the evil one how could one not look at the moral deterioration of western civilization and not say there is just no fear of god in this place it's enough really to make your blood boil this righteous indignation and furious anger would be natural reactions to what we see playing out before us and while there may be room for justifiable emotions like that the rebbe the laboratory points out what made avraham so unique and so beloved by hashem so the rebbe points out four biblical prototypes of great biblical leaders i'm not going to go into the whole thing we're running out of time here but the first one he brings up enough right that uh despite the fact that humanity was deteriorating he walked with hashem but the madras teaches us that he was so consumed with maintaining his own righteousness and purity that he secluded himself in a cave and hashem eventually just took him away he wasn't influenced he didn't influence but he was too afraid of the evil of a generation and then there was noah we've discussed him before there's people that say that noah didn't even try to warn his generation and bring them to a place of repentance but the zohar that the the rebbe actually quotes teaches that noah did he called out to his generation to mend their ways but what didn't he do he didn't pray he didn't pray for their salvation like moshe did and like avraham did meaning that he didn't really really care but rather he was sort of trying to cover all his bases because if he really did care he would have poured his heart out to hashem in in prayer on their behalf and so therefore there was no success 120 years right of possibility and only he and his family entered the ark alone alone right what did the sages teach us it's it's the truth the rebbe explains what what comes from the heart goes into the heart and if he really really cared his words would have touched hearts you know people feel it when you speak from your heart people can tell the difference whether your desire is to change them for your own interest or for them because you really care about them so while we know the outcome of avraham's audacious negotiation with the creator of the world on behalf of stone right we know how it came out but he didn't know and if you think about it he was really putting everything on the line everything and what was he putting it on the line for a city that was so thoroughly evil with sin and debauchery it's hard to imagine but abraham believed that if there were even 10 righteous people in storm they could be influenced by them and there was hope for them so the fourth prototype i'm not going to go into we'll talk about that it's really moses it's motion we'll talk about that in the book of exodus but i'll tell you when we arrived at this mountain and hashem began blessing us with the vision and the mission of this place which is still coming into reality we realized how much money it would take to bring this into reality we both we tried to rate it we tried to raise funds but uh it would just we were keeping it afloat but it wasn't getting anywhere near the amounts we needed to push the mission forward and i remember thinking oh we just need these funds and once we get them oh we're going to really bring hashem into the world but then this curious phenomenon was starting to happen and i would try to raise the funds and i'd have minimal success and then when i wasn't even trying or looking for it hashem would send a miraculous donation of significant size at least for us and it wasn't even anything that i tried to do and it was then that the most liberating revelation of my life came to me i realized that i'm not a fundraiser that's in hashem's hands i i have like minimal effort towards that but my main job is the abrahamic job of welcoming guests not making a conscious or subconscious determination about whether a visitor had funds or they could help us or not my job was to love on them on every guest and make them feel that they're the divine angel that they are i just need to do that i shall take care of the rest and that's when i bought my foot washing station i would wash the feet of whoever let me do it here's a video hopefully they're going to start playing it now of just various people i was just washing their feet i love doing it and i used to do it with brush by hand but that would often feel awkward scrubbing people's calluses with my toothbrush so i bought these foot baths that you can see and i fill them with water and oil and the water vibrates and um and i figured that's what avraham avina would have used today so bigger groups it's hard to do that but where shane and i are working on a solution but it was just so liberating because there's nothing i love to do more than that and that's really the heart of who avraham was that was the reason he was the prototype of that's why he prayed for stone because he realized that the deepest way to love hashem is by loving our fellow human beings that's what maimonides says the greeting guests into your home is no different than greeting the face of the shrine and that's why we should pray for the world right now not curse them and not try to distance ourselves from them pray for them this world is being so flooded with this authoritarian coercive evil that we need to pray for the world because this is a world that we could really look at and say there's no fear of god in this place so please hashem please hashem as we learn about abraham avinu in these portions please allow his love for all of mankind to fill our hearts and not only our hearts but the hearts of those that are the furthest away from you the hearts of those that are the deepest immersed in evil that's being spread around the world shine your light hashem so that all of mankind can return to you with whole hearts and therefore return to each other with compassion and kindness and justice and love amen back to you jeremy 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.thelandofisral.com backslash fellowship or send an email to fellowship at the land of israel.com love and blessings from judea