Are You Among the Lost Descendants of Joseph? - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

over Shabbat when I was reading the Torah portion of Vash I came by a teaching of ritak Ginsburg who is undoubtedly one of the greatest minds and loftiest Spirits in the nation today and he said something that I've you know I've thought about I've reflected upon uh in in depth before we've even spoken about it here and there but I'd never directly heard of a prominent rabinal leader in Israel who actually said it and keep in mind I'm going to share with you my understanding of it but R ginsberg's ideas are so far beyond what I'm sharing with you this is just one small Dimension One facet of it R Ginsberg starts by discussing the half Torah the portion of the prophets that we read with each Torah portion and this portion was from the 37th chapter of yel of Ezekiel so let's start with the beginning of the half Torah in verse 15 the word of Hashem came to me saying now you son of man take yourself one wooden stick and write upon it for Judah and the children of Israel his friends and take another stick and write upon it for Joseph the wooden stick of eph and all the children of Israel his friends and bring close to yourself one to the other like a single wooden stick and they shall become one in your hands and so that was always a very curious prophecy to me I've thought about it a lot there's a lot of discussion about it and so you know this was a prophecy I mean on the simplest level everybody could understand about the two kingdoms you know there's the kingdom and the south of Israel comprised of Judah and there's some of Benjamin in there and the kingdom of the north led by eph children of Joseph and comprised of the the other tribes and they were of course exiled many years before the kingdom of the of the South and the prophecy is that they would unite together eventually as one there of ginsburg's teaching like I said has much more to it than that but uh but one small dimension of it is that this reunion is much more than just the tribes reuniting this is nothing less than a hint to Messianic times in which mashiach can only be fully expressed and revealed when both aspects of him of his both the Judah Dimension meaning the davidic line and the Ephraim Dimension meaning Joseph line Messiah can only arrive when both of these aspects can be fully expressed and developed so of gimberg boldly teaches that while the Jews of today are mostly descendants of the Southern Kingdom of Judah the descend the descendants of Joseph to are destined to be gathered in separately much as they were exiled separate and these descendants of Joseph and the other tribes of of gimberg teaches remain exiled around the world and although they do not identify as Jews and have the outward appearance of Jews per se they have a distant kinship with the Jewish people and so how are we supposed to identify these descendants uh from from from Joseph and the other tribes how are we supposed to recognize our long lost Brethren well I don't think we need to identify them I think they identify themselves and according to R Ginsburg you can spot them based on a special feeling of affection that these people have for Torah and for the Jewish people what I understood from R Ginsburg is that when Jacob heard of Joseph's fate in Egypt and uh from the from the brothers and he saw the wagons and he realized it was true he explained od ysep my son Joseph still lives now there's no you know exclamation marks question marks we don't know if that was a a question or a rhetorical question or what that was but it's a it's it seems It's a declarative statement my son Joseph still lives and this statement from Jacob was a spiritual illusion to the descendants of Joseph in whose Souls the spark is still alive and the strength of that spark is most powerfully man manifest in this strong love that they have in their hearts for Israel and the Jewish people a love that they themselves may not even understand and I wouldn't be surprised at all if this sounds very familiar to many of you and uh and it will be in the times of Messiah that these Souls will be will be awakened and brought together with the descendants of Judah culminating in the Messiah ruling over all of them over all of us