Can You Love Those You Hate? - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

anyways but jeremy's right today was a very challenging day for israel we were at a meeting of activists in jerusalem trying to understand what is the calling of the generation and that's when the news of the attack came in but they weren't clear as always at the beginning they're not clear and then just a few hours ago we had a machina a seminary out to the farm these were like american kids that are right after their high school year and it was electric and they were so into it and they were laughing and then right at the end one of the group leaders made the announcement that from what i understood this man eliahu that was killed eliahu k that was murdered he ran towards the attack to get involved to hear the attack happening he get to get involved and save lives and he was killed trying to save the lives of his fellow jews and he was the cousin that's when the leader made the announcement that he was the cousin of one of the kids that were right there with us in this group from what i understood and everyone was shell-shocked and devastated in tears and it was just really really difficult and and this grief that we're in i think it really amplifies the message that i want to share with you guys today because not only today where we find ourselves in jewish history and in world history and that's this confrontation that happened between jacob and the angel followed by his confrontation when he was already israel right afterwards with esau and this uh this was a confrontation of forces that was so powerful that the consequences of it continue resonating throughout history until today so i'm sure you know in most places jacob and esau are painted as the forces of light and darkness right between good and evil and the sages say asav this means esau hates jacob allah from moses at sinai very often jews are involved in debating the root of jew hatred and like we were today really and we find ourselves at this familial uh familiar juncture of of realizing that there's really no rules to jew hatred we're rich or we're poor communists or capitals no matter what faith or ideologue ideology we seem to be hated no matter what and then someone chimes in with the famous quote asap sonatiakov esau hates jacob and that's just how it is that's just the way things are and in other places that the sages say and tell me if i'm wrong here jeremy could tell me if someone tells you that rome right which is esau is rising and jerusalem which is jacob is also rising don't believe them if they say that rome is falling and jerusalem is falling don't believe them either but if they say rome is rising and jerusalem is falling believe them and if they say jerusalem is rising and romans falling believe them meaning rome and jerusalem are inverse spiritual powers and one's rise is always at the expense of the other so the point of all this is that this confrontation between jacob and the angel who our sages widely agree is the guardian angel of esau as well as the confrontation between jacob and esau it has such profound consequences and we've learned together in the past the acts of the fathers are assigned for the children jeremy can i have three more minutes here just a little bit longer okay there there are so many facets of this encounter which we can look in more deeply but there are just a couple points i want to focus on in our limited time so jacob is approaching his brother esau and uh who's just been brooding he's been reveling in this hatred and this he's been so thirsty for his revenge against jacob for 20 years 20 years this could be the end of the story right here as far as jacob's concerned after all esau is a legendary warrior and a leader and jacob well he studies intense right hashem promised jacob it's true that he would make him a great nation but our sages say that jacob thought that perhaps he had sinned or he lost his merits and he lost the binding nature of that promise or perhaps he felt that he was diminished by the kindnesses that hashem had done with him the kindness that the kindness that he received were just more than he deserved and he used up his merits as we see in chapter 8 verse 11 when he says i have been diminished right or made smaller by all the kindnesses and the truth that you have done with your servants i don't know if that was just put up on the screen but um you know i have to admit that this sentiment that they say jacob had here really resonated with me that's the quote there you can look at it for for i often look at my life right i'm living in this garden of eden on the judean frontier i'm gifted with being able to really fulfill my greatest joy of sharing and teaching about israel hashem with the world and i look at my wife shayna and i look at our daughter dvash and i look at the family we're building and i feel so thoroughly unworthy i feel like there's many years where i just i suffered where yes perhaps i earned some credits during that suffering like when i passed up on the like rational and lucrative job opportunities to to pursue this mission that we're in but um but i feel like i just used up those credits uh by now for sure but you know i definitely feel like i have more than i deserve and when i'm stuck at looking at the world in such a you know a simple way like that through that prism it makes me nervous i feel uneasy about it and and i it can feel nerve-wracking and i understand how jacob at that point could feel diminished and unworthy and he was scared and that fear in and of itself made him even more afraid right in chapter 32 verse 8 it says jacob became frightened and it distressed him and this spoke to me very powerfully as well because i don't think there's a place in the whole torah where i identify with jacob more than exactly right here in this portion because jacob was frightened and therefore he was distressed because as we know fear is a form of idolatry fear is the belief that something may happen which shouldn't happen and whenever i feel fear which i often do i often find myself more disturbed by what i judge to be the spiritual failure and shortcoming of faith that that fear represents than i am of the very thing the fear is attached to i'm more disturbed by the fear itself than the thing i'm afraid of if that makes any sense and so my personal understanding is that jacob was distressed by the fear itself he felt that he'd run out of merit and that hashem may not be with him anymore as a matter of fact our sages teaches us that jacob was indeed hoping with all of his heart that the night before this encounter with east or any point leading up to it he would have had this divine revelation which would grant him clarity but he received nothing he got no prophecy no clarity nothing and for that reason we're told is that hashem is why didn't hashem give him this clarity because hashem is hashem yearns for he's thirsty for the prayers of the righteous and so he wanted yaakov to be afraid so he could dig as deep as he could and pour out his heart in prayer and so hashem denied him the clarity and the prophecy that he really wanted anyways all right i'm going to try to bring this together having so he was he wasn't granted a revelation um and so he starts making preparations and we read in the text he takes a three-pronged approach he prepared for war he prayed and he sent lavish tribute meaning that he also took this route of appeasement and every step of this has consequences into the future for example there is serious prophetic foreshadowing to the division of the camp in which jacob split up his family in his possession so they shouldn't be destroyed in in the situation where esau would attack him and there was a battle so the ramban nahmanides points out that this was actually the situation we saw being played out throughout the entire exile that just as jacob divided the camp the nation of israel would be divided up amongst the nations for that very reason because at any given point one nation would inflict horrible catastrophic death on the exiles of israel for example the crusades and the pogroms and the holocaust throughout europe while during those very times of wholesale massacre elsewhere in the world the rest of the jews would find themselves among other host nations that at that moment were much more benevolent and treated them more humanely so just as jacob divided up the nation to prevent complete destruction the children of israel were scattered among many other nations throughout the exile to ensure their survival as well but here's what i want to say the part that i found really challenging and thought provoking was how jacob jacob could possibly take all these different approaches without being dishonest or disingenuous because it seemed like these pro approaches are really mutually exclusive it seemed like he couldn't sincerely and honestly send tribute and blessings and expressions of love and brotherhood while at the same time prepare for a war prefer to prepare to kill right he either hated esau or he loved him how could he possibly pray and how could he possibly pray and put his faith in god's hands while at the same time pragmatically and practically preparing for every scenario as if god weren't in the picture at all and the reason this uh seeming contradiction is so challenging is because you know as we know from the concepts that jeremy's been teaching that he's writing actually a book about that each one of these forefathers represented and manifested a certain attribute but the attribution of these attributes to our forefathers isn't taught by jeremy alone but by the sages of israel and the prophets of israel for example the prophet micah i don't know jeremy if you knew this but the prophet micah he speaks about the attributes of both jacob and abraham in chapter 7 verse 20 of the book of micah right it says you shall give the truth of jacob the lovingkindness of abraham which you swore to our forefathers from the days of old jacob is the attribute of truth right not of pragmatism not of practicality and so how could he embody truth but at the same time seemingly embody these conflicting and opposite characteristics so i remember that one of the wars that jeremy and i were in we found ourselves in gaza and we were abruptly called up to the army right because that's how it is one day one moment we're just living our lives lost in whatever we're doing then boom sometimes within a few hours we find ourselves putting on a uniform and being sent out to war and this war we were called up during a very challenging time of my life i was going through a pretty painful divorce and i remember that however dark and painful it was hashem was really blessing me with light and with clarity that i was that i've been able to take with me and incorporate into my life from that period of time and these lessons that i took into my life i remember with crystal clarity i was able to internalize them into my essence during the throes of that painful dark time that i was in and what was this realization well i've shared it with you before but i i feel like i can't say it enough times it was just so life-changing it was that the anger it was that that anger and hatred are just toxic they're toxic to the person who allows those emotions to dwell within them and that it's always possible to replace those negative emotions with love and compassion but when we were called up to war it wasn't a divorce i was dealing with it was hamas uh was i supposed to feel compassion and love for hamas how was i not supposed to feel hatred for them and have this toxic feeling within me i was trying to reconcile that hamas right whose very essence is dedicated to finishing what hitler started and murdering every single last jew hamas who murdered murdered this holy holy jew today in the old city how can i possibly feel compassion for them and that's when it hit me i thought about world war ii as the other most extreme example possible and i pictured that just as i was i'm a sharpshooter in the israeli army that i was a sharpshooter and i saw a nazi carrying a canister of zyklon b to a gas chamber filled with innocent jews so okay so knowing what we know about this world that it's a fleeting dream and that we're not bodies with souls but we are souls that are briefly wearing a garment called this body knowing that what's the greatest kindness i could do for the nazi himself the answer would be to shoot him dead before he had the opportunity to perform such a heinous act as murdering all those jews an act that would cause his soul to suffer and be in torment for all of eternity so while on one dimension yes i hated that nazi but on the deepest dimension i know it sounds weird i loved him as a child of hashem and the greatest way to manifest that love for him would be to kill him as crazy as that sounds so these hamas terrorists they weren't just trying to kill me and jeremy that i could forgive them for they were trying to infiltrate into this jewish village that we were protecting to murder every single innocent woman and child and it was during that war that my range of emotions my range of attributes was able to expand and hold two seemingly contradictory emotions in my heart at the same time at the same moment and that my friends is what i believe jacob had to contain at that point it didn't compromise his truth at all for keep in mind that jacob fought the angel he became israel right the national consciousness the the confrontational power the birth the nation into the world but he didn't lose his identity of jacob he was still called jacob too and so when he sent these lavish gifts and bowed down to esau that was a true part of him he truly felt he saw his pain and was grieved that he caused him so much anguish he was he was sincerely and authentically sorry but at the same time he knew the justice of his cause and the righteousness of his position and he was willing to fight to the death to defend his family if need be and i think the reason i wanted really to share this with all of you is because we find ourselves right now in a war right there are forces of true evil in the world that are gaining strength i think we all see it and we all feel it and so we need to be willing to fight these forces of evil with all the strength we have but for our own sake for hashem's sake we can't let that hatred penetrate into the depths of our souls we need to be able to fight without losing our love and compassion for the very people that were forced to fight against and so i just want to end with this last thing my wife shane has shared with me a teaching that a rabbi told her he said that sometimes like yaakov's battle with the angel we must grab hold of our darker moments and insist i will not let you go until you bless me so i bless us all my friends that we should be able to to take the darkness that this world is throwing at us right now and bring light and love and blessing 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 www.thelandofisreal.com backslash fellowship or send an email to fellowship at thelandof.com love and blessings from judea you