Celebrating Brokenness & Wholeness (Yom Kippur) - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everybody so good to see you so good to see your beautiful faces I hope everybody had a great rashash Shana um so I want to talk today about Yong kipur that we have coming up this uh this coming Shabbat now we started talking about this last week a little bit I mentioned how every biblical holiday has something that happened some historical event behind it um you know not every great event gets a holiday but every holiday seems to have a great event so last week we talked about what was rashishana which was the creation of man and the remembrance of uh Noah so I want to today talk about what was the historic event of yum kipur so the Torah doesn't spell it out for us do you guys want to write in the comments does anybody know what happened on yum kipur so it's actually a bit of a calculation the sages tell us that on the 10th day of Tish which is Yum kipur that was the day exactly Laura Laura uh you got it right great job laia get the prize um so we got the second tablets now how do we get to that calculation it's a bit of a it's a bit of math that we need to do if we know that on shabot we received uh hashem's revelation at SI that was on the sixth day of Sion so we imagine that is the day of revelation after that on the seventh day of Sion uh on the seventh day of Sion Moshe Moses goes up for 40 days and then we know that he comes down and sees this horrible desecration of the worship of the of the uh golden calf that's 40 days later so that would come out to actually be on the 17th day of the next month of tamuz which we know is going to be a tragic day the 17th day of tamuz is a tragic day throughout Jewish history and that first tragedy actually happened when Moshe broke the tablets then Moshe goes out to clear out the camp and to purify the camp and to uh find all the people who are responsible then in Deuteronomy 9 we know that Moshe says that for 40 days at that point he sort of thrusted himself at hashem's Mercy and begged for us uh begged for us to be forgiven and so that would actually come out if you do the math on the very last day of the month of ab and then Hashem says okay you can make new tablets come up to me for another 40 days and so if you actually calculate that that starts on the first day of el and goes until he comes back down with the new tablets on the 10th day of tishay so if you actually follow the math of 40 and then 40 and then another 40 from the original Revelation you come out to this unbelievable discovery that those 40 days that mosha was up on Sinai for the second time atoning for us and creating these new tablets in a CO collaboration with usem then that was actually the month of el and the 10 days of Chua that as my son Noom says he says blow minding that is mindblowing when we think about it because what does that mean can you imagine what it was like when Moshe was up on the mountain like they don't know what's going to happen are we they don't know where they're going to get new tablets the Israelites don't know what's going to happen now is Hashem forsaken us is he not forsaken us so that you could just imagine the depths of repentance the depths of chuva that were set into the f fabric of time for those 40 days it was such powerful repentance that it actually reverberates through time to the point that it allows us in El and in the 10 days of chuva the first 10 days of Tish to tap into those moments of the greatest repentance that ever was mosha was on the mountain begging for us while we were doing our own repentance that is the greatest repentance that ever was they set into motion that period of time that could contain that level of of repentance and on the last day can you imagine the feeling of yum kipur looking up and seeing mosha coming down with a new set of tablets like try to imagine that is the essence of yum Kipper that moment of looking up at the culmination of 40 days of repentance and looking up at the mountain and seeing the new tablets coming down now what's really interesting I mean there's a lot of things that are interesting about that one thing that's interesting is if Shabu then is the day of the real let's say original Revelation the day of the like the the sort of First Love Revelation at Sinai we have shabot and Yom kipur is that sort of second Revelation now what's interesting is that look how opposite ways we celebrate the two times that we get the tablets how do we celebrate shod we know now in modern let's say more modern uh tradition that we learn Torah and we talk about the uh you know the giving of the Torah but what was it like in the times of the temple this was all a festival about the first fruits coming and celebrating eating the fruits in Holiness just enjoying the Luscious delicious you know seven species of the land and taking a bite out of a pomegranate and a bite out of a fig and a D it's so physical and then what do we do on Yung kipur it's really the exact opposite so two times we're getting the tablets one time we celebrate with the most bodily kind of Celebration and on yum kipur what do we do we negate all of our physicality we act we act instead of like people taking bites out of delicious fruits we're not eating anything we're not drinking anything we're dressed like Angels we're acting as if we even have a human body so what's going on here isn't that strange so something interesting that I learned is that if you think about it the first tablets were completely made by Hashem we know that they were carved straight through miraculously the letters were like floating in the tablets from side to side they were the handiwork of God himself and what does it mean to live by tablets that are coming down as the handiwork of God himself you can become a completely spiritual being by living in that existence that's just completely given to you by God but the idea was that you can take that godliness and Infuse it into your physical life so on shabot we take this complete godliness and we bring it down into our physical existence of just eating and drinking and celebrating and saying even your physical existence can be done in holiness it can be infused with godliness what happened on yon kipur well who actually carved out the tablets this time Hashem commands Moshe Moshe carves out he says you should carve out the tablets the tablets are actually going to be made this time the second time around Hashem sees that we are not going to be able to live in this existence on of of the of that first original uh Covenant of the tablet we need new tablets that are going to be coming from our own effort coming from some kind of human effort so now Moshe in his human effort actually carves out those tablets and then what is that what do we it's like it's as if it's telling us well how we how do we then celebrate that day we celebrate that day by negating our physicality we say you know what we were not able to completely Infuse our existence with godliness we broke we weren't able to handle it right we weren't able to we we broke and did the we worship the golden calf we're going to now try to lift ourselves up in our own effort to be worthy of receiving the Torah the Torah isn't just coming down to us we are going up to try to meet Hashem in making the Torah so we have these we don't have one day of receiving the Torah we actually have two days of receiving the tablets and they're sort of mirror opposites of one another showing these two sides of Revelation on the one hand bringing down hashem's Holiness into our physical existence but at the same time saying Hashem we're also going to meet you this is not just something that is happening to us we are fully participating in this and we are going to try to lift ourselves up and cancel out some of our physicality so I thought that was kind of cool but then as you guys know me I wasn't really satisfied because something here struck me a little bit odd okay let's say you guys have let's say you have friends okay not you God forbid this not happen to you but maybe it did I don't know okay let's say you have a friend and they fall in love and they get married but then Things Fall Apart and they separate and they have this massive blowout and God forbid they get divorced maybe somebody was even not faithful to the other God forbid right and then they decide much begging and and and therapy and working on it they decide to get together again and that they're going to put away they're going to bury the hatchet and put away everything all this pain of the past right they're going to really try to overcome it and they decide to get married again which one of their wedding days are they going to celebrate wouldn't they celebrate only the second wedding I mean the first wedding ended in such a blowout it ended up in such a disaster it ended up in in divorce it ended up in in separation in Breaking of their Covenant wouldn't the really happy day be the day that they had their second wedding I think that that's super strange at first sight that we celebrate both of these days of giving the tablets we should be so ashamed of that first day of giving the of of the tablets because those tablets ended up broken we're all dancing and happy on chevo and taking bites out of our fruit in the temple did nobody read the next chapter did nobody read the part where those tablets were smashed to the ground well maybe there's a really deep secret here maybe it's teaching us no no no no no you do have to celebrate these two weddings what does that mean there's a very very deep there's a very very deep um uh teaching in the sages that says that in the in the Ark of the Covenant inside the Tabernacle and the temple we know that there were the tablets right but not everybody knows that the broken shards of the original tablets were there as well and sometimes I think about this idea and I think it's one of the most profound possible ideas the idea that we would maintain those broken tablets that symbolizes everything that's wrong about us everything that's dark about us everything that was unfaithful about us and keep those together in the holy of holies right next to the the tablets can you imagine that when you think about that what is that trying to tell us you know this idea uh it it struck me so powerfully when my brother uh my brother was getting married this was the speech he gave to his wife and it didn't sound very romantic at first but it was in the Torah portion of the breaking of the tablets and when he got married he said to his wife he said you and I were building our Ark and there are things that are wonderful about us that we love about each other we're two tablets that are whole in some ways but we're also two tablets that are broken in some ways and he started saying well you know you're kind of broken in this and you do a little bit of this wrong way then everyone started to cut him off okay okay okay that's enough and he said no no no wait hear me out you're broken in this and you're broken in that and I'm broken in these ways but I want your broken tablets and your whole tablets together in our art I love you for everything that's broken about you and I love you for everything that's whole about you and you love me for everything that's whole and everything that's broken in me as well we're not covering it up we want it to be in the in the Ark in the holy of holies can you imagine and so what are we essentially saying when we celebrate both Shavuot and yum kipur and we keep the broken tablets together with the whole tablets what is Hashem saying to us he's saying when I'm renewing this Covenant with you an Yom kipur when I'm showing you once again that I forgive you that I love you that I want to be together with you that I believe in you I'm not saying let's erase the past and let's forget about everything I'm saying I love you with your broken tablets right next to the new tablets because we're not forgetting about everything we're not erasing everything there are some people that want to erase their past some people want to say whatever I used to be that's gone I'm a new person now and Hashem is saying no no no no no your Chua that I'm accepting on yum I'm accepting it because I see you in your Brokenness I see the places that are wrong but I also see the places that are good and I'm holding them together and I love them together and I'm forgiving you with all of that package and I'm recommitting to you with all of that package you know whenever I go to a wedding I always think it's so beautiful it's so romantic but I enjoy myself even more at second weddings because you know like when jerem and I got married we were babies we were idiots and I look back at our wedding videos and it's so happy and cute but like we were really idiots we didn't know what we were going into we didn't know what lay ahead we were not knowingly accepting upon ourselves all that we were unknowingly accepting upon ourselves all of that Adventure that was coming a couple weeks ago I went to my cousin's uh second wedding and I said to myself you know these two people both of them had been through a lot and I said these two people after everything they've been through they know exactly what it means to get married and they're still doing it it's they're they're they're letting those broken tablets and those whole tablets be together in the ark they're like accepting upon themselves everything that they know that's going to be broken and and where and and owning that and taking that upon themselves and so Yung kipur is so beautiful because shavod is is is romantic and it's wonderful and it's our covenant with Hashem but we didn't know what we were getting into and we sure managed to mess things up yum kipur is where Hashem re accepts us and opens his arms to us knowing everything that is wrong with us and he says I am still going to give you my tablets knowing all that I know about you and it's just a a lesson about all of our Journeys you know a lot of people here in our group and a lot of people that we know can kind of look at their past and say what did I think what did I used to believe well oh how could I have been so wrong everything I used to think was terrible everything I used to be was terrible and yur is telling us everything that you used to be is only making you richer and deeper for it we have a friend who uh we have a friend who converted uh to Judaism and his mom came from a Native American background and he became actually kabad so now try to imagine uh we had them over for a meal try to imagine somebody with a black hat and a black jacket long beard looking totally like a rabbi looking like 100% like a kabad rabbi and Ari had the uh guts to say uh could you teach us a rain dance and now he said sure and and he's doing a rain dance for us now imagine at our Shabbat table seeing a kabad rabbi doing a traditional uh rain dance you can't make this stuff up I said that is the broken tablets and the tablets together he didn't say forget about it's like everything that he came from only made his journey with Hashem so much richer and my son AKA said to him something so cute my Sona said you know I I once heard a mathematician explain why in the last decade there haven't been any new discoveries in mathematics you know why he said because everyone goes to school and learns the same math books and they have the same Math teachers that learned from the same Math teachers before them and everyone is learning the same thing so no one's coming up with something new he says you are bringing something new to Torah because there hasn't been a Native American kabad Rabbi yet and that's something new like you're bringing and he was so and it was it was so cute that my that AKA was able to recognize the beauty and I really think that that is the message of Y kipur that we are coming to Hashem and Hashem sees us for who we are we're not saying Hashem erase everything that we are but Hashem show us the way that everything that's broken in us can fit together in the ark with everything that is good and becoming better put all of that together in the holy of holies love us with all of that and Hashem says yes and shows us Anum kipur these new tablets that are not made only by Hashem and they're not made only by a human being but by a meeting by a marriage by a collaboration between Moshe and Hashem where we reunite and say we know what this means now and we're still accepting upon ourselves this journey together and what's really cool is that and with this I'll finish up this I read in the N Shalom he says that yum kipur does in fact symbolize our Awakening towards Hashem our writing out those L are trying to meet Hashem and become more Angelic less physical Shabbat on the other hand is something that represents Hashem hashem's pure creative power right the the Shabbat is is creation it's something that was totally not done by us Shabbat was from the from the the seventh day of God's creation we had nothing to do with it Hashem makes Shabbat and whether you know it's Shabbat or you don't know it's Shabbat Shabbat is happening like with or without you it's going to be Shabbat and what's cool is that this year Shabbat and yum kipur come out on the same day so it's like that Hashem is in an even deeper way coming to meet us and we're coming and saying we're going to make our human efforts to meet you Hashem and Hashem is saying it's going to be on Shabbat on the day that I made holy and all of that is infused together and it fits I think well in in you know the times that we're in that we are you know fighting here in Israel for our lives and seeing hashem's Miracles coming and protecting us and you know so may we have that meeting together in our personal lives with Hashem on yum kipur and on a national level let's see our please God let's see our efforts and our self-sacrifice and our um you know our our battle that we are going up against be met by hashem's love and hashem's miracles coming down upon us and meeting together to lead us to both personal Redemption and National Redemption so with that I wish everybody to have the most meaningful yum kipur Shabbat shabbaton the Shabbat Yom kipur that all of that should be experienced for you uh in your lives