CHAZAQ's Torah Talks #159 Rabbi Gavriel Sanders - A Minister's Journey to Judaism

the Jewish journey is really connected integrally organically with the Jewish texts we're called the people of the book and when the people of the book separate from the book they eventually separate from the people which is why we've lost more Jews to the good life in the west than all that perished in the Holocaust because they got disconnected from the book because alternative Jewish movements that really you know they're not reformed they're deformed and I'm sorry to say that but I was 2 and a half years in that millu I know I was there I was part of it it's anemic it's deficient it it's not Torah it's modern it's hip it's contemporary it's politically correct but it's not the real [Music] deal bar and welcome to Torah talks kazak Tuesday night program with special guests we have with us RAB Gabriel Sanders barab welcome how are you doing Rabbi I am so grateful to be with what I think is one of the greatest Jewish Education and connection organizations on the planet kazak I've been with you in person a few times in the past it's been a long time and I'm happy to be with you here in this Virtual Mode as well speaking from cheeseburgers to chilling a minister journey to Judaism an unbelievable story that you've experienced and been through and first and foremost Rabbi where are you nowadays I remember the good old days in New York area more or less yes I have uh left the United States for the most exciting place on the planet which is er Cel I'm speaking to you from my little Studio place here in the hippie neighborhood of nakot yusal near the shuk right in the center of town close to everything um surrounded by all kinds of shs and you know the ashm say you know these little little places yes vot around here there's so many wonderful Jews I think it's amazing that here in Israel you find people that wouldn't Define them themselves as religious but sayem and they they give you a and it's just it's just such an amazing place to be a Jew without fear without concern that I have to wear a baseball cap on the on the subway or wonder if I'm going to get home unscathed so I I going say right up front for everyone watching if you can at all get out of Dodge get out of I call it Biden stand these days sorry if you're a supporter but I uh I I I I just longed for this for years and so about 14 15 months ago finally made the leap and so I am a Jew I am an Israeli Jew I am a yerushalmi Jew so it's just great to be here and there's I could just talk for 45 minutes easily just about the the Wonder the power the mystery the magic of being right here where theh is at a much higher and more visible level um it's like going from black and white to Technicolor it's like going from two Dimensions to three dimensions you know it's it's like going from being choked to being completely liberated and breathing fresh clean Mountain Air and sparkling water and that's what it's like to be here even with all the problems that we have going on right here both internally and externally Hashem is here in a powerful way and I see it every single day so come your portion amen the Merit so so the with understand the rabbi grew up on the streets for a lack of better words and became a minister a Christian minister could you uh take us back a little bit to how that was and how that became sure let me take this you know this we're going to break this kind of into three pieces so I like to say that the the river of thought will divide itself into three streams it sounds more poetic you know so it's how we used to talk in the preacher Factory where I learned to to be a speaker and we're very metaphorical so I didn't grow up in a normal situation in fact let me just set the stage and say that when subnormal becomes normal normal becomes abnormal follow that I'm G say it again when subnormal becomes normal then normal becomes abnormal so I grew up in a very subnormal context when I grew up it wasn't normal it was subnormal for a kid to have divorced parents today it's much more common when I grew up it wasn't normal to go to a different school every year all the way through till I hit the 10th grade speaking of 10th grade it wasn't normal for kids to drop out of high school in the 10th grade like I did you know it wasn't normal to always be the new kid with no old friends it wasn't normal to have siblings that were all halves from different fathers you know it was a very fractured family so I guess if we wanted to put a term in the dictionary you know messed up family we would our picture probably would have been there so as you can imagine uh growing up with much instability and also uh especially when I hit my junior high years poverty we we were really poor can you imagine you're 14 years old you're going to a public high school in September your mother buys you two pair of corduroy stove pipe pants one green one blue and by the time you hit April you've grown but the pants haven't and so you look kind of like a HED from Williamsburg at least from the knees down right and if you're trying to impress friends that's not going to make it it just didn't so my life really consisted of uh surfing you know I was born in Georgia grew up in Florida eventually migrated to Texas onto California but in those Florida years I was very much a surfer and that's where I tried to find my identity and with my friends and I'm very much a street kid um I didn't grow up with much discipline neither academically nor morally in the home that I was in I didn't certainly didn't respect uh either my parent units my father was a shadowy figure on the other side of the world I really didn't know much about him he would appear once in a while but you know my parents got together because they did and they quickly found that they weren't suited for each other my mother was a big city girl from Chicago and my father was a simple country boy from the middle of nowhere in the state of Georgia who dropped out of school I think when he was 13 to go work and that's my father's whole identity was about working I'm not sure that emotionally he knew the difference between mad sad and glad I did end up living with him for a short period of time when I was 15 and if anybody knows where the SE Shell's islands are here in Israel people do know because air seels flies in here you go to Kenya go to the coast mambasa go about Thousand Miles and you hit one of the most beautiful sets of islands in the world called the SE shells so I lived there for about four months but again my father and I were like oil and water we did not mix and he sent me back to America and I resumed kind of my life on the streets but somewhere along the line in um in when I was 15 which was a very tumultuous year a lot of just ugly things happened that year someone spoke to me about the Christian Gospel now my first exposure to that happened when I hit shik now imagine how old am I 15 I'm in Dallas Texas one of our many stops along the way and I hitchhiked to California 15 years okay now in those days it was not quite as uh treacherous or threatening or dangerous to do that but uh and along Highway uh was it Highway 80 forget the number of the highway U truckers wanted somebody to talk to to help keep them awake so I would be sitting in these trucks big huge trucks I wanted to go to sleep and they wanted to talk I got to Huntington Beach California Huntington Beach was one of the surfing uh centers of the West Coast was happy to be there disappointed in the waves that's another story but I didn't know anybody when I got dropped off by some guy that gave me a ride didn't know a soul but there were Street people in those days and I spoke to some of them and said hey man you know some place I can crash which meant place to sleep yeah man we know these dealers you know they got this place you could sleep when they said dealers I'm not talking about cars all right so they brought enhancements to people's life Better Living Through Chemistry haminin all right and they gave me a place on the floor now this this was a little a railroad car railroad Box Car type of apartment with a me Central living area a tiny kitchen no bathroom that was down the alleyway and we had six people piled in there trying to eek out an existence and I was there for about two weeks and I said hey man where can I eat and they said oh you go to this uh place on Main Street was called the Teen Challenge Gospel Light Club and this was a group of missionary type Christians very clean-cut people uh and they provided sandwiches from the day old sandwiches from the catering trucks wow that sounded good to me all you had to do was go and listen to what they called a Bible rap Bible rap meant like in our terminology be like a Devar Tor right lav deal but we would listen to whatever their thing they were doing they would show a movie or someone would stand up and talk about how horrible they'd been at their life and they came to Faith in in JC they believed in him and their life was radically shifted and turned around and where there was emptiness there was fullness where there was sadness there was Joy where there was uncertainty there was confidence these are amazing promises and so night after night munching on my sandwich and I would be talking to some of the people that were there and they sought to influence me of course my friends the dealers said hey man don't let them get you in that back room there you know they get you on your knees and they'll put their hands on your head and start talking some funny language you know speaking in tongues and you know one night they got me in the back room I had no idea really what I was doing I just knew that they these these nice people were paying attention to me and it was shortly after that that I was off to the SE shells islands and I was trying to Hitch back hitch back to Texas and I got a little vacation in the San Diego juvenile detention center for three days until my father could figure out where I was and took me overseas when I came back from sells I found some other Christians and got a little bit involved in church again I at 15 I knew nothing about theology really I couldn't give you a statement of faith I hadn't really read much of the Bible I I the only impression I had from God in my childhood was that God and Godzilla were similar you know very big fire breathing angry if you get too close you'd be burnt toast it was like really a messy situation that was my primitive concept of God but these Christians these nice Born Again Spirit-filled Christians were telling me that God loved me had a wonderful plan for my life that I was separated from God by a condition called sin but JC came 2,000 years ago as a perfect human being he was God In the Flesh lail that he came and lived a perfect life and fulfilled all the requirements of the Jewish law which none of us is capable of keeping because we all continually fall in sin he became the ultimate kapara the ultimate atoning sacrifice for sin's past present and future and all I had to do is believe and I would receive a new life well well I didn't know what the pack package of believing insisted of so much they just said I need to repent of my sins which meant feel sorry for my sins that sounds like the BR bom little bit righta uh and that if I believed and I asked they quoted a passage from the New Testament says behold I stand at the door and knock If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come into him and dine with him and him with me in other words you know JC basically says if you open your heart I'm coming in and you're going to feel my presence and that's going to give you a sense of energy that you've never had before well that sounded really good to me to based on the background I just told you being a street kid doing all the street kid things that I did you know feeling um Angry empty ashamed uncertain frustrated having a family situation that was so subnormal but it was for me for me it was normal and so and when I by the way if I had come to any of your homes take the jewishness out of the equation just if you had a normal family structure as a father and a mother and brothers and sisters and a dog and a white picket Finch I was so uncomfortable in those situations because your normal was my abnormal I couldn't deal with it so I kept you know people have this like U set point or default system within them like the guy that wins the lottery and goes back to Poverty because that's where he came from so I had a certain you know Behavioral or psychological similarity to that situation uh but as I got deeper and deeper into Christianity and hung out more and more with with these people there began to be some Progressive changes in my life because you really become like those with whom you associate with now by the way that's Christianity does not have a monopoly on that if someone has a problem with alcohol and goes to AA for example or anybody with any issue and goes to a 12-step program and sticks with it and works those 12 steps which are really a form of chuva if you analyze them carefully you'll see that the process of chuva is very much in there you know acknowledgement and and regret and making amends and resolving never to do it again and connecting with the higher power through prayer and meditation you know all those elements are in there and that's why the 12-step movement is probably the fastest growing movement in the world today and people's lives change outside of JC and there are other systems out there that help people to change as long as they're sincere and they really want to work it but for me I was in a closed system said there's two Dimensions you're either going to heaven or you're going to hell the only way to go to heaven was to believe in JC any of your righteous efforts your your Works your outer um let's say in our case any mitz vote that you try to fulfill as a way of being right with God not going to happen not going to make it because you're human and you're sinful and you're going to fall short and you inherited that tendency from from Adam harishon from Adam okay Adam and Eve in the garden so the humanity Had A congenital deficiency called the sinful nature and JC came to help us overcome that and also that when God the Father looked at anybody who believed they would not see our sinful nature he would see oh he's got credit in other words we get we Karine is the Yiddish way of saying with Karine on on JC's righteousness so all that sounded pretty good to me and I also knew that I felt pretty good being around these people now over time I read the Bible I became more committed I began sharing my faith I became a youth evangelist by this time I'd moved from Texas back to California and then on to to Oregon uh I finished up high school through a college program started going to college what a disaster I had no discipline I had I didn't know how to write I could talk but I couldn't sit down and study and do be systematic about anything lost a scholarship whatever it it all worked out eventually but I went to six different colleges over the course of quite a number of years to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up wow my pastor I was part of a small Church how small 30 people in Eugene Oregon south of Salem South of Portland and that little Church of 30 in three years grew to 3,000 people and I was on the staff and I was cultiv I was sort of groomed into the ministry by this young Pastor named Roy Hicks Jr and he sent me to he said one day go to Los Angeles go to Bible College where I went to school get the application fill it out I'll sign it and off you go go so I did and off I went in my 1965 Ford Ranch wagon with the window in the back that didn't roll up and I went to California and started started Bible College it took me about five years to go through that and at the same time I joined the staff of again it had been a very small Church of 18 people in the San Fernando Valley of California and that church eventually went from 18 people in 1968 to well over 12,000 people many years later 80s and 90s and I joined initially as the audio engineer and then eventually as a youth met Pastor as a high school Pastor as a finished a certain level of Bible college education I had a real burning desire to help bring about the end of days now according to the Christian theology at least Protestant Evangelical Christian theology Messianic Jews believe pretty much the same thing because they're just you know it's Christianity and it's in in drag I would call it um wrapped up in a talit they believe that JC not only came 2,000 years ago but he's supposed to come back but he can't come back until two very major events take place the first event this is quoted in Matthew chapter 24:14 said that this Gospel of the Kingdom he be published to all the world as a witness to the ends of the Earth more or less and then the end will come in other words the Christian Enterprise of telling everybody this message that you need to be saved you're a sinner you're going to hell unless you believe there's no good thing that you can do to please God God you have to receive the gift of eternal life which was purchased on the cross by JC for you so how could you turn down such a wonderful gift you can get you know get right into heaven free all you got to do is believe and he'll change your heart and you'll start naturally doing the things you didn't do before sounded like a pretty good deal you know so that was the first thing the second thing is in order for all this to to wrap up the Jewish people had to come to believe in JC as their Messiah and so it was in the 70s early 70s mid 70s that this thing called the Messianic movement and Messianic congregations uh began to take off and Jews for Jesus in San Francisco was was formed a little earlier in the late 60s under mosha Rosen the car salesman and Baptist preacher and then all of a sudden across the country there are these little this Jewish uh fellowships kind of popping up and I had two people in my my Bible college education one was a professor and the other was a fellow student and they had both been to Israel they'd been to an Old Pond and they'd studied Hebrew it had a dramatic effect on their life and I said that's what I'm going to do I'm going to go do that and so I arranged to reconfigured my life and I came to Israel I can't tell all the details because it's really too long but suffices to say that I came to study Hebrew in a five month course five and a half months went to my first kibuts and in five weeks I was done why because I learned Hebrew so well no I was kicked out by the American director of the ulon and not a religious guy guy this was a hash kib they were like Communists but they became very from when I started sharing the gospel of JC or the Yeshua hamashiach with other people in the then they asked I didn't initiate they asked and I shared and one of the girls there in the Old Pond an American Girl decided to believe as I believed and I led her in prayer one night with some other people that were Believers also and she quote got saved I didn't say you become a Christian I said you're now a Messianic Jew a completed a fulfilled Jew so several of us got kicked out of the kibuts eventually um I almost got kicked out of the country I was put on a blacklist after I left the country and when I tried to come back to Israel some years later I was detained at the airport and sent back on the first plane out because that man who kicked me out of the kibuts also made sure that my name was on The Blacklist it it's too long a story about how many got off the black list but eventually it did I went back to Israel I said I wasn't a missionary I was an English teacher I was a language student but I was invited by a Christian Ministry called project kibuts which had small groups of Christian Believers kind of many missionaries uh but carefully coached not to be too aggressive in how they shared their faith and they were planted in like 10 different kibuts around the country and I was way up in the north of kotz Dan and kibutz Dafna and I was part of the leadership structure there for for a while and then I migrated into being hired by the kibo again I was hired by the Ministry of Education imagine this I'm a missionary I really am a missionary I want the Jews to come to Faith in JC and they hired me to teach English to their elementary junior high and high school kids now I didn't talk to them about you know my faith system but I certainly was there as an influence now people ask me so Sanders is there anything here that started some kind of hairline fracture in the wall of your faith and I would say yeah so when people ask me what was the one thing that convinced you well the answer is really a chalant so when we say from cheeseburgers to chalant there's a metaphor in there that is appropriate because a chalant is a blend of ordinary things that slow cooked over time produce an amazing result you know sometimes too much of a result you need to take a nap so the Hebrew language was my new set of glasses the Hebrew language opened me to see that the texts which I had quoted from the Christian scriptures pulling from the Jewish scriptures in many cases were either Twisted taken out of context U mistranslated couple cases I could think of made up and so there's this disconnect between what's supposed to be the Fulfillment and what was supposed to be the prediction so as a young Minister I used to say I would say to you do you realize that there are 300 prophecies in your scriptures which were fulfilled in JC because the new new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed doesn't that sound that's pretty pretty smooth language right but I eventually discovered that what's new isn't true and what's true isn't new all right and so that was the beginning beginning to see passages where there was this disconnect so when I went back to the big church in Southern California it was with some serious cognitive dissonance is a what a psychologist would call it I worked very hard for the next two years during that time and this was a this was another big this was a big hit of the wrecking ball on the wall of my faith I I was asked by the church to attend a counter missionary rally I didn't know there was such a thing but it was happening at the kabad house on the UCLA campus newly dedicated because the previous one had been burned down by an arsonist so they were having this big rally because there was a huge missionary push going on in in Los Angeles at the time our church was part of that and I went I took my little sui kipa that I bought in the holy city of spat my members only jacket with the label on the outside making me feel look seclusive and my little tape recorder so I could record the event and I listened to Rabbi Dr Emanuel schet from Toronto and Rabbi lisman from Los Angeles and a fiery young Rabbi with a flaming Red Beard named Ben on critz today his beard is Snow White and he's now become a dear friend of mine and they laid out out very clearly why everything that I was doing and believing especially Vis trying to reach Jews why it was sheer how we were appropriating Jewish symbols to suggest that they were that our Christianity was really a natural extension of Judaism uh I'll give you one example but I'll just say this before I I give you the example I picked up a book there that night called the Jew and the Christian Missionary by Jerry seagull another friend today and he made it so clear he he went through and analyzed all these different New Testament passages that claim to be extended fulfillments from the quote Old Testament I had never in my life looked at the Jewish perspective because my perception and it's mentioned in the Christian scriptures is that when Jews read Torah they have kind of blinders on they can't really see clearly what's really there and only when they believe in JC are those blinders removed and they go ah he's really the M Messiah so the example I want to give you it's so embarrassing all right one fine year I said to my staff of four people at the big church we're going to have Passover seder okay so outside of Israel how many seder nights do you have two okay we had four why did we have four uh well because we had 600 people that signed up to come and we had a many buildings on our campus one used to be a barbecue restaurant so we used that and it only could hold 150 people so we had 150 people a night for four nights running and I brought in a well-known missionary at the time his name was Eleazar urak Al Shalom he was one of the leaders of the American Board of mission to the Jews which today is called chosen people Ministries and eleazer Mish looked like a HED from Williamsburg he had had a big long beard he had that accent he he' fought in the 48 war of independence uh he knew Hebrew he was you know he just and he made everyone dumbfounded astonished fascinated by the things that he said I'll give you a couple of examples one example was he said behold the matah how many pieces of matah are there three what do those three pieces of Mater represent the a the Ben and the okay not Coen Le Isel orov he said the now which piece of matah is taken out and broken the middle one ah he said this is the body of Messiah that's broken for your sins and then isn't part of that tucked away in like it's just in a shroud you tuck it away that's the burial and then we bring the afikoman back that's the resurrection you know did you guys learn this in Yeshiva didn't you say in in the the mcta called bamus you didn't learn that in bu my okay so and he said look at the stripes this is the stripes on on on the messiah's back from the Romans Whi him see the holes in the matah these are the holes in his hands and his feet and you got all these Christians and these Jews sitting there going wow wow wow and all the waiters that we had those nights those were the Jews they were waiters for all these these non-jewish people so can you imagine the shock and awe I guess I could use that I felt years later looking back on that and thinking what was I thinking well I was certainly not a cunning deceiver I was a very sincere believer but as I kept reading and learning these aspects of uh Jewish views of these scriptures that I thought were fulfillments I just had this like Progressive meltdown and there came a time when the minister who' become a missionary and who was so confident that he was going to be part of the overall package of bringing JC back to the second coming of Messiah not as the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 but as the Conquering King and I just lost it I just I just melted down and I left the church I left everything I lost everything and for eight years I wondered and I wandered okay uh I lost my faith once in a while I would go to church play peek-aboo with God hi I'm here are you there I don't hear anything hello and it was a very sad thing so what to do you I I I didn't really know how to work a regular job that wasn't part of the landscape of my experience so I remember calling at my father one day we' talk once in a great while we weren't really close but once in a while I'd call him up my father I told you was the country boy from the middle of nowhere in Georgia Dodge County East I called him up one day I said Dad I'm 33 now and I have no idea what to do with my life and he spoke to me in that beautiful country accent of his and he said everybody's Gonna Learn country now because there's only two rules every one syllable is two and you don't really say it you kind of sing it so c a t becomes k a y a t k See K and d a w d o g becomes d a w a dog see there you go see a c and the dog so I spoke to my father and he said to me you just go somewhere nobody want to go do something nobody want to do and you have yourself a job say job it's like the Trum in the right so and I thought wow that's such wisdom country wisdom right but he'd been all over the world working doing these all kinds of weird offbeat things and the Bahamas and the sells and the cin Island and Oman and and Abu Dhabi and that was my dad The Traveler I thought where could I go what could I do well I'd gone to graduate school to study Linguistics at a missionary University in Pasadena California I called him up and said any English teaching jobs anywhere in the world that you know they said so funny that you should call there's a need for English teachers for the Royal Saudi Naval accademy would you like to go to Saudi Arabia well no there's a place nobody wants to go and what do I have to do you're going to be teaching betwin students in the Navy technical English now who wants to do that you know hey Muhammad yes sir can you say hammer uh hammer Abdullah yes sir can you say screwdriver uh screwdriver see there's no V in Arabic they trans transfers to an F so I spent all together about two and a half years in Saudi Arabia I happened to be there for the fun and games of Saddam Hussein's First Gulf War little scary time the Saudis actually helped me find my Jewish Soul so now we're transitioning to the next phase that that middle phase yeah was the for that was is it true because I believe it or do I believe it because it's true think about that is it true because I believe it or do I believe it because it's true now we come to the third phase in the third phase I came back to California from Saudi Arabia again just kind of I mean thank God I wasn't uh put into some kind of detention because I was involved some some things in Cal excuse me in Saudi Arabia that could be questionable like I had a fax machine drove them nuts they didn't understand why do I have a fact machine wellow $2.65 a minute on a phone call two weeks for a letter to go back and forth fax machine seem reasonable but uh and I was learning Arabic I spoke a lot of Arabic in those days I was close to the officers I would go to the Officers Club and hang out and have parties help eat half a sheep with them you know they'd hand me something like an eyeball this for Honor I said this not for Honor so honor somebody else but they detained me one day and said we're sending your home your contract's over they didn't tell me why I figured out why eventually so when I came back to California T I really started doing serious thinking about Judaism now I read a fascinating book that was very pivotal to the trajectory of my life from then on out and the book was called Jewish meditation by someone I'd never heard of before named arier Kaplan I didn't know that he'd written 60 books I didn't know that he was a renowned physicist who also was a brilliant brilliant Jewish scholar and that he could I mean when you look at his books and you look at his footnotes and this was before the internet and see how incred what an encyclopedic mind he had but a lot of things in the book I didn't understand because it was using terminology like amida Shon kavana terms I wasn't familiar with at the time but he made me come to know a couple of outstanding things first of all early in the book he talks about that Judaism is not a western religion it's an Eastern religion okay and even though it's been co-opted by the um the West its foundation is that of a really truly spiritual Eastern mindset the other thing that he talked about was that meditation was something very common in the period of Tanakh and that we had sort of drifted away from that and he conducted something that he called linguistic archaeology going back and doing a deep dive on the words to extract and bring back to the surface the real practical meaning of of some of those terms and you'll find that in the book it's not a long book chapter four when he talks about State Altered States Of Consciousness when he talks about the inspiration of Prophecy and and other things that that are there and how a person can really connect with God and so my impression that I came away with that is like I thought I thought Judaism was a bunch of old tired wooden rich rual Traditions I'd seen Fiddler on the Roof when I was 17 years old you know and it seemed like it was all about somebody losing their faith as their as Eastern Europe was falling apart and the Jews were getting out of town and going for the good life in America but surprisingly this book opened my eyes that yes there's something here so what did I do I spoke to a college professor friend of mine about my thoughts about digging into Judaism and she said you should go for this I said well where do I find the Jews she said I don't know look in the Yellow Pages that was a big book that we used before we could Google it right that's our Yellow Pages is the old way in the 80s and 90s of saying Google it I looked in the Yow Pages under synagogues and here it says Shir hamalot a friendly congregation wow now I knew where the friendly Jews were so I called him up I talked to the education director name was Barry I said Barry um this is a little bit about my background I'm interested in studying Judaism do you have a conversion course he said better than that we have a bar mitzvah course for adults and the rabbi accepts the curriculum for conversion I said wait a minute are you saying that I can have a conversion and a bar mitzvah he said yes it's like a two for one special he said yes come on let's talk so I signed up for the course it was a nine-month course every Thursday night and I would we had the this is for par mikit about the seven cows and the Seven stalks of course and ysep and and all the things that happened in MIT rim and we had 16 people in the class and so finally came the fateful day just before Kaneka the shabas before Kaneka shab Shabbat mik kits and we had 16 alot lur that day there were three guys and 13 that weren't guys okay and uh we had this big bar mitzvah celebration and I took some friends of mine out not on shaas remember took friends of mine out to a Lebanese restaurant for a nice lunch you Middle Eastern lunch and within a few months really I became what we would call the maget sheir for the par study at this reformed congregation in Orange County California okay and I didn't know Rashi I couldn't read Rashi I had no idea ramban ramam nothing you know Ral bug radak any of these sages I knew nothing about them we would get together and read portions of the of the of the para in English and then dispute whether they really ever happened now if Moses ever really existed if those Jews really were in the desert now maybe when they got to the mountain they'd all eaten some magic mushrooms and they had this Collective psychedelic experience together of fire and smoke and voices you know that happened in the 60s maybe it happened back then you know pretty wild situation then if we had 10 people together we'd make up a minion and once a month on on Shabbat we take out the saer Torah and if somebody could read Hebrew didn't make any difference who they were they'd stumble through it and after two plus years in that situation the more I learned the more I realized if I can use a metaphor if Judaism is a house I'm living on the porch and it was also during that time that someone invited me to a workshop at another reformed congregation on the coast in Orange County and that seminar was called you might remember this discovery it began in Israel something called arim a revolutionary seminar that tens and thousands of Jews maybe hundreds went to and this one was the English version I actually know and I'm friends with today the man here in harof who was one of the founders of the discovery movement we're very good friends and working on projects together now I went to that Discovery workshop and I discovered I really discovered things I didn't know about why the Torah is really inspired why it was God breathed instrument why it could not possibly be the product of the mind of man but really the hand of God and why the mitzvot these Commandments which I looked at as demandments were really that's Rabbi David eron talks about that why they were really commitments that lead to connections because the root meaning of for the root meaning of the word Mitzvah means to connect so and I discovered that there's in Discovery I discovered there are Commandments between myself and Hashem and there are Commandments that affect my relationship with you and every other Jew and every other person across the world and that we've been given this package of spiritual technology moral technology behavioral technology ethical technology ways to live that would bring us up so one day when Rabbi van of of Calabasas California asked me while I was going through my second conversion process he said could you give me a definition of Judaism in one word I said yes I can he said what is it elevator because what's an elevator do it brings things up and it brings things down we bring BR down into this world and we Elevate things that would normally be just routine like an apple I make a braa all of a sudden the Sparks the Divine Sparks in that Apple become part of me and there's a whole process going there's gratitude happening I'm acknowledging the Creator Hashem is part of my day every day throughout the day I've got these reminders I got Ma I've got I've got my talit I've got my Min I've got my sa Tor all these things around they constantly remind me because I have a human tendency to forget that's why the Torah says P Les You Forget by the way are you following me through all this am I doing okay I know I'm going non-stop here at about you know 85,000 miles an hour but I'm I'm wanting to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time and if anybody wants to know more then you there's a meaningful people uh piece that I did a couple years ago that tells a lot of this story you can find that I think on Yahoo uh just look for Gabriel Sanders that's but I really want to get to the things that are really common because the first part of the journey really had nothing to do with you the second part of the journey might have had something to do with you because you're asking questions you're wondering you're seeking I did that I did that as a teenager I did that much later in life in my 30s when I was reconditioning revamping refurbishing my inner life and I've now been I'm happy to say about 24 and a half almost 25 years not under this yamaka necessarily as one but under the yamaka and it's amazing think about this it's amazing I was walking the show this morning thinking about this time with you today thinking it's it's phenomenal what a little piece of cloth on your head can do to affect your perception of yourself and others perception of you and your own behavior when you're out in public yeah it's amazing I am a product of a designer you know if there's design there's a designer if there's creation there's a Creator and one of the fascinating things I've discovered in my own personal Jewish journey is that it's not just a theory to acknowledge Yes somewhere out there there's a God but in here there's a God you it's amazing that in the in the book of Exodus that and sometimes you see this up above the Aron KES in as that says [Music] Mish which has couple interpretations says that they will build for me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst but the literal meaning is I will dwell within them also the Torah tells us it's not just enough to believe it's not about believing it's about knowing when we talk about we say this on you gonna know consciously it's an intellectual awareness but you're going to take and transfer that into your heart so that there's an emotional connection to it that Hashem really is the one who's a master of all powers there's none greater than him I'm learning a book right now called a OD Mado which is all about the concept that we call Hash basically means personalized Divine Providence okay not just the Providence that runs the sun coming up every day and setting later but the Providence that supervises every blade of grass and everything in between including your life and my life so that I can live a life of gratitude no matter what difficulty is happening to me and it's on this basis I say to you I now know know not just believe I know that I existed before I got into this body I'm in this body as a soul for a purpose and I'm G to go on Beyond you know we're talk the we're taught by our sages that moving from this life is like moving from one room to another or taking off one garment putting on another and and with this I want to kind of conclude pass away as opposed to that's right very good excellent because we passed over that away so my name as I'm called up to the Torah is Gabriel arier Ben Abraham okay so Abraham we know who that is his his Kev his tomb is about 25 miles to the south of where I'm sitting right now Gabriel arier So what's a Gabriel that's a nice name but Gabriel represents Amal an angel and AR represents a lion so we have these these two figures here we have an angel and we have a lion and the homeostasis that we want to achieve in our Jewish journey is that the angel rides upon the lion now the truth is the arier the second I took from AR Kaplan I wanted to honor Rabbi AR Kaplan so I I took that for there but the two concepts together a representative of the inner makeup of every one of us every one of you watching right now kind of a funky way to say it but you are a Gabriel arier you are a Gabriela ariela what does that mean it means that you are well let me say it this way many years ago I was living and working in Costa Rica I had a chance to speak one day to some University students and I asked them this question I said could you tell me please who created the first hybrid and they all said in that beautiful lilting you know Central American accent of theirs Toyota I said no that's the second hybrid the first hybrid was hu Hashem our creator created the first hybrid where he fashioned Adam harishon the first Adam the first human uh in this iteration Out of the Dust of the earth just like the animals they come from the dust of the earth so we have this carbon based commonality with the uh the animal kingdom but then what was unique about Adam unlike the animals was that Hashem breathed into his nostrils the breath of life so there was something of divinity of the Divine of Eternity breathed into the corporeality and the temporality of Adam arish so that now he became this hybrid and you have that and I have that the the part of me that's looking out toward you right now and you looking at me that's the Eternal that's the real you that's the soul that fills your body in all parts you can't see it but you know it's there and if it's not there the body's still there the ears are there the the eyes are there but nothing's functioning what Happ what's missing the real animating force is gone Hashem is the animating force of the universe and he breathed you into this body that you have as it were and you have a mission part of our mission is for to learn this lesson that spirituality has to ride upon the corporality I don't kill the Beast like the song said in cotel California all right but I tame the Beast and we say that in the morning ding cause our yeter our our tendency to be subservient to you and so the thing that could take us astray we learn to harnessing that energy and put it toward Divine holy meaningful higher purposes say see that is the Jewish jur that's what you find so when you learn too when you master mitzvot when you achieve consistency you know I mean this is this this i' be very careful about things I do but one benefit I discovered in the last since I've been living in atis last 14 months or so is almost without fail I read the sections of tahim that have to do with each day we go through the book of tum every month and I've been able to go through that cycle at least 12 times and the The Amazing Power that I feel that I'm able to bring these passages to my mind as I'm walking down the street or recite certain some of the smaller uh chapters whatever to put those in my heart and David amik says this and we just read it yesterday's reading that that and the English says it this way I'm I've hidden your word in my heart so that I don't sin against you and that's the amazing thing that when you ingest this holy spiritual bread as it were it causes a nutrition to be triggered within you that creates that overcoming of the lower animal nature that wants to go out and be angry at people or take things from people or live out a lustful life or or consume chemicals to compensate for the whole in your soul this is the real set satisfaction so we say Ashu how fortunate we are M how good is our portion this is real Jewish living loving and learning this is what it's about and finally I'll say I in my Jewish Journey you know I moved from California to New York uh I ended up working for art school the publishing company for about 10 years I learned so much from Rabbi mayor LTZ Shalom and now the current president his son Galia who's a dear dear friend I get to see him once in a while when he comes here and I get to work with people like Rabbi pesak cron and many many others rebit Esther young rice Al Shalom she became my Tor mamy and so many people who had an impact on my life and see that's one of the beautiful things about being part of the Jewish Community what does community mean Community it's a Latin word means with unity you get to connect with people I'm here in Israel I'm one degree of separation from the president and from BB not that I'm going to use it necessarily but you can connect you can get together with people you can meet people who can help Elevate you going back to that one word Del one word definition that I mentioned to Rabbi van and Calabasas elevation you can get on the elevator it can take you higher you don't have to settle for mediocrity you don't have to go spend you know $3,000 for Tony Robbins seminar all you got to do is sit down open up the par start learning get a Kusa connect with somebody start keeping Shabbat in some way maybe it's just lighting candles on time or taking it in a little earlier maybe it's starting to eat kosher food whatever is your entry point on the ladder of your possibility you can do that now so and I'm living proof because I I I I took this Jewish car for a test drive over 25 years ago and I thought if I don't like it I could bail in fact the people in my baiton Rabbi Union Rabbi Holland Rabbi Summers from the baon of the reinal Council of California said to me you don't have to I'm standing in the water of the mikah Los Angeles December of 1999 and they're telling me you don't have to do this you can come out and you know you know a lot about Judaism you can be very serviceful and I just said what's that braa again what am I supposed to say and I've still driving the car there been people ask me did you ever regret there have been some tough times but you can't really learn faith unless you go through tough times you can't learn how sufficient Hashem is Until you realize how insufficient you are you can't discover his richness until you discover your own poverty and so this the last theme of this third piece of what we've talked about we began by talking about when subnormal becomes normal normal becomes abnormal we talked about do I believe it because it's true is it true because I believe it and this final is I first came to Israel as a Jew the Terah Jew observant Jew in 2003 and I had the marvelous Good Fortune to sit for 20 minutes not too far from where I am right now with Rabbi schlomo Volby ala Shalom he was about 91 at the time he's long gone from this world he passed in 2005 but he was a bridge between the the generations of the Warriors and he brought the understanding of what's called M which is ethical teaching to a whole new level and as I sat with him and I said we were speaking in Hebrew and I said you know what do we need more than anything else and he looked at me with those beautiful eyes of his and he said three words a person needs Faith Thea and I asked the natural follow-up question where's it gonna how am I gonna get it and he picked up one of his not the well-known one called ales but another one and he he just looked at me again and gave me two words Katan it's written here so the Jewish journey is really connected integrally organically with the Jewish texts we're called the people of the book and the people of the book separate from the book they eventually separate from the people which is why we've lost more Jews to the good life in the west than all that perished in the Holocaust because they got disconnected from the book because alternative Jewish movements that really you know they're not reformed they're deformed and I'm sorry to say that but I was two and a half years in that millu I know I was there I was part of it it's anemic it's deficient it it's not Torah it's modern it's hip it's contemporary it's politically correct but it's not the real deal and they're on the endangered species list and they're not going to survive the only Jews that are going to survive into the next few Generations are the ones that are connected to T Judaism and if you don't believe me go to a website that's really hard to forget because it's called simplet remember.com and you will find a study there you like that I love to see what kind of humor we can enjoy here quickly but go there and look at the study on will your grandchildren be Jewish it is a powerful thing so everybody needs to look at that and aiv I'm really stopping now come home I'm G to cry I want you to come home we need you in the land of Israel it's tough here but I promise you you can trade in a standard of living to achieve a quality of life that's here that's nowhere else and even with the difficulties that are going on even with the current War that's happening with the threats in the South and up in the north Hashem is here and he'll reveal himself to you you say well what am I going to do when I come here I came here over a year ago I had no job I had little money I didn't know what I was going to do now I'm working four different things the project major projects I'm working on it's just phenomenal I go from 9: in the morning till most days 11: at night I'm busy you know Hashem is keeping me busy doing things that are significant so come I have a dear friend he's also a convert he's a martial arts instructor his name is Jacob Jacob lenon he's also a Shakespearean actor amazing guy and two years ago when I was here looking around to figure out what to do he just he just looked at me and say Gabrielle just get here Gabrielle just get here Hashem will make the way you just get here you're the one that has to get here and so I'm saying to my Jewish friends across the world watching this get out of Egypt come go to neph at least do this much okay here's your here's your homework get in touch with neish benfish open a file it's good for five years you can start the process I went through it three times to try to get here okay and do at least that much give Hashem something to work with if you do nothing that's what you're going to get if you do something doors can open for you okay so make this CLE as we call it okay this this is do make a step take a step of Faith like like U nak stepped into the water and the Sea split let's see what the sea will split for you okay so I'm telling you I've had 25 years to prove if this is right or not if it's real or not if it works or not I'm still here I'm going forward I've gotten you know www I've gotten wider wiser and wider you know because of Jewish food so it's amazing what this journey holds for you I want to hear your journey so if you're interested and you want to share your path with me please I'd love to hear it Gabriel Sanders at gmail that's Gabriel with a V Sanders at gmail love to hear your story I get to teach Hebrew online today I teach T you know Biblical Hebrew tanak Hebrew Hashem blessed me to be six and a half years a Hebrew teacher on Long Island Jewish high school it's amazing it's like this Divine joke this kid that grew up as a as a nothing gornish they would say in Yiddish nothing it becomes the head of a Hebrew Department in a high it's how did that happen you know this kid That Couldn't Write in college it's Hashem it's Hashem it's Hashem you give him a little and he'll make it much okay as you can tell I come from a Christian world where 45 minutes was a short druss but I hope you found something substantive with your name on it that you can take this time you're Vie okay because I want to see a maximum you okay actualizing all of your potential because potential is just the part you're not using so let's find out how you put that into actualization that's what it's all about thank you so much for having me powerful real thank you so much for joining us wow so inspiring the prayer is that we should beete Redemption to come we all go to we'll all visit you over there talks Tuesday night 30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time what an amazing tour talk we have gel Sanders from cheeseburgers to chilling a Minister's journey to Judaism thank you very much for your time thank you very much for the for the inspiration we should see everyone together only occasions thank you very much amen s come home everybody come home we're waiting for you [Music]