Eretz Yisrael The Land That Heals The Heart - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

Because while we are commanded to begin, there are depths of pain, trauma, and exile. You know, there are blockages of the heart that no human effort alone can remove. We're just people. Only God can perform that deep surgery of the soul. And the fat amed actually explains that the foreskin of the heart is the dullness that covers and hides the inner light of our soul in exile. And that covering is thick and heavy and it's just hard to pierce. But in the air itself, I guess it like it's like it like softens it up. It it it if if you've been here before, you can testify to this that that if we have an open and yearning heart, even just the air itself, the air of the land sharpens us and refineses us and helps strip it away and allows the light of our soul to shine like it just can't in any other land. But the at the climax of history, Hashem will remove it entirely. And then love of God will be as natural as breathing. And where will this surgery take place? It's going to take place in the land of Israel. The prophets say that the final redemption will sprout from Zion. Here in the land of prophecy, Hashem promises to transform our hearts into vessels of eternal love. But as we said, it's only in the land that we can truly do our part as a nation. For as we read just a few verses into the sixth aliyah portion that the land of Israel is quote a land that Hashem your God seeks out. The eyes of Hashem your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. I just had lunch with my friend Tulie Weiss. He said that that Rabbi Tuliwise that that verse is such a part of his entire world life journey is that verse you know because our sages teach that Eritrol is not like the other lands. It doesn't just give it demands. It mirrors the spiritual state of its inhabitants. If our hearts are blocked we may be able to live here physically for some time but we will remain spiritually exiled. Only with an open circumcised heart can we truly feel and experience the holiness that radiates from this land. You see, in exile, a Jew can survive with half a heart. Foreign lands allow space for compromise and for self delusion and for the illusion of control. And a Jew can live with a measure of cognitive dissonance there and still get by. But here in Charlotte, it's different. The land itself demands truth. It does not tolerate it doesn't tolerate half measures here. The very soil, the very air calls us to strip away illusions and live with a whole heart before Hashem. The land is alive, right? In in Leviticus 18:28, I've thought about this many times. So let not the land vomit you out for defiling it as it vomited out the nations that came before you. Erit Israel cannot abide by impurity. It doesn't tolerate falseeness. It doesn't tolerate evil disgustingness. Not from the Canaanites and not from the Israelites, right? There's nothing special and unique about us where we get any dispensations. It doesn't work that way. Living here calls for a deeper covenant. And just as the brea the circumcision marks our bodies, milatv the circumcision of the heart marks our inner essence. And in this land, the inside and the outside must align. The covenant is not only written on our flesh, but inscribed upon our hearts. And in the diaspora, a Jew can still delude himself into thinking that he can somehow escape his Jewish identity, that he can slip away from the fate and destiny of his people. But here in the Holy Land, there's just no illusion like that. And you know this [Music]