Idolatry of Love - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

i've lost my voice again as you heard and i'm willing to give every last bit of it right now victoria just raised her hand that's cool um i lost it on friday morning and uh i've been really trying to save it up so i would be able to share this with you tell me are you understanding me yes can you should i even continue talking okay good so how did i lose my voice this time you may be wondering because i'm not a guy that loses his voice i have one of the most powerful bellowing voices hashem has blessed me with it i can really literally scream and the mountaintops near me i'll hear it there's some but i've been losing my voice but this time it was a a little bit different so um you know jeremy's talking a lot about this historic monumental men's meditation retreat and i always i often call things like the gimpel uh exaggeration right there's a little bit of spin there sometimes um not as bad as my family but but he's got it but he's not exaggerating really it was so so unbelievable and indescribable but at the very end of the retreat we all went to the house of prayer and we sang together and we prayed together and we shared together and then at the very end we let out this primal scream to hashem sort of like sort of like an offering and i dug deep down to the depths of my soul and i shouted with everything that i had it's hard to explain not only what it was but why it's almost like we had just experienced such a powerful life-changing thing together that we we felt something awakening and stirring inside of us a certain yearning a certain connection and and a primal shout to hashem expressed something that no selection of words or liturgy could accomplish and so i shouted and immediately afterwards my voice was gone and i shat all the time and it was gone and i really did feel like it was some sort of offering and the truth is i was really at peace with it because despite all the talking that i knew i had to do coming up with a tour i have a huge tour tomorrow and a tour today we had a group of germans come to the farm this fellowship i knew that you know my voice is gone but i was at peace with it because um there was just so much light there was just so much light there and it was something that i offered up to hashem as opposed to corona you know where i lost it now i was able to offer it up and uh you know i only knew a few people from beforehand from before this uh that were they were part of the meditation retreat but i knew a few people these these were guys you know they have walls up a lot of us have walls up but these guys really have walls up like a cynical jaded i didn't know how they were going to react to some of the mushy sharing open arts but i'm telling you how just pierced through all of the walls and they were just tears and joy and they're writing to me it was just life transforming 18 hours six of which were sleeping five of which were sleeping and their lives were changed so much it's really hard to explain and yeah what jeremy said about me standing up and sharing i wasn't planning i didn't know what to do i wanted it to be serene and beautiful and holy and spiritual and then i just gave like like a 15 20 minute stand up routine and it wasn't helping me stop it that people were rolling on the floor like rolling on the floor struggling to breathe they were saying our cheeks are hurting give us a break that was from god that was from god because what is laughter right if it's not something that's unexpected and i think everyone was expecting this like com that's what i was i wasn't expecting to do that and there was laughter and i feel like that's part of what redemption is redemption is god just like bringing on the unexpected and there's going to be tears and there's going to be laughter and our hearts are going to be so sensitized and open and in their natural states that um that we'll just laugh and cry together and we'll look and we'll say how could we have hated each other feared each other just the world is going to change not on the outside but on the inside in our hearts that's what i believe redemption is going to be can you still hear me i feel like i can barely say a word okay good thanks jeremy anyways so going in shabbat uh you know directly from this retreat was really powerful you know i usually emerge from shabbat empowered and uplifted and inspired and now i was able to go into shabbat with such a high like that and then to dive into this torah portion right well for for a moment it was actually bringing me down right this portion may be among the most painful in the entire torah you know what i'm talking about right ki tisa it's it's always been very difficult for me to understand and i don't think i'm alone you know after all the nation of israel just witnessed the most miraculous miracles and liberation in human history not only in jewish history but in human history and then we build a golden calf just the complete lack of gratitude it seems so strange that there has to be elements that we're just not able to wrap our mind around about the spiritual realities of what they were facing and i've always had so many questions about this this episode and i've read so many explanations that explained you know the thinking of the nation that they never really you know the the nation didn't really um want to worship the calf as an end in and of itself right moshe was gone moses was gone and they needed a new intermediary but they wanted to connect with the god of israel but moshe their intermediary was gone and then as often happens with idolatry they lost their bearings and they worshipped the calf as an end in and of itself um but you know what no matter how we may try to soften it god was furious god was furious and he even suggested to moshe that he would wipe out the nation as a whole i mean this is just another one of those proofs that the jewish people that some jew didn't just write the bible write the torah you know if i write a biography about my life an autobiography it's definitely not going to have the worst highlights of every terrible thing i've done and even if it doesn't have one or two i'm not going to focus on it but that's what this is right it's just the worst it's the worst and um and so god says he's gonna wipe out the nation as a whole and the levites right they swept through and they killed other israelites it was dark and it was horrible and it was bloody and it's just so hard to understand and and on top of it all aaron who built the calf he built the calf itself he seemed to evade responsibility altogether for building it have any of you thought about this like the the aaron issue like i had a lot of questions about aaron and the calf that i've always bothered me because not only does he mean to have avoided punishment but he's anointed the kohen godzilla the high priest afterwards he's anointed the high priest of israel that's not just any position right it's not like congressman ocasio-cortez right it's like the high priest of israel it's the most holy and sanctified service imaginable it's the intermediary between god and the nation the powers at play are so powerful that a slip up in the ritual or even possibly the intentions while performing them could could have fatal cataclysmic unimaginable consequences right that we actually see happen with aaron's sons we're gonna see that soon so how in the world can the fashioner of the golden calf be granted such a position it just never made sense to me and so as i was reading through the words of our sages who just toiled over this torah portion i came by one teaching that actually made me cry as i was sitting there in synagogue i've been telling jeremy you know jeremy has uh the saturday morning shabbat morning uh uh shepherding duty you know so he goes out and he prays in the fields as he's the shepherd and that's beautiful but i was i keep telling him he's missing something he's missing something there's something in the synagogue experience being amongst these sadie king these holy jews that just opens my heart and so i sat there sitting in synagogue and i was crying over this teaching that i read sorry and maybe it was uh you know it's particularly emotional i noticed this happens to me almost every shabbat that i'm in synagogue with the prayers it's a possibility but what i read that there really addressed this deep question that has been plaguing me for so long and it wasn't just an answer it like put my heart at peace and i couldn't believe that i've never seen it before because it seems so simple and i suppose hashem you know he reveals the truths that we need revealed to us exactly when we need it so i guess it just wasn't my time yet and so as i was sitting there fighting off tears i just felt the truth of it resonating in my bones and i knew immediately that i had to share it with all of you because you know one of the things i've been trying to really do is whenever i have strong emotions any strong emotion whether it's fear anger sadness regret i try to immediately harness that and make it into a prayer and so as i was feeling strong emotions i was actually not praying praying for all of you praying for this fellowship praying for each and every one of you and realizing that i was just so excited to share this with you and the truth is i don't know if it's going to hit you like it hit me it may not even be that profound for you but it was for me so i need to share it with you anyway so it was a teaching from kohen and he explained that our own that aaron became the high priest not despite the golden calf but because of it now what does that mean forgive me so the sages explain that aaron saw the rapid moral deterioration of the people for example you remember horror in the bible i'm sure you guys remember he was the one you know aaron held up one of moses's hands and core held up the other one during the battle against amalek he was the grandfather of betsalo who was uh the divinely inspired craftsman of the tabernacle he was a righteous man and when he sought to stop the nation from committing this horrible sin they murdered him i don't know if you guys are familiar with this sometimes i forget that there may be like different gaps in our understanding based on midrash and the teachings of the rabbis but every school child every jewish school child is taught this this teaching that it's a very fundamental teaching that was murdered around the building of the calf because he tried to stop the nation and so aaron saw this murder he saw the reveling he saw the licentiousness he saw the adultery and the murder and the promiscuity he saw all these behaviors that result from man shirking the yoke of heaven that uh he saw the behaviors that that we see happen when man decides to build his own god and therefore to be his own god and so when aaron saw how evil the people were acting he realized that if he resisted them that they would murder him as well and then they would proceed to build the calf and worship it anyways but their guilt at murdering him compounded by the sin of building and worshiping the golden calf would just be simply too much for the nation to bear how could they be forgiven for such a thing so he decided that would be better for the jewish people if he alone were to bear the guilt if he were to take it on and so he fashioned the golden calf himself and by doing so he was manifesting his willingness to sacrifice everything everything for his love for the jewish people everything not only in this world but in the next he was willing to to sacrifice his entire portion of the world to come and to cut himself off from the nation of israel from the god of his own carrot that is one of the punishments of idolatry it's just it's just one of the consequences idolatry right we should rather die it's one of those things we should rather die than commit someone puts a gun to my head and says bow down to this idol i say pull the trigger i'm not doing it anyways so aaron was willing to take that on and you know we know from past fellowships that moshe moses was willing to do this for the nation as well we talked about it last week he loved the nation no less than aaron did and when moses uh you know when god told moshe he wanted to start again and wipe out the whole nation what did moshe say we've gone over this erase me from your book mahini the same words right as may noah the waters of noah because noah said okay god wipe out the world i'll build this ark and moshe said no wipe wipe me out with the world and he fixed that that shortcoming and moshe said erase me from your book if you're going to erase them erase me so then why did aaron become the high priest and not moshe i think the answer that's given is because when aaron stuck out his neck for the nation it actually got cut right he was actually responsible for a terrible sin and therefore he truly did need forgiveness himself he wasn't standing above the people on the mountain looking down in rage and in judgment he was amongst the people he was surrounded by the people he was immersed in their sin with them and that's why he was the only one who could really be the high priest because when the high priest enters the holy of holies he carries the sins of the nation with him and to do that he needed to have sinned himself the high priest needed to be someone who needed forgiveness he needed forgiveness for himself too he needed to be someone who was willing to dive into the mud and the and the gross filth of sin if that's what it took to be connected to his beloved nation and to pull them up right out of it with him he needed to love the people so much that he was willing to suffer the pain and the punishment and the alienation from god in the most severe way imaginable if that's what it meant to save them and so that's why he was anointed the high priest after the golden calf because the golden calf was a prerequisite he couldn't have been the high priest without it he had to secure the forgiveness of forgiveness for the sins of the nation he had to be a sinner as well and so even with the greatest of motivations right so he needed atonement too and i think i think that there's a reason that it seems like lately every time i open the torah it's this thing that screams out of me that overwhelms me i had these young yeshiva students over for shabbat and it was this love for israel this unreasonable love for the jewish people that we have to have in our hearts that is the truth that we really need to have in our hearts that's all we spoke about the whole shabbat because i think it's a truth that not only i need today but that the entire nation needs today and really that the whole world needs today because it feels very much that we're in an orphaned generation right now our leaders are weak and corrupt and it doesn't feel like they have the best interests of the nation at heart of the world at heart all of our leaders i can't look at one of you in any country and not think wow we're all on this boat together and and this is causing fighting and division and animosity within our nation within israel within the nations around the world around the whole globe and so we really need to seek to emulate moshe and our own and see beyond the flaws and see beyond the sins and be willing really to pray willing to get down in the guk even for those seeking us harm those who are standing against all the values that we stand for we need to love and pray for them too and it's not an easy thing believe me i walk around just crying with my teeth gritted thinking about some of the stuff we're facing in this country and that all of you are facing just the injustice the canadian truckers is big big time those those sweet simple holy people that have such simple requests and they're being having their accounts shut down and being called nazis it's just it's horrible and we see this happening around the world and so we need to be able to pray for the justin trudeaus and for the bidens and for the naftali bennetts we need to be able to stand as intermediaries and intercessors for our fellow man to fill our heart with love for all of creation no matter how bad they may seem we need to seek to be like moshe and our own of this generation and please god when we do when we do the world will be moved to return to god and to repent with full hearts just as the israelites did after the golden calf they came back to themselves oh what were they going through and as i see it there's a really only one cure to the diseases plaguing the world and that's love so may we be blessed my friends to have the strength to truly love despite the magnitude of the price that we may have that we may have to pay for it so shalom my friends i love you all so much thank you for bearing with me on my voice