Israel Inspired: Nikki Haley's UN Jerusalem Showdown & The Leader Israel is Waiting For

I like the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations for all of these nations that take our money and then they vote against us that the Security Council well they vote against us potentially at the Assembly they take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us well we're watching those votes let them vote against us we'll save a lot we don't care but this isn't like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what they're doing so Nikki that was the right message that you and I agreed to be sent yesterday and I've had a lot of good comment on it believe me your people are tired of the United States the people that live here are great citizens that love this country they're tired of this country being taken advantage of and we're not going to be taken advantage of any longer and now live from Jerusalem you're listening to Israel inspired radio here your hosts rabbis Aria bream woods and Jeremy Gimpel hello everybody and welcome to Israel inspired on the language of network at the Land of Israel calm this is Jeremy compelling here with Aria brand watts and we're broadcasting from the mountains of Judea and they tell you times are a-changing times are changing it can be sensed in almost every aspect of life in Israel every time I look at Israel I'm like well it didn't used to be that way well things are changing here things are developing there things are shifting it's as if the cosmos are aligning and the Messianic era is at hand that's what it feels like to me things are moving forward faster and faster and it seems as though the Israel is getting it's almost lighter and lighter sometimes you feel like a certain heaviness on Israel the the war war is hovering over Israel Iran's nuclear what's gonna happen and now it's a paradigm shift you know I'll tell you you you just said something that sort of struck me in an interesting ways that you know things are getting lighter and the Messianic era is at hand and for some reason I go through in my head different demographics they listen to our show and there's a lot of our listeners that are shaking their head absolutely but there's other people that are a little bit more of the secular bent you know or something about those words can make them a little bit uncomfortable and that's okay that's who we are that's who we are it's fine I just want to address those people if you okay you see no no so what I'm gonna say is that I was just thinking we are doing this full week it's called the yah-hey Kalla with our been a massive ottava group with Katz and we're traveling through Israel an entire sentence in a strange language a week of your high college of law because of boniva you have to translate that right so our listeners by now know about the series of words called been a macho vltava that Katz we're studying this learning with him with this group of guys that are all seeking to grow in our spiritual knowledge and understanding our self-awareness our service of Hashem so we all come together and it's been going going stronger and stronger and strong were bonding and having these incredible experiences and this week was a special week where we every day we're doing a new activity together we went up to the north to the tombs of the righteous in Swat enter of Shimon bar Yohai who composed the the Kabbalah and the Zohar and the great leaders and rabbis of the past we would do that in the north you went to have Ronan on Sunday I wasn't able to go the whole group came out here on Tuesday and and when they came in I have to say it was like such an exciting experience for me that they came out I want to get into that in a little bit with you because I know for you it was like just as life-changing and exciting for our most beloved best friend brothers to come out here and to experience and to see what were what we're doing here but we were just today this morning sharing the highlights of that experience with each other and one of the guys name was Rafael he said that the the story that I shared about the Germans and that our listeners have heard it already you know that the Germans that I went to them in the morning they were so excited to have volunteer and to help and to do whatever they can do and I said they're the men to go to the right and the women to go to the left and how strange and awkward that is for a Jew to say that to Germans in Judea and we all sort of laughed about it together and he said that he was thinking about that since Tuesday he was it made such an impression on him because he says what is laughter laughter is really the element of a surprise the unexpected that comes in such an unimaginable way that laughter is the only result when Sarah named her son Yitzhak why because the laughter that a 99 year old woman would have a child that's so unimaginative and that's really when you say we're in the Messianic era it's a foot that's what I see happening all around us right now it's that you know just from a rational secular sense the unexpectedness on a macro global scale of the Jewish people being in gathered from around the world and coming back home in the Jewish language to be survived and Donald J Trump who reminds me more of a modern Esau than anyone now rising to the occasion and declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel just unexpected after unexpected so when you were saying that you know the met we're in the Messianic era that's a way to understand it on a rational secular level yeah I mean you know you know that and they're all of our listeners know that we're people that are open up to many different people from many different backgrounds in almost every spiritual leader nowadays whether they be from a background of new age whether they be from a background of Judaism when they from a background of Muslims or Christians everyone feels that we are on the precipice on the edge of entering into a new era of consciousness we're about to enter into a new stage in human history and we see this Asaph like character who what is a sub a sub is all about the quick fix just give me the bowl of porridge and forget about the past Donald Trump wasn't a politician he was like an instant made a sob literally means a soui means s I was already born with hair on his head he was like fast food he was just done Donald Trump rose to the presidency out of nowhere immediately he's grabbing at women he's making a lot of money he's got red hair he is just the personification of the Western world which Asaph spiritually represents and now a sub as foretold is rising up and declaring is Jerusalem as our capital in the world is now struggling with it the world doesn't know what to do with it the world is like they came together in the UN and they tried to veto no they tried to condemn just listen to the clip here the result of the vote is as follows in favor 128 against 9 abstentions 35 draft resolution a /es - 10 / l 22 is adopted so that's true it was 128 4 and 9 against but let's actually just give credit before I give credit to where credit is truly do which is Donald Trump which is a little bit of a mayor couple for me I wanted to give credit to the other nations the voted against this you know annulment of Jerusalem being Israel's capital we have Guatemala Honduras Marshall Islands Micronesia Nauru I've always had a good feeling about Nauru Palau Palau have always been good with Israel Togo and the United States and Israel most of the countries Togo Paulo Nauru those are the countries that voted against in this declaration but I have to say that the United States and President Trump I have never felt so positive about a president in my lifetime having such bold courageous action to make these statements I in my heart I'm trying to really just be open to this and accept it maybe it's this collective Jewish you know cynicism I have that this is somehow not going to be good for Israel that it will be used against us maybe we'll get into that a little bit later but let me just start by saying hat tip to President Trump that's leadership he is paving a new way and he independently is shifting global consciousness that's what's happening now because consciousness you know the hidden sides of Judaism say that consciousness is actually created through words that our words create consciousness our words have the powers to shape our opinions to shape our emotions our words create things giving something a blessing what did you do you've blessed something by giving it words but yes those words have a creative power to them and now by just declaring the obvious truth by just saying it Jerusalem is the capital of Israel Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people you're saying it and the world is struggling with it and they're trying to cope with this oh the truth is being revealed but that's the truth the truth is being revealed let me tell you something else exciting that I heard ambassador Friedman the United States ambassador to Israel has now sent a message to the State Department saying they are no longer allowed to say the words occupied territories when referring to Israel when referring to Judea and Samaria they're not allowed to say occupied territories for now more than a decade whenever the United States referred to Judea in Samaria they referred to them as occupied territories now listen to the words occupied territories just those words have created a consciousness they've already stated your opinion you've already now said well this is obviously not doesn't belong to the Jews it's occupied territory and there are these colonial realities on this occupied territory well then now we're colonialist now we're somewhere where it were foreign to the Land of Israel but once we start restoring order and truth to the matter then there's nothing more natural than a Jew living in Judea then we're not these the foreign entity that need to be expelled Colonials no we are Jews living in Judea and the words occupied territory all of the veils all of the lies are slowly but surely being pulled away but not only then for the first time that I remember Netanyahu is actually speaking in the name of God I've never heard that before I he I don't think he's the most religious man I don't exactly know his theological understand I know he's a lover of Tanakh but so was ben-gurion I know that he has a certain Jewish neshama to him but he went to the president of Guatemala and he said I want God to bless you usually it's always the presidents of the United States that say god Bless America now it always bugged me that why can't Israel say god bless israel god bless the nation well I think Netanyahu does legitimately have that side to him and that belief in his heart it's not okay no I know it's not spoken because he's a pragmatist but he's changed about I don't know that he's changing his letters are changed okay I don't know that his actions are changing the reason he's a pragmatist he's a politician he's a politician okay and the the president Honduras is a religious man he's a religious Christians quantum and I'm sorry of Guatemala as these were his motivations so it is a very rational practical pragmatic approach for Netanyahu to do that but the point is he can do it because it's a real part of him but I don't know that he's totally change I just I don't know who he is at all I'm saying his actions are changing let me tell you it's fun to look at Netanyahu when he is a little bit Unchained when he knows that he has Donald Trump has his back a little bit more he's becoming more face he's becoming more tzuf you know hutzpah he's a little bit a little bit of the Jewish foot soup is coming out and that's exciting to see he was standing or sitting across the table from the president of the EU Eamon Sh'ma and the president they using you know what what Trump said I'm sorry we don't accept this Jerusalem being your capital and then Netanyahu looked at the president of the EU in the eye and said just about 70 years ago here in Europe you put our fathers and grandfathers into gas chambers and I want you to know as the Jews were walking to the gas chambers at your hands they were dreaming about Jerusalem and now here is the next stage what I believe is the next veil to be lifted off the eyes of the world I think if you go to an average American Jew or non-jew doesn't matter and you say if you had to rate Israel's security how safe people are in the Land of Israel on a scale of one to ten is Israel a safe country to visit I think you take the average American whatever background they are I think they'd probably get below a five I think they get below five Israel's Middle East the Hamas the wars the terror that is that all the scattered jihad but because the media is so full of lies distortions of falsehoods misinformation when you look at Israel from an objective perspective it is literally the safest place on earth the point is is that it's the safest place you go to downtown Chicago la there's violence there's rape there's killers there's kid now every Walmart I walk into there's a whole wall with missing missing missing faces missing faces I'm like what the heck is going on here in the United States of America everyone's missing here in Israel yeah there are some violent acts that are being done but know that the roads in Israel are far more dangerous than any sort of terror attacks or any sort of war far more meaning you're just driving in the streets in Israel and the streets in Israel are getting even safer the point is is that the entire perspective that people have on Israel is wrong the average person in the world didn't think that is Jerusalem was our capital and they think that Israel is a scary place to live every single tourist that I've ever met that has come to Israel says as soon as they walk off the plane they feel like they're the safest place in the world and the truth is they are Israel is the safest place in the world we happen to be here in our headquarters in the most contested real estate in the world and the deepest settlement in south-eastern Gush Etzion in the Judean mountains but let me tell you we are in the safest place in the world and once the world starts to realize that not only is Israel the safest place in the world Israel is also the strongest country in this region that's a paradigm shift that people haven't fully absorbed yet because we're so used to winning miraculous Wars we're used to being the underdog winning the war in 1948 winning the war in 1967 when the enemies had three times as many soldiers and four times as many planes and five times as many tanks and we still won the war what a Hanukkah miracle the next war Israel is already now the most powerful force in the Middle East the most trained military in the Middle East the most sophisticated technology in the Middle East we would crush any army on almost any radius around us including any army from Europe we have become the most powerful force in the world the world doesn't recognize it yet because Israel hasn't yet flexed our muscles but the world is very soon going to see that he who blesses Israel will be blessed and he who curses Israel will be cursed that's a promise in the Torah that has lasted throughout all times in all days and it's going to become a apparent very clear very soon that's right you could really look at the world right now and you could either believe in the puppets or believe in the one who is pulling the strings and for those people who believe in the puppets themselves well they look at things too quantitatively and they look at the hundred and twenty eight that are voting against Jerusalem being Israel's capital they're looking at all of these Arab countries with all of this oil money and if you believe in the puppets well then that would be the more rational route to take but those people are literally digging their own graves and making their own beds because when you believe in the puppets it's survival of the fittest it's the strongest that is what determines what is just by who is the strongest and that's not true because you know one of the things that pains me a little bit about America's declaration that Jerusalem is Israel's capital is exactly what this what this Arab spokesman just said listen to this the truth is I actually agree with him it really should have been not Trump I mean great for Trump good man good leadership but it should have been Prime Minister Netanyahu it should have been the Knesset it should have been the Israeli leadership that said if you want to have an embassy here in our country that means that we're friends that we have diplomatic relations and that we respect each other and there's a mutual respect so you have an embassy here and if you refuse to put your embassy in Jerusalem what you are now declaring that we are not friends with a mutually respectful relationship take your embassy out that's what a good strong self-respecting country would do and so it pains me a little bit that it took America to do this and not Israel to do it but it's okay we're part of a a process of evolution and maturation and growing into ourselves and you can take quantum leaps when we're not necessarily right yeah but I'll tell you go ahead you all just want to say that Netanyahu has a very specific strategy in almost every issue that he has in the Land of Israel and it's called the strategy of the status quo status quo but it's a strategy that he has if people like criticize Matteo that he's so status quo he doesn't change the status quo he specifically keeps the status quo because that's his ideology why is it his ideology there's a real deep root to it when we keep the laws of shmita we keep the laws of eret cistrome if the fruits were grown in the land the ezra conquered and lived in in the times of ezra so not my time Rita's radical the sabbatical meaning that the the the the laws of shmita are kept in the Land of Israel right now we're the where the line lies fallow right and so in the times of Joshua it was conquered by the sword and the time of Ezra it was just brought back we settled in the land we had the the Cyrus declaration and of course you all know when I took la vie for his Bar Mitzvah trip to the inauguration of Donald Trump we had a sign with us that said Trump equals Cyrus because already then la vie and I believed that he had the potential and the opportunity to do the historic things that he's doing now but what happened when Ezra came back it wasn't with the sword it was just settling the land and living in the land and that's settling in that living in some ways the akiza the grasp of the land is stronger there because it's just natural so Netanyahu strategy is very much rooted in that let's just keep things stable the longer the Jews are living in the land of Israel eventually Jerusalem will become our capital because our Knesset is there and our Supreme Court is there and the great synagogue is there and the temple I mean I'll think of Unitarians like the tester he feels that time is on our side on our side in the longer that we can just keep life going in Israel Israel is getting stronger and she can good for him and the reason I like him is because I really do believe in my heart the regardless of what this person or that person may say about Netanyahu being corrupt I don't think he's corrupt well I think here I am now and you know we just saw the Gil Hoffman put out a show and we love Gil Hoffman but Here I am as the founder of the Land of Israel Network in the host of Israel inspired I'm coming out against Gil Hoffman what are the corruption cases I'm like I'm not a Netanyahu fan I've never voted Likud in my whole life but what are the corruption allegations around Bibi you were just saying this to me right now what it's cigars and red that he took cigars and recycling bottles yeah I mean are we are we joke there's also youth rally oh but look at look at Putin okay he's twenty billion dollars he's worked I don't I don't know but I mean I'm comparing what I'm saying is that when you're in such a position of massive decisions huge leadership where you have to decide about the exact existential threats against the State of Israel there better be real corruption charges in order to be pulling him out of meetings driving him nuts tormenting him and end up allowing him to actually be take the leadership role that he has to do when to be Prime Minister of the country when I get for those from people and they ask me what's going on with Netanyahu and I say well the allegations against him are about his wife recycling bottles to like the president's wife is recycling bottles and they're calling that corrupt it's such a mind bend it's such truly fake news because the left-wing media in Israel is very similar to the left-wing media in the United States I can't watch any media out of America anymore I used to have comedians that I really liked and I enjoyed watching their news analysis I can't hear anything out of them anymore because their hatred for Donald Trump is so much it's so skewed and it's so like overwhelming I just can't listen to it anymore so to the media in Israel is attacking Netanyahu for the most absurd ridiculous corruption cases let's a technique ten yell for what Nintendo needs to be attacked for but not for this nonsense okay so what I was saying is that regardless of this accusation against him or that one I do think that he has been a leader that really truly wants the best for this country maybe he slips up here maybe there are a little few little corruption issues that he has on a small level that just can happen to any at any point but the point that I'm trying to make Jeremy is that we want a leader that is moving forward boldly with faith that isn't just trying to keep the status quo but is doing what is right and what is just and what is true all of the other leaders in America they were doing status quo Obama to Bush to Clinton they all said yes there's about the embassy but they just kept the status quo why make waves right Trump is making waves I wanted a leader here in Israel that isn't afraid to make waves when the waves are the right waves to make when it's about truth and when it's about justice so that's what I'm saying that it would be nice for me if if as this you know this Arab spokesman said you know he's being more pros or than the Israelis themselves so that's that's the first point I want to make but here's the point and as long as we're getting lost on little tangents here there you're talking about you can't listen to any media in America because it's so overwhelmingly anti Trump did you hear the CNN news clip no listen to the CNN news clip remember yesterday how United States ambassador to the United Nations nikki Haley said the US would be taking names of countries that supported a resolution critical of the Trump administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital well let's hope Haley brought a lot of pens and paper because 128 countries voted against the United States today many of them US allies only nine countries voted with the u.s. there were 35 abstentions among the 128 countries that voted to condemn the us on this issue were some countries with some rather questionable records of their own take Venezuela's representative today the world is not full sail the world is not for sale and your threats imperil global peace the u.s. imperils global peace as the representative of Venezuela a country in a humanitarian disaster with violence in the streets an economy and colleague complete collapse citizens malnourished dying children being turned away from hospitals starving families joining street gangs to scrounge for food on what moral platform does the government of Venezuela stand today now that we have done of course the u.s. also got an earful today from Syria we're in the seventh year the brutal Syrian civil war that has killed half a million people and displaced millions Syrian President Bashar al-assad has used chemical weapons against his own citizens including children also feeling a bit preachy to get today Yemen which helped draft the resolution condemning the u.s. seemingly more focused at least during the speech on where the u.s. puts its embassy in Israel than on the 7 million Yemenis on the brink of starvation in that country Civil War given the circumstances that our region is experiencing and which constitute a threat to international peace and security Yemen concerned with stability in the region interesting there are plenty of policies and actions that are perfectly valid to criticize about the United States and about Israel and certainly whether this move will help the peace process in any way seems one of them but listening to these countries including North Korea and Myanmar and Turkey and China lecturing the United States in any way about human rights and peace might seem a bit much but here is a bit of context that you might not know according to UN watch which monitors United Nations the United Nations General Assembly from 2012 through 2015 has adopted 97 resolutions specifically criticizing an individual country and of those ninety seven eighty three of them have focused on Israel that is eighty six percent now certainly Israel is not above criticism but considering the genocide of the row hanga people in Myanmar the lack of basic human rights in North Korea the children starving in the streets of Venezuela the citizens of Syria targeted for murder by their own leader using the most grotesque and painful of weapons you have to ask is Israel truly deserving of 86 percent of the world's condemnation or possibly is something else afoot at the United Nations something that allows the representative of the Assad government to lecture the United States for moving its embassy and so why was this rare CNN clip there was soaked of fresh air because I think that these media organizations are becoming increasingly aware that they are in this Hollywood bubble and that they're in this liberal vacuum and that they're disconnected with the nation as a whole and America as a whole in the Bible Belt in the country in general is not in in this confused morally bankrupt blindness of being anti Jerusalem and anti-israel I don't think it's the Bible Belt I think it's like just not California and new you right that's what I mean the the country as all I would even say the majority of the country absolutely that there's a different movement going on and that's why I think also here in Israel you know the we're here in right next to my ammos almost were the Prophet almost had as his prophecies and one of my favorites that I really feel like is talking about our days he says he now yamim by eeem days are coming where there will be a hunger in the land and the hunger will not be for bread and the thirst will not be for water but to hear the words of Hashem and that is something that I see throughout this country and throughout the world we just went last night Jeremy to hear Rabbi Moshe Weinberger a rabbi that's sort of here on a little vacation from his community in America the one at some time off and he was giving a speech somewhere in Jerusalem there are people literally not not ultra-orthodox the Achieva students people like us with jobs that are have families and they were all flocking to hear this rabbi speak hanging on to the bars of the windows hanging from our rafters hey rain from the hanging from the rafters and falling off the windows just to try to hear the words of Russian to try to hear wisdom and truth and I think that that is an underlying thing while we may have a leader like Bibi who has a good heart but is sort of the more the pragmatic type we there is a movement going on in the world for a thirst for something greater and something deeper and something more powerful so I'll tell you what what I think the secret of all leadership can be found in the Torah portion of this week and obviously this week is really connected to last week and the week before that and it's really all about leadership because here we have the two leaders of Israel that really are figuring it out and it takes centuries and generations to actually figure out who is to lead the Jewish people Jacob has children and Joseph who seems to be this incredible leader maybe he will be mushiya and there's Yehuda Bannu Hooda has this inborn incredible leadership ability maybe Messiah he'll come from them and they're living it out through this whole reality in this all the drama that unfolds and at one point there's like a shift in the whole story in last week's Torah portion where you'd assess listen I'm out I will switch Ben Yemen take Ben Yemen bring him back to my father why keen F shocked she Rob enough show their souls are intertwined and my father he simply won't be able to live if Ben Yemen is kept down here and at that point I mean the whole story turns around right there and this I'm gonna say in the name of my beloved wife to he'll again pal and also in the name of rabbi foreman from Aleph beta and for those of you that are not subscribed to Aleph beta you should subscribe to Aleph beta it is fantastic incredible insights into the Torah into the hug game it's nine bucks a month it's an absolute worthwhile thing to do you should do that David Forman rabbi Forman points out that there's only one other time in Tanakh where it says the language of enough jokes you rob enough show only one other time and that's in the story of David in Yonatan defeating Ionut on it says that their souls were intertwined with each other and how beautiful is that because where is Yonatan come from Yonatan comes from the tribe of benjamin david from the tribe of Yehuda and what does Yonatan give David he gives him his tonot the Katonah the the the Royal garb but the Royal garb that was given to Yosef at the beginning is now being handed over to David a melon at that time and now what happened there well just you throw out a lot of names there once you double back and make that a little bit more clear Jonathan was the son of Saul king of Israel he was supposed to be taking over the mantle of leadership David was a direct threat to that I mean look at just the history of of monarchies you know look it's always been that way that the threat is being killed is being assassinate assassination I can't think of any story where there was a voluntary surrender of the leadership from the son of a king to someone else altogether you see not only voluntary but but loving loving and why does it say Vinay shoke sure Abhinav show in DeFede in unit on David and Jonathan it's to bring us all the way back to the story that we're living through right now with Judah and Yosef and Yaakov what happened right there Yehuda the real leader the one who was ultimately gonna bring mushiya what was he thinking about he could have said you know what good Ben Yemen's out now we're done with Rachel's children I'm gonna be the king I got this all taken care of if he was thinking about himself he could have taken care of business right then and there but instead who does he think about he's thinking about Yaakov he's thinking about his father and so and if we bring that into modern-day leadership of what Israel really needs so on one hand we can quote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks this is a quote that Ari likes to quote a lot that you know it's not thinking less of your humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less so it's not just that that Yuda wasn't thinking about himself because what he did is just unbelievable is gonna give his life to stay in prison to let his brother go he wasn't not only thinking about himself he was thinking about his father and now what is the ultimate goal of Messiah really it's not just to think about a me sir L because I believe Netanyahu has a me Sarah Elle's best interests in mind and he's making every pragmatic move that he can make with Israel's best interest in mind but the leader of Israel doesn't need to have the Jewish people in mind he needs to have our Father in Heaven in mind that's the secret here if a leader were to think what it would ham want me to do what will make God's name great what will make God's presence restored to Israel that's not pragmatic anymore now you're gonna start making declarations before Trump makes declarations why cuz you're not thinking about just the Jewish people but you're thinking about our Father and that really will be the shift that mashach is all about when we have leadership that's hungry for it right now you know if you go out and you get a slice of pizza and then you get some french fries and you come home to dinner and your wife has made a marvelous meal for you but you're not really hungry for it because you just you were you're full so so - right now the Jewish people we don't yet have the hunger for the bay timing - we don't have a hunger for the temple right now we're filled with our with our jobs and with our houses and with our families and we're like Samantha McCain and we're happy with our lot but what's happening now is a yearning is growing in the hearts of the Jews a hunger is growing in the land not a hunger for for bread but we're having a hunger now for something deeper for something more meaningful and the leader that's able to really channel this hunger that's growing within the Jewish people that's growing within the whole world he's gonna channel down something that hasn't been seen before and he who blesses Israel will be blessed and he who curses Israel will be cursed that's right and you know speaking of blessing of Israel we've added a blessing to our prayers right every single day we're praying to Hashem to end this drought right we were just in the Torah were reading about this drought that was plaguing Egypt and how Joseph solved that well he was he was in Egypt at the time and droughts are not were not as prevalent than in Egypt as they are in Israel Egypt was not as as susceptible to a drought why because it had the Nile something that they worshipped as their God because they could look at the Nile which overflowed on relative exact frequency and they said well that's our God but in Israel we're in a situation right now on a rain level we it's how many years has it been since it's been a drought like this a lot many years we haven't had a drought and on our farm we I've never felt the lack of rain so powerfully so powerful trees and our little values to be so disconnected from the greater Clow that I just didn't like rain why because I mean we go when I walk outside I don't like getting wet so that was me Andrade I was totally not connected to the land needing the rain now that this winter has been quite from that perspective it's been a very pleasant winter last winter at this time it was freezing whipping winds it wasn't raining so much but it was a very wintry winter this has been you know warm and pleasant but it's been painful on an on a level because we're not getting the rain that we need and this is another sign that we really need to pour out our hearts time and say please please we need your abundance so we need your rain we need your blessing on the land because we're suffering here the land is suffering the people are suffering and that's something that we really need to keep in mind as we're fasting today that's part of the reason I think today's show has been a little bit all over the place because we're not as sharp as we could otherwise be just from the very fact that we're fasting I'm not you're not a great faster are you yeah but you know something marvelous happened to me today where I got up early in the morning in order to get a couple of glasses of water beforehand and as I was walking out of my room tequila is like Jeremy Jeremy it's I'm gonna shock are you're already five minutes late I'm sorry you can't have any water and I'm like what why would you tell me that day Gila it's dark outside I could have easily had water and no one had to know now you've said it out loud you say no no you mean you wouldn't I didn't have to know that we didn't know exactly what i before am dark outside it's like in the middle of the night as far as I'm concerned I can have water and then she's like brother she just look it's 504 a.m. and just set your alarm for for 58 like I didn't set an alarm I just was doing what I was doing I don't know what to say so I went downstairs and I'm like that how you are with Shabbat let me just tell you what happened this is a really marvelous story so uh so then I woke up why did I wake up because no I'm of course in my house is a diaper factory I am the I probably provide more jobs to Israeli factories making diapers I mean it's like it's it's a non-stop diaper factory in my house right now so no I'm at four or five o'clock in the morning he wakes up cocky Abba cocky I'm like great cocky that's what I got to deal with now at five o'clock in the morning for that kid no I'm so here's what I get I get out of bed and I'm like okay cool anyway I'm gonna go get a glass of water that's what happened I woke up because I've know him and then Tina is like don't drink anything you got it the clock and I'm like okay you know why did you do that and I'm like you know what come on I mean they did in the olden days they didn't even have watches it's dark outside I'm gonna get some water why I'll be able to learn more Torah today I'll be more productive today I had twenty reasons why I was gonna get a glass of water in order to make my day better for God's sake so I go downstairs I pick up the diaper I open up the cabinet I actually grabbed a glass out of the thing and then it at one point I I have a flashback to a Torah that rubbish Lowell was teaching us right outside that Sadiq we went to visit in your shall I'm one night in the tour there was that if the yetzer Hara attacks you it it's a nedra zone it's a net red zone I had that same flashback today and so let me tell you so I was like when I when the explain what a truck showed me when the evil inclination attacks you all of a sudden do you want to do a sin so you'd think like oh I'm so embarrassed why I'm all is that I'm having these terrible things shameful Scheckter taught that actually in that place it's an ED root zone this is a time of God's will in your life that's favor God's favor you have a chance to really capitalize how if you at that point you say yetzer Hara evil inclination I don't want you in my life there's a holiness that can be brought into your heart deep into your heart that you can't get any other way and God is like offering you an opportunity and so with my hand on my glass as I have all of the rationalizations of oh why they're so hollow equai there's a dark outside I'll have a big oh wow the flashback came D and I'm like I don't want you yetzer Hara and I walked upstairs and I didn't drink the water to Gila until the very end of the day until I told her this story was sure that I had the water cuz she knows me better than I know myself she knew that I was I got up a little bit too joyfully to go change norms diaper he's like he's gonna go get water anyway okay well Jeremy's on his own journey I will talk to him about it but she already knew what was already in my heart and she didn't realize the flashback would come the bottom line of the story is I didn't have the water and I've never had such an easy fast in my whole life I'm a terrible faster usually by about one o'clock in the afternoon I need to take a nap I need to lie down my head hurts I feel weak there's something supernatural that's happening to this fast that the fast is almost over and I feel spectacular and I think it's on that point that I want to talk but this is my last thought for the day my last thought for the day and this has been a theme throughout our entire lives together and all of our friends that have joined us on this marvelous journey from way back waving before Tuesday from the light unto the nations that are roots chevre re and I have had one word that has always been sort of this overarching principle this kind of word that's followed us over and over and over again throughout our lives and it's the word unreasonable folks these days these days are days in which the calling is to be unreasonable to go out of the box to think differently we learned a beautiful Torah on heaven this week and it was says here on the beginning of this parsha it says even now it's not defined bayonetta Jacob is saying to Joseph if I find favor in your eyes please I want to be buried in the land of Israel and the question that arises is oh I mean Jacob is Joseph's father why does it need to ask in such a polite way if I find favor in your eyes please bring me to land of Israel he could yeah it's like it's his final request before he dies you don't have to be so yeah of course Yosef will do that and so Rep slow-mo taught in the name of the issue Pitzer that really what Yaakov was giving over to Yosef and to the Jewish people into the world at that point was Hine and what does the word phen-fen is usually translated in english as beauty or favor or charm or grace but really those are just English words that are being put on to the word fen-phen means according to the ish bits that thing that is beyond that thing that is beyond the rational that unreasonable reality that yes for that that's why I'm doing it why because it's that thing that I can't even articulate it's ineffable it's the thing that connects so deeply to my soul that if you don't have that thing in your life then you don't know what it is to be alive and if you come to the Land of Israel and you don't find the pain in the Land of Israel then made you'll see Israel for its terror and its violence and it's the traffic jams and it's nonsense and if you can't find a hand in Israel you'll never see what Hashem has in store for you in this place and in this week's Torah portion we're given over the greatest secret that everyone needs to find that kind that unreasonable place in them that they're willing to do what's beyond the rational what's beyond their comfort zone to be unreasonable and to really make it a work of art right and I think what you're saying is very true there's another dimension that I think it was rabbi Forman that that sort of brought this out and brought it to my attention more that he was making a quite a huge request from Joseph why because think about it when Joseph was sold into slavery he didn't know the backstory of what happened he didn't really know that his father wasn't in on it he didn't know what was happening on that whole side of things so he goes to Egypt and the most father-like figure that he ever had was Pharaoh who took him in and made him second only to himself and gave him all of this power and all of these blessings and all of this privilege and all of this strength and there was never and then when when Jacob and the brothers came to Egypt they went to Goshen but there was never really a conflict of interest between Jacob and Pharaoh but now Jacob realized there's a conflict of interest here he's asking Joseph who is the paradigm of Egypt he's supposed to be you know like Jews always have this question in their mind about dual loyalty who are they loyal to well the reason Joseph's brothers didn't recognize them as he looked so Egyptian he had the Egyptian garb in the Egyptian makeup and the Egyptian everything and now Jacob is saying me and your Egyptian father there's a conflict of interest here because it would not look good for Egypt to have a massive state funeral of the father of one of the greatest Egyptian leaders in Canaan outside of Egypt and I think that's why one of the kindnesses that he did was to ask Joseph to swear to him why do you f just he doesn't trust Joseph well I think one of the reasons is because it's Joseph can now go to Pharaoh and say listen I made a vow to my father this is something that I can't violate as opposed to if he didn't have to swear then this is Joseph's own decision but ultimately I don't think it was a no-brainer for Joseph maybe it took courage and strength but he knew what the right thing to do was then no matter how long he's in Egypt he's a Jew and he's the son of Jacob and that's what I think a big calling of our generation is we've been in Egypt for a long time we've been in the Exile for a long time a lot of Americans start feeling very very very very American and they may forget for a moment that they are this children of Jacob that we are Jews first and foremost before anything else and when it's time to be called back it's time to come home and this is the time this is the time to come home right the first conquest of the Jews when they entered into Israel was of the city of Heshbon right husband means like in modern Hebrew it's like calculations all of the factors and the thinking and the calculations we have to conquer that and say no that's not what we're considering now we are simply going to do what's right it doesn't matter Pharaoh is the most powerful man in the world we're going to be true to our inner selves and who we are and that's why I want to introduce a new segment that I want to try on today's program I want to try this segment and I want to hear from all of you whether you like it on the way up to spot I was looking around this bus of these guys who were part of this group that we were just talking about earlier in the show and each one of them is so spectacular in in his own way not only these guys but so many people here in Israel from all around the world they've come and you know a lot of tour groups come and they want to go to this tour site in that tour site but after one or two trips they love Israel so much but the tour sites aren't calling them it's the relationships and I want to share the people I want to give our listeners out there an opportunity for relationships to really know who the people here are so one of the guys in our program his name is cranny such a wonderful incredible guy I sat down with him and I interviewed him and I want to let all of you here who is dove cram and next week you'll hear about another Jew here in Israel and we'll attach it here to the end of our shows and you tell us what you think so here is the segment better know a Jew Shalom from Judea so here we are in the bus on the way up toots fought with the been a macho Vltava kabura for our listeners out there that may have sounded like a big chunk of words would you don't know what it is but it's a group of guys that are truly seeking to connect with Hashem and are connecting with each other in the process of that journey under the guidance of our rebbe reb Katz and Jeremy and I have spoken about it a whole bunch of times on the program and I thought all the way up why not it do a little segment called better no AHA there right better better know like kabura is I can how would you define a sub or AHA borås you know a group of guys coming together to learn but the root word of is ha they're a friend which also comes from Tibor which means to connect so I'm I decide I would start with one of my dearest most beloved friends which is strange for me to say because I feel like it's been I haven't known you all that long but the contrast between the closeness with which I feel towards you and so many guys in the in the in our group everyone in the group really is it's it's really a phenomenon in my life and I feel like in many others that you know true friendship I don't know is always a consequence of time but of a certain qualitative connection so we have with us douve cram someone with more than his share of pain of of grace a dear friend and and I thought we just better get to know him so dope welcome to the program thanks Ari thanks for having me on of course so tell me a little bit about your life journey the things that stand out to you the most in your mind how did you end up in a fraught so we can we can do the short version or the longer version ah I'll let you decide this is our first segment we'll hear back from the listeners if it was too short or too long you you decide I want cheetah so I'll just give a very quick explanation of my background and I was raised and lived most of my life in in brookline masters it's an outside of Boston and I was raised born into an Orthodox family my grandfather loved us all my mother's father was a big Orthodox rabbi made his had a very big impact on the world of Orthodox Modern Orthodox Jewry in America so I was raised in a firm household in Brookline grew up dava new at the Boston rebus had payout down to my shoulder until about the age of nine really you had payout down to your shoulder let me just open a quick parenthesis here I should have said this at the beginning the cram family is a powerhouse of pillars of this of our group because your brother Toby is also learning with us as well and and he's a force of nature himself and I remember when we were just in the Ukraine and Toby came up and said something to me which really rocked my world shook me I've been reflected back on numerous times since then and I went onto the bus and I asked you a question I said what who was your father who were your parents what made you who you are because you know there's a lot of young young parents listening to this program it may take notes about what my parents were very my mother my parents are very special people my father unfortunately passed away about two and a half years ago and I'll come back to that a little bit later on explaining Who I am because that's really a lot I'm living in Israel now really in the salute of my father level Sean among other things but that was the primary force behind it but to better get to know me and and you'll get to know Toby a little bit through some of what I described but well let Toby have his own interview and explain who he is Toby and I are very close and we're also close both of us are also close with our little sister Tamar who also lives in our neighborhood in Efrat now but we're all very very different very unique in individual personalities even though we're all from the same parent so we had this amazing upbringing and my father's parents you said you were you were none you'd pay his down to your shoulders I and ya know that and I think a lot of that came from influences from my older cousins at I'm I'm at the older end of my first cousin unit but and I have one male older cousin older than me and he grew up most of his life here in Israel and hornoff and always had peyote and so there was that influence in my life which I think definitely acted as an inspiration for me to grow my payout and then also though it was your decision oh yeah the fur listeners out there payout or one we call them ear locks side yeah side locks side locks there you know the curly hair locks that come down from the the ear because in the tour it says you shall not cut the five points of your face right right there right that's that's the Jewish law right but so we we don't cut and and because we don't cut our hair there and the idolaters of the time did correct so we go out of our way and say if that's where they cut hair we're never getting rid of differentiating so I had mine kind of tucked behind my ears they weren't out flying in the wind but when I went away to sleepaway camp for the first time I remember the first time I jumped into the lake my payout came out from behind my ears and all the boys laughed I'm in and so my pale were cut off soon thereafter but but we all still have our payout whether they're visible or not everybody in terms of the length anyway so I lived my life and in a Modern Orthodox were pretty typical Modern Orthodox style for our listeners out there some of them don't know the nuanced a distinction between Modern Orthodox ibattz we kept the laws of Shabbat we kept the laws of of kosher of kashrut in inside our home and outside of our home we didn't eat meat meat and milk together we made sure everything that was packaged had a proper Jewish kosher certification on it and that's the life that we lead and that's pretty much the pillars of modern orthodoxy what would you say differentiates Modern Orthodoxy from conventional orthodoxy we interesting so I'll use this opportunity to tell you that I actually think one of the worst things that have happened in Judaism internally is that we started creating these sub categories and definitions for ourselves and as a as a young adult I mean my early 20s it bothered me so much to the point where when people would ask me what I am meaning they wanted me to put yourself in a box right they wanted me to say that I was Modern Orthodox or maybe conservative or a reformer car radio or tea light I mean there's so many different different terms that have come out of this need to kind of define ourselves in these sub categories that I used to say well I'm a Jew and people have a hard time accepting that as an answer because they're looking for something more than that so for a long time I my wife and I actually created our own sect of Judaism so that we'd have our own box to put ourselves in and we call ourselves tradition ox and there's a little more you need to know about about how that came to be but it basically came from the fact like starting when I was in middle school age I I started to rebel I had a hard time with Authority certainly as a kid and I didn't like the being told what to do and how to do it so though you're rebelling against your parental authority I really just an observance so but who was for in order to really some coercion whereas I came home but there was expectations that surrounded me in my life from my parents from my community from my extended family certainly from the school and modern orthodoxy is kind of a closed community and there are certain expectations that are placed on everybody inside that community children included and it was not an easy thing for me to do I was living a lot of my life because that's what was expected of me like I was expected to to to pray you know three times a day or at the very least in the morning as expected to keep the laws of Shabbat expected to eat only kosher food you know there was a lot etcetera etc there were a lot of these expectations placed on me and I'm a very independent person and it's definitely stubborn a little very much type-a in that in that respect and that was very hard for me and so I started to rebuild quietly I I have the utmost respect for the elders or rabbis certainly my parents that I started to rebelled but in quiet so like with my friends I'd quietly I wasn't I was the internal rebellion it was an important thing for you which by the way in my journey through life I've seen that this is a very Jewish phenomenon meaning that Abraham was Abraham rebelled against his father's idols and we as Jews of our program to be Abrahamic so we rebel against our parents idols even if their idols are true we still need to reject them in order to reconnect and I think that one thing that we can try to do better that I'm certainly doing now in my life and trying to do better for my children in their lives is make the connection more personal instead of it just being something that you're told this is the way to do it and make it very black and white that you're either in or you're out which you did at the end of the day you either are in or you're out but is it true why is that I think that it is in the sense that like either you're observing things so the letter of the Jewish law or you're not in that sense I don't know that that that's all that defines a person and I don't think that that it is and and actually one of the one of the ways that I convinced myself that moving away from the observance was something that was okay for me is because I I came to the conclusion this is already we've jumped now to the point where I'm like in my college age and a little bit afterwards where I had really decided that the only thing that God really cared about and we were really measured on is our morals and being a good moral person and that all of these other things that surround sort of legal trappings it they were at first I thought they were less significant and then I got to the point where I thought they were completely insignificant and and I really believed in my in my early 20s that I was just wired differently than the rest of my family because the rest of my family stayed on this Modern Orthodox Orthodox path really through their whole lives and I thought well I must be lacking the thing that allows me to connect in that way and and I was actually okay with that because I felt such a strong my Jewish identity never wavered I was always I always felt very connected to that but my connection to the religious to the observance had had definitely wanes the point where I wasn't observant anymore I wasn't keeping the laws of Shabbat or the laws of kashrut and you don't mind if I get a little personal here right you said no holds barred so I don't when we were discussing before in in the Ukraine you said something which I found shocking shocking I couldn't believe because you are such a mensch for our listeners out there I don't know what I mentioned just go to google and type in m en t CH and you'll know what a mensch is but it just good values good and you were describing on this journey you said you started off rebelling internally but when you already started you finished high school you went to Israel for the year which is also part of the sort of path that has been laid out for the quote/unquote Modern Orthodox you really weren't an all-out rebellion at that point and you said you had rabbis come into your room sure and you would just I would curse them out yeah try to wake me up to go to go pray in the morning your rabbis oh yeah so where did that come from because I was a very intense I was a very angry person back then what was that anger from I think that you know I bottled up a lot of my frustrations with the expectations placed on me because I I think I did it out of respect for the people around I didn't want to hurt anybody by rejecting their world which is what what ultimately I felt I would have been doing had they known how I was living my life how I really felt so you thought perhaps that by having your rebellion be a merely an internal one that you were being untrue to yourself and you are resenting others because of that internal dissonance I don't live with regret I really don't I don't think there's anything productive that can come out of that and I don't know I'm not saying now no no I'm saying that then what kind of degree and so I think that had I spoken to people more openly about what I was thinking about what I was going through I maybe could have could have worked through things in a different way instead you know anytime you bottle things up there's this pent-up energy and it comes out unpleasantly and it can come out in other different ways usually not so not so great one of the many transitions that I that I went through starting in my year in Israel and I went to Israel not really to come and learn even though that is what ended up happening I came because I ended up enrolled in weiu YouTube University to go there after my studies in Israel and if you went to study in Israel you got a year's worth of credits and universities so for me it seemed like wow here's a chance to just go it and have a great time in Israel two birds with one stone yeah and it had really had when I when I left to go there and for the first six months or so it had nothing to do with the learning for me it was really all just about having a good time and have a good experience which I definitely had but something you know changed about six months in where I started to allow myself to connect and allow myself to to become observant again and start to learn and start to pray again and and I certainly was eating kosher a lot of that was because of how easy and accessible kosher food was in Israel but growing up in Brookline sure you did not eat I did certainly with my family I always did but on my own no I did what I would and your pay your father didn't know that no my knew there my parents knew and at the time my siblings didn't even know and I got to tell you some people listening out there would say that's disingenuous but I had a friend of mine that became totally secular and a completely secular his father was a rabbi every time he went home he put on a kippah he told his father that he he kept Shabbat he would lie to his father and to me it was actually respect so I was able to do that because of the internal chaos yeah fear and anger and is this like crazy dance for so many years where I I guess there were there must have been some white lies along the way but I was very careful to always try to say things and present things and respond to things and answer things in a way where I didn't have to rightly lie but exactly either right but I just want to take a step backwards and it looks like there's gonna be an interview on the longer side than the shorter side but what was my question I was taking a step backwards oh you you said that you came to the conclusion that it was morality that mattered right and the legal things mattered less all the way to nothing right did you I can only imagine that you saw a certain hypocrisy around you where people were focusing on the legalities and not the morality was that what caused that well there was some of that no not so much I think that for me it was I was trying to understand what was it all about I believed in God and I felt connected to him but in a very different way than the people around me and so I was trying to understand what's the essence of the connection that we should we should strive for with God and where I landed was this morality which made a lot of sense to me you know you need to still be a good person how can you expect God to love you and look favorably upon you if you're not treating other people with respect if you're not trying to help your fellow man so really that's really what it boiled down to and so I just settled on focusing on my morals which also felt good to okay it doesn't feel good to be mean to somebody and I think because earlier in my life I had had all this anger and maybe I wasn't so nice to people that I realized like that was something I needed to work on it was one of my character traits I had to work on so that's the focus that I had and and you know a lot of that I think also came from this place around when I started to connect on in my studies in Israel my time there after about six months I realized that I was very unhappy and I was very angry and I realized that's not the way I wanted to live my life and so I started to focus a lot on on the idea of not not worrying so much about what other people thought of me which I did worry about because I think I lived in this world of expectation for so long that I started just to kind of live my life more as an open book and if I felt a certain way I tell people I felt that way if I thought something I would let somebody know that's what I thought and something amazing happened where I up until that point I think I was very self-conscious and at very low self-esteem I started becoming more confident because the more that I was genuine and open with people the more I found my my world expanding you know in terms of the number of friends I had and I started feeling better about myself and and so I started to to begin to to kind of really live the life that I'm still living to today through that but but yet all of the connection I had with the learning and with the praying and all that and I really did feel very connected very very connected in that time once I left the world of my Maha Shiva my my program in Israel I went back to university it didn't take long for for all of that to kind of fade away and I went back to just kind of living the you know for myself and I've tried to be a good person and a good friend and I still was living a very real kind of open book life but my religious observance you know start to slide again and and that's really kind of the the path that I stayed on up until about five years ago five years ago five years ago okay and then about five years ago all right now you were held 4141 right so about 36 is actually exactly at my 36th birthday my nephew Joe say if my sister Tamar and my brother if he had their second of three children yo safe because that that's a little bit of a tenuous place to be when you're getting married right I mean you were married how many years ago we're going on 17 and a half years so almost 18 years 18 years so you were you've really gone through a transformation today yeah my wife and I thank God I've always been very connected she's amazing she's amazing she's she's I say like a best friend to me because she's my wife so it's not the same as when you say somebody is a best friend who you're not married to she's definitely a best friend but it's different there's much more to it than that she's also my wife and and we've always kind of somehow been tapped into the same thing so we've gone through all of our different stages of life as adults together and that's a huge blessing huge blessing because I see people who decide they want to be less religious or more religious and their spouses are not with them on that journey and it can pull pull people apart yes it really urges a hundred percent so we've been very very lucky in that sense that that didn't happen and yeah so five years ago my nephew was born I came to Israel actually met my brother Toby here just for the bris it was like for the bring me allow the ritual circumcision that Jewish baby boys have at eight days after eight days after they're born so we were here for like a two half-day trip it was a very short trip but over the course of that trip based on the things that Toby and I got to do in terms of the places we went and prayed and and the people we saw and I just started feeling really really connected to the observance of my religiosity which I hadn't really felt a personal connection to for most of my life for a lot of my life I started wondering like maybe I needed to live in Israel to have that strong connection and the conclusion that I was helped to through talking to some people was that it really wasn't Israel that if I wanted to be connected and have that connection be real I just need to make it real and take things in slowly and with intention and that's the conclusion you've come to you don't feel like the being here in Israel was a certain environment in fact that with a facilitated subconsciously at that stage it wasn't for me it wasn't I understand intellectually it wasn't it wasn't something you could I I had more to go through where I was so that the connection could be mine and it wouldn't come just from the outside so much of what I had done in terms of the observance that I that I did because of expectation happened because it was what was surrounding me I needed to now come to a place of observance from inside so coming to a place where you're surrounded by this very obvious holiness and inspiration while I think that Israel is an incredible place and where every Jew should come to live and and non-jews alike but but it's best especially the Jewish people out there should come to live here in the Land of Israel for me personally at that stage you know I didn't that wasn't that wasn't what inspired me to come move to Israel Israel was always very important to me and I should say that my wife all since she and I had been together she always wanted to come live here and I would come on trips and it was something that I wasn't opposed to that I come on trips and try to explore different career opportunities for myself and and I just didn't find the opportunities that I really connected to so I continued on my career path in America and you know Liv was living a very comfortable very good life there you know with all the all the trappings and trimmings and we we were very lucky to be in a great community with lots of friends and a great career and a nice house and two beautiful cars and great kids and the dog and you know like the whole package there but but anyway I went back to America and and I started to connect I started by learning a little bit more the advice that I got really that really helped to kind of change everything was that if I really wanted to connect I should find something to attach to that I felt attached to something small and focus on making sure that I had it in my life on a daily basis and then I should think of that thing as like a spark and that if I really take care of that spark and I focus on doing it daily that before long I would take on another spark there be another spark that comes because of the first one and how I was taking care of it and then another and another and before long there'd be a real fire burning and that's exactly what happened you know I started by deciding to put on seat seat the four corner garments Jewish men are expected to wear these tassels on the garment as a reminder of the connection we have with numbers right exactly what the creator and so I started and I like that idea because number one I felt like I could do that daily and it was also very personal now I walk around with my tassels out most of the time but back then I actually really liked the fact that I could put this garment on under my shirt tuck them the tassels it wasn't about expectations or what anyone's know that was just you and God me and God and I I walked around and nobody had any idea that I was wearing it was just for me I mean my connection my relationship with God and then I started to learn and then through the learning I realized that if I really want to set out on this journey of connection that I should find a rabbi who I could feel close to and relates you to help me along this path and and help guide me and help help me through the questions that I in everybody I would have and I did have and so I reached out to this rabbi he wasn't the rabbi of my synagogue at the time he became the rabbi of the synagogue that I when then went then and and connected to rabbi Benjamin Samuels in Newton masters it's a very very special very special and dynamic person and he was incredible he encouraged me to take things slow which I think was very important for me and in terms of making them real instead of starting to do all the things that I knew I should quote-unquote should be doing I was gonna try to understand why why did did I want to do this thing and what was the significance behind it and so I went I just continue down that he helped you pick the sparks yeah or or just through that through some of what he revealed to me certain sparks became obvious to me and and they they did it and amazing things started happening I started you know being my wife and I in our we had two girls already at that point we all started observing the Sabbath laws again and being shown my Shibata and show Marrakesh roots first in just in the home and then also outside the home and for some reason it's such a mind Bend for me that you're married you have children and you weren't keeping Shabbat and kosher and you are who you are now yeah it's I mean you know III there's a lot of things that have become clear to me over the last few years let's say certainly in the last year and a half especially since I moved to Israel but one of the we live in the world of illusion right and our reality is just what we're able to perceive and time is one of the the many illusions of this world and and you know there's a lot that we very convincing but so I'll tell you how I got to Israel who should we switch yeah parties yeah go my my well I should say that my youngest sister our yeah the youngest is my family is my sister who's 12 years younger than me Tamar she made alia about eight and a half years ago and she was living very happily in Jerusalem and started her family there and then my brother Toby may Dalia now about four years ago three and a half four years ago and was after my brother made alia that I came to visit Israel on Sukkot and Toby already had moved to Ephrata the neighbor that I live in now where the base of our learning takes place and and I really love the community when I was here I got connected with Rob slow mo the leader of our Jabara the head of our club Laura and I really enjoyed that so that was like my first connection to eff rotten and we I was so inspired through one of the the prayer services that we did the hoshanah Rabbah Hallel that I even walked up to her of afterwards and said to him something became very clear to me during that that that's Fela that prayer that it's not a matter of if I make a Leah's just when so there was this awareness we're like I'm gonna come live here someday and I knew and I didn't think I expressed it to him and I said you know to myself and to my wife we want to come live here in a frat this is a special place and then I actually went and tried to explore again the idea of trying to find a career for myself here I felt like I was blocked off hit a bunch of dead ends and went back to America got back into my routine there and we were very happy but within a year about eight or nine months later my father eleven he passed away and was not something we were expecting and that was very hard for us for obvious reasons and it it started me down this path of trying to reevaluate life you know the first thing that happened when the initial shock wore off was I realized in a much more real and clearer way than I ever had before that life is short and fragile and we all have one go around you know one see Veuve to use the hebrew word and some of us have a longer go around some of us have a shorter go around my dad's was only 64 years it not long I can't say it's short either people people so thank God he had a very good life but it wasn't a long life and I realized no matter what the length is it's just one it's one one go around right and even you know we say in Judaism odd May of Esther emits at 120 years and even that's not a very long time and it's a morbid thought we don't like to think about it but I didn't care about thoughts being good or bad or more better not more of it I just true what was exactly truth what's real what I want to open a parenthesis really quick because we're good I don't want to take you off this trajectory you're on but I just remember on that trip to the Ukraine I was so you know impressed with you and in Toby and I said tell me a little bit about your father sure I want to know about him and you said some things to me that I have not forgotten said and I don't have like a memory for anything but I don't want to not already go on all the time but just open up a parenthesis share a few things one to find him my dad I'll tell you why I want to I want you to share this because when you were sharing with me I said to myself what do I want my children please God I should what do I want them to remember me by what when someone says tell me about your dad what do I want them to stand out in their minds and I said I I would want my my children to define me as you defined your father well I don't remember exactly where to find them men but to find him you just shared if anything I'll tell you a little bit about him that is it share a few of the unreasonable that's what I remember about the stories that you're dead you know a lot of Jews are just good a lot of Jews er a lot of I mean people in the world are good but good he was unreasonable he had his flaws like we all do but he he had this uncanny ability to connect with people but not just anybody like we all can connect if we choose to he somehow was able to see and notice the people who are like sitting in the back of the room that nobody else sees not only did he see them but he did all he'd go up to them and he did engage them and he'd give him a hug and asked them how they're doing and want to get to know them we had a revolving door in our house growing up of people coming to our Sabbath table for meals that we didn't know that until we ran into them at our synagogue that morning or that evening we had never met it before in our lives and they needed a place to eat and so my father was the first guy to like raise his hand and grab them to bring them home with us he was a tremendous Balthus ed you know a guy who who just wanted to help everybody that he encountered and he'd see somebody in he'd hear somebody who was going through something and want to help them get out of whatever Jam they're in or he'd see somebody who wasn't in a jam but my father would see an area where maybe he could help and just improve their life whether they were looking to improve it or not and he'd try to help them to that's just what to find him he just what really went out of his way and I think the thing that that a lot of people spoke about after he passed away that certainly stands out in my mind is you know we grew up hopping at the Boston at praying at the Boston rebus synagogue in Brookline but we also were involved in the young Israel of Brookline and the young Israel of Brookline but but on a second there it's like a secondary base of prayer and worship and the others were Brookline burned down in a tragic fire back in 1995 my father took on this role spearheading the rebuilding of the synagogue and worked on it for about two and a half years and refused to take any money for it and that was his full-time job for two enough years he dedicated his whole life his whole being to rebuilding this shul so I think that that that in a nutshell it's the best example I can think of that that's more on a on a community level but he also didn't see these divisions that I mentioned earlier for him the Jewish community was one community so he was involved in all these different sub categories and I'm using parentheses to say sub categories cuz I don't like to think about that way I might on Orthodox this is my community this is my buddy he would have defined himself as modern or he didn't allow that to it he didn't limit the fact that he lived in modern orthodox life to the community that he was going to get involved in anybody within the extended Jewish community that needed help he would go help him because he saw it all as one community and that had a very big impact clearly on all of us and you mentioned something and I'm gonna let you get back onto your alia trajectories something about the airport oh yes when when after my father passed away we he lived in Brookline and we were at that point my wife and I and our kids were living in Newton through the last of my siblings still in the States and we were about a 15-minute drive from where my dad was living and my father had wanted to be buried in Israel he already had a plot picked out from before he passed away which is not an uncommon thing to do an injured isn't to find a spot ahead of time and my wife father just picked out his putt and my mother's blood and he's very consumed with the view yeah my dad office very proud of his spot - it's funny he say that and my dad loved love that's my talk glowingly about where he was gonna be buried and and you know maybe that's something nice it helps to take the edge off this fear of death when you know like I know where I'm gonna be my body my body anyways gonna rest for eternity her and soul till the Messiah comes almost comes but yeah he loved that so yes I came here I flew with my wife we escorted in my dad's body to Israel for the burial and then we began the seven-day Shiva period where we sit in a time of mourning with my siblings in Israel but in the middle of Shiva we laughed all of us my siblings and I and my wife flew back to America back to my house in Newton in Boston to finish the process of Shiva in Boston so that my father had spent so much of his life is adult life in Boston we want to give to allow people there to have their expressed their condolences and feel like they could get some kind of closure closure yeah yeah and when we were in the airport waiting to board the plane we ran into an acquaintance of my brothers who insisted on speaking to my brother on the flight my brother I remember saying to him like you know I'm in Shiva I don't really it's not a time for me to socialize and this guy really pushed you gotta just talk to me hear me out so they did and next thing I knew my brother was grabbing me on the plane on the mid flight to come talk to this guy and he wanted to talk to me about trying to connect me with the Builder who was building his house he had bought a house from a developer in Raanana a city closer to the coast than where we live in Israel he bought from a developer but the developer hired this builder this builder was an Israeli builder building to a very high standard it was a very big very large high-end home and this acquaintance of my brother's fellow by the name of Ilan he wanted me to meet the contractor whose name was avi and connect me with him in an effort to try to establish a partnership to bring me to Israel to come live in Israel to work with this guy because my specialty in the States for my whole career was building high-end custom homes and obvious specialty was high-end custom homes I'm American he was Israeli and the the English native English speakers coming to Israel in large part and there are of course exceptions to every rule but in large part they're intimidated and afraid blocked off to building these custom homes for themselves because they were afraid of the cultural and and gaps and the different mentalities and the language barrier and so rather than buy a place or build a place when it's really billy they'd buy places mostly already built and do small changes to personalize them that was this concept of Ilan's which i think by the way is true to a large degree again exceptions every rule and so I kind of I agreed to meet with this obvi I was coming back about three and a half weeks later where we were gonna place my father's headstone and I said I'll meet with him there's no harm and meeting with him I admit with other contractors before nothing seemed to work before but I figured what the heck can't hurt to meet with him long story short I came back I met with him IV and I totally hit it off it was the beginning of a potential partnership but that's really where we left it I said to myself look if if I decide to move to Israel this is a guy I could partner with and I went back and I went back to thinking about like life's priorities like I said life is short the conclusion I came to was let me speak with my wife and let's figure out what our priorities are or should be make sure we have them all in our lives right it's life is short let's just make sure I have it all correct we did that over a course of a couple months talking constantly about it came to the conclusion we're good we have all of our priorities in life there in our life we're good and then we said well wait a minute let's make sure we have them in the right order another few weeks of conversation debating what's the right order and something became very clear to us that we didn't have it to the order right that the most important thing up into that stage was our career and career is very important you have to be able to support yourself to support your family but it's not the most important thing for us the most important thing was family and Israel and most of our family thankfully for us was already living in Israel that was at the moment we made mental Alia in the weeks and months that followed we made our preparations to to move we sold our house and our cars and and I think all of our personal belongings that we didn't want to bring with us we either sold or gave away or donated and I in that same time period I formalized the partnership with this fellow avi who I admit and we came to moved Israel we knew already where we wanted to move was this scary no I tell people it was the easiest hard thing that we ever did it or have done in our life it was not scary because it was so clear to us what needed to happen and we need to be done scary maybe in the sense that like we knew there were gonna be a lot of unknowns but I can't say that I was afraid of those things I just knew to expect them and that there were gonna be things that I didn't know how to navigate and I have to figure them out and I personally like challenged and there was nothing about the challenges that I knew lied ahead that were gonna hold me back from doing what I knew was right for me and right for our family and there was talk my wife I talk should we delay moving do we have to do it right away you know we don't want to rush into it but the boys came in it's not theirs first the only time I was only a few years away from taking full ownership of my company I had a partner in the States and you know there was talk should we wait a few more years I'll take full ownership I don't have to then think about selling my shares or giving up my shares and I can maybe run the company from Israel and come back and forth and we looked at our kids and we looked at life and said you know look we've just established that we had our priorities out of order and if our priority is being in Israel I don't want anything tying me back to the States in terms of career friends and the family that does remain in Israel and America rather certainly keeps us connected that's selling your shares was the best case scenario that the best thing to do was to to have like a clean cut as far as that that was concerned and we didn't keep our house to rent it and we didn't keep our cars to rent them we didn't keep shares in the company we wanted a fresh start we wanted to not because we're running away from anything that's also important to note that we were very grateful and still to this day I'm very grateful that moving to israel for us was running to something and away from nothing and i think that's an incredible thing to be able to say and I it's something I'm very very grateful for and and we've come here we're here now a little less than a year and a half that came in July 2016 I hadn't I'm amazed at the beauty that surrounds us on a daily basis and we're afforded so much opportunity here you know you hear all the time that America is the land of opportunity and it is I think there are a lot of opportunities in America but there is only one land of opportunity and it's Israel so I want to touch on the various opportunities but just to ask for one that I think a lot of our listeners are wondering did you take was it a big financial hit on a career level on a professional level you had an established company there you sold your shares you burn the bridge you came here new partnership how did the new partnership work out it's working out great I have two other partners that I that I've agreed to to work with since I've arrived and thank God I I approach in terms of getting the business started is a little bit unconventional based on all my experience in the States and you know I've worked very hard on connecting with other like-minded professionals in related fields architects and designers and real estate attorneys and mortgage brokers and real estate brokers to surround myself with this community of people who Idol who I want to collaborate with on these high-level projects and so a lot of this time since I arrived there's been introducing myself so people know that I'm here now as an option to turn to and thank God the opportunities keep keep coming on a regular basis now we're at the stage where pretty much thank God about once a week if I'm getting at least one invitation to come bid on a project or be considered for a project which is an incredible incredible thing it's something that I thought I hoped was going to happen based on the approach I took I expected that it would happen but until it happens you know you you don't have that validation of knowing if it's the right approach or wrong so in the career of professional level think thank God things are going well yeah I came with a three year plan for career as far as career goes and I launched my company at the end of November 2016 so I'm just over a year in and thank God based on the goals that I set for each of the three years I'm doing better than where I hoped to be at this stage and I think it was good that I had that to kind of check myself against because there were times in that first year of the company where I said is this working and all I had to do was look at well what was I hoping to have gotten accomplished in this first year and I can look at it and say yeah yeah okay things are going well this is working in terms of finances yeah there are challenges I came based on you know selling our house and selling our cars and all the assets we had in America I had a certain amount of money to live which which we are still I'm still living off of savings not entirely because I've already started to work and thank God I have projects running but but still still working to build that up but that was part of the plan I didn't expect that it would happen instantaneously because I wasn't starting off here as an employee I was starting my own company here and so you're starting I'm starting my career here from scratch I'm not starting from scratch I bring all of my experience in my knowledge from America here to Israel so I have that that jump start but but it is starting in a new place so there is that that time you need to give to think for things to to take root and take hold okay and kids and that's the biggest blessing for us my kids we have four amazing girls age fourteen thirteen seven and six now my kids thank god they're all really happy and there are challenges I don't want to sugarcoat anything the most important thing is to be real for anybody listen you 67 76 that's a good tell you know it's 14 to 13 you know it's really amazing and it's not that the older kids didn't have challenges when they Kame although my oldest really didn't she was so happy to make alia the happiest of all my kids but I think that the younger to have had more it's been more challenging for them and for the older team and true the opposite what what I expected asks counter it's another good reminder about this world of illusion by like the worst things we can do for ourselves sometimes is set expectations why don't we just go through life maintaining our priorities and and working hard on our morals and and setting goals but not not looking at them as limited to to just whatever we've set out to in other words okay I'd like to achieve a certain amount of revenue in this year all right but I don't I don't want it to only get to that number I'd love for it to be an even higher number and I think that using a financial example for my kids to like I'd like for my kids at the end of three years to speak Hebrew fluently but would I be disappointed if they did that after two years of course not right I'd love for it to happen sooner but you know you want to try to balance balance those two things mmm okay and on a spiritual level how has have no big surprises well I can tell you I never I've never learned so much on a daily basis in my life I don't even know how to put it into words but there's something very special going on in our community and with our community both the local and extended one your something in between right because you're like always there but you live outside of our little little neighborhood hopefully people see our our kabura and our community at large the she wrapped up in community as being open because it is open the reality is it is open I think that it might be perceived from certain people looking from outside as a very closed group because of how close we are but that's not the case at all people here are walking through life open with an open mont open minds open hearts looking to connect with other people who who want to explore the depths of life and of learning and of connection with us and there's no limit to the number of people who can come join us on that journey and I think that you know you talk about Jews being the light onto the nations which i think is true and I think that's the expectation other nations in the world have for us as Jews and I aspire to live up to that expectation but I think that we really need to focus not just on that but we need to focus on being a light unto the other Jews of the world you know I have to say when you and the entire kabura came out to the farm yesterday wow that was amazing yeah I call it the farm just for lack of better the headquarter call it he calls it like that the vineyard vineyard fruit tree I don't even I don't know but I Jeremy and I know we both felt very strongly that there's something very significant to the time out there and because when I think about what we're doing out there I don't always know the what but I do know more the why than the what and the profit on most that's where he had his neva and he said he made ya mean by M no mushroom you hear out of Barrett's laravel a lack of a lot some alum I'm keenly Schmoe dear hm there will be a hunger in the land the hunger will not be for bread and the thirst will not be for water but to hear the word of Hashem and I think about that I say well that's what we want to broadcast from there but on the other and I don't know that word I don't know what is the word of Hashem and you know my David Aaron used to say he said Torah is not the place you come to to get all the answers it's the place you come to to ask the right questions beautiful and I think that's what's so beautiful about our kabura it's not that you know there's even even Rosh Lomo he doesn't come to it with an energy of saying I'm gonna teach you now he very much comes to it with an energy of we're here all of us including him to learn together he's sort of our guide in the learning together but he's learning right there alongside us and I felt like when the Hoeber came out that there's something that's going to be here that is not just us but the the labora the group of us in general it's what we're doing out in the farm it's gonna be can I don't know how I don't know what but I just had that feeling I'm with you hundred percent you know how much I love going out there to visit you and just to be in that spot and I definitely feel some kind of a pull to those those hills those mountains and I loved every second I have out there and you definitely I can't say that I'm receiving Nahua or prophecy when I'm there but there is something about that spot that that's just very special and I definitely feel it yeah I haven't closed myself off to that by the way haha the idea of never I think we're entering the times where cuz I'll say that or say just say Naboo is going to come back into the world how that looks and how that is I don't know but I know that there's certain times I have ideas that come to me and as I'm writing them down and saying thank you I'm I know there's a museum I know this is not for me that that sort of inspiration isn't from within it's a good place to find clarity of mind that's for sure yeah sometimes it will lead to some confusion because there's like wait wait a minute how did I even come to that to that thought but that's that spot is definitely a place we did it yesterday in the cave on on your farm or whatever we're going to call it's not that we were and that's sort of how I base it I would sort of wind the show down in the way that I started it by saying it's it's difficult for me to put my finger on why I feel so close to you and to the guys in this group and and I would say that in the spiritual world right you're close to something when you're is similar to it and you're far from something when you're different from it because ain't no Demi Lovato there's no that you said time is an illusion so is distance 100% so how were we close or far away from anything if there's no real thing as distance when you're similar to it and and what are we at the very core if not our desire so the desire of all of the people that we're with here is I think what really binds us together and that desire is truth is to come close to Hashem and therefore we're coming close to each other in that journey so and what's so beautiful about is where all the years Rosh Loma also not teaching but we're learning together and he opens it up to the world I think what what's happening with us we're like the nucleus but though people all around the world are tuning in term of Shlomo's teachings to our teachings on the Land of Israel Network and and I feel like it's the beginning of some sort of movement and you and your Adobe a real pillars in it you're a pillar and it's very humbling and and if anyone wants to reach out to to don't send me an email I don't want him to get bombarded Ari at the Land of Israel , forwarded to him sounds grand no thank you so much for joining us Thank You Ari