Journey to the Galilee 2026: Traveling Through Eretz Yisroel to Show Love For the Land

Welcome everybody. It's a great sim to see everybody. This is by far our largest and most successful trip to Israel. Uh it's really a pleasure to have such a to have so many beautiful friends. So welcome everybody. Uh we started this it must have been uh 7 8 years ago. uh that the first trip consisted of four people. We had four people. We had uh Rabal Orbach, me and two of my boys in his back seat. Then we expanded it in the next year. Uh I want to welcome Rabsal and Reb Tyberg. We uh we expanded it. I think we had 17 people. And then in year three, we got a bigger bus. We had 22 people. then maybe we expanded it to 24 people and we haven't done this in a couple of years. So this year we're pushing 100 people. So it's a great to be here and I want to speak about uh some of the important thoughts to have traveling through the length and breadth of you know there's a that when you enter a shul you're supposed to exit the shul the opposite direction. You don't enter and exit the SH from the same doorway. By the way, Rebnas Welther's not on the bus, but I want to give a special acknowledgement to Nasan because this year we we combined we combined our annual trip with the Kala. So this was a very big job. It was many many weeks of planning uh and fielding phone calls around the clock. Not that anyone had any questions, you know. I'm not not that anyone had any uh questions or concerns. Just mentioning that it was a it was a big job. So, back to the shaw. When you enter a shaw, you're not supposed to exit the shaw the way you entered because you want to show that you appreciate covering the whole length and breadth of the shaw. So, you enter in one way and you exit another way to show I've seen the front of the shaw. Let me check out the back of the shaw. let me check out the other side of the shaw. You want to show your appreciation for being in the airspace of the sh. So the same thing with it's wonderful to spend time but a way to bear is to travel through the length and breath of so I want to start with an amazing chuva. This chuva was authored by Rabbi Kescali. Who's Rabi Kaki? He never existed. There is no such person as Rabi Kaki. Rabies Kaki is a pen name for the Beneskai. One of the swarm of the Beneskai wrote he wrote anonymously. Shilubasma. He wrote it Lashma without any uh desire for a claim. And the gumatria of is the same as the name of the Beneskai. And the question posed to him was somebody asked him this this individual moved to and there was an area outside of that he could travel to. It was a couple of days away and in this area he'd be able to partake of the delicious fruits of the perosar. The only thing is traveling a couple of days to he's going to lose time from his learning from his shurim from his actually yesterday in I met a who gave me a little muser he he said you know Rabbi Gladstein you know you're going on the trips but what's going to be with the shurim and the learning you know maybe you should uh maybe you should cool off with the trips that's what he tells me so I listen very respectfully I wanted to pull out this chuva from I had some I also took what he said to heart you know this it was just said when somebody gives you muser even if they're wrong don't respond it's always good to hear muser even if they're not correct it's good it's good for your nish to hear words of muser but anyway he he was telling me when it comes to learning he said you can never be from learning What does it mean to be from learning? Rab said means if you could hold in your blink then you shouldn't be from learning. That's what it means just so that's what okay. Now with that in mind, the question was asked to Rabbi Kasal Kaki. Should he spend two days traveling to uh this area outside of to eat from the fruits? He's losing learning. He's losing his regular aid hashem. He's losing and maybe you'll question what's he doing. He's eating the fruits of gayosar. What a hashem is involved in eating the fruits of gayosar. This was the question posed to rabies. So the vanishes responded look in the Garan Araven that Rabbon says we used to follow Raban to goar and if we had 100im each one took 10 fruits. If we had 10 tidim each one took 100 fruits and we gave it to Raban and Raban ate all the fruits. He ate a thousand fruits. By the way a fruit is usually a round object. Sometimes it's colored red or just you know in case you haven't seen them for people who come from New York a fruit they grow on trees ate all 1,000 fruits. Ask the beneskai. He's compiling the he's giving regular shim. How could he take off time to eat fruits says the benes to show it's worthwhile to take off time to show your love for because is the land of so you need to appreciate the land. Actually points out that if you look in Russer is in migillas is the he's the god of and what's he doing the whole day? You ever find him in the base mish? He's not in the base mish. Where is he? He's in the field. Why is he in the field? Saysam. If we caught Bayaz putting on fillin, would we ask why is he putting on filling? If we saw Bayaz wearing sitsus, would we ask why is he wearing tits? He's in the field because there's a mitzvah to work the land says. So therefore, the benesai responded to this man. It is not considered indulgent to go to the area to eat the peros. It's not a waste of time. It's a valuable way to spend time even at the cost of other endeavors of Hashem to show for Israel. Actually, it's very interesting. Is there value in visiting Israel even if you don't live there? Does it have spiritual value to visit? Absolutely. The garra says that if you walk David, what does the garra say? How if you walk >> 4 hours? Four. Very good. If you walk four in you gain therefore that even though one should avoid airplane travel in the nine days, you're allowed to come to Israel in the nine days because it's a mitzvah to come to Israel says you could even come on tish itself to Israel. What about the sak involved? There's no sak coming to Israel. By the way, just a personal recommendation. It's always advisable to come to Arat Israel on tishab as opposed to coming to America on tishab. Cuz if you come to Isra your fast will be about 5 hours shorter. But if you go to America on tishabove your fast will end up being like 4 days long. Actually recently somebody asked me a shila they were coming back to America on a sarbate. They wanted to know when the fast is over. I think they're still fasting. We're already in Shabbat. They're still they're still haven't broken their fast. Min would say uh from the that there's a a famous contradiction in the Gar if somebody sells their EV Cananani except for Shabas. Meaning the Evani will not be able to observe any mitzvah other than Shabas, the Evani will not necessarily go free. However, if you sell your Evani to the Evani goes free. Why would that be? You're only making the Evani lose one mitzvah living in Arat. So would say, "No, if you're not in Arat, you don't have any mitzvah. Even Amiras is watered down outside of Israel. Even is not the same in so selling your EV where he'll lose every mitzvah except for Shabas is not as bad as selling him to. Anyway, I just saw this uh shabas uh in the biography of Rab Shra Mendelovich where he gave the following analogy. Who here has been to the Bronx Zoo? This, you know, I'm just taking a poll. Anyone here ever been to the Bronx Zoo? Okay, very good. This is unbel that you should really be proud of yourself. Okay, so in the Bronx they have a polar bear. Now, you may not have known that polar bears do not live in the Bronx, right? Saul, you knew that. >> You heard that polar bears do not live in the Bronx. Let's say you were going to Yankee Stadium, right? You wouldn't randomly catch a polar bear walking down the street. Polar bears only live in cold climates. They don't live in the Bronx. So, what do they do? They have to create an artificial environment. So they they bring ice water and they pump the AC and but if you would ask the polar bear, is this your home? The polar bear not this is fake. This is all artificial. Or let's say you could go to Scandinavia and you could see a tiger from India. The only thing is tigers don't live in Scandinavia. Tigers live in India. So they create a jungle-like atmosphere and it makes the tiger feel at home. But that's not where the tiger lives. It's all artificial. But the natural habitat of the tiger is in India. The natural habitat of the polar bear is in Antarctica. So too, you could go to New York and you could have a shul and you could have a base medish and you could even have kosher pizza, but that's not the natural habitat of a Jew. It's all artificial. It is not real life. Real life and the natural habitat of the Jew is right here. Right here. Okay. If you're in the base medish, the Marsha says there's a that's what we, you know, that's what we're banking on in the meantime. But in general, fundamentally, is the natural habitat of the Jew. Now, uh, we who live in Kutzarts, we do have certain advantages. I'm going to tell you what it is. So, on the way here, I bought a mint in gourmet glad. You know what gourmet glad is? You don't know what gourmet glad is? It's like one day Osharad will be like gourmet glad. Okay. Now, actually, I I have to say I think you know you've you've basically caught up. Okay. Um, if not more, if not exceeded. So, I bought this mint. I figured on the plane I'm gonna have this mint. So, I put the mint in my mouth. It tastes good for the first maybe millisecond, 2 seconds, 5 seconds. After 20 seconds, you get used to the taste. You don't appreciate it anymore. So, people live in actually a big lambda from he says people in they don't appreciate being in because they're used to it. They take it for granted. We who come from we we come here and we're stunned by the tremendous kaduca and not only in in a sashem but even in the even in the physical world even in the gashmas we could appreciate it because we're not used to it. So that's that's one of our advantages. The other advantage we have is you see we're used to two days of yam. You guys might be a little surprised when Msiah comes and everyone keeps two days of Yam. But we won't get into that right now. Okay? You know the says when Msiah comes, everyone's going to keep two days of Yam. So, and that's why it might be nephesh for you to be Yeshua. But still, you're going to you're going to have to you're going to have to den for Msiah to come even if it means keeping two days of Yam. Now if you look at the topography of Eratis, you'll notice that it's surrounded on all four sides by water. You have the Yardin on the east, you have the Mediterranean on the west. In the north, according to the biblical boundaries, you have the Euphrates River on the south. You have naratimi that shows that before entering Israel, you need to purify yourself. What does it mean to purify yourselves? physically, emotionally, spiritually. You have to make sure you're have to make sure you don't owe people money. You don't have money that doesn't belong to you. You need to go into with the mindset that you're purifying yourself to be to be writes the numerical value of Israel is taste placed it on your heart. Think about, contemplate how you could get here, how you could come here, how you could connect to Israel. Actually, would say if a week goes by that you don't at least dream, how can I be here? How can I come here? That means the the nishama is not in a healthy state. The healthy state of the Jewish soul is your dream. at least your dream at night how you could come here. So uh with that introduction we could think about how the next two days the next 48 hours we're going to many holy cities in Israel. Uh there's an idea that there are four holy cities in Israel. We'll talk about that coming up. And okay, we'll we'll pick it up from here. Thank you very much.