Lessons on Faith in War from the Father of Israel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everyone so this week as we're coming on the stories of Abraham what really jumped out at me was the subject of amuna of faith in Hashem looking around especially since the beginning of the war we can just see how so many people are accepting upon themselves Mitzvah and you know to do good deeds and people are doing more praying more people are saying Psalms people are trying to be kinder to one another for the sake of our soldiers and for the terror victims but at the same time I don't know many people who in the face of so much suffering and so much pain having had moments of doubt maybe some questions about their faith in Hashem if Hashem loves us and Hashem is good how can he let all of this happen and throughout the war so many incredible people have lost their lives given their lives but something in the spirit even with all the pain in ER Israel here in Israel seemed to be okay we're keeping our heads up you know we're we're doing good things but something about the past few weeks and I don't know how it is outside of Israel but here in Israel it's like it's hard to breathe I can't explain it because it's been hard for a whole year but something about just lately so many amazing righteous sadim fathers of children being taken away one after the next crying orphans is just so piercing that you can't breathe how do we hold on to our amuna to our faith in a time like this so perhaps in the nick of time maybe when at least I need it most these weeks portions of uh Abraham really might be just coming to help us with this question Abraham is actually the first person we are told that has belief in Hashem that he's ma in Hashem and so this could really be a place that we can look to draw strength for our own amuna so in chapter 15 were're only two chapters into the Abraham story and he's already been through a lot and he's actually getting pretty old and Hashem says to him I am going to make you into a great nation but Abraham is doubtful he says really how so I only have elzar my servant he seems to be the who's going to inherit me and then hasm says no no no no you're going to have actual biological an actual biological child that comes from your body and to convince him it says famously that Hashem took him outside and said please look heavenwards and count the Stars if you are able to count them and he said to him so will be your seed so Hashem makes this beautiful metaphor showing him the stars and saying that's how many children you're going to have and then in verse six it says and he believed the Lord and He accounted to him as accounted to him as righteousness so that verse is a little bit tricky in Hebrew it says the verse I want to try to unpack there are these two parts and there's kind of a double meaning that can be understood from this verse let's take a look at it the first part of the verse says that he believed in Hashem and then it says he considered it a which is translated as in most of the translations as a righteousness now for those of you who know Hebrew modern Hebrew and even you know Hebrew in halakic texts we talk about Sedaka as Charity like voluntarily giving out of kindness you don't need to give um but in the in the Biblical Hebrew the word Sedaka is used in the same meaning a similar meaning to SED Justice Sedaka actually means something more akin to doing something that is just and right and required more than something that's just voluntary which as a side point is very you know is a very cool lesson that's encapsulated in the Hebrew when it comes to charity because when in English when we use the word charity that comes from the Latin of karitas meaning love benevolence and the Greek word also means love and benevolence in Hebrew giving Sedaka giving charity is not just a sweet loving gesture it is something that you are responsible and required to do in any event what is strange about our verse is that it's unclear who the second part is actually referring to when it says that Abraham believed in Hashem and he considered it aak for him he considered it a righteousness for him who is considering it a righteousness for who in some translations they put a capital H to say that it is Hashem considering Abraham to be righteous but there's no capital letters in Hebrew the verse can actually be read either way that Abraham was being considered righteous by Hashem or vice versa that Abraham was thinking that Hashem is righteous so now the conventional wisdom the popular interpretation given by Rashi and others is the simple accepted interpretation that Hashem considered Abraham to be righteous because he was believing in him you know fair enough um and that's why you'll see that Capital H in many of the translations that works Abraham was a man of faith and he was beloved by Hashem for that very reason however you have to ask yourself what is actually so righteous about Abraham the believing in Hashem we have to look at the nature of all of this you know of this of this faith that Abram was having to understand why Hashem would be appreciating it so much as righteousness if you if you look at the verse itself it's a little bit odd because you know we rightfully think of Abraham as the real first monotheist as the father of faith and the midashim are full of stories of Abraham breaking his father's idols and trying to find Hashem looking to the sun looking to the moon and then coming to the you know at the end of this search coming to the conclusion that there is uh you know that there is one God who created heaven and earth he was the one who grew up in idolatry worshiping all these you know where everyone was worshiping all these gods and then he decided to believe in the one Creator and to believe in Hashem and to listen to his calling that's amazing so we aren't surprised essentially that the first person in the Torah referred to as having amuna as having faith in Hashem is Abraham but it's a little bit funny that it appears here it doesn't say he just believed hashem's promise Hashem is here doing a whole light show of stars to convince him it doesn't say that he believes he will have children or that he believed this promise it says that he believed in Hashem what do we usually mean when we say that someone believes in Hashem well Hashem is hard to see you can see an idol you can see the sun you can see the moon you can see the physical world but the creator of the universe has no body no physical existence that's hard to believe people say they are atheists because they don't believe in God meaning you can actually exist in the world and not believe that there is any God and you could just say there's nothing and then other people who are people of Faith say I do believe in God I believe that there is a God so Abraham is a young man growing up in idolatry and then chooses to believe in God a God that you cannot see and cannot speak to he had auna he had faith that would be the time to tell us that from his spiritual sense and his search for God he connected with the Divine and then he believed in Hashem wow and then Hashem would say h look at Abraham he is so righteous he is so amazing but where does it tell us where does the Torah choose to finally tell us that Abraham had faith and that Hashem was so uh you know was so impressed and so pleased with his faith it appears literally Midway in the middle of a conversation between Hashem and Abraham imagine you're in a conversation with god he is speaking to you promising you things you take a Starlight stroll and even gets a little sarcastic he's like yeah right I don't really believe this what about my servant and that is not exactly the point where you're asking yourself hm I wonder if Abraham believes there's a God they're talking to each other they're having a conversation it's like yeah really righteous I believe that I'm that I believe in the existence of the god that I'm speaking to right now that's an easy cell that's a lot harder than you know coming to the belief in God when God doesn't speak to you so while grammatically the construct and interpretation here could work we can say that Hashem you know loves abam but you know because he believes in him I want to try to look at the other way of of understanding it especially when the Torah leaves something open for two interpret or for numerous interpretations it's really an invitation to us to at least entertain that there is a lesson to be learned from from numerous interpretations so and and so so I want us to not jump to any conclusions and I want us to kind of examine the multiplicity of meanings that could be drawn out of this pasuk so as I said while the traditional interpretation is that the verse is referring to Hashem considering it righteous of Abraham that he believes in him there is a tradition Trace back to the Z to the great work of cabala of Jewish mysticism that actually says that this entire sentence is Abraham's inner world he believed in Hashem and the continuation of the pasuk is that he considered there to be righteousness of Hashem so now if that's an interpretation we want to follow I want to go back and read the whole thing again Abraham is a ma a man of faith that believes in Hashem now that obviously is not going to mean that just mid conversation he comes to the conclusion that God exists he's believing something clearly about God he's understanding something or coming to a conclusion about about what is God about right and so we have this mystical tradition that says that that is that Abraham is not only believing in God but also making drawing some kind of conclusion about hashem's about hashem's righteousness so maybe that second part of the verse can explain to us the nature of his very belief maybe he believes has promises and believes that Hashem is going to keep his word but what about the whole way of getting there it's difficult Hashem doesn't give him children I I want to suggest that he is believing something about the nature of the way that Hashem is going to fulfill his promise and I saw an explanation offered by raim Rafel H that maybe this idea of Sedaka of righteousness is not referring only to his belief in the promise itself but to the hardship that leads up to it that is a seemingly disproportionate amount of challenges that Abram has to face on the path towards becoming the father of Nations that explanation really resonated with me when we look at the context of the verses and what it's all what this whole story is coming on the tale of Hashem didn't just appear out of nowhere and say here Abraham you're going to have children the very first introduction to Abraham in the beginning of Hashem says go to the land and I'm going to make you a great nation when Abraham gets that promise that promise that he's going to be a great nation and have children he's 75 he he's not young but Sarah is 65 it'd be weird but it's doable there have even been documented medical cases of spontaneous pregnancies at that age it's a long shot cool I'm going to go to Israel I'm going to be a great nation he doesn't express any doubt at that first time that Hashem promises him children but now we're in chapter 15 this conversation is not happening in a vacuum it's a conversation that happens after two chapters packed with dense challenges that Abraham managed to face he had to face f he's had to face his wife being kidnapped and being held hostage he has to face family Strife needing to be separated from his beloved nephew and then a war between five Kings and Four Kings and then seeing his same beloved nephew Tak in hostage he has to rescue hostages and then just imagine he had been telling everybody Hashem told me to come to the land like the shame the international shame he had to face like among the people in the land and the people back at home and hasem says oh Abraham it's going to be great you're going to have kids and arah must be like are you kidding me I have nothing I have one servant that is all I have is this some kind of dark joke and hasem is like no no no look at the stars well what kind of proof is that he didn't make a miracle he made a metaphor nothing happened Hashem made promises years ago he faced unspeakable hardship and tests and then he gives the second promise with not really any explanation Hashem doesn't say well I know you've had a rough go of it but I was really doing that to make you a better person and now you're going to be a great dad because of everything you've experienced in life no has just says here is the promise look at the stars and at that point Abraham makes a choice he's not given proof that will just settle all of his doubts he is not giving compelling explanation that forces him to believe he chooses to believe and then it says at that point I am choosing to believe in Hashem Abraham believes in Hashem that he's going to keep his word and maybe if we go according to the interpretation of ra he doesn't only choose to believe in Hashem and the faithfulness of Hashem but he believes that the whole world way that he had to go to get there I had to face family problems and hostages and Wars but I believe that Hashem is going to keep his promise and that the way to getting to the promise even if it's a winding path had a righteous purpose he believed in the righteousness of Hashem not only in following his word but in how he and the path that he takes us to get there you know I had a conversation uh this week with a friend who's going through a rough patch got married later in life and expecting barash uh a baby but going through very difficult uh times relating to the pregnancy said maybe I'm being punished cuz I was so happy about the pregnancy too soon and I didn't deserve it maybe I'm being punished because maybe maybe one of the isas in my house is in my house isn't kosher or not written properly and I said you know for people who don't believe in Hashem then all of this is just random genetic Lottery and everything is pointless those people aren't troubled by the tragedies of the world philosophically because everything is just random to begin with but you believe in Hashem and so for those of us who believe in Hashem and the believe that Hashem you know created the world there are really only three ways to live the way that you're describing I said to my friend is a vindictive God who randomly strikes at us because we bought a defective Maza okay you can be like that the other way to be is to say that there's God maybe created the world but he doesn't really care about you and your little problems maybe he just deals with the big things he gave you the Mitzvah and the Torah you have to be a good person but he doesn't go into the details of your life he said the world in motion and just lets it run he doesn't get involved so be good that's what you have to do those kind of Believers also don't have terribly horrible you know philosophical problems with suffering because God is you know he's just sort of out to lunch he's not really involved and the system kind of makes sense in its own way and then there's a third way of course which is to say that in some way whether we understand it or not whether it seems impossible or not I believe that Hashem is actively involved in my life and in all of our lives and he rules the world in a way that ultimately is just and kind and for our betterment even if we don't understand it now in some way that is going in the direction of goodness so I said to my friend those are your options do you want to live in a world where hasem is out to get you probably not do you want to live in a world where everything is random and Hashem is not involved might solve your philosophical angst with Hashem but then you start a Cascade of all these other problems because yes Hashem isn't mean to you but you've put all of your faith F in the hands of Nature and other people so what are you going to do with that you know what are you going to choose I read a great story this week about R amitel and having a conversation with uh the famous poet famous Israeli poet ABA kovner abak kovner had survived the Holocaust in the Holocaust he led the Rebellion uh in the villag ghetto against the Nazis and he fought in the partisans he was actually the first person to realize and to put into writing that Hitler was actually going to systematically exterminate the Jews because Up Until then people thought well this is another kind of round of pums this is anti-Semitism but it'll blow over and he said no no no there's going to be an actual genocide he was the first person to coin the phrase sheep to the slaughter in context of Jews going to uh to their deaths in the Holocaust and needing to fight back and then he made Aliyah and he fought in the independence War he became a famous writer and one time he asked Ruda amital zat uh the founder of uh the gion Haron Yeshiva who was also a holocaust Survivor who also took part in the Revival in the in the birth of the state of Israel and abak kovner one Survivor to the next speaking to ra amital said how can you believe in God after the Holocaust we've both seen it how do you believe in God after the Holocaust ra amital said believe in God well you know God I never really expected to understand his ways but how can you believe in your fellow man after everything you've seen in the Holocaust if you let go of your belief in God you're just stuck at the mercy of people who will arbitrarily just do the worst things you're at the mercy of of nature pick your poison so that's a choice it's not provable it's not like we can know over every other option what is going to be precisely true it's a choice and it's a choice to believe in the ultimate Sak the ultimate righteousness of the long Winding Way that Hashem leads us both personally and collectively to say I believe I believe the promise and the end of everything is okay that's important but also to believe that the path to get there is also just even if it seems so unbearably hard but in the end what other choice is there you know I said to my friend you're you're worried about this pregnancy that the outcome is not going to be what you're hoping for but what will happen to you if you believe that Hashem is leading you on this path for something good and that Hashem is really taking you exactly where you need to be even if it's to grow even if it's you know even if it's difficult it's not random then you're also going to act differently you're going to live that out because if you believe for example that Hashem is testing you to build you and to strengthen you and to correct you whatever it is how are you going to act in the face of your challenge on the other on the other hand how are you going to act if you believe it's all random nothingness well you believe everything is random or bad why should you change yourself why should you strive to be better if reality is out to get you or if reality just doesn't care about you if nothing if Hashem made the world in a way that that you don't actually matter why should I go out of my way to treat anybody better than God actually treats anyone but if you believe that things are ultimately for the good in hasem is driving everything even you're suffering for something that is deeper and something that is righteous you will become ennobled and more righteous for that and if you believe that this is for your good and all you'll see you're going to act that out in every aspect of your life and you see that even in the PS of the story that I just told you about ra amital and abaker these are two Holocaust Survivors Two fighters for Israel two great leaders two great thinkers one chose to believe in Hashem despite his suffering and to see reality and one chose to see reality as just random and put his faith in man and nature R amital left behind him thousands of righteous students many of whom are actually Torah Scholars and warriors fighting today in the war and have many have lost life and limb to save other people just came out in the newspaper a few months ago that the son of ABA kovner after October 7th said that the Arabs of Gaza are Freedom Fighters and that he would join them if he was gazen because without Hashem and without Hashem there is no objective ultimate standard of righteousness so even if you have Great accomplishments and courage and great vision what will you pass to the next generation without having auna and so that is what Abraham chooses Hashem doesn't convince him with any kind of proof Hashem knows how to convince people Hashem could turn his staff into a snake or give him a magic uh you know magic trick give him you know leprosy that disappearing Le leprosy but Hashem right now is not in the convincing business it's up to Abraham and Abraham chooses because really what is his choice he can look at the suffering that he went through all the tests that he went through and believe that they were dark believe that they were random but he chose us to believe that there's a covenant that Hashem made with him and to believe the Covenant that even when things are so hard even when they're so hard they're really for his betterment and so I think that understanding here of the pesic of the verse makes so much sense especially for the time that we're in so if that's what it means you know maybe maybe both of the interpretations are are are legitimate and we need to look at it from both angles you know he believes that Hashem is acting justly and in doing that Hashem considers him to be righteous and he's also believing in the righteousness of hashem's path they don't even need to contradict one another and now if we follow that Abraham makes this choice to believe well what happens what happens that he believes that all of hashem's ways are just well he becomes AB ainu he becomes abam Our Father someone that can be the father of a great nation by choosing to believe in the way that he did he essentially sets the groundwork for hashem's blessings actually being justified for the Sak for the righteousness of hashem's blessings because he ennobled himself and became a person who could carry the mantle and could withstand the tests and then pass that down to his children now what's interesting is the words dad doesn't only appear here in the Abraham story it appears another time in the context also of Abraham's lineage but it's after Hashem sends the angels to announce abah and Sarah the pregnancy he decides to tell abam about sto and Hashem explains why he's chosen to tell Abram about sto and not anybody else and it says abam will become a great and powerful nation and all of the Nations will be blessed in him why is that for I know him because he command he will command the actual Hebrews that he will command his sons and his household after him that they should keep so here's that word again so when Hashem promises in children he says we see the word and now we hear it again Hashem says that he chose Abram because he will command his children to Doak to do righteousness and that's why he was chosen he was chosen because he sees Saka in reality he chooses to believe in that all the good and all of the difficult are from Hashem for a purpose that's not meaningless that kind of person will ultimately act out their belief in their own life be an example for their future generations of what it means to courageously face suffering to believe that Hashem is just that reality is ultimately good and to be a good person as a result of that so when you are a person so then you're a person who actually deserves to be judged as righteous those two readings are both real and they're both right and we are the children of Abraham and now in our times we too felt you know called to come back to ER Israel to the land of Israel we too were inspired by the promises of asem that this land would be ours and that we would have Redemption and we too are facing Wars and we are facing hostages and we are facing International pressure and we're facing you know every manner of suffering and now we have Abraham to draw strength for to say do we believe in the promises yes we believe in the promises but like Abraham it's more than just believing in the promises this story calls us to say we don't only believe that the end will ultimately be good but that even the path itself even the difficulties themselves are part of hashem's plan and we have to strengthen ourselves in the amuna of the ultimate Saka of reality because in doing so maybe we will actually be partners with Hashem in not only the Fulfillment of the promises but in making ourselves and the Generations that come from us people that are deserving in some way of those lofty promises because we chose to accept the tests and accept the challenges and grow from them to the greatest of our ability so with that I wish everybody a good week um and that we should all just reach into the very depths Plum the depths of these Abraham stories to strengthen our own faith in Hashem in these times and always when we talk about faith there's clearly a breakdown in communication there is a reason why mashiach Messiah and Messiah communicate are the same word in Hebrew because ultimately to bring World Peace we need a great communicator and in order to really understand faith we have to understand the Hebrew language and that's why there's a prophecy in the book of Tania that the whole world will soon learn a pure language that we can finally speak the same language anguage a pure tongue and so the word faith in Hebrew is amuna and that comes from the same root as the word imun which means practice and Ne which means loyalty so what does the word amuna faith actually mean in Hebrew it means Faith practiced with loyalty faith practiced in life with loyalty faith in action is Hebrew Faith so what does that mean for us that means that not only acting out our faith will build us into the people that God created us to be in all of the challenges and all of the doubts we stay true and loyal to our faith that's why the Torah speaks about breit about a covenant because you need to be good because you are good no matter what that's in fact the entire secret of the Book of Job of EO this righteous man who has so many horrible things happened to him and at the very end he never wavers he was a true sadik a true righteous man in the face of disaster and tragedy and Satan himself coming after job job never leaves the path of righteousness because that's true righteousness If Everyone is always blessed every time they follow God then what's their righteousness really worth they're just being righteous in order to receive the blessing true Faith biblical faith is Faith practiced in loyalty a covenant no matter what in some ways the biblical ethos is the foundation of real Western Civilization what do I mean by that one of the most popular movies today in the world they're all the superhero Marvel comic book characters and when you delve into the story of both the superhero and the super villain they all tell the same story some tragedy or pain happened to them earlier on in life and the villain says the world hurt me I'm going to hurt the world back and he takes it to evil the hero though whether it be Bruce Wayne whose parents were killed and he was just a child or Superman's planet that was destroyed they lived through some sort of trauma and they took the pain of that trauma and they said I want to put an end to other people's pain and suffering that's real Faith that's what emuna all about and in that way Abraham ainu Abraham was the world's first superhero that in the face of all of the challenges in unmet promises he continued to be faithful in some ways to have amuna is to be faithful to have trust and to live out that trust that's why and they believed in God and Moses his servant as they're walking through the Red Sea it's not that they believed in God like they believed in aliens or they believed in this theology or that theology they believed in God and in Moses well Moses is right there before them what does that mean it means that they had faith and trust and action and loyalty and they followed Moses and God into the desert that's real faith and that's the faith that all of us need now and the world is going to push us to a place where that faith is exactly what's demanded and with that I want to bless everyone that we live with true amuna that we live with true faith and we actually become the superheroes that we were created to be Shalom hey this is Jeremy impel if you enjoyed that content then you will enjoy all the content on the landof Israel Network at www.the landof israel.com and if you want to take it up a level you can join our Global community of people that learn together that work together that are all a part of a global movement of over 1,000 families all over the world and you can join the land of Israel 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