Living Inspired. Living Amazed. The Laughter of Isaac. - Jeremy Gimpel:The Land of Israel Fellowship

it's you know in Israel so much going on all the time there's International things that are happening at the World Cup all of this Jew hatred is coming out in Qatar inside Israel in this transitional time between the governments there's all these Terror attacks that are like you know abusing Israel's weakness right now in order to kill as many Jews as they can there's unbelievable rise in anti-Semitism across the United States I mean president Donald Trump is hosting these neo-nazis at his house and Marlo Largo like what's going on there there's just like so much happening and you can see all of this woven in to the biblical narrative in fact if you don't really see the world through the Paradigm that Ari was talking about that Abraham Isaac Ishmael Jacob and Asaf represent movements in the world Nations ideologies ideas that are manifest then you can't really understand reality and I don't think you really understand the Bible but I'm going to leave that over to Ari because I think that's the direction he wants to go in this Fellowship what I want to do today is I want to share something that was really uh kind of touched my heart as I Was preparing for my birthday and as I was learning with tahila and I was learning with my oldest son lovey so um I wanted to specifically talk about the Patriarchs not only as a map of our outer world in the international Realm but of our inner world and this one specifically really hit me because you know it's so funny tahil and I have such opposite reactions to our birthdays where to heal is like oh no it's another year and I'm not accomplished enough and I haven't I only have six kids I don't have 60 kids and I only have seven degrees and not 20 degrees has all of these things and she's like somehow so hard on herself and I'm like I made it another year yes I got another one that's amazing I'm just like happy to be alive and I want to talk specifically about that and so um we're you know we've said goodbye to Abraham and now we're entering into the life of Isaac and now he is now raising up his next generation and so this is in some ways the heart of the story of Isaac and his whole life and his marriage and his fatherhood and Isaac internally represents spiritually the concept of self-sacrifice I mean that's obviously displayed as he's ready to sacrifice himself on the altar with Abraham um and what he represents is in order to make progress in the world in in order to succeed you have to be able to sacrifice you want to be healthy you're going to have to sacrifice the sugar and junk food that you love you want to be strong you're going to have to sacrifice the comfort and go and work out and exercise you'll have to sacrifice the time and invest in your body in order to become strong you want to be learned you're going to have to sacrifice watching another series on Netflix and invest that time learning Torah you want to have a good marriage you want to have a good family you're going to have to sacrifice for that love Abraham represented Hassan Abraham represents love as the root of our faith in fact one of mine Ari's mentors one of our rabbis that we just admire so much Rabbi David Aaron wrote a book on Jewish thought Called Love Is My Religion and that is what Abraham brought into the world that the core of a believer in the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob a core of being a Jew in the world a core of like really loving the Bible you're going to love the world you're going to love people you're going to love God love is the core Isaac though is brought in as the second patriarch and then he brings in another dimension it's not just enough to love God like a hippie you need to have gavorah you need to have a little bit of a fight in you to fight your lower self to fully express your soul in the world your higher self and you need more than just love Isaac introduced the afternoon prayer and prayer now is not just an expression of love that Abraham had no it's a spiritual discipline that Isaac said no every afternoon you know it's something we're going to do every day every afternoon in the middle of our productive busy day we're gonna stop sacrifice our time and remind ourselves about what really matters and that's that's like the heart of Isaac but Isaac also brings in another dimension and this is really what I wanted to talk about on my birthday Isaac's name means laughter everyone knows that because the word laughter appear here so many times around Isaac's birth Sarah's laughing Abraham's laughing why are you laughing he's laughing everything's laughing Isaac's name Yitzhak he will laugh laughter his name literally means to laugh why is our father the father of Israel I'm the patriarch named laughter like that is a interesting name um and this week I delved into that topic and here's what I discovered um Abraham and Sarah why did they laugh what was that about what was that laughter really about why would they laugh about Isaac being born and the answer is because they were so old it just seemed impossible like it didn't follow the regular narrative Isaac should never have been born they were like a soul they were like older than Tequila's grandmother and they're having a baby like that's just it's like a miracle Isaac's life was a miracle and that miracle that unbelievable surprise of being just made them laugh and so that's key that's like God recognize that life is a miracle and that's why the mystics and sages of Israel they connect Isaac's life the essence of Isaac we associate with Rosh Hashanah and every Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the creation of the world the creation of Adam the creation of the cosmos the creation of everything because in some ways what we're doing there is we are recognizing that none of this needed to be here everything is a miracle existence is a miracle that didn't need to be here and things that surprise you things that are unexpected that's the key to laughter and actually I went into a scientific study and they said that they scanned the brain when people were laughing and science confirmed exactly what the Torah is pointing to and this is what it said in a scientific study this is when they scan scan the brain when people laugh the scientists notice that it has to do with expectations and the violation of scripts we find things funny that don't fit in with what we think should happen is the reminder to never take anything for granted that is like one of the foundations of being a believer in the world and Abraham Joshua heschel sometimes has such a beautiful way of articulating ideas I just wanted to share this quote with you here's what he says can we get it up on the screen the shoe among the many things that religious tradition holds in store for us is a legacy of Wonder the surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted indifference to the sublime Wonder of living is the root of sin now that's pretty amazing the root of sin I would think is like our lusts are our desires our lower self our our egos no it's indifference to the sublime Wonder of living as soon as we start taking things for granted that's actually the root of sin in a religious life don't forget after love the next thing is awe is Wonder is amazement is gratitude it's just none of this needs to be here every day that we have is a gift so here's something that I learned with LA vid this week um he's under a lot of pressure now lovey is 18 years old he finished high school and he's spending the year now in Yeshiva learning Torah in philosophy and he's also doing a lot of different studies and tests in order to get accepted into one of Israel's most elite intelligence programs he's Tequila's boy and he's brilliant but you want to be among the best of the best in Israel's IDF it's very demanding and so he's working hard and he's under a lot of pressure for an 18 year old and he has a lot of tests and he called me up and he's like you know just like I just feel cramyaba you know I just don't feel good right now and I said you know I was just learning this thing about Isaac and Adam and I had this thought and you know the fact that the stages of Israel connect Isaac to the creation of Adam and Rosh Hashanah it got me thinking and there's different ways to learn the Torah you know you can learn just the shot level of the Torah like you know what were the stories I want to know about stories those stories of inherent value in their own rights and sometimes you can understand the symbolic sides of stories and you can understand stories as prophecies and templates of how to understand the world and I just love sharing new keys of how to unlock meaning from the Bible and I love sharing these new ways with the fellowship and what I shared with La Vie is a way of learning Torah that's called heat Bona Newt and hit Bona nude is when you read the stories of the Torah try to actually envisioned the characters in the story in your mind that the characters become three-dimensional beings and they're like they're actually like really alive you have to really dream it up and imagine it or you won't have the effect it's almost as if the stories of the Torah are meditations in their own right that you need to think about you need to imagine you need to Envision and when I had this image of God creating all of the world and then he created Adam and God comes to Adam and says hey Adam just created you and Adam was like if you laughed a little bit he's like he's just thank you you just made me that moment of laughter right there that Adam has when you're like we should have that exact Sensation that Yitzhak every morning we open our eyes we got another year I got a birthday yeah nothing just need to be here every day should be a little bit of laughter don't take anything for granted every day is a gift and every time we open our eyes Hashem is telling us I created you for another day and we should be just as in Wonder and as grateful as Adam must have been when he first encountered life itself from the Creator who gave us life and so you know in these challenging times when it seems like Jew hatred is rising and anti-Semitism in America is really seemingly out of control right now and that's only a sign for things to come for the rest of the world it's so important to go inside and to strengthen our base strengthen ourselves inside with the gifts that avraham gets stuck in yaakov Abraham Isaac and Jacob we're Elohim the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that's powerful those are gifts that can be given to us to strengthen us to fortify us to really enjoy the gift of life and to help us weather through all of the difficult times so on my birthday I have a little bit of a gift we're told that I'm able to give out blessings and so I want to bless everyone in this Fellowship that they should love life with all their hearts that they should take nothing for granted that you should be blessed beyond measure that Hashem should answer all of your prayers not necessarily with the answer yes but with the answers that you need and that you should know that you're being answered that your heart should be filled with his light that his light should guide your ways that we should all continue to learn together to grow together to build up the land of Israel as we build ourselves and that we should be a example for how a Believer should live in this world as we approach The Amazing Days Ahead amen