Noach vs Hamas (Parsha Noach) - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everyone it's deila gel from the AR goat farm for those of you who've been learning with us for a while um you know I'm rarely at a loss for words but this uh last week and a half have done that to me and I just have not had it in me to go before a camera because besides as being stunned and grief stricken and overwhelmed by the enormity of everything that we're dealing with I just felt that everything I could possibly say felt tra and pathetic and puny and who am I to try to inspire anyone when I can barely inspire myself to get up and get dressed you know I and I and I gave myself all of the excuses of needing to tend to the kids and to the soldiers and to the people whose husbands are gone and to the you know visit the morning houses and there's so much to do no one needs me to make a YouTube video and on the other hand I know that so many people have been reaching out to check in on us and and people have you know asked me to share uh what's going on and and to share what's been on our minds and so uh Jeremy uh kindly and gently uh kicked my behind a little bit into shape this morning and said to me in very nice words but to me sounded like tahila get yourself the heck together and say what you need to say so U I'm very humbled by the task of trying to say something on these days of just tremendous judgment but here I go I'm going to start with this week's Torah portion of Noah we know that the portion speaks to us exactly what we need to hear for exactly what we're dealing with at a certain week and it can't be a coincidence that this is the week that we learn about a society that has been completely overrun by evil uh what it looks like is Genesis 6:1 it says the Earth was corrupt before God and the Earth became full of the English translations are different here but the word in Hebrew is actually quite amazing because it's the word Hamas for 3,000 years 3,000 years the Jews have had time to argue with one another what Hamas is because there are sins but what sin could Hamas be that deserves total Annihilation so the Jews have been arguing about this forever the most famous translation is Rashi say theft robbery and that's how most Jewish English translations uh go unus one of the oldest Jewish interpreters of the Torah thought uh it translated this into Aramaic as meaning the world was covered in kidnapping hostage taking from Isaiah 59 in the context that he uses the word Kamas you can understand that it's maybe violence murder uh later in the Torah uh we learn about edas a witness who Slanders somebody else and says they did something that they didn't do so somebody lying about someone else the RB says that it's rape uh orim says which one is the right one and he says you know what all of the above Hamas is the inclusion of all of the evils kidnapping gratuitous violence murder rape and then lying and slandering others and stealing and he says Hamas actually means all of those things at once and is that not prophetic because you know that's actually what we've seen right now and you know when the Hamas the terrorist organization made their name they surely were not uh doing Hebrew U marketing research looking into the Bible to try to give themselves this name Kamas is actually an acronym from Arabic for harakat aluk Al Islam the Islamic resistance movement but it also has a meaning on its own in Arabic hams actually means enthusiastic bravery and maybe you know that's so interesting because usually Hebrew and Arabic are quite similar they have they're both Semitic languages and they usually mean the same same thing it's so interesting that of all the words this word actually means the opposite what for them is a great attribute is for us the greatest evil so it's like Hashem is speaking to us so clearly saying that one day you will face Hamas the culmination of evil that they perceive to be the greatest virtue you know the Torah is not just here to teach us history it doesn't give us the stories we want it gives us the stories that we need a lot of things happened since the creation of the universe we don't hear even a small fraction of them Hashem tells us the things that we're going to need and Hashem is telling us that we're one day going to face Kamas and Hashem chose Noah as the character to teach us what our posture should be there you know sometimes as Noah gets a bad rap because he had the unfortunate placement to be just opposed to Abraham who admittedly looks a little bit cooler you know Abraham is in this horrible world and he goes out when there are four Kings and five Kings and he fights the bad guys and he goes out to war and he fights evil and you know when Hashem says he's going to uh destroy Sone weight ab was also merciful and he says uh you know uh he's willing to have a huge fight blowout with Hashem saying well maybe save them uh and and he's you know arguing with Hashem there's a lot of fight in Noah he seems kind of like now if you're watching this video you're probably not a general or a president or a diplomat or able to really uh you know have massive influence on the current situation you're probably a person like me just trying to figure out how to live your life in the face of this and it and you know it feels good to be like yeah let's wipe out evil and it feels good to other types to to be like oh well there's good people on both sides right we can do we can like do those things but it doesn't really matter maybe what hasem is telling us is that we need to draw strength from the unique character of Noah he doesn't look as cool as abam he doesn't have as much fight in him but maybe there are special things about him that can help us and now the first thing I think we should notice is that Noah is not a Jew this is not a Jewish Gentile thing this is you know Noah is the father of all people and this is the first time that the world divides into camps I keep saying there's no more right and left only right and wrong there is a self- selection going on right now who can identify right from wrong and it does not always go on Jewish Gentile lines we see it clearly now that the world has a side with moral Clarity and a side that doesn't it's a Line in the Sand and it's been very painful for me to see people that I once respected or looked up to not being on the right side of this and so we have this model that says it doesn't matter Jew Gentile there's going to be a moment where you face Hamas you will face the culmination of all evil and you're going to have to decide where you stand and and now here's the thing when we look at Noah's life Hashem doesn't just say build an ark he had him build an ark for 120 years 120 years is a really interesting number because it's the paradigmatic lifespan when you bless someone in Judaism oh you should have good health and long life you say may you live to be 120 years old that is the lifespan he had an entire lifespan worth of mockery of everyone thinking he's nuts and crazy and he's not chasing anyone around he's just quietly building his boat he heard what Hashem said he believes Hashem and he is willing to spend a lifetime not being Vindicated and he can survive that it's cooler to be a fighter I know but he had this quiet posture that he could create an ark a home that would be like a nature preserve of goodness in the face of everything else being dark we feel that so much in Israel like you know a lot of the men are out fighting but the primarily the women are home making our little Noah's arcs to protect our children just like hammering away on like one board and one nail at a time building up our children to be good people in a world capable of the kind of evil that we've seen in the last two weeks and he Noah just stands his ground he keeps on speaking truth and that's another thing that struck me now is that we must all speak the truth it was really hard to make this video because I felt like everyone I can say somebody has already said everything I can say somebody has said and it's all TR trit and obvious and stupid and jery said no you stand up and say it because no said it every single day of his life everyone said to him why are you doing this and he said it again he said because this world is behaving in an evil way and I am making a sanctuary of goodness because that is what Hashem wants and then there's after and I never really understood the end of the story of Noah like why does it end with him drinking it mustn't take him years to grow Vineyards and make wine and get drunk I'm sure he did a lot of things to rebuild the world why is this the one story that we hear about him getting drunk in his tent but now for the first time I really understand him imagine us coming out of the boat and seeing endless rotting corpses that's what our people are facing here my nephew shared that there are still bodies of slaughtered holy Jews that haven't been brought to burial because the monsters booby tra bodies with explosives sewn into their poor mutilated bodies so that the holy people coming to bring them to burial will be killed as well these people are not going to come back the same my nephew's not going to come back the same my holy brother and sister-in-law spend 12 hours a day like as we speak purifying bodies and preparing them for burial my sister-in-law can barely speak about it she is piecing together remains of burnt babies to wrap up together and she will never be the same and we can understand Noah was never able to be the same he just wanted to get out of his head and unsee what he had seen and you know a few days ago was the eth day and the first week was all adrenaline for me so many people needed help and food be taken care of and I was just on all the time and then suddenly I lost the adrenaline and it all sunk in and I could barely do anything but in my life I'll never forget the feeling I went into my room and Jeremy came to check on me he saw that I was falling apart and I couldn't stop crying and I couldn't be in my body anymore I started screaming I just want out I can't and I couldn't escape being inside of me my whole body hurt from the exhaustion and the stress and the pain around me and even if I sat still all I saw in front of my eyes was the images of the people and the atrocities and the babies and Gaza and the young women and the vile hands of Hamas and I couldn't escape I was literally scratching my own face to feel anything other than I was feeling because any sensation was better than the sensation of being me and I understood Noah who just wanted out he just wanted to get drunk I said Jeremy bring me something put me to sleep give me a shot and Noah is the right man for us at the right time because he faced Kamas he faced what a world looked like after being covered with Kamas and yes Hashem is telling us this is what you will feel maybe the story is not a criticism of Noah it's not a praise it's just the truth because we don't know at the end of the story if Noah was ever able to heal and we don't know if we're ever going to a be able to heal but from Noah was born Shem and from Shem was born ever and from that boat of goodness and light that Noah created he eventually brought Abraham into the world and Abraham brought in people that would be able to receive the Torah and begin to set the world right so maybe for us the character of no is the right man at the right time for us to each just put all of our Focus on building our Ark sharing the truth with as many people as we can it's not always about the fight but the ability to just be willing to take an entire lifetime if that's what it takes 120 years if that's what it takes to keep on believing that it's possible to build an arc of light and Hashem is so careful to tell us that no Arc had a window what does that mean that it had a window it had a window of light it was always a place where in no matter how dark the world got there was a window of light going in and he was willing to dedicate his entire life to that so with that I wish you guys that we hear that we all hear good news this week bye everyone