Preparing For Our Spiritual Battles (Parsha Shoftim) - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey everybody it's great to be live with you guys hope everybody's doing great um so you know something I noticed that there was a a repetitive Motif in this week's Parsha and in the haftura and I've actually missed it when they were reading the Torah and I only picked it up in the Hof tour when reading from the prophets after the Torah portion because the verse starts out saying in Isaiah 51 it says that we will not if we forget Hashem we will be afraid all day and I said well why did the sages choose haftura talking about fear and then when I went back into the Torah portion I realized that really the portion was also about dealing with fear so that's something I want to uh talk about a little bit this week you know we see a few times in the portion but primarily in the context of going out to war there are a few categories in this past portion of people who can't go out to battle like if you planted a Vineyard um and did it inaugurated or you built a house and you didn't move in yet or you uh betrothed the wife but you didn't marry her yet and take her into your home those guys you go home you don't go out to the war and that's pretty straightforward to understand right because these are people with unfinished business they're not the people you want to be in battle alongside because they're not putting their hearts in it they're thinking of all the stuff that they're missing back at home but then the Torah gives us one more category of somebody who can't go out to war it says that anyone who is fearful and weak of heart should go home it's pretty straightforward too that makes sense right you know I'm reading a book with the kids called the survivors club by Ben Sherwood and it's about how people survived it's kind of like disasters natural disasters plane crashes floods and stuff like that and the book says that in every disaster there's 10 80 10 10 80 and 10 the 80 are the majority they just kind of freeze and freak out that would probably be me they go into shock and they just don't do anything they're paralyzed they don't know what to do just kind of following the crowd then you have the top 10 percent because of the people like Jeremy who don't lose their cool they figure out what needs to be done they're the ones running around Into the Fire you know saving people they know what they're doing and then you have the bottom 10 they go into total meltdown they don't just endanger themselves they drive everyone else crazy because they're freaking out and yelling and distracting everyone from helping the situation I'm sure you can see this with your kids like a couple of months ago we were near a traffic accident next to a very um unfriendly Arab neighborhood it was the only time in my life that I actually had my hand on my gun in a real situation but the Army was trying to manage everything and there was a sort of mob scene unfolding up so nervous I'll be okay the Army was there and we're right in the center of this and the soldiers started being so overwhelmed by this mob that they started shooting machine guns into the air and like our car was even scratched by the casings and I had three kids in the back would be all right but it was interesting to watch the kids like one was kind of talking himself through the situation okay guys stay calm everything's all right and you know one of them was just sort of staring not knowing what to do and the other one was screaming her head off even though I explained to her that we're not in any actual danger so those bottom 10 those are the ones that you do not want to have with you when you're in a war so the verse in this portion is pretty sensible right like if you're those guys that can't keep calm under stress you should go home and don't make anybody else nervous right and so indeed we see in the tall mood in the interpretation of this verse Rabbi Akiva says who is the fearful and faint-hearted that Satora is talking about sending home from the war it's the people afraid of seeing battle he says fair enough that makes sense but then the talmud is really surprising here because Rabbi yasi had glyoshi ugly disagrees and he offers a different interpretation he says the torah's not talking here about people who are afraid of war the Torah is talking about sending home soldiers who are afraid get this guys afraid of sin well that was new for me my eyebrow kind of went up and I said huh aren't we supposed to be afraid of sin like don't you want God-fearing soldiers out in the battlefield that are afraid of sinning and then I found a great explanation given by the kutskarevi he explained this absolutely marvelously he says on this verse and the explanation given by Rabbi yossi he said well really you know like how can that be that if you're afraid of sin you can't go to war we want good guys at work like you know in battling for Israel and anyone would you know like be sent home if they were afraid of sin then everybody would be sent home he goes no no you're not understanding he says the Torah is warning according to this interpretation against a person going out to battle listen carefully what he says he says who's afraid of their past sins meaning someone who can't stop thinking about their past sins and become sad and depressed and incapable actually ironically I've ever really improving themselves in the future because they're so stuck in all of the mistakes that they've made and feeling bad about themselves that person isn't allowed to go out to war because he doesn't have any internal strength left because of that fear of sin and it really struck me and hit home because this week I got a massive dose of fear in the context of something that happened to me at my work I made a mistake and I filed something to the court that was late and I wasn't sure it was going to be accepted but it was extraordinarily important and it was Thursday afternoon meaning I wouldn't even know if it was accepted or not until after Shabbat and I was struck with so much fear that someone's life would be seriously impacted by my error that I was just crushed under the weight of my guilt and like how was I going to get through that I drew strength from an experience that I had about two years ago when I was in like a similar situation of feeling very guilty over my mistake that I had made and was weighing heavily on me and I went to a friend who does breathing exercises that helps you get she helps you get into like a very calm meditative kind of prayer State and I did these breathing exercises with her and she said close your eyes what do you feel like Hashem is trying to show you in this experience and what came to me very clearly in that moment was these three words Hashem everything is from Hashem that even mistakes are from Hashem and what we're doing in this world is not doing life but passing through life in order for arnishamas our souls to experience what we need to experience and so part of the experience that Hashem is sending me on is to experience this mistake that's what needs to be and that's something I needed to go through and the only one thing I can control is how I'm going to relate to that how I'm going to learn and be better or just think and you know feel like I'm awful I stink because of this mistake so fast forward to this week I really remembered that Clara gave me at that time and I drew strength from that long story short instead of being paralyzed I drew strength from that and I got an idea of how to make things better and I became action oriented and you know more clear thinking and Mark Hashem things really miraculously worked out but going back to our verse and this dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yoshi ugly well who is right I think that Rabbi Akiva when he says that the Torah is sending home people who are afraid of the war is maybe bringing the plain meaning of the verse like when you're actually in a physical military war the last guy you want around is the nervous Soldier who's having a panic attack but maybe Rabbi yossi is going even deeper and giving us guidance for other types of Wars because we are all and when we read the you know ardell's prayer list we know that this is true for all of us we are all fighting some kind of war in our life and probably more than one it might be a battle to do the right thing when the people around us think we're weirdos it might be a battle to support Israel when everyone around us hates Israel it might be a battle to fortify ourselves and our children against harmful you know cultural influences a battle to support our families financially a battle against illness whatever it is we are all in some kind of battle so maybe the Torah is talking not only about physical military battles but telling us who is not ready for their spiritual battle well it's the one who's weighed down by the weight of their past mistakes because you would think that being you know being conscious of your past mistakes would just Propel you forward but in excess the Torah is teaching us when you think about the past to the point that it gets out of control it actually hinders our growth and how will you have the strength to fight the next fight rev cook in his article on fear said that all weakness physical moral and mental come from fear that has gone over to the side of excess I thought that was really profound he says it will make a person unable to take action for their own Redemption Rabbi cook says that you won't even lift a finger to save yourself when you are filled with fear that you're not going to get repentance for your past sins so he said the outcome is this weakness and atrophy that leads you to paralysis and I think it's so interesting because usually we associate sin with action but if Cook says that we need to worry also about inaction that comes from being paralyzed with just feeling guilty about mistakes that we've made in the past and can't get fixed and I got this really touching letter A few days ago from a member right here on our fellowship maybe she's watching struggling with precisely this this issue of such deep regret about things that she did many years in the past not like a sinful place but just from being kind of young and not really knowing and she felt that no matter how much she's trying to do too but how much she's trying to repent she doesn't feel forgiven and she's such a kind loving person but this is weighing her down I said well maybe you don't need repentance but to actually have mercy on yourself because you're such a compassionate person to other people what about having some compassion on yourself like Hashem knows that you're not the same young foolish person who made those mistakes because look at the life you've built filled with goodness and righteousness that speaks to who you are now so if someone came to you and said well you know I was once dumb and young and I didn't know better and I made this or that mistake but I've lived an upright life since then wouldn't you give them a hug and show them compassion so give yourselves that hug the Torah teaches us love your neighbor as yourself meaning if you want to understand what it means to love a neighbor you have to actually know how to have compassion on yourself too don't be more kind to others than you know how to be to yourself and so I think that really connects beautifully to the time that we're in now to ellu because it's not that we are taught to forget our past mistakes but we're taught not to fear them not to drown them but to take a hard painful look at them in elul to contemplate them to look to learn and then comes Yom Kippur and we let go once a year we take this time and we kind of go into it we face it we're courageous but we don't fall into this fear of the past we keep it in its proportions to not go into excess and allow Yom Kippur to come wash us clean and move on ready to fight our next battle so with that I give you guys a blessing to have a beautiful amazing week and a profound courageous month of Elo