Seeking Mashiach - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

so my question is who is the mashiach not his name unless you know it but how will you know how will you know when he comes is he a person a spirit a way people will choose to live what is the messianic times how long does it last is there something after the messianic times with people from all different beliefs and backgrounds hearing your words we each have a different definition of what you're saying i want to understand what you mean from the torah ari today for your time and for the love you give to us in this fellowship you and your family are in our heart and prayers um okay so i you know i have to i was conflicted about whether even to go into this if the question she asked resonates with you could you raise your hand okay i'm just flipping through this that's a lot of you so so i'm i'm happy that we're we're going through this because you know there really are so many uh so many of you have have different perspectives on this and i wanted to start by saying that what touched me so much about her message was the honesty and the openness of it a lot of hands are going up that's cool we should use that hand function more hand raising function um you know she she made it clear that she doesn't want this to lead into a debate that she just wanted she wanted me to know where she was coming from and she wanted me to understand and she wants to understand where i'm coming from and i really appreciate that and that really is the spirit of this fellowship it's just so beautiful to see it manifesting itself so organically in the fellowship right now because jeremy and i are very clear we are not out to change any of you into anything that you are not right now i mean on top of we just don't believe in that you're just such beautiful holy souls who am i to even think to change any of you you know when i leave this world if i see you guys in the world to come maybe 120 i'll know that i am in a good place but um but also because like seeking to change each other isn't love it's control it's ulterior motives right it's conditional relationship and i never get the feeling from any of you that you're wanting to change us either and and i've met people who have you know people who really want to remove the veils from my eyes and and i don't hold it against them i know it's from a place of love but it doesn't always feel that way um and by the way it's also my desire my greatest desire to do the same thing right to remove the veils from my own eyes but i i remember feeling bad for the for the the person numerous times but the person i'm thinking right now who is really aggressively proselytizing to me because if if i want to remove the veil from my eyes and he wants to remove the veil from my eyes who's left to remove the veil from his eyes right and removing our veils and coming closer to hashem is one of the greatest missions we have in the world and it's also one of the greatest joys in the world because what does king david say hashem happy is the heart who is seeking god seeking not finding you know we've talked about a lot of this before but we're going to review it right now because we we're we're always seeking we're never there we've never arrived and that is what this fellowship is about you know jeremy used to use the word and i felt like it was weird sounding but uh having thought about this and going through just today i was like you know what really he's right this we are a community of seekers people who are thirsty to learn from each other and with each other we're thirsty to learn because i i know that what stephanie is saying is true right we are not hiding from anything in this fellowship i know that there are i know that there's many jews in this fellowship who believe as jeremy and i do on the subject and i know that there are many christians or even people who don't define themselves as christians or don't know how to define themselves at all but many share stephanie's belief in and her that question resonates with them and i know that they're understanding about who mashiach is differs from mine in a fundamental way that obviously i as a jew think is wrong and i know i've said this before but when i look at the way i understood god 10 years ago i now see that half of the way i understood god then was wrong so i hope and pray that 10 years from now i will have grown enough that i will look back and see that half of the way i understand god right now is wrong none of us can ever fully understand god and i don't think he expects expects us to as a matter of fact i really believe in my heart that god loves this fellowship and blesses this fellowship and that what we learn together and create together here in this fellowship is a as a fragrant incense in which he finds pleasure because in the end of the day in order to really be here together and love each other and learn from each other it takes a certain level of humility and not not only humility but it takes a deep thirst and an overwhelming desire to come close to hashem and to seek his face and to serve him with all of our heart enough that we're willing to come together in this community in a way that does not always make sense to our brains but i think it does make sense to our hearts i think it makes sense to our hearts and um and so while i must say right now that in this fellowship we don't have the time to fully delve into the whole subject but i do want to touch on it and give some main points because it would just be too ridiculous to give that entire introduction and then run out of time at the end of the fellowship although i did have an impulse to do that because i did think it would be really funny to say that whole thing and be like all right goodbye fellowship i'm glad we did this so we'll talk about it but i'm not going to answer every single one of the questions right now unless jeremy wants to to chime in because i know he has a lot to say on the subject maybe we'll have a little corner to talk about it next week just to talk about meshia because the question can i just say one thing though before you go into that art go ahead because as you were talking of course i just agreed with everything that you said and i'm looking at sister christopher in particular right now and you know she's wearing like a it looks like a catholic garb that's just so different than anything that i've seen in my just jewish upbringing in israel and you know i'm just looking at everyone here i'm looking at caleb and i'm looking at brandon as everyone here there's like harold and bridget over there from germany like all of us have come from different backgrounds different cultures different educations we just have life experiences that have like locked us into a certain journey and now at this time all of us come from different places and we've all been brought together in this incredible unprecedented fellowship and i think that a part of the game is that we're not supposed to see things in the same way that's what makes it so beautiful because all of us are so different and it's actually loving everyone even because we're different that we're all coming together in our differences like how easy is it when everyone wears the same keeper in the same color in the same furry hat or the same you know this garber that garbage no here's like different countries different languages different religions different understandings different backgrounds and then all of that diversity to come together that is mashiach like that is exactly what mashiach is meant to do bring us all together and when he is finally revealed to the world we're all going to know it and so i just wanted to say that i feel like if there has ever been like a a touch of mashiach that i've ever experienced in my life it has been through this fellowship just seeing the diversity and the unity in this diversity is i think what is meant to bring all nations together to bow our knees and bow our heads before the king of israel and that's what we're all here to do and so i just wanted to say that well jeremy i appreciate you sharing that and saying that and and that's why i think we really need to start setting aside some time uh in in the fellowship and just focusing on that question and that issue get raise your hand if you think we we need to just do a little bit more mashiach talk just to talk about it again not debate well a lot a lot of hands going up a lot of hands okay wow okay well it's uh it's pretty clear we need to do that but listen the truth is i think it would happen anyways considering the times that we're in right now but um but but just to start i want to say that i i want to start just you know i guess by sharing fundamentals rather than comparing and contrasting and focusing on the differences because while that's fun and it's cool so many believe people believe so many different things and it could just go down a rabbit hole so it's our tradition that mashiach is a human being right no more and no less and he is a descendant of king david through his son solomon uh he will usher in an era of god consciousness and awareness of the almighty uh that will be holistic right and internalized in a way that we just cannot understand he'll be a part of the in gathering of the exiles and the building of the temple in jerusalem i mean mashiach it literally means the anointed one from you know it's it's uh in that way each one of the kings of israel who were anointed by a prophet with olive oil was mashiach is the actualization of the of the purpose for which the earth was created which is to elevate the physical to the spiritual and to imbue the spiritual into the physical that's the purpose of mashiach and so you know before i go on i want to say that i've always felt it was a little bit of a waste of time and energy focusing too much on the mashiach's identity because i have yet to find anyone at least in all of jewish liturgy who claims that one must know the identity of mashiach or when mashiach comes that we need to believe that they are mashiach you know as jews we really don't focus on that we focus on yearning for mashiach our sages tell us that the first question we're asked when we leave the world is did we eagerly anticipate redemption did we yearn for it with all of our hearts and why would we be asked that right because yearning for redemption is one of the deepest and truest gauges of our love for hashem for we know that hashem created the world in order to have a real and true relationship with all of us with his children with all of mankind and yearning for redemption is no less than yearning for god himself um you know this is how maimonides the rambam puts it he says any individual who does not believe in the coming of meshiach or does not await his arrival is rejecting not only the prophets but the torah of moses for the torah promises us regarding his arrival deuteronomy chapter 30 god your god will bring back your exiles and you will have mercy upon you he will once again gather you even if your exiles are at the ends of the heavens god your god will bring you to the land which your forefathers possess so that's what maimonides says i'll give you a second just to to read that because you know it's a pretty powerful statement for maimonides to say that if you don't believe meshiach is coming and you don't await his arrival eagerly await his arrival anticipating it it's a rejection of the torah itself and by extension one could say a rejection of god himself and notice he doesn't say we know we need to know who he is but we must yearn for his arrival you know i've had this disagreement with my beloved friend and rebbe eshai fleischer for many years he's just allergic to all this mashiach talk i don't know how he would respond if he watched the fellowship today but almost everything i said would have driven him nuts you know when there are prophecies or predictions by the vilnigone or anyone else he doesn't look at it he says it just doesn't interest him and it actually bothers him but me i mean i couldn't be more different you all know me by now right like i last pesach last passover i was running from mountain to mountain blowing my shofar on each mountain that's how sure i was right so so yisha and i were having this conversation again but it's uh you know it is one of the great differences between us and in some ways that's because it's the most fun to focus on those and then i shared one of my favorite teachings with him and i thought that this teaching maybe maybe point to the reason why he doesn't like this kind of talk to begin with and why i respect him for not liking the talk to begin with and he lit up when i said it and i really think i i nailed it so one of the primary principles of faith articulated by maimonides and accepted by all is anima amin ashley [Music] right i believe with the perfect faith in the coming of mashiach and even if he may tarry even if he may delay i will still wait expectantly for him each day that he will come that's the 12th principle out of the 13th principles of faith now now here's the teaching right the word for weight is weight shares the meaning of the word which means to imitate or to emulate right now think of it with that in mind i believe with perfect faith in the coming of mashiach and even if he may tarry i will seek to be like him right to imitate him to emulate him to fulfill his mission each day that he should come and i think that's why it's important not to get too lost in the theological or the theoretical discussions because that is just in some ways it's more god's department than our department we have work to do down here right we have a mission to accomplish to do all we can to increase the internalized faith in the world to help bring the nation of israel back to the land of israel and gather the exiles to settle the land of israel and to strengthen her all things by the way that you have participated in just by being here in this fellowship with us and perhaps why this that the subject is so shrouded in mystery right because maybe we are just we're not supposed to know we're supposed to await mashiach and to yearn mashiach and to know it would ruin it right we're supposed to do all that we can to hasten his arrival not necessarily to know exactly when it is and also by the way on a personal level i just want to share my heart on this the closer we approach to the arrival of mashiach which as you know i believe is imminent the closer we get the less i feel like i really understand any of it you know there have been fleeting moments in our mission out here on the farm where i feel like i i experience it right just for a moment right i just taste it for a moment it's over as soon as it starts right it's like a flash of lightning in the middle of a dark forest where i just see see it all and then it goes away but but the imprint of that moment that feeling it stays with me it's a part of me and there's no way to describe it i'm sharing this with you i'm being a little vulnerable because there are people that may legitimately think i'm nuts just from saying this but but there's no way to describe it other than a mixture of laughter and tears you know it's like imagine just seeing in black and white and all of a sudden seeing color for the first time or seeing the sun for the first time or or feeling love for the very first time like what real love is i don't think mashiach is going to be this cerebral intellectual experience it's not going to be a pr campaign it's going to it's going to be this overwhelming spirit of godliness and love that will be so overwhelming and transformative that the very nature of mankind will change you know i i liken it in my mind sort of to the opposite of the sin of eating from the tree of knowledge right when we ate from the tree of knowledge all of a sudden everything congealed into physicality and became separate and everything appeared as a threat and rather than than seeing that we were divine beings which was so clear to us one moment before rather than seeing that we were souls wearing the garment of a human body which was so clear to us right before we believed we were the body and then we spent the rest of history wondering whether we had a soul at all so when meshiach comes we will see ourselves and see each other as what we truly are beings of divine light right expressions of hashem we'll see each other as as that and and we'll love each other for that and we'll look back at human history and and i think we'll just look back and we're just gonna have a big cry we'll just cry at the insanity of how we have hated each other and killed each other we'll cry with the we'll cry at the shame of it and just the tragedy of it and then i think we'll laugh uh just a pure unbridled unadulterated laugh right hazarim bedima barina like king david says when return design will be like dreamers and our mouths will be filled with laughter and what will we be laughing at the truth is that i'm not sure i really don't know what i'm talking about almost at all um and maybe that's what we'll laugh at maybe we'll laugh at the fact that we really never knew what we were talking about to begin with