Taking Responsibility - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey guys um so i wanted to talk today a little bit about this past torah portion balak and a bit about the significance of this day the 17th day of tammuz i want to see if we can tease out any kind of interesting connections and lessons from them so let's start with the special day today is the 17th day of tamus i bet a lot of you guys know that this day is a fast day and that it commemorates the day that the walls of jerusalem were breached by the romans right before the destruction of the second temple in the first temple the walls were also actually breached in tamils but that was the ninth of tamus but the sages didn't want to put too many fasts so close together so we kind of smooshed them all into the 17th day of talmud's which is more like salient for us because we're still living the consequences of the second destruction so when most people think about the fast that's the 17th day of tamworth they think of it as relating to the destruction of the temple maybe a lesser-known connection is that it was also the day that moshe smashed the first tablet when he came down from the mountain and he saw the jews worshiping the golden calf he threw the tablets down and they were smashed to smithereens and we lost the potential of having with us the actual tablets that hashem wrote so we know this from the mishnah in the tractate of um ta'amit and it says that there were five sad things that happened on the 17th day of town was the first of which was the breaking of the tablets but we actually i mean how do the sages know that it's actually pretty clear from just a careful reading of the verses because if we know that the torah was given on shabu oh which was the sixth day of sivan and then moshe went up for 40 days to receive you know fresh em to give him the whole torah besides for the ten commandments then he would be expected to come down after completing those 40 days on the 17th day of tammuz so can you imagine like what a happy day this had the potential of being like we'd just been a little bit more faithful a little bit more patient we could have celebrated this day as the day that we got the torah for real like the tablets came down to be among us but instead it turned into a sad day and then all these other sad things kind of got added into it um and the 17th day of time was isn't just sad by itself it also kicks off a period of time that's called the three weeks between now and the ninth day of um which are generally a sad time of morning um the ninth day of ab was as i'm sure many of you know when the first and second temples were destroyed but the ninth day of ab also has its origins in the desert because the ninth of ava was the day that the spies gave their bad report and it was decreed that most of the people would not be able to enter the land so while historically these days are like generally thought of as commemorating things that other people did to us the babylonians destroyed the first temple the romans destroyed the second temple the original like badness of these days came from our own failings both of them having their roots in the desert so when i look at these two failings they seem to be like the paradigmatic failures that we're always struggling with because they relate to the two primary missions that hashem has given us in the world as i see them the first mission is to bring the knowledge of the oneness of hashem to the world and the other one is to live as an exemplary people in the land so in that context it's like the golden calf was our failing to live up to our first job right of bringing monotheism to the world and not falling into the temptation of idol worship and the ninth of us symbolizes our holding back our unwillingness to recognize that we're supposed to settle the land and you know and and be there and establish our you know our our you know uh proper and just society there right so our days of mourning are like having these like two bookends of conflict of contemplating these tragedies um that they were kind of a result of these two paradigmatic sins something that i think is so interesting and marvelous in jewish culture is the way we address our tragedies and challenges i'm not a historian but i think you can make a reasonable argument the jews have been the most persecuted people both in severity and in duration like we were had like horrible bouts of of persecution and just like a long time thousands of years of being persecuted you would think that we'd be like the most embittered angry people just hating everyone so vengeful but the sages set forth such an unusual way for us to look at these things like let's take the great tragedies the destruction of the first temple and the destruction of the second temple you would think there'd be tons of jewish texts talking about how awful the babylonians were and how awful you know the romans were for destroying our temple you would think that there would be a lot of writing on like the value of revenge and there'd be anger but when you read the jewish texts surrounding the destructions they're all primarily introspective our sages teach us that the first temple was destroyed mostly for the sin of idol worship and the second temple for hatred between people meaning social shortcomings which kind of goes back to those two primary sins of the 17th of thomas and the ninth of ab all the way back to the desert so does that mean that a jew thinks that the only reason the temples were destroyed were because of those sins no we know that there were geopolitical realities and there were armies and actual physical bad guys enemies people but the takeaway that we walk away with from our suffering is not directed at them and they're all the way you know by the way they're all long gone and we're still here maybe because of that because what we take away from our tragedies is this radical sense of responsibility personal responsibility group responsibility like what did we do to make this little slice of hell that came on to us even worse it's like in what sense could we have been better and deserved maybe a better outcome it's such a different ethic than what's popular today like today if you're any kind of minority that was ever persecuted or discriminated against the main focus has become who's at fault whose grandparents were at fault who's you know which statue can we take down because that guy was some way at fault you know who has some kind of privilege that makes them at fault even if they weren't born when the bad things happen or didn't even know about the bad things or didn't intend to do anything wrong right so now are they wrong for feeling that no not necessarily i mean there are people who are responsible responsible for the suffering of others but it's so different than the jewish tradition which is while you are cognitively aware of the wrongs committed by others your internal energy is always focused on what we can do to make the situation better how can we look inwards you can see it most clearly like physically um you know you could see it like in israel so um so blatantly with the narrative of our neighbors like if you ask our arab neighbors what is the source of your suffering it's always the jews it's the occupation it's the nakba it's a jew walking around with a flag it's a jewish community uh you know some peaceful community somewhere what will you never hear you'll never hear somebody say well maybe it's because of all of our violent terrorism maybe it's because of the rejection of the partition plan maybe it's because of the war that our you know our leaders started in 1948 and in 1967 maybe it's the fact that our leaders have rejected every peace agreement ever offered nope whereas in israel you would imagine that after all the terror attacks that we've been through we would just be this bitter vengeful people but it's interesting you know when you actually if you look at the grave of any person in israel that was killed in a terror attack it will say the letters hey you'd dalid hashem ye which means that his blood should be avenged by hashem why does it say that because primarily while we know that there was a person who caused this tragedy we say okay it's up to hashem to figure that part out hashem will avenge his blood our attention is focused inwards how do we take fuller responsibility ever more responsibility for what is around us and for what happens to us so we're heading into this period of time now these three weeks of reflection to see it's a time to reflect like okay things you know what's not going right and where have i fallen short not you know what has everyone else done to make me you know so miserable but where we've fallen short on the missions that hashem has given us and interestingly it coincides with having read the parsha of balak yesterday the ways that the parsha the way that the parshas are divided up is so interesting so the vast majority of this past week's parsha is the story of the prophet bala now king balak wants to defeat israel militarily but in order to do so he believes that he needs to first weaken them with a curse so he can win in the battle and balaam is like he gets there and he is in all trials say whatever hashem wants it when he sees israel he's like you're not going to be able to do this militarily and he ends up giving these blessings that describe the special attributes of israel and their close relationship with hashem now the story you would think that the torah portion would end there that's like a good place to end the story because the story that follows the story of balaam is the sin of peor and that seems to be like a separate story more appropriate maybe to be in next week's portion which is the story of pinchas because pinchas was the one to stop all of that horribleness right but the story of the sin is actually part of this past week's torah portion of balak and not in pinchas parsha so had this just been about the balam story right balaam doesn't really come out such a bad guy does he like he kind of tries to listen to hashem and he says that he's going to listen to him and he ends up blessing us he might have been a little too tempted by the money he might have been a little trigger happy with hitting his donkey but he doesn't seem like such a bad guy if you just look at that story but we find out later from moshe right after israel kills balaam that in fact he was the instigator of the whole um like plan to lead israel to sin at or in chapter 31 moshe wonders you know when the jews go out to fight the midianites he says why did you keep the women alive and in verse 16 he says hey ah sorry they were the same ones who were involved with the children of israel and balaam's advice to betray the lord over the incident of resulting in a plague among the congregation of the lord so it turns out that moshe tells us a piece of the puzzle that we didn't know from reading this week's torah portion that tempting the jews to sin with or was actually balaam's idea so if it was his idea what was he understanding how did he get to that idea it's like he realized one of blessing israel that when israel is in a proper relationship with hashem and living in a society of holiness it's hopeless balak you're not going to be able to win them militarily but at the same time he realizes if you can sink them spiritually you won't need to do anything their own tragedy is going to happen on its own and that's actually what happens right they worship the bible and then hashem sends um sends a sickness to to kill them so now and now or is also a really interesting and gross form of idolatry i hope there are any kids watching like if your kids are watching cover their ears now for a second okay guys the way that you would worship the ball pit or was actually to like go to the bathroom it was by defecating in front of the idol it's so gross that you wonder like why was this so tempting to israel now uh rabbi yehuda amital of blessed memory said that there's actually a really deep attraction to this kind of thing and it can be confusing and tempting on the one hand you think oh it's gross why would anybody want to do that but when you think about it a little bit more deeply it's this idealization of everything that's natural it's something that we see so much around us today right like why should i cover my body why should i be modest my body is natural why should i limit my urges or my relationships it's natural why should i not talk about certain subjects in public or on television they're natural it's really a tempting idea even for people who believe in god because if god made nature it must be perfect let's hold it as the highest ideal but that's not the message of the torah the torah starts out in the whole throughout the whole book of reishi with this process of leaving the just nature moving towards wearing clothes setting up agriculture circumcision all saying yes there's nature but nature is a starting point we build up right we build off hashem gives us a job to improve and correct the world not to just wallow in things as their natural order may be so interesting when moshe dies his place of burial is noted as being across from ore and when you think about it it's like isn't that almost offensive to moshe that like to reference where he's buried as being in any way related to or like i'm sure you could have like said your latitude and longitude you don't need to talk about or but it's like he's there his final resting place like where moshe is going to be forever is across from or when you're across from something it's like that is what you're standing up against i am the alternative to that what i'm offering you is the torah that's an alternative to the values of or like when moshe dies you want to know what he symbolizes he's going to always be standing up against those or values those whatever his natural goals values and it's so perfect that this week's portion the half torah you know the we've talked about this in the past the half torah is the part that we read from the prophets that the sages said is a section from the prophet somehow profoundly related to the torah portion so this week's torah is from mikha chapter five and it says your hand will be lifted in triumph over your enemies and overall and your foes will be destroyed so okay it sounds good right this sounds like a a good prophecy and it says and in that day declares the lord i will destroy your horses from amongst you and demolish your chariots that will destroy the cities of your land and tear down your strongholds well that doesn't sound so good right is this a is this a good prophecy or a bad prophecy what's interesting is that hashem is promising what theoretically sounds like not such a great thing which is that he's going to destroy our chariots and our fortified cities right and you know and but then it's like why is he why is that a good thing hashem is saying there's going to come a time where you don't need those things and why will you not need those things because you're going to have built a society that's on a high enough level to be spiritually fortified in the way that bilam saw us when he looked at us that first time right so it's like in the end of the half torah later on it says the prophet michael says he has shown you what is good hashem has shown you what is good what does the lord require of you to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your god so you're there's going to come a time you won't actually need chariots and horses because you've fully internalized that acting justly and mercifully is the key walking humbly with hashem is the key you've taken enough personal responsibility to make such a society that the prophet is envisioning a time when the rest of the battles are going to become irrelevant they're going to become unnecessary just like bill and pointed out when we're doing our spiritual missions both vis-a-vis our relationship with hashem and in our relationship with others and in creating an exemplary society there's no point in even trying to defeat us so as we enter these three weeks i hope this is a really productive time for all of us to look at the places where things might be going wrong and to choose not to dwell on maybe who technically caused them and who's responsible but to use this time to see where we may have missed the mark where can we walk more humbly with hashem where can we take more responsibility to have mercy and to create justice in the places that we have control over to try to take the natural world that hashem has given us and not just let it stay where it is but just lift it up a little bit in the realm that we are able to take responsibility for so see you guys later have a great week hi my name is jeremy gimpel a lot of people want to know exactly what the land of israel fellowship is and what members receive when they join so let me explain the land of israel fellowship is a global online community with hundreds of members from over 40 countries around the world there are live sessions and gatherings that create a direct personal connection to the land of israel and the lovers of israel from around the world there's no online gathering that i'm familiar with that is connected to the land of israel that unites and brings together such a diverse group of people backgrounds and nationalities it feels like prophecy it feels like something we need in these times a window in to a better future on the horizon there's a divine unity we experience every week in our fellowship broadcast we heard these amazing teachings from an authentic hebrew and israel perspective and our jaws drop not only because they ring so true and are such a blessing because they are so consistent with what we believe these sunday morning gatherings are nothing less than a house of prayer for all nations cindy lo the united states of america the land of israel fellowship is an amazing resource for learning torah the bible and the prophets unfiltered and uncensored directly from the land of israel we've been studying torah for almost 20 years but we feel we are stepping into it more than ever in seeing new depth and dimensions to scripture we're encouraged more and more every week calinardell usa members receive access to all the archives in the library of teachings on every portion of the torah the biblical feast hebrew prayer prophecy sessions on the ancient wisdom of the prophets of israel to help us navigate through these turbulent times these sessions are so rich i re-listen to each and truly each session is the best one yet tehela is a tremendous asset and the teachings ari shares are so rich i've read the bible so many times and i've known the things you are teaching the hebrew understanding is what christians have missed for century sister georgian from germany the land of israel fellowship is truly unique because it's built upon personal relationships with the teachers of the fellowship myself rabbi arya bramwich and tahila gimpel every member has direct access to the staff 24 6 via email or direct whatsapp to ask questions to comment to connect directly to all the teachers and over the last years we've connected to some of the most beautiful people on the planet so if you want to find out more and join the land of israel fellowship you can click on the link below and if you want to try it out for just a month you can email fellowship at the land of israel.com and we'll hook you up i hope to see you shalom from the mountains of judea