The Blessings to Come - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

this is rabbi riskin who jeremy and i are very close with and this uh the rendition i actually took um directly from my dear friend rabbi thule weiss anyway so rabbi riskin told the following story about rabbi yocucio halbersten who is the spiritual leader of the sons-thousenberg sect of ascetic jews and rabbi halbersten's wife 11 children and the vast majority of his followers were murdered by all the nazis while he was incarcerated himself in in auschwitz and several different concentration camps and after the war he survived miraculously and he resettled in brooklyn with a small remnant of his hasidan you know who survived as well and they took over the bait moshe hospital in bedford stuyvesant neighborhood and they converted to a large study hall and a synagogue anyways rabbi risking related i was a young boy he left his home on hart street in brooklyn to uh to from shabbat this shabbat the shabbat of parshat kitavo the year was 1952 and he wanted to pray with the klausenberg kasim he's a 12 year old boy he wanted adventure he wanted to experience the acidic prey and perhaps even meet rabbi halberstam himself anyways the young rabbi riskin who was not a rabbi at the time he was the young little he did he did this knowing that the torah reading included both the blessings god promises for following his commands which are beautiful but uh but also the 53 verses that describe the punishments in store for israel when they forsake hashem's teaching he was just like a little bit of a taste in there we're not going to go into into everything if you don't obey the lord your god and all those commandments and statutes then these curses shall come upon you god will smite you with consumption and with a fever and with an inflammation and with an extreme burning and with the sword god will turn your reign to dust and it will come from the skies and destroy you and your corpses shall be meat for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth god will smite you with madness and blindness in the confusion of the god will bring a nation from afar against you from the ends of the earth swooping down like an eagle a nation whose language you don't understand a haughty arrogant nation who has no respect for the old or mercy for the young and there's so much more it's it's a nightmare now jewish tradition mandates i don't know if you all know this um but if you go to any synagogue you hear this even till today that you read these verses with a low voice like even a whisper in synagogue you can barely hear it that's the tradition reading these verses in this way i find that it makes it even more dramatic and shocking um but uh you know just makes these scary verses just more terrifying i'm not sure that was the intention but either way um that was the custom and the man reading from the tour that day and rabbi klausenberger shul in the synagogue did so in in a soft whispered voice and the young rabbi riskin the young was shocked to hear rabbi halberstein jeremy have you heard the story robert halberstein he's standing at the lectern he's a and he commands in the stern whisper a stern whisper he says which means louder and the man reading from the torah stopped in confusion he was deliberating a few moments he was torn between the tradition and his understanding of what the rabbi seemed to be commanding him to do and the congregation was also confused could it be that the rabbi who's an expert in jewish law and jewish tradition was ordering them to break this tradition so the torah reader he resumed his chanting from the torah in sort of a whisper uh you know adhering to the tradition and then rabbi halberson began banging banging on the lectern with his fist raising his voice and yelling in yiddish hector i said louder read these verses out loud we have nothing to fear this is what rabbi alvarez on the screen we have nothing to fear we've already experienced the curses let the master of the universe now hear them let him know that the curses have already befallen us and let him know that it's time for him to send the blessings so the rabbi turned his face to the wall of the synagogue probably most likely hiding his weeping while the torah reader continued this time in a loud voice chanting chanting those curses and a loud voice to this stunned and confused congregation riskin included this is how rabbi iris can actually describe the experience he said i was trembling with tears cruising down my cheeks my body was bathed in sweat i had heard that the rebbe lost his wife and 11 children in the holocaust but he refused to sit shiva to mourn for them because he couldn't spare a moment from the task of trying to save jewish lives by enabling them to leave europe he himself refused a visa for america until the majority of his own his own followers had been saved his words seared into my heart that's what rabbi riskin said and so after the conclusion of the prayer service rabbi halbertson addressed the whole congregation he said my beloved brothers and sisters pack up your belongings we must make one more move hopefully the last one god promises that the blessings which must follow the curses will now come they will come but not from america the blessings will only come from israel it's time for us to go home and uh he was true to the word you know rabbi alvarez then led his followers to israel and he founded a new community called kiryat sans which is in natanya founded in 1960 it's still there until today and so rabbi riskin he was 12 when he heard these words and he credits them those words that experience to his own courageous and historic move in which he took many of his congregants on their own aliyah journey to settle the barron hills of judea now to this day he's still the chief rabbi of a front he's established a whole network of high schools and jeremy went to his high school actually so you can thank rabbi riskin for jeremy or blame him i'm just kidding you know colleges and graduate programs and seminaries and rabbinical schools and and all of it he credits to that faithful shabbat of our parsha in the synagogue in brooklyn of rabbi halverstadt this highlight was taken from the land of israel fellowship every week hundreds of families from literally around the world come together on our live zoom sessions to strengthen each other to inspire each other and to learn torah from the land of israel in which we connect the dots between the bible the hebrew language and the confusing events of our times go to www.thelandvisual.com backslash fellowship or click on the link below to join thank you you