The Desert Journey of Our Lives - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

and so we had shabbat followed by shavuot on sunday so we missed the last fellowship so a lot many of you have reached out and told me about your shavuot experience uh in personal communications which i love and if you haven't shared yet i would i would love to hear but i want to take this opportunity to share with you about mine because it was uh it was definitely the most unique chevron i've ever had and while i was bracing as i went into it for it to possibly be the least spiritual looking back i see that without a question it was the most spiritual uh so usually on shavuot right every single year i can remember since i was a boy i was up all night learning torah and this year shayna and i we really did have great plans we were going to the nearby settlement of a front we were going to stay with close friends you know in their little guest house and we had these different tour classes lined up and meals lined up with good friends that we don't often get to see and we were unusually excited about it and then as you know my father was hospitalized and it was taking different scary turns and uh and going into shavuot and shabbat i i realized i was going to be by my father's side in the hospital in jerusalem my mother could have possibly done to my sister but i realized i was really the best fit for this and he was in such a delicate situation that we couldn't leave him for a moment so i didn't attend services and i didn't go to torah classes at all there were even times where like i didn't know should i violate shabbat or or the holiday for this he wanted like his bed adjusted a little bit that's not really to save his life should i violate shabbat for that and i just decided you know what for my father's comfort i'm willing to throw away my entire world to come and it felt right and it felt true and anything he wanted me to do anything i was there to do that for him and you know i slept when he slept and i was uh i was able to get away and lie down at night time but i was in the hospital the whole time uh the whole time with him and i needed to be energized and alert throughout the day to help him so i needed to sleep for every moment of the night that i could so there was no all-night learn-a-thon for me and in the hours leading up to shavuot i realized that you know most of the time shavuot is about learning torah all night but this shavuot would not be about learning torah right it would be about about living torah about living the ten commandments about living the commandments of honor thy father and mother and i wouldn't trade the time i had with my father over shavuot for all the money in the world for all the money in the world the moments that i had because in the moments of torah learning and just conversing and being together that we had without devices without distractions when he was like aware and conscious and alert the moments we did have together i really felt the shrine between us we really there was so much healing there was so much light there was so much there was there was there was laughter there were tears tears between me and my father it was really powerful on a personal level i felt like i was finally finally able to be the son for him that he deserves i never felt like i was able to really come anywhere near to the level of honor i owe him compared to the incredible father he's always been and continues to be and may continue to be for many more years to come just the father that he is for me and i'm so grateful that when that opportunity presented itself that i grasped it firmly right with with both hands and i didn't let it go and i'm grateful that hashem blessed me with the awareness and the acceptance to embrace this new different experience this unexpected situation um and to to grasp it rather than to resist it or god forbid to miss it all together due to a lack of spiritual flexibility or a predetermined and preconceived expectations of the way things should be right those expectations that we often make into idols and cause us to miss out on the beautiful opportunities of life i could have been like yo my mother will be with them my sister will be with them they'll figure it out and then i'll really step up next week i'll step up next week once i strengthened myself by studying torah all night or something like that i could see having those thoughts and and i think in truth you know that that that's one of the great themes of this week's torah portion you know we see in the parsha the complexity of the camp right of the tribes of israel when they would move from one stop to another stop throughout the desert the cloud would move right indicating that it's time to get up and move and we're talking about three million people right the kohanim would blast their hatsothroat these loud blasts short blasts different combinations of blast that indicated to do different things you know it's complicated just getting your family out of the house when i think about jeremy's upcoming speaking tour like how do they do it they have six kids and they're going through out of marriage it's a lot right just imagine the complications involved in his family let alone three million people and the the detailed instructions of how to deconstruct and transport and reconstruct it it's a lot you know that you you've read the torah portion you know what went into it so my friend michael hyman brought this verse to my attention so really the credit goes to him but he pointed out that the key verse that we need to focus on in this portion and really in our lives this verse is one of the keys to to happiness one of the greatest keys to really being happy in our lives and serving god with all of our hearts it's in this torah portion in chapter 9 verse eighteen it says alpi hashem israel at the commandment of the lord the people of israel journeyed and at the commandment of the lord they can't as long as the cloud abode upon the tabernacle they rested in their tents right by the word of hashem's mouth it was time to camp and by hashem's word it was time to move and you know as we know from chronicling their journeys there were 42 different encampments 42 stops and the founder of khasidu write the baal chamter he says that we each have 42 different encampments in the journeys of our lives 42 different times that we need to pick up that we need to uproot everything not only our possessions often not our possessions at all but our expectations our firmly held beliefs of the way things are supposed to be right 42 different stops that we each have in our lives different relationships maybe or jobs or missions or purposes i don't know 42 different sets of expectations that's the best way i can sort of bring it together and as the text tells us there were times that they were in the in a camp for one day one day right sometimes a week a month a year one of the stops in the desert was 19 years right if you were born on the first day of that encampment that one stop was your entire life until you're nearly of army age you could even be skeptical that you were traveling at all maybe you just arrived your whole life you're in that one stop or one day right we said there one day imagine that unpacking everything and setting up the camp in the most exhaustive and exhausting and precise way and then the next day the trumpets blast and it's time to undo it all and move on without having any idea why right the degree of self-nullification to embrace this journey i mean it must have been immense although the more i think about it i'm not sure it's any more immense than the self nullification that each of us need to go through in the journey of our own lives with the level of surrendered hashem that we that we need to have i don't know i've just as i was thinking about this and going through this parsha and this idea i was thinking about so many of you and the pain and the expectations and the grief and the challenges and how you've just you know infused it with faith on this journey just intuitively filling it with faith but it's it's hard you know it's hard it's that one day you're that one stop but but they really in the desert they had to feel in the most real way that they were the sheep and hashem was the shepherd and and this you know he was sharing is one of the deepest reasons for human pain right hashem knows where we're supposed to be and when we're supposed to be there and when it's time to move on and often we don't want to we're scared right we're scared or we're not ready and uh and we should really this is something we shouldn't be ashamed of it it's part of the human condition it's part of the way we're wired but this is so much of where our pain comes from but the journey through the desert really is no less of a lesson to us than it was to them because sometimes we become married to a particular idea to a particular situation to a specific perspective or philosophy and we don't want to move on because we're married to this thing right we we have it figured out we finally have it figured out we finally made sense of this thing and now everything is going to change right you know often quite often quite often that which we hold dearest and most attached to is exactly what we're called upon to leave behind the degree of self-nullification right of of emunah right of faith and of betafun of trust is so immense and that's what's demanded of us that's the greatness of the opportunity these stops on our journey however scary or jarring or challenging they may be for us that is the opportunity for us not to be married to these or those ideas or perspectives or expectations but to be married only to hashem that's why a lot of the songs over shavuot that we sing are saying to the shava the songs of the wedding because it's really a wedding where we are married to hashem on for for us to do what hashem wants us to do and to go where hashem wants us to go even if we have to unpack and repack it and one day we'll do it that's the muscle that the journey of our lives and our journey through the desert builds within us the muscle of trust and the muscle of faith and we even see this muscle being built up really through the through this portion through failure after failure on the on the journey itself right we see in this torah portion again i'm gonna i was gonna share a lot of them but i don't have the time and i don't wanna eat up jeremy's fellowship but we see this with the medona mitoni right the complainers who had the chutzpah the audacity to complain against moshe and really against hashem that they wanted meat and they missed egypt they no longer wanted the holy manna the holy food hashem provided them with they were so attached to the idea of the meat of egypt they were so married to this concept of the melons and the leaks of their servitude that they didn't have the eyes or the trust or the faith to embrace the reality that hashem was blessing them with and the idols of their own expectations and again my friends this is not to judge them right we have all been there i know that i have i still go there sometimes but that's what the journey is all about it's about growth growth quite often from failure from falling on our faces again and again and again but never to stop getting up and seeking hashem again with all of our hearts and all of our souls reaching higher standing atop of our countless pile of failures so all right jeremy door i'm going to i'm going to wind it together here because there's a lot more examples of this in the torah portion from miriam speaking about moses to it but anyways just throughout throughout the desert of their journey and throughout the desert of our lives throughout the entire torah portion throughout the whole torah all of jewish history our history this is what it's all about by the word of hashem we travel and by the word of hashem we in camp and i'm just so grateful that hashem gave me the eyes going into shavuot to give me the eyes and the consciousness and the awareness to embrace the opportunity to discard my predetermined expectations because i did have moments of of doubt not real doubt but really little bits of doubt in between shayna who strongly confirmed what i knew in my heart even though that meant that she these great plans that she was excited about would be canceled and she would now be with a toddler and an infant without my help and jeremy right confirming that the decision to be in the hospital was what did you say jeremy is definitely not the decision you'll regret if you make any decision you won't regret that one that's what jeremy told me sometimes he says a thing and it just pierces my heart but ultimately i felt that in my heart too and i want to bless us all that we should internalize this truth that ultimately we are married to hashem and hashem alone that all of our preconceived notions and expectations are okay right we're human but the moment they conflict with what hashem actually gives us in our lives we're able to discard them and move on to the next stop that hashem has in store for us and it's not always easy it's never easy but when we try to follow our show with all of our hearts he often gives us the eyes to see how perfect this new stop is for us in our journey and how without it we would never be able to achieve the greater level of closeness to hashem that really our journey in this world is all about so anyways thank you so much my friends for your blessings and prayers and support and being there for me and my family every step of the way my father is actually miraculously getting really better he's really really getting better and i have it's miracles like he wasn't able to walk for four months now he can stand up and take steps i told him in the prayers in the morning who straightens the bend thank you for showing the strength of the event that's you he said that to you my father said believe me that blessing has been in my mind in my heart and and so may we continue my friends too to hold each other up as we journey through the different stops in the in the desert journey of our lives love you all so much and thank you so much and thank you jeremy 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.thelandofisral.com backslash fellowship or click on the link below to join thank you you