The F's That Make Your Life: Elul Workshop - Jeremy Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey shalom everybody great to see you we're both broadcasting from the same computer so that was our smooth transition um i i wanted to talk today about i mean i guess it's just in the air it's really about returning so arya's invited this conference about returning to the land of israel we're in the month of el now which is just a movement of return now the jewish tradition has this amazing ability to sort of guide us on the path in tune with the time and every single day of the month of elul we say a very specific psalm that king david wrote so the prophets gave over this secret saying if you want to tap into the power of elu you want to tap into the power of transformation of realignment of return then there is a specific psalm that you should meditate on a specific psalm that you should say every day from the beginning of a little all the way until the end of the holidays and that is psalm 27 and you know every year i say it almost every day if i can and every year i find something a little bit deeper a new insight and it's like gosh the depth is just so overwhelming that king david was able to write such beautiful lessons encoded in his poetry and so this year our oldest son lavi went up to yeshiva he finished high school and he's now going to spend between a year to two years depending on what army unit he gets into and he's just learning torah now he's just developing his inner world before he kind of goes out into the real world and of course he's trying to get into this elite cyber technology unit where he's gonna have to go to the technion for four years to get a degree in physics and computer electrical engineering i don't know what he's doing he's too smart for us but for the next year and a half he's just learning torah and developing his inner world and i actually went up there on his first day and dropped him off and we learned this psalm together in his yeshiva and this is just such a beautiful insight that i want to share with the fellowship and what i learned with my oldest son love me it's psalm 27 and if we can get it up on the screen it's specifically these two verses that come right after each other verses three and four and here's what it says though an army may encamp against me my heart shall not fear the war may rise against me in this i trust one thing i've asked of the lord that i will seek that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life to behold the pleasantness of the lord and to inquire in his templar to visit in his temple and so i just want to focus right here can we put the screen back up there for just a minute there was one word that i underlined where if you read the poetry i'm just asking a simple question here all of these terrible things might happen to me an army may encamp against me the enemies will rise up against me in this i trust what what is this that he trusts in i want to know that this is the thing that king david is trusting in he doesn't tell us what it is and then the next verse it says one thing i request of god just one thing i'm asking i just want to sit in the house of the lord it's like okay i mean what does he trust in so rasheed and then midrash said that king david he's trusting in the very next verse the next verse is what his trust is in can we get back up on the screen and let's read it together now because it's just peculiar what is the midrash trying to teach us if we can get the psalm 27 back up on the screen so it's saying that the midrash says that what is david trusting in he's trusting in his question one thing i've asked he's asking a question i just i one thing he's seeking that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life that's what he's trusting and it's like in hebrew it's even more it's like to ask why he's asking of god he's he's requesting of god i mean usually a question is like well am i going to get it am i not going to get it i really want it but i'm not sure and here david said no no that's what i'm trusting in say well what does that mean and i think the deep insight into that psalm is saying that what was king david's one request it wasn't financial success it wasn't power it wasn't fame and fortune and it wasn't glamour he had one thing that he trusted in because everything can be taken away from us our health god forbid can be taken away from us our families can be taken away from us our wealth can be taken away from us king david says there's one thing that i can rely on and this i trust in this i have total be tahom i just want to be close to god the one thing that i'm asking or my deepest desire is to be close to hashem that can't be taken away from me i can be close to hashem in the caves near the arugula farm as i'm hiding from the king of israel i can be close to god in my home i can be close to god in my work i can be close to god if i'm fired and as i'm walking with god in my life it doesn't matter where he takes me if that's my goal i can trust in that i have nowhere to go and that can never be taken away from me and that's really i think what this month is all about it's absolutely realigning ourselves because this year i've had focus on building the farm and settling the land and starting this farm and helping that and doing this like wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute we all want to accomplish a lot in this world but ultimately the inner inner inner core of our being our deepest desire our ultimate goal the fundamental prism through which everything else needs to come from needs to be our real goal is to be close to hashem our really goal is to walk with him in our lives and so the month of elul is just opening the doors and saying okay wait a minute it's time to fully return to the core of my being to the one thing that i can trust shift hashem to sit in the house of hashem hashem's house when this world is his house just to be in his presence to rely on him to walk with him and so in last fellowship it's kind of like a survivor's guide to the month of el how we want to do this i said that's who we want to be and what we want to do with our life what wants to be in our days and then the last one was how we want to live and so i remember a deep beautiful teaching that's so simple some of the deepest teachings are just really simple to remember and it was taught to me by one of my friends i mean it's like a rabbi friend a mentor really his name is rabbi daniel lapid and he said listen if i have to give over a teaching to my children i want to give over three fs i want them to know these three things and that's my job and i added on two more f's to rabbi lapin's teaching and this is just if you you're still working on the ingredients that you want in your life so i've boiled them down to five f's faith family finances fitness and fun what does that mean faith it's like okay what are we doing in this world keep that scroll up thank you very much keep the slide up faith what are we doing here what are we learning this year in what aspect on our journey do we want to grow in faith how much more knowledge the torah we want to learn the prayers the time we want to dedicate to that family there's so much to think about and i think that the key as we go through these f's is that's what king david teaches us stay away from evil and do good so what i'm doing is i'm thinking each one of these categories which are really simple i want to take one step away from the bad and one step toward the good and so in my family practice with my wife and with my children what's one thing that i really want to try to stop doing and one thing that i want to start practicing and then in finances what am i doing tonight sadaka what am i doing with my money like things that i do want to do more of things that i want to do less of fitness our diet and our exercise it's like our life it's our body it's like this is the temple for our soul and now the last one it's not really fun but i couldn't think of another f i really want to make sure that i get the last one in and make it clear what exactly i'm talking about but the last f is in some ways the destiny of every person and it's something that hashem puts in our hearts that we just love and we don't know why we love it we just love it because god put it there and that interest and that curiosity and that sort of magnet that's pulling us toward whatever that is is really kind of a pillar of fire that's guiding where we should go i don't know why i love the land of israel i love nature and i love animals i don't know i've always loved the land of israel as far as i can remember i've always loved nature and i've always loved animals and so i'm building a life here out in the edge of jewish settlement in the land of israel surrounded by animals and in nature and so each person some people they love reading some people they love i everyone has their own passions that's really what it's about it's like what do if if i had shabbat in my whole life i should i don't have to do anything i don't need to work i don't need to fix anything i don't need to change anything what do i do when i just want to do what i love that's the fun that's like just life for life in hebrew that's what we would say we're just life for the sake of life what do we love about this life that makes life amazing and then think okay this year usually those things they get marginalized like one day i'll have time to travel one day i'll have time to do what i really want to do now i'm busy paying my bills and raising my kids and doing this and doing that no no no this is the time to really say you know what this year i really wanna i loved writing i loved poetry i love whatever it is that people love to do is to sort of restock and it's so easy five f's that's like so easy to remember faith family finances fitness and fun it's like if we open those up into our heart and say listen what do i want ultimately shift hashem i just want to be close to hashem in my life and these are the five access points the five most important things in my life how do i bring god into those five elements of my life and this is the time to set the stage this is the time where it's like you know when you swing at a golf ball if you're just off by five degrees by the time that golf ball gets down the range it's gonna be like hundreds of meters off its target so going into the new year you really want to get as much clarity as you can for what we want in our life what we don't want in our life and so i'm making a public declaration that i was nervous to make but now it's time i have been struggling with a certain element in my life for almost as long as i can remember and akiva my second oldest son came to me and he said you know abba you know what the real job of the evil inclination is and i'm like no what's the i mean isn't just kind of like to to seduce us to kind of pull us down to challenge us i didn't know what he wanted to say he's like no but what's the checkmate when does the evil inclination really win and i'm like i don't know it's like this is what i learned in yeshiva this week when we give up that's what he wants when there's some elements in our life where we're just like you know i just i just give up that's absolute victory for the evil inclination and for years i have been a slave to my love of sugar just a slave i just love i have a sweet tooth and i just can't help it i just love sweet things i love sweetness in my coffee loves to cook kept and donuts and you know i exercise so i'm able to sort of maintain relatively uh like i'm in good shape but what can i do i just know that it's actually corroding my insides in really unhealthy but more than that why am i a slave to something that's outside of me i just want to liberate myself from that and so when i talk about sur mera the assetto the one thing that came to me throughout my trip in the united states throughout my speaking tour was that this year please god i'm going to war against my evil inclination and what i'd really just kind of given up but that's just what i am that's just who i am i'm just the guy that eats sugar no i'm not going to let the evil inclination have its victory over me and so this year it is a public declaration that i am going to take control back and let my soul be the one that guides my life in my fitness and in my diet that i do my very best to only have minimal minimal minimal amounts of sugar i'm really gonna i'm working on it so far this l i am doing you should ask tahila and she never she's a tough grader she's always giving me bad grades for my attempts at being better she would even say i think that she's pretty proud of me and so i'm just showing you my internal work so i now have my sur mera that i'm that's just a practical example as i'm going through my f's i'm like gosh on my fitness on my health and well-being what do i want to step away from and what do i want to step towards so it's just an example of just going through them and slowly but surely making practical changes to allow our souls to shine a little bit more because as our shoals sign as our souls shine really what's happening is that we open ourselves up for divine providence we allow god to really take hold of our own life because our soul and him are connected and the more that we are connected to our soul the more we're connected to him and so as ari is preaching the return of the nation of israel to the land of israel here i am kind of bringing the encounter of just our own individual returns to ourselves to our souls to letting our souls really shine and so we should be blessed this elul to slowly but surely go through those lists and just make one step closer one step closer and then who knows by the end of all of those steps we may actually make it all the way to the promised land so have a beautiful week and have a beautiful ella we'll see you soon 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 and seeing new depth and dimensions to scripture we're encouraged more and more every week calen ardell 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 centuries 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 bramwitz in tehillah 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 you