The Power of Restraint - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

but this week i i want to um i want to dive into something else because that you know it was difficult for me to choose what i wanted to discuss on this parsha because there's so much to talk about but jeremy asked me to share about a certain process that i'm going through regarding uh my own quest for self mastery right on on my quest for chuva repentance because that's what self mastery is because as you know my friends we've been through enough to know that repentance is not just relegated to the high holidays or the days of atonement but it's really a lifelong mission excuse me um as rav cook says right the journey of chuva begins in the physical domain with our physical bodies and it was hard to say no to jeremy uh regarding his request that i talk about this because he was actually a significant part of my inspiration on this critical critical journey for myself because i'm getting up there you know we're getting up there we're getting older and our health is not something we could just take for granted and i'm getting started late and wash is a year and a half and please god will be blessed with more children and so i want to be there for them so i i owe jeremy a lot for that you know he wakes up at 4 30 a.m and he goes running and he does that in the cold and the dark it doesn't matter what and then he jumps in an ice cream freezer every day i've seen him do it i've actually seen him forgive me i need to take a drink of losing my voice [Music] i've seen him actually break the surface of the ice in order to get in the water and then he jumps in a microwave okay he's either a psychopath or he's a rebbe unfortunately i know him well enough enough to know that he's a rebbe he's a rebbe he's he's one of my great rebbies in the world so when i looked at the parsha i saw that this was actually the perfect parsha to start opening up and letting you in on this journey because i wanted to share it with you i wanted to open up with it i just didn't know if i was far enough into it yet if i had the courage the vulnerability um but i thought this was a good one because we don't know much about yitzhak about isaac from the text of the torah itself but one of the keys to yitzchak's very essence is very much fueled the journey that i'm about to share with you so um like like many of you i have lofty goals and i've tried different approaches to achieve these goals and while i've been successful with some of them i have others i have failed with i fail that i fail that again and again and again and i tend to sabotage myself in any sign of success and if it's um it's sometimes it's hard to figure out why and the the the only thing i'm proud of regarding these failures is that i'm still at it is that i haven't quit and inspiring my resilience regarding these are the words of our sages sadiq no the righteous falls seven times and continue to stand up again and i i aspire in my life to try to be as righteous as i can and the number seven by the way i've been told is not the number seven but it includes seven and up it means many many many that's what seven means and um and believe me i've been i've fallen many more than seven times now as you remember this past summer i had a few really hard weeks and i shared those weeks with you i shared that journey with you whether you liked it or not i just had to be transparent and you just were so loving and so responsive i really feel like we bonded together between me and you guys during that time and many of you reached out and really helped me through it and i'll never forget that what we went through together and jeremy was in america and uh wasn't there for me like all the times i really need him most i'm just kidding now jeremy's there for me but anyways it was intensive it was intensive and i remember i was talking to a friend of mine on the phone i believe he's a rabbi but i'm not sure jeremy without saying his name is he a rabbi you don't know if he's a rabbi anyways he's definitely one of my rabbis and he was sharing such valuable wisdom with me and i said you know you should really be a therapist and he said to tell you the truth i am a therapist so i said i never knew that about you and the truth is i've never had a personal therapist but uh i'm going through a rough time so let's do it and so he started and we started doing that together and he was really helping me and as often happens when you're going through a rough time you feel like it's going to last forever but in just a few weeks it passes and that's what happened here but i said to him you know brother i want to keep this up it can only help so even if it's not therapy right let's just call it life coaching advice a student talking with review and so we started our work together and we're going over my dreams and goals and aspirations and trying to balance everything and we got to one of my great challenges that i've been struggling with most of my life and that's what i perceived at least was the challenge and that was my weight i've never been super overweight but it's always been a thing since i'm a kid it's always been a thing and while i know that there were ways i was approaching it and thinking about it that were causing self-sabotage i could never put my finger on it i could never figure it out and during one of the first sessions my dear friend therapist reby life coach whatever you call him he put his finger right on it at least i mean if it wasn't it right he definitely got me closer so sharing with him my goals and talking about the weight thing right the atkins and the keto and the paleo and the intermittent fasting jeremy i can't even talk to him about it anymore he's like okay 20 years of this i'm done just keep your weight to yourself keep it to yourself um you know all these ideas uh of from the like the paleo the keto it just felt like i was treading water and never really getting there and then he said he said all right it seems to me like your goals are off it seems like your purpose shouldn't be to lose weight but much more importantly to prove something to yourself to prove to yourself that you are a man of integrity that you're able to set a goal and stick to it that is the purpose in and of itself it's not your weight it's not your speed it's not your cardio and it's not your strength it's to prove your integrity to yourself and i i mean just like you know it that penetrated deeply and i realized like there there's definitely truth to what he's saying so they said okay all right here's what you should consider doing set a goal right something ambitious ambitious but realistic one thing that you'll stick to in order to prove to yourself that you're a man of your word and after a little bit of thinking i said okay you know what my goal is that i will eat only between 12 meaning noon and 7 pm for 90 consecutive days 90 consecutive days not one bite of anything outside of that window no matter what so my thinking was that most of my damage i do at night but i'll tell you it's like that's what i do nighttime eating and um and so this way i can really eat what i want but during the hours from 12 to 7 p.m in the middle of the day cookies cake pizza i just try not to be a schmendrick about it but i can be if i want to be and it was hard at the beginning and i would wake up every hour in the middle of the night and i would drink bubbly water i would then use the restroom because i've been drinking bubbly water the hour before so it was throughout the night using the restroom drinking bubbly water and this is like a week straight is this too much information forgive me we're family here maybe this won't be a public uh sharing documentary with the world won't be a highlight but anyways for about a week i was doing this and my body started to adapt and it felt good to have impulses uh and and these physiological impulses to have them and to overcome them to procrastinate them to push them off i can always eat tomorrow at noon whatever i wanted to eat that night i felt like my soul was emerging from the dust and i was starting to take control of my own and the first three weeks i actually messed up when shabbat came around i didn't plan it right and plan the window right and i just started again started again new check marks started again right at the beginning and i've lost over 30 pounds i went i had i started at 246 and i just weighed in at 214. 214. that's like 14 kilos i don't know i didn't do the math but i haven't been this low in years and it's really because hashem sent me a messenger who was able to guide me and help me realize that the goal is integrity not weight loss the goal is is restraint right it's not my pant size and um and hashem also gave me the strength and the resolution and the ability to see things differently and to be true to that truth and i remember hearing someone once say that discipline is what it looks like when your higher desires rules rule over your lower desires right when your higher desires rule over your lords it takes work right it takes remembering there are times i want to forget there are even times that jeremy says all right let's go out to dinner let's grab a bite no it's okay you can have it at 7 30 p.m because you it is actually daylight savings time he said this he said this it's daylight savings time and you could do it and i said no no jeremy no jeremy sitting on my shoulder the evil impulse jeremy i'm not listening to you and he's like you know what i'm proud of you and um there are times i go to a barbecue and i wrap up chicken poppers and foil and i eat them the next day but it's barzel it's iron it's non-negotiable it's unreasonable and it's been liberated because um you know rabbi abraham joshua heschel he said that self-respect is the fruit of discipline that the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself and that my friends is the deepest essence of yitzhak because out of all the forefathers we really know the least about him this was his parsha but what do we know about him we know that he was willing to sacrifice it all and the talmud actually tells us tells us about a story a conversation right that happened between yitzhak and yishmael this was before the incident where abraham offered him up on the top of harimoria he said here's the story right one day ishmael was boasting to isaac that he was circumcised at the age of 13 and that he did not protest and that was an advantage over isaac who had been too young to protest at the time of his circumcision and isaac replied you think that sacrificing one organ makes you better than me if god said to me sacrifice yourself before me i would not hold back right and he didn't god brought him to that exact test and he passed it with flying colors his father was going to sacrifice him on the altar and the sages said that at the moment he asked his father what they were going to be offering where's this sacrifice and his father abraham said god's going to provide the sacrifice it was at that moment that isaac knew the iditch knew that he was going to be the sacrifice nonetheless the torah says that they went to the mountain unified in heart and in mind and in mission so yitzhak loved hashem so much that he was able to restrain right to restrain the deepest impulse that man has which is the impulse to survive the impulse to live and that's why i'm sure jeremy will explain it later because he's been getting into these concepts of the attributes and such a beautiful and illuminating and inspiring way you know every day he gives these classes to the shepherdesses and i've been going to them not to contribute but just to learn from him really it's been so beautiful it's been so powerful and so jeremy will talk i'm sure about the attribute that yitzhak has embodied this attribute of gevorah of self-restraint of self-control and these um you know these translations they really don't do it full justice the idea of gevorah is so much deeper than that but you have to start the translation somewhere all right so there's so much to share regarding the life of yitzhak but fortunately this portion transitions seamlessly to the next week's portion so we can dive into it further together right after i tell you my version of the chicken story and the horror story which i think is worth tuning in just for that but until then i want to bless us all that we should be able to reveal the divine light within ourselves by expressing these great attributes of our forefathers right the the gevorah the self-restraint of yitzhak and by mastering our bodies and our speech and our deeds and by controlling our impulses may we reveal hashem within ourselves and within the entire world as the masks are coming off and much of the world is turning not only against israel but yes against the jewish people if you feel different if your love for israel is growing deeper and stronger if you're thirsting to cleave to the nation of israel and to the god of israel if you're thirsting to learn authentic torah from jews in judea then the land of israel fellowship is for you hundreds of individuals and families from around the world come together on zoom every week in what can only be described as a fellowship of love friendship of learning and praying and belonging a fellowship really unlike any other it's more than just a movement it's a family to learn more about the land of israel fellowship click on www.thelandofisreal.com backslash fellowship or send an email to fellowship at the land of israel.com love and blessings from judea