The Redemptive Olives of Judea - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

I'll start with the arrival of the Germans but um but their arrival uh not their arrival this week but their arrival years ago when they first connected with us and they said that they wanted to volunteer to help us in any way that we needed out here but they reached out and they they said that they wanted to to uh you know they wanted to help us and that their children and grandchildren of Nazis many of them were and that their parents brought so much darkness and death to the Jewish people and they wanted to bring light and life and and building and uh you know we didn't have money to pay them but they said it wouldn't be needed that they were here to build and it was really on them they said that that we're the furthest settlement into Judea that this is where the world is the most against us so this is where they wanted to stand with us so in different visits out here they came back on really like an annual level other than Corona they worked on building The Retreat Center and they planted trees and they spent a day building our house of prayer baked knesset they built the entirety of the pergola next to the pool and all the while we really got to know each other and we really came to love each other and we learned together and we really connected and so they came back this year they're actually at the farm right now as we speak and the plan was that they would help us build the um you know the khupa deck Overlook right behind the House of Prayer you need to come and see it it's absolutely breathtaking that's one of the places when I take groups I take people I say that there's going to be a Hupa you know marriage canopy suspended eight meters out over the arugut valley you can like hear the gas and you can hear them compare that to like the Marriott of Teaneck New Jersey or or whatever and you know the song in every Jewish wedding you've seen the song of the prophets that say there will be in the hills of Judea in the outskirts of Jerusalem the bride and the groom their song dancing well there's nowhere that is more than Hills of Judea and the outskirts of Jerusalem literally than our uh than our Hoppa right there but the problem was that they came to build it but the wood didn't show up in time and so what we're going to have them do and so I remember we were reflecting together on what would be the best usage of their time and I said that perhaps you know after them coming and serving us so selflessly in years past perhaps it was our opportunity to serve them and they could just relax and enjoy the farm and pray and meditate and just be and they would not hear of it no no they are here to serve and not to be served and so uh the first days they were here we decided that they would harvest the olives they harvested our olives and they weren't alone they were working hand in hand with three members of our fellowship who spent a number of days here with us as well at the same time I'm sure many of you will recognize them there's Brandon and Ryan and Gala and it was just a pleasure and a blessing to have them here and join us as well here's a little video what are you doing we're harvesting olives and where are you doing that what a friend Ari up to you anyways this was all happening right in time they showed up right in time because the time to harvest the olives is right after the first reign of the season and that's exactly when the rain fell right when they were getting here and that's um so it was a no-brainer it was really exciting when I say it was a no-brainer it actually didn't strike me it struck Jeremy so good for you Jeremy it was a no-brainer for you but for me I didn't think about it but anyways there's some Poetic Justice also in seeing the the Germans in specific harvesting these olives because in the past years they themselves planted some of the very trees with olives they were harvesting so here's a short video of the Germans at the beginning of the harvesting Journey foreign I don't know if any of you have seen the uh you know Olive Groves but the trees are like bursting with olives and like haphazard scattered sort of ways and when normal people harvest the trees everybody's pretty much satisfied with getting most right but not this group they harvested maybe hundreds of trees and I'm telling you when I went up the next day to see if there were any that we could finish up and harvest with this little group I had I found a total of two olives left on the trees not two olive trees two olives that's how thorough they were I mean just so meticulous everything they do is so meticulous and thorough and on time like they didn't show up in time for one of the things and Jeremy and I looked at each other like did you tell them no did you tell them no we each thought the other told them they didn't know because if they didn't know they would have been there on time and they kept telling us you know how grateful and honored they were at the privilege to be able to harvest these trees because you know we explained to them that these were holy olives because you know as you all know we've talked about it before so this past year was the sabbatical year the shemitahu in which we let our Fields lie right they don't actually belong to us oh they belong to Hashem they belong to the entire people we don't work the land because it's the Sabbath it's the Sabbath of the land and although the sabbatical year ended at Rosh Hashanah the olives matured during that year so they are still considered kadushat-shvi they're still considered um you know the Holiness of the seventh year and there's a series of guidelines in how to handle this sacred produce a lot of people are very afraid around the degree of synchrony and sacredness and Holiness of this produce you can't just throw it out in the trash every drop of it every bit of it is Holy and you have to just let it anyways there's a lot of there's a lot of laws there but we decided to go ahead and not to be afraid a friend of mine told me he just keeps reminding himself isn't a problem it's not a problem some people are so afraid that they make it into a problem that they avoid but we decided to go ahead and make it into olive oil very carefully and reverently and there's a lot of laws around it and about it but we're learning them and we're going to have olive oil that has the sacred Holiness of the seventh year so uh so anyways I drove it to a special olive oil processing Shack uh that specializes in doing the the the holy olives of the seventh year they know all the laws and they're very careful about it it was in the valley of who can tell me what happened in for one organic delicious lollipop that is where David slayed Goliath that's right and so I arrived there and I unloaded the olives and we weighed it and it weighed 382 kilograms that's a lot that's a picture of the olives on that scale and um and now they say that approximately 15 of the weight of the olives is what you get in oil but I haven't picked up the oil yet so we'll just have to wait and see how much we got but I remember wondering as I was unloading the olives if the oil from this batch of holy olives picked by these holy Germans you know as we said many of them being the descendants of Nazis if perhaps some of this oil it was it's just a thought that I had that perhaps some of this oil would perhaps be used in the near tamid of the beramic dash and the Eternal Flame of the Holy Temple because while I couldn't exactly put my finger on it something felt like it really could be for like what is redemption if not the elevation of the greatest darkness that we've experienced into the greatest light imaginable right the more profound the darkness the greater and more Illuminating the light so if I were picking what oil went into that eternal flame in the Holy Temple I would definitely nominate this oil so and by the way that seems to be one of the greatest themes of this fellowship and also of the our mission in the world is to elevate light from Darkness