The Torah of Judea from Iowa! - Jeremy & Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

i wanna i just wanna share with you uh where we are we are in cedar falls iowa i have never been to iowa tehila has never been to iowa and we're in just the most beautiful place this is the home like retreat center that we were at this is the campus that's all around us and we sort of took this place that was organized by members of our fellowship and we spent a shabbat here and people from wisconsin and all over iowa i don't know 40 to 50 people it seemed like came here for pretty much the entire shabbat we were here and we learned together prayed together had kiddush together meals together tore a study together havdalah together this is and shabbos ends here like on monday it's like never ends it's like the longest shabbat it's like a full day into the night it's like until 10 o'clock at night and it was the first time tehila and i have ever done anything like that where we hosted a shabbat as a family last night eden our 12 year old was up i'm not exaggerating until one in the morning learning and talking and conversing and teaching and every little bit of information that she had to give over she has given over in the last i would say 28 to 30 hours just teach us blossoming being who she uh was destined to be and you know we've been out of israel now for two weeks and i'm gonna pass it over to teal in just a second but i just wanted to say just getting that little glimpse right now of the shiva bracha on the farm from bayeri's wedding and i'm missing that is really disappointing for us but then seeing those people with the ancient middle eastern instruments that are playing you know just that music in that scenery and then the idea that those aren't ashkenazi jews or sephardic jews those are kind of concepts that were made in the exile with people that were exiled to europe or exiled to the arab countries and those kind of traditions developed and now they're they're just judean and i really feel like somehow our lives have placed us at the cutting edge of god's move in the world of history that's unfolding that most places in israel you know you go to visit places of the past you go to visit old synagogues old churches old archaeological sites and you visit the history and the museums of israel and the ancient history and just the thousands and years of of all that's happened in that land and then just watching that video of the arugula farm just for that brief little moment it really felt like a snapshot into the future where there is no more ashkenazi and safari that whole thing of the exile that's already been dwindled away and melted into the jews that are just growing up in the land of israel speaking hebrew in the mountains of judea and it's as if like there's a museum into the future in the arugula farm where you can sort of experience the next step of biblical destiny and i really felt however weird this sounds we're in the mid america i've never been here before but it felt like we were touching into the future here as well that we were out here in the middle of the united states removed from the big cities outside in nature in this beautiful place and the righteous among the nations were pulled out of their different communities and cities and came together to celebrate a judean shabbat out here where it really felt like we had a little part of the aragoat farm in the land of israel here in the middle of iowa and somehow we've been blessed in this fellowship to not only celebrate the past but somehow be the first pioneers into a new future and that was just uh kind of touching on how similar and how different it is the arugula farm to iowa but at the same time we're sort of touching on this chapter this unfolding prophecy this sort of next step in the history of israel that's unfolding that just really touched my heart thank you for sharing that video of the shava brachar after the wedding all right taylor your turn thank you i agree with everything you're saying so we're having the most amazing trip and i feel like have you ever seen those guys on the beach where there's like you know garbage all over the beach and they're there with like some metal detector like looking for treasure that's how i feel our trip is in america we are driving through and there's a lot of you know there's a lot of stuff in america culturally going on but it's like we're navigating through with this it's like this spiritual metal detector as we're traveling through america and i feel like we are just picking up treasures everywhere we go but they are people treasures just the most precious people we got to meet amazing wonderful fellowship members in pennsylvania and in ohio and then between ohio and coming here to iowa we needed to stop over in chicago and i'm just sharing the story so to understand how much we're seeing hashem's perfect guidance in this trip just showing us exactly where we need to go along the way we decided we wanted some kosher food in chicago on the way over crossing to iowa we didn't do anything in chicago except for search through the 20 different kosher restaurants there to try to find a place to eat and we picked you know i went eeny meeny miny mo and ended up in this restaurant and we sit down to eat now i've been to chicago twice in my life and i only know one person in chicago some friend that i had when i was in high school and he lived in chicago and we lost touch after high school and 10 years ago jeremy was running a shabbaton in chicago it was my first time in chicago who shows up at the shabbaton this friend that was cool we took a selfie you know nice memories wonderful 10 years go by we come into this restaurant and who walks in the one person that i know in chicago who i haven't been in touch with for those 10 years or for the 10 years before i haven't been friends with this person for 20 years walks into the restaurant i said oh my god it's you this is my second time in chicago he said this is my first time in this restaurant i've never been here i just suddenly felt like coming here so we meet and every single jew that we've told along the way that we're coming to iowa said iowa what are you doing in iowa no one seems to know much about iowa and i tell him well we're on our way to iowa and he goes i know people in iowa i said you're the first jew to tell me that he's i know jewish farmers in iowa who used to live in the city and moved out with all of their children to start a farm i said you know our exilic alter egos we want to meet them he gives me the phone number we call these people we set to meet the next day turns out that this jewish farm we go to their website it's a jewish farm that's an educational farm get this guys with a swimming pool like what can the message be any louder they are on the way on the exact highway that we had that connects chicago to cedar falls where we are in iowa so on the way to cedar falls we stop and meet these jewish farmers the most amazing people we never ever would have possibly imagined that out in the middle of iowa there's a jewish family with 12 children where they bring all the jewish students that come around and bring them to teach them they do pool and parsha and they're learning to milk their own goats and make cheese and all the kind of same experiences that we're having just out here in the exile as we're kind of trying to connect people with the judean lifestyle and the ancient biblical ways while we're in israel they're doing it here in america trying to connect jews to just you know nature and the land and seeing hashem and so we were just so blessed that's just like one tiny example of the way that we feel we're being guided throughout this journey and we're so blessed to have this wonderful shabbat and to meet fellowship members and to hear how the fellowship is connecting them and how the fellowship is having is being a blessing in their lives so thank you to all of our friends for hosting us i wanted to say a few words about the torah portion a funny thing is that when you read this week's torah portion of balak my first impression i don't know if you get this too jeremy but is it bilaam kind of gets a bad rap you know if you ask any jewish child who this parasha is about they won't just say bilam they'll say bilaam harasha which means the evil bilam he's a prophet and he's always asking hashem what to do why does he get such a bad rap you know in this past parsha in we see that moshe didn't exactly listen to hashem when hashem said to speak to the rock he hit the rock and so he didn't get to go into the land because it's so important to listen to hashem and then right now on the following parsha you have bilaam and right before he makes this decision he asks hashem and he consults hashem again he should be a hero but hashem seems to be unpleased with him even his donkey seems to be doing better than him there's angry angels showing up and we call him evil bilam for generations upon generations so what could possibly be going on here and then you know i was thinking it's true that he's asking hashem what to do every step along the way but what is he asking hashem and hashem's guidance about he's asking hashem well should i help commit genocide jeremy and i once heard this comedian probably getting nervous as i'm telling this story i'm not going to tell the entire comedy routine but there was a comedian he was talking about you know his friend that was trying to understand why bad things are happening to him in his life and he says i don't understand why this is happening to me i'm a good person i don't do crime i've never been in prison and he said to his friend you're not supposed to do crime you're not supposed to be in prison that's not like a high level he's asking hashem if he should do genocide that's not a high level yeah great good congratulations you're asking hashem but before you can have a relationship with hashem maybe the torah is teaching us there needs to be a base of being a person with a strong understanding of right and wrong listening to hashem is not the first step listening to hashem can only happen that relationship can only happen if you built a solid internal compass of right and wrong avraham didn't just listen to hashem hashem said he's going to destroy stone he was like i know right and wrong hashem the judge of all the earth must do justice he knew right and wrong when hashem said to moshe that he was going to destroy the jewish people moshe wasn't just like oh yeah okay whatever you say hashem i'm listening to he was like no i'm going to throw myself under the bus before i let you kill the jewish people hashem has a relationship with us that's built upon a strong moral foundation of knowing right and wrong rabbi abraham yitzchak says you want to know a good yardstick a good litmus test if your piety or sense of piety is actually beloved to hashem try to imagine a world where you didn't have your piety would the world run better or worse if you're a person who thinks that their religious experience or their religious imperative sends them to go kill the fogel family or to go you know kill a girl in their bed consider the possibility that your piety is not so beloved to hashem if you could imagine that the world would be better and more kind and more loving and less uh evil without your piety then you might be going in the wrong direction so i thought that was just a beautiful message and it connected to me with the experience that we're having here on shabbat because every single person that we're meeting from the fellowship i feel i just feel so blessed i said jeremy how did we get blessed to have the holiest people aggregating around us from all over the nation each person that we spoke to is honestly and truly trying to listen to hashem in their lives but the amazing thing is that it's built upon such a solid foundation of goodness that speaks for itself that you can really feel that that relationship with hashem is true and good and beloved not like balaam's relationship with hashem but a relationship that's built on goodness i heard over this shabbat the words my adopted something more than i've heard in my entire life put together my adopted grandchild my adopted child my adopted everybody is working so hard to do the good you know i've heard more times people say when i was helping with this when i was volunteering with that when i was giving over to that when i was building for you know these people and the goodness just speaks for itself because you look around and you see people not one person who i spoke to has had an easy journey in life but every person is just you can see the blessings in the relationships in the family in the energy that people give off in the faith that they uh inspire among the people around them so i just with that wanted to end with my gratitude for getting to spend time with such wonderful people and to be inspired as we continue this guided journey throughout the united states bye guys all right so i i wanted to just really build on what tehela said that you know i think that tegela and i the sort of the covenant of our marriage was we want to be guided we want to live a life that's guided by god and wherever that takes us and it takes us out to the wilderness of the mountains if it takes us to the ends of middle america and iowa if we feel like hashem is leading us in that direction we're just going to try to be our best to be courageous and to just go off into the unknown and we've been blessed beyond measure and one of the most marvelous things about this shabbat is that there were so many people from the fellowship came but many of the people didn't know each other because one is from wisconsin one is from iowa and all of a sudden they all came together and i heard people say it's like we've never met but it feels like we've we're family it's like we immediately enter into best friend mode it's like we've we've known each other our whole lives and how amazing it's been to sort of weave this tapestry together and then at the end of shabbat when we did bella i couldn't help but feel as though the words of isaiah in the most beautiful of all messianic prophecies was coming to pass with us because what the tehillis said is like the foundation of that prophecy and isaiah talks about the nations and he says those among the nations do not say this is in isaiah chapter 56 right at the very beginning let not the stranger say do not say hashem will utterly separate me from his people and let not the baron won't say behold i'm a shriveled tree do not think that because you're outside of israel that you're scattered among the nations that your house somehow separated from israel separated from the jewish people no no no you are a part of the people in all those who observe my sabbath and choose what i desire and grasp my covenant tightly then isaiah says right before that all who guard shabbat against desecration and guard his hand against doing any evil it's like those two things those who guard the sabbath among the nations and who keep their hands away from doing any evil it's like there's really clear at the beginning of creation there's light and there's dark there's good and there's evil and that's the basis and those that really walk in that light of just every day trying to become a little bit better every day stepping a little bit more into the light bringing a little bit more into the light staying away from the dark staying away from the evil but then those that really when you listen to sort of the journey of everyone it was like a passion for truth a passion for following the truth in their lives a truth that's written in the tanakh and you know the ten commandments speak about shabbat and so if we take the ten commandments so seriously what do we do with number four it's such an obvious yardstick that now many people have different observances different beliefs different theologies different ways in which they observe and which they practice but someone that reads the ten commandments and just kind of says no that was done away with we don't really care about that well if number four was done away with why not number three or number two or number six or number seven it's like well if we take this seriously the shabbat needs to be an integral part of our life and tehil and i never knew how special it would be to celebrate shabbat in host of shabbat for the righteous that are among the nations and then to actually see that here it says in my house this is verse 5 in my house and within my walls i will give them a place of honor and renown which is better than the sons and daughters eternal renown i will give them which will never be terminated the strangers the non-jews who join themselves to hashem to serve him to love the name of hashem to become servants unto him all who guard the sabbath against desecration and grasp my covenant tightly i'll bring them to my holy mountain and ultimately my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations and it's like what are the things that are happening here it's like the righteous among the nations that are able to step out of the mainstream that just follow the truth that's been revealed to them in their life shabbat is obviously the very next step god made this day holy god's blessed this day what does that mean for me in my own personal life and saying that those people will be given more honor in renown than the sons and daughters of israel i feel like until the shabbat deal and i could never really understood them why would they get more honor and renown than the sons and daughters of the after they had an argument about it in the car and here we saw that the righteousness and the passion for truth and the dedication and commitment that it took to break free from their structures and their culture and their families pressures and tremendous pressures and just the wander off into the desert of in an unsewn land with an unclear way just following the light that god had given them has just created such a righteousness and to be able to somehow facilitate connecting all of these people together and from people that were just virtual on zoom in this fellowship to manifest in the material has just been marvelous so what i want to do now is i want to turn over this fellowship over to the building over there because the whole team is they're sort of watching the fellowship in there so i can't go inside there because they'll probably be feedbacks and different like voices that will be heard from the delay but i just wanted to call out ardell and marcy to come here just to sort of share with the fellowship that was in the virtual and then to have them come here in the physical and i tried to share that this was of the most memorable shabbats of my life this is one of those that will never go away this is going with me all the way to the world to come and i just wanted to um bring them on to allow them to share their experiences and let them share with the fellowship and let them um kind of be with you so here they are hi i'm adele hi fellowship family i mean really we really learned what that meant this weekend we really really are family this is marcy i know you've seen marcy before um and and we met uh curtis and becky label and you kind of probably know them a lot too but that's what i really learned this week is that this fellowship really really is family there were lots of people who came and and uh we all connected so much we all felt so much in common and then to have the gimpels here we get to meet all of their kids we get to spend time with each one we know their personalities and their crazy bunch and we just loved them so much we wish it would go on and on in fact at one point we were like are we dreaming are we gonna wake up and go on this really never happened and so yeah it was just terrific it um we don't really want it to end we don't want to let go of them we grabbed the hold of their titsy oats and so take us with you and um but anyway i don't want to take up too much time thank you so much um for being part of our family and marthy has something really really special to say well i just it's on my heart to especially speak to any of you in the fellowship that are alone because i do this alone this was my first spot and i've had a book that i've had about the shabbat table for two years that i haven't had anybody to do it with and i didn't tell anybody this till this morning but our dallas first shabbat was it israel and my first shabbat was with israel so it's just been such a blessing so i just want to encourage you if you're out there in the fellowship and you're you're on your own doing this there we're here virtually and you know i'm hoping that they get the stuff going about how to connect more because you're not alone you're not alone and it's just beautiful and i just i i hope whoever gets to see them while they're on this trip can experience what we've experienced so i just want to say thanks thank you anyway guys i'm gonna give it to you we're so lucky to have marcy and ardell in our lives and in our fellowship and as our friends and everybody in this crew but really you are so not alone and thank you for everything that you've done to bring us here and let's keep it there were a lot of tears over shabbat there were i was crying the heel was crying it was just like overwhelmed with emotion and just we're touching something that is of the soul and so the body responds and so just know that what we're doing is just of the soul out of this world supernatural and we're just blessed to be a part of it so ari back in the arugula farm that's sort of holding down the fort bye