Seeing Hashem Behind the Headlines - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

Hi everybody. So good to see all of you. So good to see all of you. Um you know Jeremy, I'm I'm I'm listening to what he's talking about and Tucker Carlson is saying this and uh the vice president Vance and we're trying to figure out what's happening because you know we that's a big part of really what we're doing in this fellowship. We are looking within the words of the Torah, within the words of the prophets, looking at what's happening in the world today. We're connecting the dots. We're making sense of it from a deeper level because we are living in times that can feel really truly bewildering. Every headline seems to contradict the last one. One mo one moment there's a breakthrough, the next another crisis. Nations shift alliances overnight. Leaders rise and fall. And we're we're left wondering where is all this heading? What's this about? Even me, I'm constantly looking to see and understand where Hashem is going with all of this, how his mission is being fulfilled. And often I feel like I see it perfectly. And often I feel like I have no idea where this is going. And what I'm saying, what I'm saying is that for those of us who really believe that Hashem runs the world, it can still feel hard and sometimes even feel impossible to see his hand in what often feels like pure chaos. I mean, we see his hand. We know it's his hand. We know he's doing it, but it just feels like pure chaos for us to make sense of it. I always think back to the parting of the sea when they got to that sea. I don't think any of them that Hashem put in any of their minds the possibility that that's what would happen. We're supposed to be in times that feel like pure chaos. And we're supposed to seek Hashem's hand and understanding of what's happening. Because, you know, when when politics, wars, and tragedies dominate the news, when it seems like the wicked prosper and the righteous are suffering, we can start to ask the same quiet question that Ara himself may have asked. If this is the land of Hashem, why is it filled with famine, conflict, and uncertainty, right? That's what he encountered right when he arrived at this land that he was supposed to go to. If this is if this is the story of redemption, why does it feel so messy? Now, I can't say for certain that Avrau that Abraham asked these questions, but everything I know about our forefathers tells me that their journeys were never smooth or obvious. They walked through confusion and doubt. And that's precisely what makes their faith so powerful. It's why their stories give me strength in my own journey. If I thought they were perfect, they knew it all, they never had fear, they never have doubt, [snorts] it's unrelatable. And uh and that's why I believe in moments like these when we struggle to discern the divine path through the fog of history that the Torah gives us these stories of our forefathers, the stories of Arainu. Because his journey is not just the beginning of our nation's story. It's a road map for how to see Hashem's hand when the world looks like it's spinning out of control. Right? And Hashem said to Ara, "Go to your for yourself. Go to yourself from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you." Araminu is called not just to travel, but to transform. Hashem sends him to the land of promise to begin a revolution, to begin a nation that would embody his presence in the world. Leaving everything familiar, leaving his land, his family, his culture, Aram steps into the great unknown, guided only by faith and the voice of Hashem. But when he arrives, right, the promised land looks nothing like paradise. Like we just said, there's a famine in the land. The soil of prophecy is barren, right? This land flowing with milk and honey offers hunger instead of abundance. Aram is forced to leave the very land Hashem sent him to seeking food in Egypt. And when he returns, he faces more heartbreak, conflict with his nephew, Lot, the the right, the one family member who he had on his journey. He's having conflict with Ree Bikram. And there was quarreling between the herders of a Abram's cattle and those of Lot's cattle. Lot departs for Sodom for stone leaving Abraham still childless, utterly alone. Right? The there's this promise of a nation he thought it was going to be through Lot and now it's just silence. Right? of Mosha Terrian points out that Aram's arrival in the land shatters any illusion that holiness guarantees ease. The promised land does not hand over blessing on a silver platter. It demands struggle and courage and faith in the face of contradiction. Right? And then comes this great regional warfel. And it came to pass in the days of Amrael, king of Shinar, four kings against five. For 25 years, the land of Israel is torn by conflict. Armies rise and fall. Empires battle over the same soil Hashem had promised. It's it's here, right? Not in peace, but in war. But Aram's mission begins to unfold. When Lot is captured, Aram could have said he made his choice. But he doesn't. He gathers his men. He pursues the kings and he rescues his nephew. It's an act of courage and compassion. Aram's first great deed, not only as a believer, but as a bringer of peace. His victory ended the war that had ravaged the land. And in so doing, Aram begins to fulfill Hashem's promise. I will bless those who bless you and curse the one who curses you. And all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. So, Rabbi Teran asks, "Why does the Torah give such detail, right? The names of the kings, the locations of the battles, the geography of these faroff campaigns." He could have just said kings. Why do we need to know all of that stuff? No word is wasted in the Torah. And he says, "Because Hashem is teaching Abraham and us that his promises are not suspended above history, but they're woven through it. The wars of men are not outside his plan. They are the stage upon which his will unfolds. Aram learns that the land of Hashem will always be a land of tension. Right? It's it will be inshed in geopolitics. The fulfillment of prophecy happens through the mechanisms of human power not despite them. When Hashem appears to Aram in the brear in the covenant of the pieces he confirms this truth. On that day, Hashem made a covenant with Abraham. To your descendants, I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates. The message is clear. Even when the world seems ruled by kings and empires, Hashem's covenant moves forward. Yes, it's guided by an invisible hand from above, but the hand, this invisible hand is the hand of the king of kings who keeps his promises. So, Rebbiten Adina Schmidman, I was reading one of her Torah over Shabbat and she teaches that our ha echoes the this very truth but in a more precise way that the haftra the portion that we read from the prophets was written and selected for us right now for our times. The haftur was taken from chapter 41 of the book of Isaiah and [snorts] in it we see that the nations of the world sense something is shifting that hashem is moving in history again and they panic. Listen to this. It says each man helps his fellow saying to his fellow take courage. The woodworker encourages the smith. He who flattens with the hammer encourages him who pounds the anvil. He says of the riveting, "It is good." And he fixes it with nails that it may not topple. Now, the mal beam explains that this isn't a scene of idol worship or idol making, but of frantic weapon making. Nations sense the divine light approaching and scrambled to prepare for battle. Even broken swords are patched together good enough for a world desperate to hold on to its power. And that's what it's about. They're making these weapons. They're running to make these weapons for that reason. Here the malbeam reveals something extraordinary. When light rises, resistance to that light rises with it. When divine light is on the ascent, the world's darkness rallies in fear. Right? Nations forge alliances. Armies arm themselves. And even broken swords are patched together. This that's a frenzy. It's a frenzy. And it's not a sign that Hashem is absent. It's proof that he's approaching. The louder the nations become, the clearer the proof that Hashem is drawing near. From Isaiah chapter 41 from this week's Torah portion. Who has wrought and achieved this? The one who announced the generations from the start. I God who is first and will be with the last as well. The uproar of the nations is not the absence of God. It is the shadow cast by his advancing presence. And so it is today. Here in Israel, the same drama plays out again. The land of Israel is never it's never simple. The headlines are filled with wars and alliances and ceasefires, negotiations, and yet behind every headline beats the same pulse that guided Aramainu. the establishment of the state of Israel, the victories and the tragedies, the modern wars and the shifting global powers, all of it, like the wars of the four kings and the five are part of the same exact divine choreography. Really, when I'm out in these mountains and I talk to Hashem, I'm cognizant of the fact that he was in these very places, Aram was in these very places that I'm talking to him from. The same words, the same God. Right? I look back the bow for declaration, the UN vote of 1947, the British and the American alliances, they looked political, but each step was Hashem turning the gears of history. And even today, from the attack of October 7th to the return of our hostages, these tangled negotiations between the nations, they are not random. They are threads in the divine tapestry stretching from to our own generation. And like Aram, we must look past the surface and see Hashem's hidden hand in the machinery of geopolitics. When the nations rage, when we see coalitions forming, weapons building, hatred rising, we must remember this noise is not proof of darkness winning. It is the it's the sound of light breaking through. While the nation arrogantly the nations are arrogantly reinforcing broken swords and fortifying their arsenals, we are reinforcing amuna. We are reinforcing faith. They act out of fear. We act out of faith. And when the world trembles, we stand firm knowing that the same God who called Aram to this land still guides our destiny today. King David said to fortify his own faith the same words we say. Elohm, the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Our generation is walking the same road Ara walked. A journey of faith through uncertainty, of prophecy through politics, of of a light illuminating the chaos of history. And every time it seems like the world is arming itself against us, every time we see that happening, it means redemption is drawing closer. So [snorts] may we have the eyes, my friends, to see Hashem's hand behind the headlines, the courage to stand firm amid the storm and to know to know that even now that Hashem is the first and he is the last and his story, the story of redemption is unfolding through us at this very moment. [music]