Torah and Transformation - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi guys it's so nice to be back home back on the farm backspinning shabbat with our partners and the ever-growing number of guests that seem to just show up on the farm from all different communities and from the neighboring towns it's really something to see especially now that we have a tourist school to read from and can have a proper prayer service on shabbat morning so there's this lovely family that comes to visit the farm sometimes and they uh you know in the synagogue you know in our in our house of prayer we were taking out the torah scroll and the mom of the family leans over to me and says this week's torah portion bothers me so i made her you know the universal israeli sign if anybody's been to israel you know what this means let's wait a minute and she's like no no this is really bothering me and i'm like okay what what's bothering you so she says the first commandment in this week's torah portion is that when you go out to war what you should do to be able to take a captive woman she says this poor woman plucked out of her family out of her life out of everything she knows you drag her to your house you make her ugly shave her head i mean really it's horrible how can the torah be telling us to do this so you know i was planning on talking today to to you guys about rosh hashanah and ello but i thought her question was so important and so fundamental because it really it's not just about this commandment it really goes to a very profound question about what the torah is about in general so through this encounter i felt like you know i'm gonna we'll wait till next week to talk about what i wanted to talk about rosh hashanah that can wait and i just want to address this point so i said to my friend let's finish listening to the torah portion and then let's talk about this so we finished reading the portion i said to her you know your question is such a good question that before i even try to address it i'm going to match and raise i'm going to match and raise you think that's bad what about just a few verses later with a wayward rebellious son that you go and uh kill i mean the torah is giving us instructions in this week's portion about raping captives and killing our children what the heck is going on here it reminded me that last week ari asked me how can it be that there are cities of refuge for a person who kills someone by accident if it was an accident he's innocent just say uh leave the guy alone he's innocent why does he have to run and go to the city to be protected can't the torah just say don't take murderous revenge on unintentional killers so can't the torah just say don't take captives how about not killing your children when they misbehave what is going on so i think this touches on a question of what is the torah is the torah just a law book can a law book be eternal i think you know about little old israel our little country not even 75 years old how many laws have been written and erased written and cancelled rewritten to keep up with the times when there are laws about privacy but they didn't take into consideration the internet they didn't take into consideration cell phones so we'll make a new law to match you know keep up with the technology and with the changes of society and with each new development we throw out our old law books and make new law books to keep up with the times how can there be a law book that lasts forever so the torah has a unique recipe if you look at all of the ancient law books the torah stands out as different look at the ancient mesopotamians they had myths and stories they had gilgamesh and tiamat and morduk and they had law books like the hammurabi laws that were namulas and such right and keep on going we get the greeks they had mythology they had homer the iliad the odyssey they had stories about the gods and there were also law books same for the romans the philosophical concepts this the the the the ideas of what you should know about the world about the gods about zeus about whatever that's in the mythology that's in the stories you want to know who your ancestors were read your mythologies and then you have the law the point of the law is i'm the king i'm the emperor i'm the boss do what i say do as you're told be obedient the torah is the only book that doesn't make that division what you know about hashem about the creation of the world what you know about your forefathers and your foremothers how you need to act in the world in your social interactions the laws of the you know community and of the kingdom and the laws of your spiritual interactions how you keep the festivals how you keep shabbat how you relate with hashem in your heart that's all in one book what is that telling us it's telling us that there isn't a separation the laws are not there to control you they're there to transform you and through seeking hashem's will through learning the stories of your ancestors and stories of how hashem relates to us and the narratives of the torah and the way that the laws are structured all of it is to light up the person that you can become not a person who just follows rules but a new person who's better than you would have been so in that understanding let's look at these laws in this week's past week's torah portion of the captive woman deuteronomy devarim chapter 21 verse 10 if you go out to war against your enemies and the lord your god will deliver them into your hands and you take captives and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her you may take her for yourself as a wife i'm not going to be surprising any of you if i tell you that war and rape and pillage they go hand in hand in the ancient world and not in only the ancient world in today's world as well i don't think it's news to any of you none of you guys are gonna fall off your chairs to hear that so one way for the torah to have approached this is to say no no not for us don't do that and probably some people would have listened some righteous people would listen and some more you know people would have struggled with it and maybe not succeeded to hold back right what the torah does is it molds our hearts so it says okay you have this desire yep gotcha we got you covered you just got yourself a wife you want this captive woman you got yourself a wife there are no privileges without responsibilities you'll take her but you take her into your home you provide for her you feed her you wash her clothes let's see if you want to sign up for that then you bring her to your house what do you do you shave her head not so cute now is she do you still like this idea are you still into it now let's let her cry and mourn for the loss of her family she just looked like an object to you you know what why don't you watch her cry hear her stories about the way she grew up about her family that she's lost she's not so dolled up anymore and now she's a person with feelings you've been watching her cry are you still into this okay so now you get to the end of verse 13 she will be a wife to you so if after all of that you're into it okay take all the responsibilities you're not into it it says verse 14 that you free her you can't sell her she is a free woman and all i think about in this story is what's this wife's what's this guy's wife gonna say like what happens in moab may stay in moab and everything's fine and dandy when you're far away from home you're not thinking about your real life you bring that girl back home i imagine the wife standing there like swagging her ladle against her hands saying what'd you bring home you want me to cook and clean for this girl too and your kids are looking at you at a little cross eyed i'm thinking about like tevye from the middle of the roof tevye's wife how she would respond to this i kind of start to feel bad for the guy so the torah is giving space for human nature giving say okay you have your desires fine it doesn't say no but creates a set up to transform you from within humanizing your captive seeing that she's a real person taking her taking responsibilities bringing this desire into your real life and seeing what's going to happen if i follow my temptations how is this going to affect everything around us and i think it's the same for the law of the wayward sun if you read this in 21st century eyes you say what the torah is telling us to kill a child if he doesn't behave but if you read it like that you're reading it all wrong the torah was given in a world and in a time where children were property it was obvious it was a given that parents could kill their children at will they were their property you could sacrifice your children if there's not enough rain you could beat them and even beat them to death if they're not behaving properly you could throw them to the wolves at birth in greek law and in roman law that was okay if you couldn't afford them maybe there was a bad harvest that year maybe it was a girl and you really wanted a son that was totally fine you know in the hammurabi laws the punishment for raping someone's daughter is that he gets to rape your daughter your children are your property they're not individuals created in the image of god that is the world that the torah was given so the torah says okay you're having trouble with your child and you live in that world here's the drill verse 19 you bring him to the elders of the city meaning rule one this is not just your personal in your house business you take the child to the wise elders let's see if you want to do that and talk about wanting to you know harm your child when you have to talk about it in front of the leaders of the community let's see if there's no one there that can guide you and then who kills them is it you it says the men of the city will pelt him to death with stones you don't have free reign over your child to do whatever you want they're not your property they were given to you so now you give them over to the people of the city let's see if there is a jewish city where there won't be one person in the whole town will say you know what wait a second i'll take in this child i can try to help so if you read this as the torah telling you to kill children you're reading it upside down in the world the tutorial was given and it's saying no no no no you cannot just go kill your children you go through this whole property the process they're not your property you can't just do that so the torah is working on our hearts it's creating a setting in a situation where we won't be capable of doing these kinds of things because if it just said don't do that we wouldn't understand we wouldn't change maybe we would listen and we would be obedient but it wouldn't change us from within and maybe we wouldn't be obedient but when you change from within you don't need obedience anymore and then look how marvelously these rules are placed in their order how what's the order of the rules first it talks about the captive woman oh and then just coincidentally totally unrelated story look at verse 15 the next story is oh yeah yeah by the way totally unrelated if you have two wives one is beloved and the other despised and then it goes into all the laws of inheritance because you're you know what if you want to give preference to the to the children of your uh more favored wife meaning you're going to need a whole set of rules you bring a couple of women into your house wait for the breakdown of your marriage look what's going to happen you're going to have one that you like and one that you don't like my friend and shul said well which one was it talking about who's the hated one and who's the not hated one if this story is relating to the captive woman and i said it doesn't matter because your marriage is gonna be breaking down one way or another you've created bad feelings in your home between your spouses good luck and then what's the next rule oh yeah just coincidentally the next rule is about the breakdown of parenting and raising children you hear about the wayward sun so yeah go ahead it's like the torah the list of the rules is not just a list but it's a story go ahead follow your immodest desires but just in case you do that you should have a briefcase with your rules about what to do when your marriage breaks down and when your children break down good luck so in just these few verses we see how the torah is able to be an eternal law book it's able to be eternal because the rules are set up in such a way as to change us to the point that we don't even need these rules anymore because we've internally transformed and how do i know that what i'm saying is right well the proof is in the pudding in the nation of israel let's take just these three small examples from this torah portion there is no army in the world where rape of the conquered enemy is not endemic where it's not just all over except for one place the only army in the world that is an exception to the rule is thankfully the idf for more than 50 years we're considered an occupying force in judea and samaria and yet rape of palestinian women is unheard of to the point in the hebrew university they were so baffled by this a bunch of years ago that a radical leftist once wrote that this is a sign that israelis are actually super duper more racist than all other nations because why else how else could you explain that we're the only army in the world not to rape the enemy captives bear in mind that most idf soldiers are not even torah observant but that's how deep this runs in like the hebraic dna because for thousands of years all of our ancestors before us have been studying these rules and changing hashem has been changing us to the point that we don't even need these rules anymore look at the next rule about having two wives one beloved and one hated the second rule in this week's torah portion the torah doesn't say no no you can't have two wives but it hints to you here and throughout stories all over the torah with hagar and the discord between rachel and leia this is not the kind of family you really want to build there should be loyalty between one husband one wife not as a rule but as a truly better way of existing so on our own accord the rabbis of israel phased out polig i mean it stopped essentially being a thing and the most dramatic of course is the wayward son the rabbis in the talmud tom would go so far to say is there never was one case of a stoning of a wayward sun by this third rule in this week's uh portion because the torah taught us and they say that the torah taught us this rule only to be studied and internalized and not to be practiced meaning the message was so loud and clear in our hearts that no one in all of jewish history ever dreamed of putting this rule to practice so the proof is in the pudding that the torah is eternal because it doesn't just tell us what to do it doesn't just seek obedience but it helps us have a listening heart ready to be malleable and softened by the torah to hear the inner messages and become ever more sensitive ever more good ever more refined so see i said i was going to skip over talking about rosh hashanah and elle but maybe this idea actually fits perfectly because this is a wonderful time to think about how in this coming year are we going to open our hearts to the torah to really really listen to really here to really change from the inside out so that's a blessing to leave you with for this little month bye guys 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 in 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 feasts 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