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A Heart of Flesh - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship
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This highlight was taken from the 16th session of the Land of Israel Fellowship - The Shofar of Rosh Hashana - A Call from Within or A Call from Above? on Sunday 13th September 2020. To join the Land of Israel Fellowship go to: https://secured.israelgives.org/donate/Fellowship
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Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
i want to invite ari here into the
conversation
to bring the parsha which is so critical
in
to this conversation this is the parsha
that the jewish people have been reading
for thousands of years
and we always read this parsha right
before rosh hashanah
so the message right now it's for us
very much so so ari take it away shalom
friends
these are very intense times wasting
times during these days feels like an
even
greater tragedy than usual because of
the great potential of spiritual growth
available to us during these days and
for me it feels like every direction i
look in
the god is speaking to me very loudly
i'm not always spiritually sensitive
sensitive enough to understand the
message but that doesn't change the fact
that i feel like i'm being spoken to in
a very profound way
and you see being sensitive to the type
of communication is still a skill i'm
nurturing
and developing it's in it's an art that
i've personally come to believe is
available to us on the deepest level
when we're in the land of israel and
that is why i wanted to share this
message to you from this holy special
place
this building right behind us on the
arugud farm because this building is a
manifestation
of the concept that with hashem's help
i'm going to try to share with you right
now
you see when i first came to israel i
was learning with one of my rabbis in
the holy city of jerusalem
and he said a very strange thing we were
sitting and learning with him
and he said this room is filled with
japanese music and one of us said to him
rabbi what do you mean japanese music i
don't hear any japanese music
and he said it is this room is filled
with japanese music
and we said what do you mean rabbi and
he went on to explain
he said imagine there was a shortwave
radio here on the table and the radio
was tuned into a station that plays
japanese music
meaning we would hear the japanese music
here in the room
but if you're tuned into the proper
frequency you can hear it
he went on to explain that god is
everywhere he created the entire world
the whole world is filled with his
presence but when you're in the land of
israel
you can tune into a frequency in which
you can experience god's presence in a
way
that you simply cannot experience
anywhere else in the world
you see when jews from around the the
world when they come to our mountain
they walk into this breathtaking
building they say wow this must be your
bait knesset
this is the most beautiful bait canes
that i've ever seen
now what's a bait knesset it literally
means a congregation a place where
people congregate
it's the hebrew word for synagogue but
for some reason i felt
significant internal resistance to
calling it a synagogue
because like many of you there are
certain things in life they come with a
certain amount of baggage
and one of those things that have
baggage for me is a synagogue
you see when i was a little boy i would
go to synagogue with my family every
sabbath
i never wanted to go even though once i
got there it wasn't all that bad i would
see my friends and there were few old
men that would give me a candy if i
shook their hand smiled and said shabbat
shalom
but there were stretches of time that
felt very long in which i would mumble
words out of a prayer book
most of the time whose definition i
didn't even know what it meant i didn't
even consider what it meant
now i'm not trying to belittle this
experience for much of the uh
for much like time that we spend with
the children or spouse
you can't always engineer the ability to
spend quality time with each other
you really need to make it a point to
spend quantity time and within that
quantity time
you very often find quality moments so
while the majority of those countless
hours of prayer
felt like mumbling words i wasn't
thinking about nonetheless
they became engraved in my heart and
became a part of my very essence
and when you pray three times a day for
the ingathering of the exiles
and the return to jerusalem and the
rebuilding of the temple that desire
becomes one with your own desire
just as it's become one with the desire
of multitudes of generations of jews
who have mumbled these words to
themselves as well yet after moving
my life here to the land of israel my
relationship with hashem
has transformed in indescribable ways
and the old way of relating simply
didn't satisfy
what my my heart and my soul needed in
the land
i don't even know if i could use the
word transform it's as if it went from
being a two-dimensional black and white
relationship to a three-dimensional
relationship with vivid colors
as opposed to going a synagogue and
often feeling like it was a chore or a
distraction
to continuing on the rest with the rest
of my day
my prayers and my relationship in the
land of israel has become much more of a
dialogue with god
where i pour out my heart to god and
prayer and everything that happens to me
throughout the rest of my day
is is his response it's a dialogue it's
a communication
in the first book of kings god comes to
king solomon in a dream and offers him
one wish
now many of you may know this story and
say yes solomon wished for wisdom
and i thought that was true up until
jeremy pointed out to me that if you
look in the original hebrew
it was not wisdom that he wished for but
a love shomaya
a listening heart wisdom is something
that you have in your head
a deep understanding of the truth of
things but a listening heart
means that you're listening to hashem
that you're in communication with god
that my friends is what's happening to
the jewish people now as is foretold in
this week's torah portion
and the lord your god will bring you to
the land that your forefathers possessed
and you shall possess
it and the lord your god will circumcise
your hearts and the heart of your
offspring to love the lord your god with
all your heart
and with all your souls so that you may
live
this was the last shabbat before rosh
hashanah
the last shabbat of the year and to put
it mildly this was an eventful year it
was a dramatic year
and i think many of us sense that it was
only a taste of the intensity
of what's in store not only for israel
but for america and the entire world
and as we speak right now in the land of
israel as the sun begins to set
we are ushering in the 25th of elul
which was the day in which the world was
created
rosh hashanah is the new year for all of
mankind for adam and eve
were created on the sixth day which
means that tonight and tomorrow
is the 25th of elul which is day one
the day heaven and earth were created so
we're entering a time of creation
and recreation and so these days are
precious every moment is a valuable
opportunity
to do chuva to repent and to seek to
align ourselves with the creator of the
universe
and what are we commanded to do we're
commanded to return to god to return to
ourselves
our true selves to choose life and what
is true life
true life is a true deep and loving
relationship with god
this is what the whole world is yearning
for they may not know it
but the unrest anger and volatility
volatility that's overtaking the world
is coming from a deep and often
subconscious thirst
to connect with god hashem through your
holy prophet yahushua ezekiel you stated
i will take you from among the nations
and gather you and from all the lands
and i will bring you to your own land
then i will sprinkle pure waters upon
you
and you will become cleansed from all
your impurities
i will give you a new heart and i will
place a new spirit within you
i will remove from you a heart of stone
and place within you a heart of flesh
i will place my spirit within you and i
will cause you to follow my statutes
and you will guard my laws and fulfill
them you will dwell
in the land that i gave your forefathers
and you will be for me a nation and i
will be for you a god
please hashem manifest this promise in
the world today
not only for our sake but for the sake
of the entire world
hashem we've been praying in synagogues
around the world for thousands of years
but our hearts are yearning for
something more our hearts are yearning
to rebuild
the holy temple in jerusalem and return
to you
in the great house of prayer khibaiti
bait filayi
my house is a house of prayer for all
nations it's not just a synagogue that
we want hashem
it's to return to you in a house of
prayer for all nations
thank you my friends back to you jeremy
thank you ari thank you ari