Bringing the Torah of Judea to Colorado - Jeremy & Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israesl Fellowship

okay great hey everybody good to see everyone i want you guys to know that if i were to turn the camera around now there's like a whole audience about half of the people that spent shabbat with us are now live at the fellowship we're in silt colorado guys make some noise [Applause] and so last shabbat we were in iowa and we've just we've gone through the mountains we've gone through the plains we've gone through the rivers the cities of chicago and we i mean we've been to the colorado rockies before but never this far into the mountains and then we got here and as i'm looking around it's hard to even i'm looking outside the window that's right here everything here looks like out of a dream out of a postcard out of a movie it's so beautiful here and then as we come into the mountains um well we was like a little bit late it was like traffic coming up they bought us kosher meat we started making a barbecue and then out of nowhere a torrential storm came and it was like wow how is this happening as we're like trying to light the barbecue storms that were holding up tables to try to block the the rain from hitting the fire and then lightning is striking and then rainbows appear and then with the sunset turns into this magical color purple and orange and i couldn't help but feel as though the the universe was lighting up god was like pay attention if you think this is just another shabbat it's not look what i'm doing look what i'm doing it was just like wonder after sign after another like it was just the most and then it just stopped and then it just became beautiful weather it was just like to enter into shabbat with such a storm of insanity and we just had the most amazing shabbat with the most wonderful people i don't know how we've done it but the fellowship has somehow attracted the most beautiful souls in the world i can't wait we have to figure out a way of connecting more people with more people people came from all over colorado three hours four hours and they never met each other and it was just like something magical is happening on these shabbat something we've never done before and it was um it was incredible and um well i just i wanted to share one story that tehila actually shared over shabbat that really touched my heart and i know that she's not going to talk about it but i did want to talk about it myself on friday morning we woke up in the morning and i get a message from our friend that's staying in our house on the farm and he says your dog dreidel has been run over by a car and we don't know where he is and dreidel has been the bane of my existence for almost 10 years he is the most useless dog um he's not really housebroken he's not very intelligent he bites people sometimes it's not really a bite because he's so literally got chihuahua it doesn't really do anything but he's not very friendly um but he is my oldest son's like love of his life and when we heard that he was run over by a car and we'd know where he was um i almost started to cry i was like what a dreidel i mean when we first moved to the farm dreidel was our last line of defense all we had we didn't have any guard dogs we didn't she we just had dreidel our chihuahua he was our guard dog you know we've gone through so much with that dog and it was like such a horrible way to start fried i was like how am i gonna tell lavi what is he going to say he's going to blame us that we left israel and why didn't we put him in a better place and what oh gosh well it's just a terrible morning and then about an hour and a half later i get a message from my friend saying oh never mind we found him he's fine he wouldn't even run over by a car and i'm like oh god what a terrible morning what was that for and then all of a sudden i was elated just so happy to be alive and nothing had changed nothing about my life was the same life that it was beforehand nothing moved nothing changed and just the paradigm shift of what could be and what should be and just realizing that everything that we have is exactly the way it should be and we should be so grateful for everything that we have and then as i really felt the love that i had for this little dog that's really been the bane of my existence it really helped me understand an insight into balak the torah portion that we learned over shabbat that i never understood before because the verses that always bothered me where you know god comes to balak and says well if men come to summon you arise and go with them but only thing that i shall speak to you you shall do while i'm rose in the morning and saturday she donkey and one with the officers of moab god's wrath flared because he was going and i'm like well well what does god want here from balaam i mean for years i was reading that and i just never understood god said if people come and summon you go with them people came summoned him and he went and then how is god upset with him something else must be going on and so it really um struck me that as the donkey pushes him into the corner boom out of just absolute rage as if i just had a sword in my hand i would just slay you my donkey in the donkeys but i've been such a loyal donkey for you for so many years how could you strike me like that and i was like well what we see here is that balaam's inside was just really rotten god wasn't um upset with his lack of obedience he was following the letter of the law and doing exactly what he was instructed to do but god judges the hearts not just the actions and it seems like his actions were totally aligned theoretically he never really did anything against god's will but um god's ultimate will is that we have a pure heart that we have a joyful heart that we have a place of um a foundation of love and compassion and here we see that you know his donkey kind of pushing him into a side the rage and anger that erupted just shows the mental state that he was at and what i have decided or would not decided just discovered is that there is a common thread between all of the people of the fellowship whether they're getting married and engaged in norway or they're here in the mountains of colorado their insides are so pure their insides are so good and their outsides may take different forms and different shapes and some people have this level of observance and some people have this way of living in this way of following their hearts but their hearts are so good and i think that on the inside that's really what binds us all together all these people that are seeking after hashem with pure hearts with love and compassion is our foundation and it has just been um a pleasure and honor it has been amazing finally having a chance to spend shabbat real time learning their families learning their stories and um it's just like the flame of the fellowship is growing and growing yes i agree and thank you we're just so thankful for our gracious hosts here in silt colorado and get to talk to them a couple of them in a few uh in a few minutes but um you know ariel appreciate this i was very lucky this week that uh you know we found ourselves in at the waller base in patterson missouri and i wake up in a cold sweat at about three in the morning and i get this bad feeling like there's something jeremy is not telling me and i google distance between patterson missouri and silt colorado this is wednesday morning mind you and it says 18 hours i said jeremy we have to drive 18 hours in three days he's like yeah no big deal i'm like thank goodness he pulls the wool over my eyes regularly to take me on these escapades as if i would have known i would have said we can't do that but bar hashem jeremy did the entire drive on his own and our children were only slightly worse for the wear and and we were lucky enough to get all the way out here to silt just in time to barely get our food in the oven for shabbat and launch into the most incredible and memorable shabbat i was even luckier that on shabbat afternoon jeremy was jeremy was wiped out so he went to take a nap and uh apparently not realizing it i went on about a how long was it guys about a three-hour ramble three-hour tour ramble and and so uh you know we talked about a lot of things but there's just one idea that came up that i want to share with the whole fellowship because it came up in our discussion together somebody in the group asked me well you know because now we're sort of in the junction between balak and the portion of balak and the portion of pinchas in you know in america we read balak in israel we read pinchas so we're sort of at the junction where this story takes place of pinhasa's zealousness and so somebody said well do we need more of the spirit of pinchas like is this a good thing what what is that about because it seems kind of out of the ordinary and so it just got me thinking a little bit about this showdown between pinchas and zimri because pinhus and zimmer are obviously individual people but they're also ideas because pinchas is the son of the you know high priest he's like the the grandson of aaron he is the you know idea of the tribe of levy and zimri is the prince of the tribe of shimon so he is like representing the idea of the tribe of shimon and what a clash they're having but it's not the first time we meet this pair right there's something going on here that's like a multi-generational development what is that about so got me thinking back like what is the first time we meet shimon and levy the first time we meet shimon and levy is of course when they slaughter shechem the city of shechem and yakov is not pleased with them and what is going on there there are these you know two brothers that they're acting together what is driving them and so the torah is a little bit ambiguous on what's driving them because in the beginning they say you know they sound they sound really like moral they say they were fired deeply with indignation for he had committed an outrage in israel this was such a thing must not be done it was like a moral indignation at what happened to dina but in the end when yaakov gets upset with them they say well i was gonna turn our sister into a harlot there's something there that sounds more like gang wars yeah like i'm gonna do it in like some sort of bronx accent you know like there's something going on here that seems a little bit like prideful like we're just like going out and vengeful prideful it's not really about maintaining the moral status of the you know people of the land but really something that's like a little bit like tribal you know bullying and well what is it then what is it like what is driving them and it's complicated because whenever we do things what is driving us are we are we being nice to somebody because we care about them are we being nice because it makes us feel good to be nice when we're doing something bad is it because of you know when we're when we're aggressive is it because we're fighting for hashem or is it because we're just aggressive people how do you know we're so complicated and so that's the first time that shimon and levy appear together but it's not the only time they appear together because they appear together again in the final portion in genesis in vaioti where yaakov is blessing all of his sons he gives each of his sons an individual blessing but just two of them shimon and levi get a blessing together and what is their blessing is it really even a blessing it's kind of a blessing-ish curse-ish where he says i am going to divide you from one another because your wrath is so powerful i'm going to divide you from one another and i'm going to disperse you in israel now is being divided and dispersed is that is that good or bad well it depends how you look at it and then the third time we meet them together is here in this story and now look what happens in this story in this story well are shimon and lady driven by really caring about the moral level of the nation or are they just kind of wrathful violent people well pinchas kind of proves where he's coming from pinchas uses his wrath even against his own nation even against his own people but to maintain the moral status of israel shimon who had claimed to be really concerned about the moral status in the shechem story the you know representative of the idea of shimon doesn't seem when the girls of moab come about it doesn't seem like he is the uh you know person to be giving moral judgments and so they they sort of bring clarity to that question of what was driving them and then look how their blessings come to pass as blessings or curses look what happens to shimon you never meet anybody from shimon after this story because shimon eventually just dissolves kind of into the tribe of judah and they disappear but levy the same words of yaakov the same words come to pass with him in that he's dispersed in the most positive way he's spread throughout israel into cities where he can teach his zealousness and be an inspiration to the nation and give that moral compass in each tribe a little taste of levy so that blessing actually becomes a blessing for levy and a curse for shimon in a perfect harmony with what's really driving them on the inside and it teaches us something so deep that our sages convey to us that our future actions can actually have the power to even change our past because there's a strange saying in the talmud that when a person repents their former their sins from their past become become merits you say well wouldn't it be more normal to say and you know when you sin hashem when you when you repent hashem forgets about your sins that would be like okay that makes sense you know you repented let's erase all those sins it says no hashem remembers your sins and turns them into merits what does that mean that your future actions your future decisions are able to reinterpret for yourself and even in hashem's eyes reinterpret your past and then curses that might have come onto you as a punishment for those sins can actually turn into blessings just like yaakov's words turned into blessings for levy but they turned into punishments for shimon and so i think this you know showdown between these two people give us kind of a taste that we can take into our own lives everyone looks back and has you know regrets and oh only i could have done that and if only i should have done that but the torah portion is teaching us that it's never too late because through our future actions we can not only change our future but redeem the meaning of our past so that was something that came up for us on shabbat that i thought was memorable and i just wanted to share with the rest of the crew yeah i just wanted to by the way that was absolutely amazing thank you you're wonderful um i just wanted to invite um a couple of people here that are in the audience uh to just share a little bit about shabbat to kind of give people and the fellowship um a taste of the other side here it's like there's like a professional studio but there's a whole community of believers that are here in colorado that have come together and that we have an opportunity to come from the mountains of judea to the mountains of colorado to celebrate such a unique shabbat like once in a lifetime once in a in a century who knows but um it was definitely a first time for me and maybe caleb do you want to start cindy do you want to come like i guess can i just show everyone the the crew that's here so cindy why don't you come up here and then here let caleb do it that you don't break anything to hila yeah here come sit here say hi everybody all right all right here tila come hi so um my name is cindy apps and my husband and i and our two sons live here in just outside of silt uh in a little town called rifle wait one second cindy was the mastermind of this shabbat it should be said that she organized so many things for us so thank you oh you're welcome it's um i'm glad that she did not realize how far away they were so they would actually make the trip um it was uh a couple of times my husband and i we actually stopped and we said gosh is he actually not behind a screen like he's actually in the room with us like it was just such a gift um i jeremy asked me just a minute ago to talk and i was thinking gosh well what did i want to say and i think the thing that um i wanted to convey was um there's been two words that have come up for me in various different ways that hashem is just bringing over and over and they are alignment and they are connection so alignment and connection we have desired for so many years now to align ourselves to the god of abraham isaac and jacob we have a desire to align ourselves to god to oneness to unity we've designed we've desired to align ourselves to the jewish people and you know we don't have anybody to teach us right here in the ways that we really wish that we could and this fellowship has been such a gift um for that jeremy and ari and tahila has just been they have come forth and wanted to teach us and to be able to stand there on shabbat and be able to do our prayers on whatever level we are on with whatever knowledge we have and to have jeremy and tehila there and to teach us and they let us do what we normally do without judgment but they came in with the wisdom of the torah and from the god of abraham isaac and jacob and they said let me show you and let me teach you and what an honor and what a gift and i hope that you all can experience this too i know there's something going on in texas for shabbat and i hope you guys can all make it um but these people and their heart to teach us has just shown us that it's okay to be who we are where we are we don't have to try to be anybody different as long as our hearts are to align with with god with hashem he's going to send all the people that we need and so i say that as an encouragement to everybody because i know there's a lot of you that are alone out there and you're not alone here and these guys just brought it to a whole new level of real so thank you for doing that and um um just one last thing i remember from what jeremy was saying when he was talking when we were going through the prayers as he was talking he started with the modain i mean you know i've been familiar with that for a long time but i think the thing he said what that impacted me the most was you know our natural state is alignment with gratitude alignment with gratitude and when we say the model knee and we align ourselves with gratitude then our natural um desire next is to be indebted and to be in service to hashem and i just i was just thinking about how much i want to take that embodiment of alignment and gratitude um to a whole new level and um so thank you jeremy and thank you thank you so much for sharing that that was really beautiful kid you wanted to say some words all right there we are so we have [Music] like a spokesman of the fellowship here we are hey everybody i'm super stoked um when jeremy was it was it's so funny when you show up it's like there's just like this inspiration that hits me it's like it i feel like my number one fan cheerleader from israel has just showed up here in colorado and like how many of us need like a coach that's just like ecstatic about what we're doing and i think jeremy truly embodies what i believe the nation of israel will become as they as they i would say evolve but as they grow into the destiny that hashem has for them and that is that the nation of israel is going to say wait a second we're supposed to be those coaches to the world that are going to just say guys listen you're doing great and so when i landed out here in silk colorado and bought the resort jeremy was like yeah there's a lighthouse there's a there's a you know i've got an israeli flag out here and i feel like that little pole that goes up is like my antenna that's connecting me to jerusalem and so that's that's like my my daily pulse when i look out my door and i see our israeli flag it's like guys we are anchored here in silt colorado but connected to the life stream that's coming from the land of israel on a weekly basis through the individual fellowship and i know a lot of you guys feel that way and i'm super super super stoked like so what's happened over the weekend it's been a whirlwind to be honest with you it's been like it's just there's so much to process right now i i have to say it's just been you know israel has been very near and dear to canaanites hearts for a long time and it was the center of everything we did for 14 years and just to step back here into silt colorado and then just say okay what are we doing here like how what what's happening and we and as jeremy and dealer been here ken and i were just you know laying in bed talking last night we're just like is is the connection like being re-established is something happening and so i i i want to tell you guys on the fellowship here i mean my we're already setting a date for next year for all of you guys to put on your calendars because we're going to bring in the whole crew not just jeremy and tila we're going to bring in you know ari and his family hopefully and we're gonna do a shabbat like no other right here on the resort and so i told jerry cause jeremy called me last month and he was like hey we're coming to colorado let's get it done i'm like do you realize my resort books like six months to a year in advance like we we need to nail down a date so if you guys are interested we'd love to have you come to western slope of colorado be hosted by our wonderful fellowship and friends that are here uh and just experience a shabbat like no other because you know unfortunately not all of us are able to make it to israel often but maybe we can bring these guys here to us and that's what we've experienced this weekend and it's been super super super blessed and so and saying all of that you shark go in strength my brother thank you thank you all right ari so we'll pass it back to you now thank you so much we miss you guys and um bringing the light of judea to colorado it's pretty amazing 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 they're 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 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 and 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 feast 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 century 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 and tahila 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