Meeting the King in the Field - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

um so let's kick off this new chapter this new season uh with some strong beautiful torah from judea from arya bram woods who makes this fellowship so sweet with his deep and meaningful torahs every week bringing the parsha into the times that we live and we're now going into elul and of course the partial will always be kind of guiding us in those times and so right from the arugula farm um arya brambles hello my friends i was actually going to go inside because of all of the construction noise out here but it's the hills of judea that are being built up so there's a certain music to that also so i thought i would stay out here to share this with you because listen as you know we're doing something very unique all of us together and from a virtual look around at your fellow participants in this fellowship we have a very unique mix of jews and non-jews of every level of affiliation religiousness and observance so naturally they're going to be ideas beyond what we're all accustomed to and this is good as it expands our horizons and while we're all from different backgrounds and holding in different places we have one thing in common and that's that we're looking in the same direction up heavenward and that's a good place to be looking because we've just entered the month of elul which is a very special time of the year for the jewish people but also for the entire world for all of humanity for we're leading up to the holiday of rosh hashanah when god created all of mankind and it's not just a common commemoration of creation but it's an auspicious energy fertile for new beginnings to enter the world and and offering us this opportunity to take advantage of this great potential for growth and reinvention and self-discovery elul this month leading up to rosh hashanah stands for ani le dodi which means i am for my beloved and my beloved is for me it's a time that we know that the king is in the field in the palace sometimes it feels the king is is inaccessible he's more difficult to get to we have to work much harder to return to him but during elul this month the king is in the field we can just go out to meet him if we really internalize this truth we jump out of our chairs in excitement for this opportunity but it still means that we have to do our part we still have to go out into the field ourselves to meet him both metaphorically or as i can tell you in practice here at our farm in the judean frontier i do this quite literally but what does this type of repentance mean how can we really meet the king in the field well this week's parsha the torah portion is called shaftim and the first verse says shafting vashotrain judges and officers that you shall appoint for yourselves in all of your gates now the simplest level of this commandment is clear it's a call for law and for order for a justice system but the jewish people have a very deep and profound relationship with the torah that many people don't understand and they're coexisting levels of depth that simply get deeper and deeper and and more profound from the simplest secret to the deepest of secrets so the hasidic masters they share a deep insight that i believe will help us to truly go out and meet hashem in the field they say what are these gates upon which we need to appoint judges and officers the gates to our mind the gates to our souls what are these gates our mouth our eyes our ears this is a time where it's more exciting than ever to be discriminating and what we allowed to enter the holy sanctuary which is our soul our mouths what are we putting into our mouths if our body is the sanctuary within which our soul resides then a healthy body nourished by healthy natural foods creates and refines our body to be a clean vessel through which god can channel his light into the world and what comes out of our mouths what comes out of our mouths are they words of kindness and gratitude and compassion are they blessings and words of torah and spirituality or are we speaking hurtful words words of slander and resentment and complaints our words have tremendous creative power this is a perfect time to appoint judges and officers to carefully guard our mouths to determine not only what goes in but what comes out our eyes what are we watching what are we seeing the influence in creative power of what we see in the health of our minds and the purity of our souls is more than we could ever imagine in our ears what are we listening to are we listening to vanity and emptiness and nonsense to gossip into slander or to words of holiness and praise teaching and song to the words of our friends that are opening their hearts and sharing with us you see there's so many dimensions to the words of god as you can imagine even the hebrew language you see every other language of the world it has a meaning a word has a definition but in hebrew every letter has a meaning every letter has a definition a perfect example i like to use to describe this idea is the word medaber medaber means to speak now i i wrote this up just now i don't know how it's going to look with the mirror image of the camera but i'll try medabare means to speak to speak now mem mem is a transitive letter if you put mem before any word it means me it means from right the letter mem means from now again this word medabar means to speak to speak so men means from dalit is the second letter a dollar has an identity of a delete which is like a door a delete a door so dalit is a door bet is like a bite before you put bet before any word in the hebrew language of any word you put bet before it means to go inside of that thing okay so bet is in and reish is like a rosh you hear the similarity between the letters a race is like a roche which is a head ahead so the word medabara means to speak and when you put the definitions or the identities of the letter together it's from the door in your head how do we speak we speak from the door in our head so yes on a very simple level medabara means to speak but when you delve deeper into the secrets of the hebrew language itself every letter has a definition as a meaning and the meanings of the letters together make the meanings of the words and this is a time to delve deep to delve inside and to really look at our lives and say what are the guards that we have the officers we've appointed over our eyes our ears our mouth the the doors in our in our experience to the world to make sure that we're vessels so hashem please bless me and bless all of us bless all of my friends throughout the fellowship because why are we here we're here because we're seeking your faith we're seeking your truth we want to walk in your paths so help us help us on this journey come out and meet us in the fields because all we want is to come close to you so we can be vessels to bring your light into the world not just for ourselves and our friends and our family but for all of mankind so you can bring about the redemption we all been praying for for so many years thank you hashem and thank you my friends and thank you jeremy shalom shalom thank you ari