Seeking Sense from Tragedy - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

i don't think it's just me personally either because last night after prayers in our synagogue at the crown of our mountain i was able to pull myself out and go to to prayers and uh and i was speaking to my very dear friend about what i've been going through and i opened up to him because i've always considered him like the strongest most solid guy i know one of them and i told him what's happening he said brother that happens to me too all the time i was like you you you cry you break down and cry he's like yeah i do and i try not to fight it i try to just experience it and let it wash over me and realize that it's part of something much greater and i said what do you mean by that what do you mean it's part of something much greater and he said uh he said are you watching the news do you see are you watching the news are you seeing the chaos that's going on out there in the world there's a spirit of fear and confusion washing over mankind and we're a part of it just because our bodies look separate and disconnected doesn't mean that we are disconnected we're all one you're simply feeling that chaotic energy of the world flowing through you he's a spiritual guy and he was speaking in those terms and of course this is true but i i realized that i've been so caught up in my own pain and my own fear and my own experience that i was just disconnected from the greater picture and so as the dust began to settle a little bit i decided to take a look around to see who i can help as so many people have helped me just to see who i can pray for as so many people have prayed for me and well in our world you do not need to look far there was just a great tragedy that has struck america a dramatic devastating tragedy you probably know what i'm talking about not only for america but for the jewish people and this is of course the predominantly jewish apartment condominium in miami florida that uh you guys shake your heads if you know what i'm talking about so it it seemed to spontaneously collapse last week can you imagine this this isn't in some third world country this happened in an expensive upper middle class neighborhood in miami right next to the jewish community immediately in the jewish world the prayers began and the dread took hold and everybody's wondering who do i know and who do i know that knows who i know everybody called their friends from miami and of course israel immediately sent an expedition of idf officers search and rescue teams to help rescue any survivors that there may be as we do for all natural disasters by the way all around the world whether they're from friendly countries like america or adversaries like iran or syria and during a cnn interview with the idf search and rescue delegation i saw something which caught my eye and impacted me profoundly and uh it was a five minute interview but i'm not going to share the whole thing with you i'll just cut out the first minute here for you to see this is truly a global rescue effort here with engineering and specialists from around the world joining local officials with me now is colonel golan vock he's an israeli defense force commander who is leading the israeli rescue team here commander thanks so much for being with us and thank you for the work you're doing you just came from the pile you've been working overnight on the side i can still see the dust on your boots which our viewers can't see here uh give me the latest in terms of what you're finding at the last 12 hours we found some more people we found we found more bodies we found people unfortunately they are not alive we found some more tunnels and we scrolled at night in in in those tunnels and there are from one hand new spaces that we find and from the other we found more people but unfortunately not alive so did you hear the did you hear the sensitivity in his voice the compassion the love for every person not just every jew but every person could you hear that in his voice it was so moving and you may have caught what i caught twice he refused to say bodies it wasn't just semantics when this holy man uncovered one of the victims of this tragedy he didn't see a body he saw a human being created in the image of god whose soul has departed from within them every one of them is unique and holy every one of them is an entire world and thank you every one of them is an entire world and in a world that's more and more changing the meaning of words to separate us and to divide us to hear such deliberate usage of language for a holy reason it touched me and it made me proud yet again to be such a part of such a sensitive and holy nation and while colonel vach humbly diverted his focus from it throughout the interview it's clear that he had not slept in days and that he had no concern for himself you know we can ask ourselves why this is happening and we should building collapses in america are not common at all and for it to happen daftka in a in the heart of a jewish neighborhood should give us pause and and strengthen us to and strengthen us to consider this another rare building collapse happened yesterday in buffalo new york as you can see right here and so what is this all about all of a sudden two building collapses why is this happening we can't definitively know why i'm so sorry about this i'm so sorry i figured out another way you don't need to keep shaking your arms if you don't want to but i appreciate you understanding i see ardell you're saying it's okay don't worry about it i appreciate that we're gonna try to figure it out for next time but um but we should try to make sense of it we can humbly seek understanding one person seeking a friend of mine wrote why is this happening and he gave some reason why it's happening and instead of everybody saying we don't know we can't know the way god thinks all these people were making suggestion one person seeking to make sense of it he wrote this we are crushing one another we are trampling on our fellow jews we are not respecting each other as we should our father is sending us pain for through our own pain we become sensitive to our brother's pain we all need to increase our ahavati israel our love for our fellow journal your aud shaman our fear of heaven yet i pray that the merciful one will only will see only our merits and send the redeemer to help guide us back to be the on sagula and so that was really beautiful for me to to hear him to hear him say that because that's really what what it's about it's about praying that hashem just sees the good in us and that we can only do that by seeing the good in each other and then another person wrote this god sends calamities to the jewish people to awaken us to do chuva right to repent each individual knows what he needs to improve on and we cannot tell others what they need to repent for we need to make an individual accounting of our own faults and work to fix them repentance is done in three steps as explained by the rambam number one remorse and regret what was done wrong number two resolve to never do it again and number three express this verbally and ask for forgiveness from hashem that is a jewish way of coping and contending with pain and darkness in the world to try to make sense of how we can refine ourselves so i don't really know why it happened the thought that i had maybe god is telling us that the foundations are crumbling particularly in america that we must stop putting our faith in bricks and mortar or the works of our hands i don't know it isn't for us to know at least not definitively it's not for us to know at least not beyond the shadow of a doubt yes we should seek understanding and insight this is true but uh we should seek to hear what god is telling us but more important than that we need to put our own interests and ourselves aside and think about god and his honor and about the health and the well-being of our fellow man this highlight was taken from the land of israel 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