Sweet, Sweet Torah - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

so friday night service arrived and we all entered the shoal there must have been 35 to 40 men there between the ages of 13 and 90 and perhaps six or seven of the women were there uh it was beautiful it's never been so full anywhere near it on a friday night and we all came together and we sang and we prayed and we sang and i handed out candy as i always do because in nearly and just a little synagogue politics synagogue background in nearly every synagogue in the world there's a self-appointed candyman sometimes there are two and then it gets really competitive things can get ugly but i'm from many generations of candy men and it's something i deeply enjoy because when you give a small little organic candy to a to a kid it generates the same amount of excitement that giving an adult a new lexus does or a thousand dollars they're just so happy so the return on the investment is great and i also feel like it's wholly in and of itself because it creates an association um from such a young age of the sabbath services of the sabbath prayers of synagogue it creates an association of joy and with sweetness it's similar to the custom that jews have which is called an up sharon have any of you heard of an up sharon it's a ceremony in which when a little jewish boy turns three years old we cut his hair for the first time until then i remember my mother told me she cut my long golden locks and she just wept she would miss them so much and at the ceremony you teach him the aleph bet you take a sheet out with each of the letters of the hebrew alphabet printed on it it looks like this tabitha could you pull up the um the sheep anyways okay okay there we go and you see each of those letters of the aleph bet over each one of the letters you put a little drop of honey so when the child learns the letter he dips the finger in the honey and will associate these letters with which god created the world and with which the holy torah is written they'll always be sweet in his mouth anyways i'm totally distractible and i'm getting on all sorts of rabbit holes but that's why i give out candy but but i do it differently i may be the only one in the world that does gives out candy not just to kids but i had this brilliant realization years ago that grown-ups like it too so i give it out to everyone but this is a revolutionary idea hasn't taken traction yet maybe someday maybe in the holy temple everyone will get candy all the nations of the world but until then it's just at the aragon farm anyways we came together and we prayed and we sang and i think everybody felt something special was happening but uh but these people weren't on the whole journey to us they couldn't have known how unique it was so in the pause between the beautiful songs of welcoming the sabbath and the actual evening service usually the rabbi someone gets up is i i often do it because nobody else volunteers and i stood up to speak and i started by saying like this i said attenborough do you feel that can you feel it in the air and i posed that question and i just let it sit and then i said that feeling of course in hebrew i said that feeling that's the shrina do you guys know what the is the divine presence it to get actually into the depths and the of what it is it would take a lot more time but if if you want we could do another fellowship about that by the way i want to hear from you guys your thoughts your questions what's more of what to do less of anyways i'm talking to these guys and to all these people there was also eight women there and and i explained that for thousands of years when the jewish people were in exile the shina was there with us the shayna was in the exile with us feeling our pain feeling our disconnection and now that we're returning the shrine is returning with us and uh looking around at the majority of men there these indigenous judean types that i was telling you about last week with the payout and the hebrew garments just unadulterated by western civilization i reminded them that something very holy and very sacred happened in these mountains we don't believe it we know it we know that it was the wilderness of zef where king david fled from king saul who was seeking his life and in the caves all around the farm in which he had he composed most of the book of tahilim so from our synagogue you can literally look out directly into the caves where the psalms were most likely written and for thousands of years our mountain was bereft was mourning the loss of her children who were dispersed around the world and now we've returned i was telling them and the shrina the divine presence has returned with us and these holy stones these stones which were hewn from the mountain itself the stones with which our house of prayer was built are absorbing our prayers are drinking them in with thirst and then after thousands of years our prayers are finally upon this mountain and not only that but that this shabbat would be the first shabbat that we'd actually have a torah with us that a torah would be red on this mountain i i want all of you to see what it looked like i want your eyes to behold what the torah looked like within the arankodish within the holy ark that is new it's still under construction here it is can you see that it was like the torah would just fit in perfectly like a glove into this holy holy ark it's so beautiful anyways when you see it in person person i can show you the stones that we've hand selected from the four holy cities of israel right we've gone through what they are there's tiberius there's spat there's hebron and there's jerusalem it's earth water wind and fire tiberius is water spot is air hebron is earth and jerusalem is fire and we wanted prominent stones from each of these cities within the ark itself i can't this highlight was taken from the land of israel fellowship every week hundreds of families from literally around the world come together on our live zoom sessions to strengthen each other to inspire each other and to learn torah from the land of israel in which we connect the dots between the bible the hebrew language and the confusing events of our times go to www.thelandofisral.com backslash fellowship or click on the link below to join thank you you