Decoding the Connection between Missiles and Judaism

Having once witnessed the chilling power of missiles during a Blue Angels show, I was struck by an unexpected connection between these weapons of destruction and the spiritual realm. Let's embark together on a journey where we interpret the Hebrew word for missiles, "telem," and its transformation into "tehillim" or praises to God. We'll trace the echoes of history, connecting the year 1948, Abraham's birth, the founding of Israel, and a conflict where such 'holy missiles' were utilized. Uncover the fascinating intersections of physical force and spiritual power and the profound insights that an in-depth study of the Torah can reveal about our world today.

We'll then veer our course towards the pillar of Jewish tradition - hospitality. Drawing from the wisdom of our forebears, we'll discuss the philosophy of "saying little and doing a lot" in the context of welcoming strangers into our homes. Following this thread, we'll reflect on the recent terrorist attack in Israel and its reverberations within the Jewish community, underscoring the pressing need for strong Jewish roots. We'll end our journey by investigating the trials and triumphs of adversity and how we can harness the power of spiritual missiles, our prayers, to counter the negativity and violence plaguing our world. Come, let's explore these complex ideas together.

Transcript

Coach Ratner: 0:00

You know I try to set people up. I'm not a shot on like a matchmaker but since I have a lot of people come through my house and through my classes, people say, oh, you know someone like, yeah, and I saw it started. I know I, you know the. The Sager say it's like a miracle, it's like split in the Red Sea if you can bring a couple together for under the hopa. And it isn't. It is not easy, but I was trying to set this woman up and I came with this whole concept. It really is so true. And I, when I gave it over this past Chabis the Saturday morning in 1000 DC, I said you don't know your type until you meet your type. And I asked everyone married in the room, how many of you when you met your, when you got married, was this the person kind of person that, if you had to describe who they were to be, was this the person you're looking for? And everyone in the room was shook their head no, no one married who they thought they're gonna marry not no one. But I'm saying in general, that's the way of life works you have no idea who your type is and taking your type. So people have this dream. You know, ladies, woman like I want to meet. You know a dark guy, tall, rich, you know, funny, spiritual, like these are all great things, but you don't know you're gonna, you don't know who your spouse is gonna be. The house I was staying at my, my good friend, buried in Yvonne Cohen. They've been married longer than me, probably 30 years or something. And I said to Yvonne I said, yvonne, you know, when you were dating, you met Barry. Was he your type? He goes? You kidding me, not even close, using my type. But once I met him, he became my type. I asked my wife. I said I see a lot of. Was I your type? She goes yeah, I was really looking for a five foot eight redhead who's a coin dealer I like. No, you weren't my type, but I met you. You came, my type.

Coach Ratner: 1:34

This is the living clarity podcast. I'm coach Ratner and there is no one else here. Today we're talking about holy missiles. What are holy missiles? You know, being here in Israel, we have to go to bombshell tour occasionally and the word for missile or missiles in Hebrew is Telem. Telem was the Hebrew word and if you add a hate to that word, telem, you get the word to hill him. What is to hill him? To hill him is basically praises that we say to God when we're, when we want to reach out to him. It's basically a talking to God, basically, and Got me thinking the back Number.

Coach Ratner: 2:08

Years ago, as I was in Annapolis, annapolis, maryland, and I went to see the Blue Angels. And the Blue Angels what they are is a is a bunch of jet fighters from the US Navy and what they do is they go travel around the world, travel in the US, and they do shows. They do like these high flying shows flying through the air. You know, they do make little hearts in the sky with you know, there with their Contrails, and it's a great show and the very popular millions of people, you know, hundreds of thousand people come out to watch them, to fly. So I'm driving back from the show in Annapolis and thinking to myself, guys, it was a nice show, but there was something missing. There was something that I couldn't place it.

Coach Ratner: 2:48

When I first, when I was driving home, like what bother me so much about this show, this, this airplane show, I finally figured it out. Have you ever been somewhere before Like the beach, the mountains, and you spend, you know whatever hanging out. Next thing you know Jet flies over your head and F-16 and F-15, whatever it is, and like whoa, that is so cool. You look up and you see missiles under their wings. And the reason why it's so cool besides the fact that's going, you know, thousand miles an hour and it's loud is that that pilot can push a button and two seconds You're dead. Not even two seconds, two tenths of a second You're dead. Why he's got missiles under his wings. He can kill you in two, like it's instantly.

Coach Ratner: 3:30

And when these jets are flying around for the Blue Angels, they don't have any missiles. What are those missiles? What are holy missiles? Holy missiles are what we use to fight hate. Holy missiles are we used to connect the God. Holy missiles, what we need to have. Although you got to have physical power, you got to have spiritual power. And how you get that spiritual power. You take tea, lean, you add the hay, which you know Rashi brings down a gemore that you wouldn't. Hey is basically God's creation of the world, the physical and spiritual world, and you take that hey which part of God's name, and you take missiles and you turn it into, basically, the power of us connecting to God, now, what's amazing of what's happened with this war? Now you don't think about this but, like when you read the Torah, you start learning Torah. You see Predictions in the Torah right in front of your eyes.

Coach Ratner: 4:21

So what blew me away recently was that, like you know, we've been reading a story of Abraham. The Abraham was born in the year 1948 on the Jewish calendar and, of course, 1948 is also the same year that the state of Israel is founded by the Gregorian calendar. I mean, it's kind of a coincidence, you know. Okay, it's nice, it's really cute. Same number Blah, blah, blah, but whatever, right.

Coach Ratner: 4:46

But then when you look what happened this year, you know and the story read a few weeks ago that Abraham had this nephew Loat. We don't see a lot about him in the Torah, but it says at one point they were both shepherds and their shepherds. They had shepherds that worked for them. They weren't the only shepherds, they had a conglomerate, you know, and they were fighting with each other. They were like you know, you're a my land, no, you're a my land. And Abraham said to his nephew Loat that you know, you need to go left and I'll go right. You go right, I'll go left, which is. You know, when you read the Torah, it's not a big deal. Oh, you go left, I'll go right. You go east, I'll go west, right. The most directions in the Torah are based on north, south, east or west, or they use cities as directional points, like you know east of I, west of Shechem, you know east of the Yom, which is the Mediterranean Sea, and they use that for directions. But this is the only time in the Torah it says you go left and I go right, which I don't think. When Abraham was talking to his nephew Loat, he was thinking about political statements. Because now, when you say left and right, you're making a political statement, and I don't think so.

Coach Ratner: 5:58

But what happened in Israel before this horrible act, this terrorism we had on October 7th? We had fights between the left and the right. So, okay, another coincidence, I don't know, but when Abraham was asked to leave his country and go to Canaan, it was 75 years after he was born. 75 years after he was born is 2023. And also, which is kind of quite amazing, loat got kidnapped. He was taken hostage by four kings and Abraham had to go and save him. Why Left and right? There was a fight between the left and the right and the Abraham didn't have to save. You know, we have different four kings today. It's not the ancient four kings. We have today Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and Syria. We have the four kings today, it's just different four kings. And when you look in the Torah, you see that Abraham and Loat have to separate because one was when they go left and one would go right, and then Loat was kidnapped and Abraham had to save him. I mean, the whole story is right in front of us in the Torah.

Coach Ratner: 7:09

This is the Living in Clarity podcast, and I'm here at Faces International here in Jerusalem, where they're taking orders from soldiers, the families of soldiers and displaced families here in Israel who need lots of supplies. They need lots of help. Please donate today to FacesInternationalcoil and thank you so much for your support. So how do we get our holy missiles? We have to see that. We have to see how do we solve this problem? How do we, you know, fulfill the mission of the Jewish people? Make a world the safe place, make a world holy place, make, you know, bring peace upon the earth. We have to do it. What Avraham does, which basically is, you know, connect to a shem, connect the God by singing praises to a shem, by saying to heal him. You know, he Um.

Coach Ratner: 7:53

One of Avraham's amazing traits was chesed kindness, that he always had his tent open on all four sides. Now I remember when I when I first started going to my Jewish journey and we started hosting people at our house, and One time there's a situation back in Maryland where there was a family that had a, the the wife's husband's wife's father died and they had a. They go to funeral on Friday afternoon near our house. They were from Milwaukee and they needed a place to stay for Shabbos because they couldn't get back to. You know, they couldn't get anywhere on time to stay for Shabbos. So we hosted this family. We had no idea where they were like, like completely out of the blue, and I remember telling One of my relatives is close relatives and they go.

Coach Ratner: 8:41

How do you host someone you don't know? How do you like? I'm like, I don't know. That's what the Jewish people do. We host people that we don't know. We have our tents open on four sides, and not only that, we go whatever way to basically say little and do a lot.

Coach Ratner: 8:54

The mission that says, you know, say little, do a lot. Which means when Avraham saw these three angels, these three people in the desert and he has tent open, he just had a brisk. And he, he says to them you know what guys? Come, come, come, come, come, come, lay under this tree, you will get some shade. I'll brew some water to wash your feet off. I'll give you a morsel to eat, morsel of bread to eat. And what does he go and do? He goes and he, and he gets a lamb and he gives it to his son. He says go, go, cook this lamb. He tells his wife to make some flour cakes and he goes and he gets some milk and he gives him a whole smorgasbord. Because that's what the Jewish people do we say little and we do a lot. And for us to have our holy missiles and us to baby, we've Be fighting back with missiles under our wings, our spiritual missiles. We have to connect to a shem.

Coach Ratner: 9:43

You know when you, there's gonna be movies and books about what happened here on October 7th and we're gonna see stories that are gonna blow your mind. We're gonna see stories just like 1948, just like 1967. Worker people like you know what? How do you not see God's hand in this, even though it's a horrible situation. How is it what bad things happen to good people like? That's a different, that's a different story. But we're gonna see God's hand and many, many cases of him saving, saving many people.

Coach Ratner: 10:10

I know for a fact that One of my neighbors is very, very close friends with the head of Zaka and he said that there was a number of Not kabutsas but like moshaws. One of them was an observant one where they keep Shabbos and they had their gates closed and no one in their community died. But there was another one which kind of blew my mind, where they had for years we're going back and forth whether or not the closed or gates on Shabbos a lot of communities that keep Shabbos. What they do is, since no one's driving on Shabbos, no one's going to work, they just locked their gates basically, so no one can get in and out, so maybe pedestrians, and They've been fighting back and forth and they find the side this year because this year the holiday of Simhastor happened and Sukkot fell on Shabbat, so it's kind of like a double holiday. So they decided that you know what, this year we're gonna lock the gates on Shabbos and this one community locked their gates. They had nine terrorists that tried to infiltrate. They shot every single one of them and no one in their community died Just because they decided to close their gates on Shabbos.

Coach Ratner: 11:10

There's another story about of a of an officer who was Fighting the terrorists and he was injured in a ditch. And when the Israeli army finally came, they saw him in the ditch and they thought it was a terrorist or about to shoot him. And they saw his seat, seat, his you call juice strings. We there are things we wear it, you know, to remind us of all the mix fuzz. You see a lot of Jews, especially in Jerusalem, you know, wearing them, and they saw them hanging off of a shirt and they said don't shoot, he's, he's one of us. And so we have all these amazing stories. They're gonna come out Probably still too early because it's still, you know, too fresh in our memory and we don't have all the stories yet. But eventually it could be books out and we're gonna see all the amazing things that happened. But we can certainly see what happened in our story just by reading the Torah portion.

Coach Ratner: 11:58

You know, as a Jew, you gotta have strong roots. You gotta, you gotta have strong roots If you don't know what your purpose of a Jew is gonna be hard to have spiritual missiles. It's gonna be hard to fight back when you sometimes are rough. There was a and Lakewood, new Jersey, 2012,. There was a hurricane Sandy came hit the east coast and in these communities in Lakewood, a lot of them were built by developers and they all have the same houses and the same yards and the same driveways and the same trees.

Coach Ratner: 12:27

And there was one community where half the trees fell from the hurricane Sandy, from the high winds, and they couldn't figure out why half fell and half didn't. And they did some research and they found out that the trees that fell had a sprinkler system. And what happens when you have a sprinkler system is that water comes to you on a regular basis and the roots don't have to search for water. So the roots didn't have to work hard in order to support themselves. The trees that didn't have the sprinkler systems, they had to search for water. They had to go down deep. They had to look for water lower, lower, lower in the water table and those deep roots kept that tree alive. They kept that tree standing. They kept that tree erect when the strong winds came.

Coach Ratner: 13:19

The Jew, if we don't have our roots deep into the ground. Next time we get a strong wind come through, next time we get challenges in our life, next time we have a horrible terrorist attack happen to us, we're not going to be able to stand and we're going to fall. So, as a Jew, you have to have deep roots and sometimes those challenges that God sent us help us to make our roots stronger. We want to have our spiritual missiles. We want to take that ti'lim, those missiles that Hamas was sending to us on a daily basis, and add the hay and turn it into healing. And when we say words of praise to God, when we say ti'lim, we'll have stronger roots. Thanks for listening to Living Clarity Podcast. I'll see you next time.