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Living life with emuna

Shavua tov!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and a lot of praying, the last couple of days, on how to deal with ‘life in 2023’.

Very  long story short – it boils down to understanding that God is behind absolutely everything, without any exception to that rule.

If God wants my car hacked into, God forbid – then that is what will be.

And so on and so forth, for all the other ‘potentially scary’ stuff going on all around.

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The corollary to this is:

If God doesn’t want something to happen to me – it can’t, no matter how much other people or circumstances may be trying to make that occur.

And as 99% of what happens in this world is a function of our relationship with God, and our ongoing attempt to make teshuva, improve our bad middot, pray, do good deeds, reveal God’s Kingship in the world and learn Torah, etc, the more I put my time and effort into these spiritual endeavors, the better off I will be, on so many levels.

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Tachlis, after spending a day looking at manual transmission old cars, I realised that I can’t just side-step the challenges here, by trying to ‘buy’ my way out of them.

Once I realised that, I moved some pictures of tzaddikim into the new car, and I spent a fair bit of time praying very sincerely that God should keep me, and everyone else using the car and driving the car safe.

And also, everyone else safe on the roads, in whatever way that needs to happen.

I am also having in mind now ‘hackers’, when I say my tefillot haderech, and also saying that prayer with a lot more kavanot.

This approach has cheered me up immensely.

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Something else I realised, is that all this ‘soul hacking’ stuff has been going on since time immemorial – at least since Ancient Egypt, and probably way before.

Just back then, their ‘tech’ was much more spiritual and not as crass as the tech we have to deal with today.

R Avraham Sutton actually wrote a book about all that, called Spiritual Technology.

Point is: while there are some very challenges things going on right now, they are not NEW in the way they appear to be.

I am thinking of that rabbi from the Gemara, who the witches were trying to cast spells on, using the dust they would gather from under his feet.

He said let them gather the dust!! If God doesn’t want their spell to succeed, they can’t harm me!

This is the paradigm I need to be operating out of, going forward – focussing way more on spiritual solutions, and bringing more of the practical teachings of Rabbenu and the Rav, BH.

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I hope you have a good fast.

And we’ll pick things up again next week.

 

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Ain yeoush. Again

Yah, you already know if I’m writing that in the title, I’m feeling a lot of yeoush.

I took the last post down, because my husband got scared I’m over the target.

He’s probably right.

Even though I’m writing things so very carefully these days, the truth is the censorship and the suppression of truth is going up and up and up all the time right now.

For example:

I am having troubles getting into my own blog, since I wrote that second-to-last post about how easy it is to hack into all our fancy new cars and remote-control them.

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This should be a massive talking point for anyone worried about ‘China’ (ahem….) launching terrorist attacks inside other sovereign states.

To give just one, ridiculous, example.

All those ‘terrorists’ swerving into pedestrians before someone shoots them dead – how do we actually know if they have control of their own vehicles, if all new cars can be so easily ‘hacked’ from the outside?

Maybe, the ‘Hamas’ (ahem….) or ‘Iran’ (ahem…) is hacking in to these people’s vehicles without these people even knowing what’s going on, and turning their cars into weapons used against civilians in Israel.

Shouldn’t this be a massive talking point, in Israel of all places?

That someone could just ‘hack’ your car, even if you have the highest security clearance, and then use it to kill people, God forbid, or drive it into all sorts of things and places where that would be a real problem?

Instead of rubber-stamping more facial recognition tech on street corners to catch ‘criminals’ (ahem…) why aren’t ANY of our politicians, journalists, or security establishment even talking about this stuff?

(Answers on a postcard….)

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So yes, I have yeoush today.

Which is why I’m listening to this version of ‘Ain Yeoush’ by Adi Ran:

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It took me a while to recognise what video clip it’s playing over.

It’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’, where ‘the good guys’ are fighting the ‘bad guys’, and Tom Hanks gets shot repeatedly.

That by itself started to cheer me up, at least a bit.

It’s a war, mamash.

And a lot of people are getting hurt and killed.

But in the end, God sends ‘the miracle’ just when you think all hope is gone….

And the bad guys explode.

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I am taking a few days off from blogging.

I hope you have a good Yom Kippur, and that God will send in the special forces to come and rescue us from ‘the bad guys’ very soon.

Because ain yeoush be olam klal.

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The car

First, here’s a couple of interesting articles that you may, or may not, want to read about ‘facial recognition’ technology.

It’s being rolled-out all over the world as we speak, in ‘lock-step’ again, touted as the magic solution to every ‘crime’ in the country – except the biggest ones of all, committed by the people who are supposedly meant to be leading us.

Here‘s the ‘elect me’ video for the ‘Plan A.N.G.E.L’ police state plan by Mexican politician Marcelo Ebrard, from last month.

(It’s in Spanish, but the images speak for themselves.)

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The guy got so much push-back, he actually deleted the initial tweet, but HERE is where you can still find the video above on Twitter. (For now).

But here’s basically what he was saying (translated from the Spanish):

  • Facial recognition cameras on public roads
  • ID profiling
  • Weapon detectors
  • Vehicle tracking
  • Drones
  • Facial recognition devices being used by security personnel, everywhere
  • ‘Morphological profiling’ of criminals.

If you don’t know what that last one means, it means this:

“A criminal has a certain way of acting and walking. And we can set up patterns,”  Ebrard told the audience, saying that the technology would have the potential to prevent the serial killings.

“If we had this technology, we could have avoided femicide, homicide, or other actions by the type of way you walk, and behave.”

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This is so horrible, I shudder even typing it.

Yeah, right. They are talking about locking people up JUST BECAUSE THEY WALK THE WRONG WAY….

Who could make this stuff up?

John Cleese…. watch out.

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You can read about the State of Georgia’s new ‘Digital IDs’ HERE – introduced by the Governor of Georgia barely weeks after he was a guest at the WEF in Davos, this January.

Go look up ‘Klaus Schwab’ and ‘Digital ID’ – see what you find.

Point is, each country is being ‘sold’ this tech by our corrupted puppet politicians with it’s own national flavor, including in Israel – but it’s all the same idea, all the same ‘tech’, designed to spy on the citizens, and totally remove any semblance of freedom.

(God is not going to let this happen. The only question is how much pain we all have to suffer before it permanently derails, God forbid.)

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So now, let me tell you about the new car we just got.

I loved my nine year old Hyundai i20, in so many ways.

But it was starting to falter, and it was time either to spend a lot of money in the garage fixing it back up, or to buy a new one.

My husband probably missed this post, about ‘hackable vehicles’ – but even if he didn’t (see below….) I kind of felt like I’m stuck in this ‘brave new world’ of disgusting tech.

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So…. the new car came with WAZE and with Spotify, and apparently also with a fully functional Google search….

Which is when I realised that the car was ‘wired’ with WiFi 100%

I am that psycho who takes out the plug of the router each time I’m done on the internet at home…. and now, I am driving around with a computer screen, fully wi-fi’d up, in my face 24/7.

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That was bad enough.

I moved my shungite ball into the glove compartment, and hoped for the best.

Next, I realised that you can’t actually see out the back window properly, because they expect you to just ‘rely’ on the beeping camera sensor thingies for reversing.

I tried that for a day – until I realised the cameras were mistaking manhole covers for ‘obstacles’ – and also failing to catch real obstacles like people walking past….

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Then, the car kept turning itself off to ‘save gas’ whenever I came to a full stop.

We turned that function off – only to find out it came back each time.

Apparently, ‘the law’ is Israel is that the cars have to be programmed with a permanent ‘turn off’ thingy now, that you have to manually override each new trip.

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Next:

When I was driving on the highway, it started beeping at me in all sorts of ways that I wasn’t ‘concentrating’ enough on the road – even though I was – and then flashing up ‘red devil’ things in the dashboard that I was getting too close to other cars…. the side of the road…. I don’t know what.

It was so distracting I nearly had an accident, God forbid.

Again, I went through and turned off as much of this stuff off as I can, but some of it just keeps coming back, as part of the nanny state tech that apparently comes standard in new cars these days.

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I touch my windscreen wipers – it tells me that ‘automatic windscreen wiping’ has now been enabled.

I don’t want that.

And I don’t know how to turn it off.

Then two days ago, I accidentally touched some other button, and both my wing mirrors folded in while I was driving on the road, sending me into panic mode (and nearly causing another accident) until God enlightened me and I could figure out how to open them back up.

Long story short: These new cars are a menace to society, totally distracting, and really dangerous to drive.

And that’s even before we get into that whole parsha about the Deep State being able to hack straight in, take over the driving functionality and crash you into a lamp-post.

God forbid.

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Oh, and WAZE is also not at all what it was cracked up to be.

BH, I don’t use WAZE – I have been using maps and old-fashioned sign posts, and I have a good sense of direction, BH.

My husband doesn’t, and he thought WAZE was going to be great – no more having to listen to his wife telling him what to do from the passenger side!!

Except…. WAZE often gets it wrong, and often takes you to places you don’t want to go.

(And let’s not even talk about how distracting it is to keep looking at a computer screen while you are meant to be driving. I honestly now understand why so many people come to full stops at green traffic lights, then make ridiculous, dangerous turns that ‘come out of no-where’ and nearly cause accidents. I thought it was too much pot…. now I’m coming to the conclusion it’s too much reliance on WAZE.)

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So.

Long story short – I am hoping to buy an nine year old Hyundai i20 very soon, second-hand.

So I don’t get irradiated while I drive.

And my mirrors don’t close by themselves.

And the car doesn’t ‘stall’ at every red light.

And the nanny state can’t track me every second, every cm where I drive, and match my driving speed to the ‘official’ speed limit.

(And also…. the Deep State can’t hack in and drive my car into a lamp-post, God forbid.)

But the new aircon is good.

So that’s all OK, then.

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You might also like this article:

Hackable vehicles

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The ‘sweetening’ begins

I just got off the phone with my husband, waiting in some airport in Poland to get back to the Holy Land.

He told me the border crossings today have been brutal.

People standing in the sun for hours and hours, on a fast day, and lots of people fainting.

There are still some massive, ongoing tests of emuna and middot going on, and every single person who went to Uman this year, with maximum mesirut nefesh, has sweetened the harsh decrees for all of us.

Of course, the same people who are still going on about ‘safe and effective’ are EXACTLY the same people still dissing the kibbutz in Uman on Rosh Hashana, and calling the people who went ‘idol worshippers’ and ‘retarded’, amongst many other choice words.

Do the experiment for yourself.

Take a look at who the most vehement ‘anti-Uman’ people are, the worst ‘anti-Rav’ people, and then go and see what they were saying about ‘safe and effective’.

It’s probably not a total 100% match up – but I guarantee, it’s approaching it.

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In the meantime, here’s some good news I got sent, still unverified, but from a trustworthy source:

The Rav said that there is no din.

The pain endured by not getting to Uman will be instead of much pain that the Jewish people were meant to endure this year.

And the war in which all the nations will go against Israel will either not happen, or if it will happen and no Jewish family will get hurt, and there will be an earthquake in Israel like there was in Morocco (which will destroy the enemies of Israel).

The Rav was felt on Rosh Hashanah in Uman and Uman was felt by the Rav in Yerushalayim.

The Rav’s minyan was packed in the kloiz in Uman and the Rav’s minyan was packed in the Olam in Yerushalayim.

We were all together and felt tremendous tikkunim and cancellation of judgements.

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This is the ‘vibe’ I’ve been getting so far about Rosh Hashana, too, even though it seems a little incredible, if I’m honest.

That somehow, stuff got ‘sweetened’ again, and all the evils’ plans are going to some how fall through again, BH – as we’ve seen happen so very many times already, over the last few years.

At least, for the people who are making even in a tiny bit of sincere teshuva, and making some small effort to stay within the circle of the True Tzaddikim – as we saw recently in Essaouia, in Morocco.

For everyone else…. I really don’t know still, how all this is meant to play out.

Mass teshuva at the last minute, once the penny finally drops?

Let’s hope so.

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I will keep you updated as and when I hear more.

But in the meantime, it’s nice to have some ‘good news’ to share here.

Because we are still heading into choppy waters, at least in the short term.

And we still need to make every effort to keep doing our hitbodedut, making our teshuva, saying our Tikkun HaKlalis and paying our tzedaka, to get the evil decrees to carry on evaporating.

At least, in our own little corner of the world.

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You might also like this article:

The Lamed Vav Tzaddikim

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A good Rosh Hashana

Shana Tova v’metuka!

We are now officially ‘on the other side’ of Rosh Hashana 5784, and it seems to me, there will be a lot more sweetness this year then it currently still appears.

There’s a Breslov custom to do vidui on the eve of Rosh Hashana, at the grave of a real Tzaddik, where you go through as much stuff you can remember from the past year, and try to atone for it, before Rosh Hashana begins.

If you’re in Uman – you do that by Rabbenu.

But here in Jerusalem, a lot of the Rav’s people – the wives and kids and others who didn’t make it out to Uman – go to the grave of Shimon HaTzaddik.

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It’s been the minhag for me and my kids to go to Shimon HaTzaddik for a few years now, so Friday morning, we all piled in the car and headed out to Sheikh Jarrah.

Rav Natan Sternhertz, Rebbe Nachman’s main student, actually wrote a book where he set out many of the ‘sins’, alphabetically, to go through.

A lot of that book is geared more towards men, but it’s still a great ‘jumping off’ point, and I find every year that God draws my attention to some other part of the text, where I suddenly remember what a cack job I did in that area, the last 12 months.

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In previous years, some of my kids have been more, and less, into doing vidui at Shimon HaTzaddik.

One year, one of them even skipped it, and that led to yet more ‘avodat hamiddot’ for me, right before Chag, to try not to judge them to harshly, or feel aggrieved and upset about them exercising their God-given right to free choice.

It’s their life, after all, and they will have to abide by the consequences of their decisions.

But this year, I have to say it was a very uplifting, emotional experience for all of us.

By the end, all of us were crying a bit, realising just how flawed we actually are, and how much patience and love and compassion God continues to show us, year after year, when He gives us yet another chance to do a bit better, and to fix a bit more.

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Then the Rosh Hashana whirl-wind descended.

I was having the family of one of my kid’s friends come stay for two days, while the father was also in Uman.

They have a sweet 9 year with Downs Syndrome – and he needs a lot of love and attention.

Let me just pause now, and salute all those parents with Downs kids, and kids with autism, and all the other conditions that require so much constant care and attention from the parents.

By the end of chag, I was so impressed with the mother – and also the rest of the family – and very humbled by the amount of grumbling and whining I’ve done done the years about my own parenting pressures.

But the kid, the naughty, sweet kid, brought so much light into the home over the chag.

It’s hard to describe this properly, but if you’ve ever spent time with a child with Downs in a relaxed environment, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

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So on the one hand, I went into chag totally consumed by ‘here and now’ issues of making sure beds were made, and food was ready, and cakes were made.

(Boy, were cakes ever made. We were six adult women in the end, and everyone made at least two cakes…. It was the ‘sweetest’ Rosh Hashana I ever had.)

And on the other hand, I went into chag feeling pretty sad that the Rav hadn’t got to Uman, and that there is talk of wars and big earthquakes hitting Eretz Yisrael – I will give more details of this when I get the Rav’s actual words to read, and then BH I will translate what was said.

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Miraculously, I got ready in time for someone to drop me off at the Rav, on Ido HaNavi, for Friday night.

I hadn’t expected to go, so it made things even more of a ‘rush’ than usual, and the first five minutes, I have to admit I just felt a lot of sadness.

It felt like the ‘bad’ had won out, yet again.

But then I clapped a bit with the Rav… sang a big…. jumped a bit with the crowd of mostly women and very, very few men there.

And I started to cheer up.

The Rav himself looked radiant – mamash like he hadn’t just spent the last week travelling all over Eastern Europe, trying to pass through the border to Ukraine – and the vibe in the crowd was actually very joyful.

Some calm descended inside my turbulent soul, and I went back home in a much better mood than I came out.

God is deciding all this,  I reminded myself.

And God is doing everything for the best – including for the very best for Am Yisrael.

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Before Chag, I’d had a chat with my husband.

He went to Uman via Kerestir, in Hungary, and then the Baal Shem Tov – and he was travelling more than 32 hours, before he actually got there.

After what happened with the foot, the leg, the back, last year, we were both pretty nervous ahead of time that all the travelling could cause more problems, God forbid.

But he told me, he was doing fine, thank God, and that Uman was the busiest he’d ever seen it.

(Official figures say 47,000 men got to Uman this year…. and it’s probably still underestimating the total by a lot. Crazy – in a very good way.)

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Meanwhile, all the usual cr*ppy disinformation sites – including Daniel Amram’s Telegram channel, which I’ve come to the conclusion has turned into more ‘controlled opposition’ at this point – were running scare stories trying to make it sound like something awful was going on in Uman.

There are huge tailbacks at the borders!!!!

(Obviously, these people never shopped at Rami Levi, if they think that’s news.)

There are huge amounts of trash being left on the pavements in Uman!!!

(Like you’d get at any venue or ‘festival’ when tens of thousands of people are there – and that’s the excuse the Ukrainians use for squeezing a ‘tourist tax’ out of every visitor to Uman on Rosh Hashanah….)

A Ukrainian policeman is beating up Jews with a baton, for breaking the curfew!!!!

(And here? Why, policemen beat up Jews with batons all the time – and they don’t even need a pretext.)

But the bottom line is this:

Uman was awesome this year.

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All the travellers’ mesirut nefesh, time, effort and money is fixing things for all of us.

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Back in Jerusalem, I went back to the prayers on Ido HaNavi Shabbat morning, when there was no shofar to hear in any case, so it didn’t matter that I was sitting outside, half-way up some crowded alley.

I did my Shmoneh Esrei…. I did my Mussaf…. and the prayers really spoke to me this  year.

There was so much stuff in there about the ‘fake malchut‘ hatching conspiracies to destroy the Jews and entice them to serve idols, to tear them away from God.

But how in the end, God’s dominion will be clearly and openly revealed, and the kavod of Hashem will spread out to all corners of the earth… 

It gave me so much chizzuk.

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In the meantime, the ‘quiet space’ that I’d tried to carve out for myself to recite Mussaf turned into another test of middot.

Five seconds after I started praying,  a woman with an enormous stroller and five small kids showed up, and arranged her kids’ little plastic chairs in a semi-circle with me in the middle of it.

“And so, instill Your awe, O Hashem our God, within all Your works…”

(Duvey, give Chana the Bamba. Duvey! Come back and give Chana her Bamba!!)

“And so, grant honor, O Hashem, to Your people…”

(Ima, I really need the bathroom….Can you wait a little, chamood?….No, Ima, I need NOW!!!)

“Holy are You, and awesome is Your name.”

(At this point, one of the kids steals the small fold-up chair I’d brought with me to sit on, and I had a massive battle with myself to carry on talking to God, doing the Mussaf of Rosh Hashana, and not just dropping everything to chase my chair down the street.)

“You have chosen us from all the peoples…”

(Does this belong to anyone? Does this jar belong to anyone?) – from the corner of my eye, I could see it was my jar of kombucha, that I’d brought with me from home. Some toddler had ‘found it’ where I’d stashed it under my now missing chair, while I prayed.)

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Tov.

I decided to just try and ignore everything and everyone, and to accept God’s dominion in my life, at least for the next few minutes.

If God wants me to have the chair, I’ll have it.

If He wants me to drink kombucha before the long walk home, I’ll drink it.

If He wants me to keep getting bashed by strollers, my feet trod on by small kids, and continually elbowed by a teen praying and swaying so enthusiastically she doesn’t even feel what’s going on here – fine by me!

When I was done, I found my chair two feet away, and the kombucha had survived it’s mugging as well.

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On the way back home, I was pondering on why the prayers at the Rav so often hit buttons that can lead to some very bad middot surfacing.

But it came to me pretty fast, that this is the whole work to do down here.

We can’t ‘disconnect’ our prayers on Rosh Hashana from our real experiences and reactions as people.

And at the Rav, the two things go firmly hand-in-hand, giving you a clear picture of where you are really holding.

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The next day, I went to hear the shofar blowing at the Sephardi shul up the road.

It was much ‘calmer’ – but in many ways, a little ucky.

One of the main old guys singing the prayers in turn lives with a xtian Phillipino woman, and has a child with her.

He dresses chareidi, but doesn’t keep Shabbat or kosher….

I had a real fight on my hands the whole time, to not keep judging him harshly for being a disgusting hypocrite.

As soon as I heard the Shofar (enough….) I got out of there and came back home, before the urge to ‘judge harshly’ totally overwhelmed me.

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After Chag, my husband told me he’d had the best Rosh Hashana ever, over there in Uman.

I felt the same way, about my Rosh Hashana in Jerusalem.

In my home, where it really counts, there were no arguments this year, no ‘tension’, no eruptions, no harsh words.

And my house was literally packed to the rafters with people (and cake….)

BH, all of Am Yisrael will have a good 5784.

And all the ‘evils’ plans to harm the good people of the world will unravel, and come to naught.

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HaYom HaGadol

This is an old song by Binny Landau, but the words seem very appropriate for now.

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HaYom HaGadol – look, it’s coming!…

And Hashem’s honor will be revealed in the world.

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While I was looking for this song, this flashed up from Dutchsinse, from about an hour ago:

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Here’s what he’s saying:

I’ve been blocked from commenting on youtube fully (greyed out not allowed to comment or reply to anyone), on all accounts and sub accounts. Browser and computer don’t matter, even blocked on the youtube app too. This is very serious.

So it would appear something big is going down (about to go down). Just letting you know. It doesn’t show signs of stopping, and I brought some corn for popping……

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I’ve been following him for a few years, he’s usually right about most things.

Could be another massive quake is about to hit….somewhere.

The weather in Jerusalem is super weird – that same chemtrail induced ‘cloud coverage’ we’ve seen in past months, when they are about to launch some other new ‘drama’ for us all to deal with…

All the cars are covered with the ‘mud rain’ that if I could be bothered to check, would probably mostly stick to any magnet you care to run over it.

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I am still waiting to hear if the Rav has been let in to Uman.

God willing it will happen, maybe even last minute, because I have to admit to feeling a little scared about what will be, otherwise.

Big things going on in the world all over….

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But the merit of the True Tzaddikim can save the people who are trying to stick close to them!

Here’s what a friend just sent me, in connection with the earthquake that hit Marrakesh:

🌟*The miracle of the earthquake in Morocco*🌟

The first Google photo shows the extent of the impact of the earthquake. By magnifying this, you will notice a strip of land in untouched Essaouira.

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The 2nd photo is the zoom of this strip of land The 3rd photo is a *precise* zoom of this area which represents 1km2 and indicates 💢the end of the impact zone in red

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Then the location of 💢*the house of the Tsadik* Rabbi Haim Pinto,

💢*The grave* of Tsadik Rabbi Haim Pinto

💢*The tent* where we were nearly 2300 people dancing and praying for the Shabbat of Hiloula 🔥*H…., By the Zchout of the Tsadik and the fraternal Union that we had at that time, created a barrier to nature to protect us* 🔥

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Well, talk about a clear example of how staying close to the True Tzaddikim saves us from the ‘shaking of the world’….

In Sichos HaRan (translated into English as ‘Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom’, by the Breslov Research Institute), Rebbe Nachman tells us the following:

“It’s written about the time of Moshiach (Job 38:13): ‘To grasp the ends of the earth and shake the wicked from it’. However, one who comes close to a true Tzaddik, [he] can grab hold of him, and not be cast off.

When we hold on to the Tzaddik, we can stay firm.”

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If you haven’t done your pidyon nefesh ahead of Rosh Hashana yet, go HERE to do it on the Shuvu website in Hebrew, or HERE for English.

I’ll update if I hear anything else in the meantime….

And may we just hear good news.

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Kilauea erupts again, and spiritual ‘insurance’

First, Kilauea in Hawaii has started erupting again, massively.

You can see a live stream of the lava here – it’s the Kilauea crater vent camera:

https://www.youtube.com/@DoingHawaii/live

This is a screenshot from around 8.30am Israel time:

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Second, on one of the 3 Telegram channels I still check in with, someone put up this video of them magnifying a 100 Euro bank note under a microscope:

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It appears to show the 100 EURO note is crawling with spaceships and ‘alien-demon’ figures.

Yah, that ‘fake alien invasion’ has been in the pipes for a very long time, and double yah – we are living in a world of allusion, where 99% of the ‘news’ is actually just brainwashing baloney to divide and control the general public.

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Third, related to the sentence above, is this from the Uncensored Israel Telegram channel, from Bezalal Smotrich:

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Whoever controls the army, controls the State.

So now the question is: who is controlling the army?

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Four: spiritual insurance for the coming year – do a pidyon nefesh ahead of Rosh Hashana and / or kaparot before Yom Kippur with a real Tzaddik, not just a rabbinic faker.

HERE is where you can do that with Shuvu Banim.

BTW, just to make it clear, I have never recieved so much as a penny from Shuvu Banim, I don’t write these things as some ‘influencer’ on a commission, and I also give a lot of my money to Shuvu Banim, because I get brachot from doing that.

My husband is off soon to Uman, and we’re both a little nervous about that.

Yesterday, we gave quite a large amount of tzedaka as a ‘pidyon’ to a Shuvu Banim cause, at least, tagged as a ‘pidyon’ in our own minds, as the Rav is now forbidden by the courts here from receiving any donations personally, or having anything to do with ‘money’.

That, together with saying the Rav’s prayers to go and come back safely to Uman is our histadlut for the trip.

Whatever happens next – we did our bit.

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And for anyone thinking ‘but why go to a war zone just because Rebbe Nachman said to be by his grave on Rosh Hashana’….

A few days ago, two people got stabbed by a terrorist barely 10 minutes walk away.

Every day here – and also, WHERE YOU LIVE – people are dying in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways.

We don’t control the world – God does.

And whatever He decides, that’s what will be.

It’s the same argument you get from people who tell you should work on Shabbos, because otherwise how will you make enough money, and you should definitely skip paying 10% of your income to tzedaka (minimum…) because otherwise, how will you pay all your bills?!?!

All totally rational arguments that make a lot of sense.

But still completely and utterly wrong.

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I am waiting for the update as to whether the Rav has made it into Uman yet, BH.

As soon as I hear, I will let you know.

But in the meantime, I’m not planning on posting much else before the chag begins, baring an update on what’s happening in Uman.

So, I bless everyone with a sweet, healthy, holy, happy New Year, and may we all be signed in the book of life.

Amen.

====

UPDATE:

This is a brand new, short video from Rav Ofer Erez, from his BRESLEVTUBE website, explaining the importance of doing a pidyon nefesh before Rosh Hashana:

You might also like this article:

Get your ticket for Uman

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The poisonous tree, continued

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a whole post about the ‘poisonous tree’ I was trying to get out my front garden.

***UPDATES***

You can read that HERE.

Me being me, removing the poisonous tree became a whole allegory for trying to remove that poisonous family tree of Sabbatean-Frankists, that have basically taken over the whole Jewish world, with its sprouts popping up all over the place, in all sorts of unexpected ways.

I was making slow but steady progress two weeks ago, until two things happened:

  1. My neighbor kept stopping by to tell me I was ‘stupid’ to be trying to get the tree out, especially as I didn’t even own the garden it was growing in.
  2. I got bitten by something that gave me a really weird looking thing on my finger when I was busy trying to saw more of the tree’s roots off by hand.

BH, applying clay for a few days took care of it, because I was starting to worry it was the bite of a brown recluse spider, or something.

But point is, I kind of went off attacking what was left of the tree after that.

====

And so, the Erev Rav have won….

They are here to stay. Getting that poisonous tree out of the holy soil of Eretz Yisrael is beyond me, and I basically give up, God.

That’s where I was holding until yesterday afternoon.

====

Yesterday afternoon, two of my worst nightmares showed up together in the garden.

One was my landlady, wearing a blue mask up to her eyebrows, AND a pair of heavy sunglasses, to keep all the ‘covid germs’ out of her eyeballs, or something.

And a young arab man with a chainsaw….

The Arab with the chainsaw started attacking my neighbor’s overgrown mulberry tree – and that’s when I had a flash of inspiration.

Can he also chop up what’s left of the poisonous tree in the front garden? I asked the be-masked spectre stalking around outside.

Miraculously…. she agreed.

====

I came home to find the poisonous tree gone.

And in the end, it wasn’t me that got rid of it.

It was the crazy ba’al habeit who let the poisonous tree grow to humungous proportions in the first place, and the arab with the chainsaw.

====

There is a lot to learn from this.

Not least, God has a million ways of taking care of our problems, with minimal help from us.

And while we can’t complete the task, that doesn’t mean we are free to desist from it.

Sometimes, the things we think are ‘our worst nightmares’ are exactly what’s required to get the job done.

TBC

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UPDATE:

On the TomerDevorah blog HERE, one of the commentators put up this video clip of the kabbalist R Menashe Amon, saying that geula is ready, except that “some ‘true tzaddikim’ who have tremendous koach” have been praying to hold geula off a little while longer so that more people will merit to make it through.

You can see that clip in Hebrew below:

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One of the commentators on Tomer Devorah was asking if R Menashe Amon is legit.

In my opinion, he’s legit.

He’s one of the few people who came out publically just around the time Rav Berland was arrested – literally a week before ‘Covid 19’ came to Israel in the harshest way possible, politically, with draconian laws and terrible lockdowns – to explain that Israel was only going through ‘Covid 19’ because the Jewish community had believed all the terrible slanders they were being told by the state-sponsored media.

You can read all about that on the RavBerland.com website HERE – and watch the video, from February 2020, with English subtitles:

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You can also get more of the background between the connection between the persecution of the Rav and ‘Covid 19’ – and what happened at Meron, and a bunch of other things – in the new One in a Generation book that just came out, HERE.

What follows is a very free translation of some of his comments in this new clip.

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R Menashe Amon is explaining how important it is to really care about our fellow Jews – including all the Jewish girls who are now living with Arabs in places like Gaza (!), Shechem and Rafiach, and apparently no-one cares.

Because today, he says, we’re all just running after the gashmius.

====

He’s also saying that if your son or daughter drops away from yiddishkeit – they stop keeping Shabbat, they stop wearing a kippah or tzitzit – he says:

Accept them how they are, and keep them in your home!

They are still your son, they are still your daughter!

Definitely don’t say things like: you are now dead in my eyes….

(This sounds extreme, perhaps, but a couple of years ago I knew a bunch of former chareidi kids from Bet Shemesh, who were basically kicked out of home as very young teens for not being ‘frum’ enough…. and of course the next stage of being made homeless like that was serious drug abuse issues and serious emotional trauma…. Sadly for us, there are a bunch of fake ‘rabbis’ out there telling their flocks that this is the way to deal with young teens who aren’t shomrei mitzvot.)

==

He says that we need to strengthen each other.

And that Jews don’t know the true strength of our soul, and the true power of our connection with HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

But who does know?

The non-Jews.

He’s saying that people need to go with humility and self-sacrifice – there will be no protectzia, going forward, no ‘free rides’ for people riding along on their yichus.

====

Tov.

Decide for yourself if this sounds ‘legit’ to you or not.

But it seems things are moving.

 

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More quakes on the way

The last couple of weeks, Rav Berland has been talking about an earthquake hitting Israel.

In particular, the Haifa area, near the ‘Stella Maris’ Monastery, where the xtian church took over the grave of Elisha the prophet and have been barring access to frum Jews in recent months.

Speaking a couple of weeks ago, the Rav made a comment that there will be an earthquake after Rosh Hashana.

Then he segued back into what he’s said in the past, that we are totally forbidden from touching any churches and mosques.

The implication appearing to be that God will make them fall down, all by themselves, without any help from people.

==

At this stage of the game, the Rav is pretty much the only person I pay attention to, when it comes to ‘predictions’.

He was talking about earthquakes in the same manner a few weeks before that massive quake hit Turkey, back on February 6 – which was ‘meant’ for Israel, but got moved a few hundred miles to Ankara instead.

Ankara was one of the main centres of so-called ‘Pauline xtianity’, where the Torah got trashed and villified, and the Jews cast as the permanent ‘villain’ in the whole made-up religion concocted by the Romans to turn the Jewish urge for Moshiach and geula permanently against them.

==

Yesterday, it was Morocco’s turn.

With the epicentre close to Marrakesh.

The Jews of Morocco had it better than many other countries, in many ways – but there was still tremendous discrimination, violence and anti-semitism in Morocco.

My father’s family is from there, and it seems my grandfather, who was a shochet, was murdered by his Arab ‘helpers’ who wanted to steal his kosher stamps.

He was bundled out the back of a moving car and died a couple of days later.

====

So on the one hand, there is tremendous loss of life occurring in Morocco now, and that is always sobering and upsetting.

But at the same time, to not lose sight of the fact that nothing happens ‘for nothing’, and that Hashem is the Cause of all Causes.

And it seems that Hashem is starting to pay down some of those ‘old debts’ accumulated over the centuries, and the old mosques and churches are bearing the brunt:

==

One more thing that comes to mind about Morocco.

My brother in the States told me last week that he was looking into doing a ‘Sukkot program’ in Morocco this year with his family.

Since Morocco normalised ties with the State of Israel last year, it seems that ‘Jewish tourism’ is going through the roof there, in so many ways.

But if you track the most popular destinations for Israeli tourists – which includes places like Turkey, Greece and now Morocco – you’ll see that all of these places are being hit with absolutely devastating natural disasters.

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And then we have Uman.

These days, Uman has also been ‘closed down’ as a ‘stam holiday’ destination.

Today, it’s returned to being a place you go for sincere reasons based on fulfilling the words of a true Tzaddik, who requested his followers to be by his grave for Rosh Hashana, for exalted spiritual reasons that most of us are a million miles away from ever really grasping a tiny part of.

But what’s amazing, is that I heard on the grapevine that this year, they are expecting 50,000 people for Rosh Hashana.

That’s double the 27,000 that made it out last year, almost exclusively from Eretz Yisrael.

And it made me very happy to hear that so many people are overcoming their fears to go and be by Rabbenu for Rosh Hashana 5784.

====

Stuff is definitely starting to move in the world.

Remember, what Rabbenu taught us about how to survive the ‘shaking of the world’:

In Sichos HaRan (translated into English as ‘Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom’, by the Breslov Research Institute), Rebbe Nachman tells us the following:

“It’s written about the time of Moshiach (Job 38:13): ‘To grasp the ends of the earth and shake the wicked from it’. However, one who comes close to a true Tzaddik, [he] can grab hold of him, and not be cast off. When we hold on to the Tzaddik, we can stay firm.”

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I live very close to the fault line that runs through Jerusalem, that is meant to ‘cleave’ Har Zeitim in two, when geula really starts to happen.

That’s kind of disconcerting.

So, I am doing my best to stay ‘grabbing on’ to a true Tzaddik, while the world continues to shake all around us.

====

On that note, one more thing:

If you haven’t already, consider doing a pre Rosh Hashana ‘pidyon nefesh’.

Here is Rav Ofer Erez, with English subtitles, from 2017, explaining more about that:

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I’m sure he’s doing a pidyon in Uman before Rosh Hashana this year too – HERE is his website:

Or, you can do it with Shuvu Banim, HERE.

Give whatever you can afford, it doesn’t have to be the suggested amount (although clearly, if you are feeling like you are under a lot of harsh judgements, donating 5p as a pidyon is not going to do much to sweeten that…. it’s our ‘money’ instead of our ‘blood’.)

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And may we just hear good news.

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PS: I had an email from one of my C**N watching readers last week that they had turned back on, and things were going crazy in the world again.

That same day, I had another email from another reader telling me they’ve noticed an uptick in people dropping dead from heart attacks again….

Maybe, all this is just a CO-IN-CID-ENCE.

But maybe it isn’t.

Either way, God is behind it all, and He for sure wants our sincere teshuva heading into 5784.

It’s going to be a big year.

====

You might also like this article:

Shaking…awake

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Saying sorry

It’s that time of year again, when I look back at the last 12 months and realise, a little, just how much teshuva I need to make.

Probably, the people I really need to apologise to aren’t reading this blog anymore, but let’s put it out there anyway, that if I upset or offended or hurt anyone this year – I’m sorry!

And please forgive me.

As always, I’m a flawed human being, and the bad middot tend to come out in ‘high pressure’ situations…. like regular life in 2023.

BH, I am really hoping next year will be filled with more optimism and joy than the last year.

And I’m also hoping that God will help me to be at least a little better, and a little nicer, and a little more understanding and empathetic again in 5784.

I have to admit, this year took me out in a bunch of ways.

Behind the scenes, it’s felt like I’ve kind of veered from one ‘crisis’ to another, one ‘big deal’ to another, to another.

There have been weeks and months where I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed, so tired, so despairing of the world…

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I have a theory that you have a ‘taste’ of your year to come in Elul.

BH, so far, Elul has been by far the best month of this last year – and I am starting to feel some cautious optimism that BH, we’ve turned some sort of spiritual corner.

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So, please forgive me if I hurt or upset you this last year.

99% of the time it’s not deliberate, and the 1% of the time it was deliberate, you probably did something to provoke it, so I also forgive YOU whole-heartedly, too.

Ultimately, most of us are just doing our best, interspersed with those moments when our yetzers come roaring out from under the bed and just make a mess of everything.

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Also, if you sent me an email and I didn’t respond, please also forgive me.

I have had weeks and months of total information overload the past year, and if your email landed when I was in the middle of one of those, I simply didn’t have the bandwith to respond.

It wasn’t personal.

If I made you feel bad that I didn’t come back to you, please forgive me.

====

BH, God should overlook all our shortcomings, and give us a great 5784 totally as an undeserved present.

And BH, may we all cut each other tons of slack, understand that we’ve all been through some very trying times the last 3-4 years, and turn the page on all the upset and harsh judgements, so the good times can finally start to roll.

Amen.

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