BH, I translated a bunch more stuff from the last Shivivei Or (358).
There is always so much to unpack with even the smallest of the Rav’s comments, and I’m still working on the stuff about Menashe ben Yisrael, aka ‘MBY’, so we’ll get to an indepth look at the gay representative of the Eida HaChareidit, Jacob de Haan, who went to visit King Abdullah of Jordan with R Sonnenfeld to try and set up the ‘chareidi state of Israel’ another time…
(Yes, that’s quite the sentence).
In the meantime, lot and lots of clues….
Enjoy!
====
Excerpt of a shiur given on Shabbat HaGadol, 5784.
(All the following come from Shivivei Or, 358)
Page 21:
Now, on Motzae Shabbat, they said [about the Iranian bombardment]: It’s going to arrive in another five minutes, another two minutes.
People were scared. They couldn’t move…
They told me that there was fear, mamash, like with the Nazis, when they knew they were going to arrive in just a little while.
And people couldn’t move, from all the great fear.
==
But really?
Now that there is Shuvu Banim, there is no need to be afraid. Today on every street, there is a yeshiva, there is a synagogue of Shuvu Banim.
There is no need to be afraid.
==
So, there is a machloket (disagreement) about Barak.
He was the husband of [the prophetess] Devorah, this is what is written in Chapter 9, verse 1[1], about whether he was her husband, or just stam, a leader. It’s a machloket between the commentators.
Here in the Tanna De’Vei Eliyahu, he says that he was her husband, and that he was an am ha’aretz (unlearned man). And in the merit that Devorah prepared thick wicks – because once upon a time, there wasn’t electricity.
If the candle went out [at night], it was impossible to study. Only the Baal Shem Tov could study by the light of the moon.
==
Now in the [earlier] shiur, we said that [at the time of the giving of the Torah], all the mountains came, and they wanted that the Torah would be given upon them.
Everest showed up, it’s 8,848 (metres) high. Mont Blanc showed up, this is the ‘white mountain’. ‘Mont’ is mountain, and ‘Blanc’ is white. It’s on the Swiss-French-Italian border.
The Pyrenees is on the border between France and Spain. The Apennines are in Italy. Armenia is Mount Ararat. There are the Atlas mountains – all the mountains came.
So, Hashem said to them you have ga’ava! (arrogance).
Even a mountain can have ga’ava, and this is what is written in Tehillim Chapter 68: “Why do you prance, O you mountains of gavnanim (majestic peaks)?”
‘Gavninim’ is gabenet (a hunch-back). They had a ‘hunch’ (i.e. A hint that their arrogance was a blemish.)
==
“The mountain of God, Har Bashan.” (Tehillim 68:16).
Har Bashan (‘a choice mountain’) is in the Golan. So, Hashem told all of the mountains to go back, and they all went back – but the Carmel and the Tavor didn’t want to go back.
So Hashem that upon the Tavor they would say [the Shirat Devorah] ‘Anochi’ twice, and that upon the Carmel, they would say [at the time of Eliyahu’s face off against the prophets of the Baal] ‘Hashem, He is the Elokim! Hashem, He is the Elokim!”
People don’t know this, but it’s [from] Likutei Halachot, the Halachot of Koshering Vessels, 4:8.
==
And ‘Shirat Devorah’ was said on Mount Tavor.
So Rav Natan said in ‘M’Achlei Akum’ [the laws pertaining to eating the food of the non-Jews’ in 2:9, that by way of song, comes the forgiveness of sins.
Every song is the ‘forgiveness of sins’. So, we sing before the prayers.
Singing is ‘teshuva m’ahava’ (repentance from love).
==
‘Acher’[2] heard a bat kol (voice from heaven): “Shuvu banim shovavim, chutz mey Acher” (Return wayward children, except for Acher.)
So he became despairing – but really, it was the opposite!
Hashem wanted him to make teshuva in any case, and that by way of this bizayon (that he recieved from the bat kol) all of his sins would be atoned for.
==
A person says where was Hashem in the Shoah?!
What does is have to do with you? Say your tehillim!
=========
[NEW SHIUR: Excerpt from the first day of Chol Hamoed Pesach, 5784)
So we travelled to the Dead Sea, but we came back [alive].[3]
Not like Yossele Rosenblatt, who drowned in the Dead Sea. He was Shuvu Banim. He used to sin Be’tzet Yisrael mi Mitzrayim (‘When Israel left Egypt’) – he sung on a boat on the Jordan. There’s a picture of this, did you see it?
==
Yes, he made a movie out of it. They advertised it, how he travelled down on the Jordan on a boat, singing.
They made a whole show out of this – but they only gave him 2% [of the profits].
They took all the money to establish the kibbutzim.
This was in 5693 (1933)
I was there, on the 24th of Tammuz (July 18th) he drowned in the Dead Sea, he had a stroke.
==
So, Yossele Rosenblatt, he had a fit [after he was in the Dead Sea].
They took him to here in Jerusalem, on Jaffa Street. That was his house. And then he died. This was on the 23rd [of the month], and Arlosorov was on the 24th.
This [the murder of Arlosorov] was in Tel Aviv, next to the beach.
No-one was at his funeral. I arranged that at least there would be a minyan.
But many people came to Yossele Rosenblatt’s funeral.
One was on Shabbat, and one was on Sunday night.
==
So now we said mashiv ha’ruach u morid ha geshem – ‘He returns the winds and brings down the rain’[4].
Now we said it for the last time, until we will say in Mussaf the prayer for the dew, we’ll sing this together.
Why isn’t it possible to wait another week? I need around a week’s worth of rain[5]. Because now there is going to be a temperature of 50 degrees….
The Badatz ruled not to say mashiv ha’ruach until Simchat Torah, so maybe we’ll bring Simchat Torah forward. We need to do something.
=========
[NEW SHIUR]
Shiur on Shabbat, Chol HaMoed Pesach 5784, April 27th, 2024
Today is netzach she be chesed [in the counting of the Omer].
Next Shabbat, it’s netzach she be gevurah. And afterwards, in tiferet. All the shabbatot are ‘netzach’, until netzach she be netzach, which is on the 10th of Iyar.
Then was when Rabbi Shmuel Horowitz was freed.
Then on motzae shabbat, it was tiferet she be netzach. That’s when the telegram came that freed him. The Monday was netzach she be netzach, and he had already been sentenced to death.
Within the hour, they were meant to hang him. He was already wearing the red clothes of those who were sentenced to death.
And then suddenly, they freed him.
==
At the time he arrived [in Uman] he told the Russians that he had run away from Eretz Yisrael, from the English, because they were not safeguarding the Jews.
They publicised this in the whole world, that the Jews were escaping from the English to Russia, who were safeguarding them. So, the English got offended, and when he returned to Jaffa[6], they asked him why he’d said such things about them.
How could he say that they weren’t protecting [the Jews]?! Because this was after the pogroms of 1929.
Then, he said that he was escaping from the Aretz, because the English should be protecting the Jews, but they weren’t really protecting them.
==
So in 5689 (1929) on the 9th of Av (August 15th) – this was the day of fizzy drinks,[7] because all the kibbutzim came to Har HaBayit.
It was the speech of Rav Kook. Afterwards, the Arabs brought them sodas to drink, those cute Arabs, they distributed drinks, so they called this ‘yom hagazuz’ (the day of fizzy drinks).
Immediately afterwards, there were the riots of ‘29.
==
So, he said that he was running away from the pogroms.
So they asked him, where are you from? Where was the pogrom, just in Hevron?!
But really, there were also pogroms in Jerusalem, because all those who were at the Kotel at that time, they killed him. There riots all over the place.
==
Once upon a time there were pogroms like this, until Truman took the Mandate[8], because then, there were the White Papers.
Every day, they made another new decree against the Jews. Every single day, they added another page.
Then Balfour requested that there would be a state for the Jews. Today in every place, you find a street with his name. There on Balfour Street [in Jerusalem] they hold all the demonstrations.
==
So they made a decree that only 1,500 Jews could make aliyah to the Aretz.
Then, they gave all the ‘permissions to enter’ just to the kibbutzim, and within this, 75 people were given to the Mizrachi – only to those who wore sandals and short pants.
You, you have sandals? So, you can get the papers.
And to the Agudah, they just gave them five people.
==
There was one person, Moshe Gruman, he was the greatest tzaddik, the biggest tzaddik.
He was in Uman. Did you meet him? Or maybe, did you know his son? He was by Eliyahu Succoth once.
So, Moshe Gruman was in Uman, and he woke everyone up. He used to sing some song that now you are a child, look! Already you’re an avreich. Now, you are an old man, and tomorrow, you’ll be in the grave.[9]
==
Now, it’s possible to perform all the salvations, all the healings.
So on netzach she be netzach, everyone is freed – also, Shmuel Horowitz. They took the red clothes back.
Next Shabbat, it’s the hiloula of Yehoshua Bin Nun, and everyone is going to go. At 8.15, there will be coaches.
=========
[New shiur, but on the same day.]
There are Chassidei Balfour and there are Chassidei Kaplan…
Balfour is in Jerusalem and Kaplan is in Tel Aviv, there is where they do the demonstrations.
We need to know who Balfour was, we need to know the history about him.
He wanted to put an end to the riots, because there were pogroms all over the place, against the Jews. They were making pogroms! Until the decided to give the Jews a state.
This was in 1917, 5678, on November 7th.
All the nations said that the Jews need to be given a state, that it was enough with the pogroms, and with the violent bloodshed.
There were pogroms all the time, in Kishinev[10], in all parts of the world.
So after World War I, all the nations agreed, after they took the Mandate away from the Turkish.
==
Because at the beginning the Turkish were here, because ‘Ishmael’ did a brit milah.
The King said that whoever does a brit milah needs to be given the land, so it’s written in the Zohar that they recieved the rulership over the Aretz for 400 years.
Because Ishmael performed brit milah – even though they do circumcisions without periya. So the King said that whoever circumcises, they need to recieve a portion in the land.
==
Everything is because Avraham didn’t sacrifice Ishmael.
Hashem already told him: Take your son!
He was meant to have taken him, and to have immediately slaughtered him.
So all the nations of the world said that a Jewish State should be established, because there were decrees against the Jews al the time.
This is how it was.
==
All of those people who had debts of a million dollars, like me, so they would take a non-Jewish child, a sweetie-pie, and slaughter him. Then they would throw [the body] into the courtyard of some Jew, and all the non-Jews would immediately come to do a pogrom against the Jews.
This is how it was in every place.
==
Were you in America?
There, they didn’t agree [to do pogroms]. Truman said there is no such thing as this!
All the sheriffs said – a sheriff is like a ruler – so the Sheriff of Washington, of Miami, they said no, how can you?
To take a child, such a cutey, such a sweetie-pie, and slaughter him like that?!
He said whoever slaughters him will stand trial! There is no such thing as this, any more!
==
So, to sum things up, all the nations of the world agreed that there would be a Jewish state.
But, you also need the agreement of the Arabs. So Yaakov De Haan[11] went to the King of Jordan, Abdallah. He said that if R’ Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld would be the Prime Minister, all the Arabs would agree to this.
Everyone wanted to have a Jewish state here,but with chareidim. They didn’t want the zionists.
But R Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld didn’t want to be the Chief Rabbi. He said that the Rav Kook should be the Chief Rabbi, and this was a mistake.
So, we missed out.
All of this is written in the book ‘Ha Ish al HaHomot’ (The Man on the Walls).
==
[Go HERE to see some fascinating footage of R Sonnenfeld meeting the freemason Winston Churchill, together with Jacob de Haan and a few other people, from 1918.]
==
Because you also need to ask the Arabs.
So the English said we’ll also ask the Arabs.
They believed the Arabs more than they did the Jews.
So the Arab said that the Kotel was theirs [i.e. so the country also belonged to them, and not the Jews]. That Mohammed tied up his horse there, and from there he ascended to heaven, there’s a film about this….
I saw it. How Mohammed tied up his horse and ascended to heaven, and this was a horse with yichus, stemming back to the donkey of Avraham Avinu[12]…
==
So they said that it’s theirs.
And also, all the other holy places.
So, [the Arabs] agreed to let them [the Jews] to sometimes pray a little bit, like an hour a day. Like in the ‘Great Hall’ of the Mearat HaMachpela, where once they used to let [the Jews] pray for an hour [a day].
Now, everything is closed. Everything was given to the Arabs, all the ‘Great Hall’.
Just a few times – six times a year, it’s opened to the Jews.
==
So, [the Arabs] said they would let them pray once a month, once a year, maybe, on Erev Rosh Hashanah they would let them pray a little, at the Kotel.
The English said everything needs to be given to the Arabs! They pray five times, and the go to Mecca on foot!
Once upon a time, they used to go by foot. Whoever went got given a round cord [i.e. The black cord Arabs used to tie around their kaffiya].
The Arabs have it on their heads, on the kaffiyah – their gartel. The Litvaks have it here (pointing to the throat – i.e. They wear ties). And only the Chassidim put it around their loins, because from there [up] is ruchnius.
So by the Chassidim, it’s there, by the Litvaks, it’s here, and by the Arabs, it’s on top of their heads.
But only those people who used to go to Mecca on foot used to recieve the permission to come to the Aretz.
==
Everything could have been here just chareidi Jews with payot.
The zionists – nobody at all wanted them to come. Truman said to Ben Gurion that [if he established a State], that everyone would be destroyed within an hour.
Truman sat on the floor and wept, that within an hour, not a single Jew would remain here. Like what happened with all the kibbutzim now, on Simchat Torah, in Nahal Oz. They uprooted the yishuvim, Be’eri, Nahal Oz, all the kibbutzim.
Because everything was built with the money of the Yemenites and the Buhkharians.
==
There are communities that are thousands of years old, that the State stole from them.
Because they were jewellers, and they had large quantities of gold.
The Yemenites who came to the airplane to come to the Aretz, they told them that it was impossible to board the plane with the gold – that the plane would crash.
So, they stole everything from them.
==
And the Bukharians, they built everything.
Betzalel Street, Agrippas Street – the Bukharians, Moussaieff, the Yazdim – everything was built with their money. Everyone was really wealthy.
==
So, the English decided that the Jews could ascend to the Aretz, but they only recieved 1,500 certificates to ascend to the land.
And only the kibbutzim, whoever had short pants and a vest and sandals, and a beautiful chop (quiff). Only he would get permission. And also, a blue and red casquette. But without a casquette was even better.
(The Rav turns to someone in the audience: You don’t have a quiff, so you couldn’t have got permission to enter.)
==
So everything went to the kibbutzim.
And just within this [the 1,500], they gave 75 to the Mizrahi, and within that, 5 to the Agudah – but only to whoever had a beatiful quiff.
==
So there was one man, Moshe Gruman. He was the biggest Tzaddik there was.
[The Rav turns to speak to Rav Succot]: You knew Israel Gruman, his son. So Moshe Gruman, he was in Uman.
Rav Levi Yitzhak [Bender] used to tell stories about hi. He used to wake up everyone, he had a song: Now you are a boy, tomorrow you are an avreich. After that, you are old, and in another little while – you’re dead. And you’ll have a beautiful funeral. And the ‘outsiders’ will carry you [your bier].
==
Like what happened with the MAHARSHA[13].
The MAHARSHA didn’t use to go to funerals.
One time, there was some rich man who warned him, that if he didn’t come to his funeral, so he would get him thrown out of the city – because he was one of the rich men of the city. He could get him thrown out.
So, the MAHARSHA was a ‘good boy’, he didn’t argue, so he came to the funeral. And there was a white sheet covering the deceased, so the MAHARSHA lifted up the sheet – and saw that there was a block of wood [instead of a body]. Because they’d already stolen the deceased.
(Who stole him? Shuvu Banim are blamed for everything, about everything that happens, in the whole world.)
==
So, Moshe Gruman got to Uman at age 14, and was there until age 20 – six years.
Then there was a war and Russia and Poland were separated, and two different countries were made, so there was a border. And this made problems, because now it was already impossible to get to Uman on foot.
Two bochurim were killed, and also R’ Shmuel Horowitz crossed the border.
Then, Moshe Gruman couldn’t leave.
==
Whoever lived in Warsaw, or in Vienna, or in Lithuania could return [across the border, from Russia].
So Moshe Gruman wanted to come back, but they stopped him at the border. He sat in prison for nine months because they kept asking him why do you want to leave Russia?! What’s going on?!
Then an ‘aliyah camp’ came there, where you made aliyah from there to the Aretz.
There is where they give the authorisations to make aliya. They told him: you have no chance, you don’t have short pants and sandals. First, remove your payot and grow a nice quiff. Afterwards, in the Aretz, you can grow them back.
And anyway, you’re a Breslover, so you really have no chance. Breslov are totally meshugaim (crazy). Gomarnu.
==
So he said I don’t care! I am dafka going to go like this – and so he went.
They asked him, what are you? He answered I am Breslov.
So they said to him You are the ‘Breslov’ authorisation for Eretz Yisrael.
But afterwards, he went back to the United States, because he was here in yeshiva a few times, and they didn’t honor him enough. They didn’t let him become the Rosh Yeshiva in the Shul[14], they already had Rabbi Levi Yitzhak.
So, he got insulted, so he went back to the United States.
==
So, this is what all the nations of the world wanted, that there would be a Jewish State here, just with chareidim with payot, and with kippot. With a white kippa.
========
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Of the Tanna De’Vei Eliyahu Rabbah
[2] The famous Tanna Elisha ben Abuya, teacher of Rebbe Meir, who become a heretic after he ‘entered the Pardes’ of kabbalah with Rabbi Akiva.
[3] A couple of days after the Rav said this there was a horrible ‘accident’ at the Dead Sea involving a party with 2,000 people, including some yeshiva bochurs. Six of people from the party somehow got ‘swept away’ in the Dead Sea, and it’s believed two of them drowned.
[4] Said in Shemoneh Esrei.
[5] The week after the Rav said this, Israel experienced another strong, and unusual rain storm.
[6] I.e. To the port of Yaffo on board a ship.
[7] The Rav could be making a pun here on the Hebrew word gazoz, which as well as referring to soda, also means to shear or cut.
[8] To govern Eretz Yisrael.
[9] The Rav finishes the story about Moshe Gruman in the shiur he gives on the Shvi’i shel Pesach, below.
[10] From Wikipedia:
“The Kishinev pogrom or Kishinev massacre was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev (modern Chișinău, Moldova), then the capital of the Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire, on 19–21 April 1903.
During the pogrom, which began on Easter Day, 49 Jews were killed, 92 were gravely injured, a number of Jewish women were raped, over 500 were lightly injured and 1,500 homes were damaged.
American Jews began large-scale organized financial help, and assisted in emigration.
The incident focused worldwide attention on the persecution of Jews within the Russian empire[5] and led Theodor Herzl to propose the Uganda Scheme as a temporary refuge for the Jews.”
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Israël_de_Haan
Yaakov Yisrael De Haan was a very interesting figure.
He wrote a thinly-disguised novel describing his gay lifestyle which shocked even the libertines of Holland, where he was born and raised. Then he made aliya in 1919 as a ‘fanatical zionist’, and then, according to Wikipedia: “rapidly became more religiously committed. He was angered by Zionist refusals to cooperate with Arabs.”
His ‘religious commitment’ is up for debate, as: “In one of his poems he asks himself whether his visits to the Wailing Wall were motivated by a desire for God or for the Arab boys there.”
(Ah, the pedophile problem…. it’s sadly never very far away in this sordid tale.)
What is not in doubt is that the secular z-ists gunned him down in the street in 1924 because: “He spoke about the tyranny of the official Zionist movement” and was acting as the spokesman vis a vis the Europeans for the Eida HaChareidit, who wanted orthodox Jewish representation in the discussions about creating a ‘Jewish State’. The assassination was apparently carried out on the orders of Yitzhak Ben Tzvi – close relative of the Kanievsky rabbinic family of Bnei Brak.
[12] When horses are crossed with donkeys, a mule is born – but mules are sterile, and can’t propagate their own offspring. I.e. The Rav is showing, a little, how impossible the story about Mohammed’s horse is.
[13] Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer Edeles,1555-1631.
[14] The Breslov Shul in Meah Shearim.
=======
So much to unpick in the Rav’s words!
But let’s ask one question: what is the one thing that the following three people mentioned by the Rav have in common:
- Yossele Rosenblatt
- Chaim Arlosorov
- Yaakov De Haan?
Answers on a postcard….
==
UPDATE:
While I was just doing a quick look to see if I could figure out who the Rav Dov Ber Epstein of Jerusalem / Eida Chareidit actually is, genealogically-speaking, I tripped over this 92 page document that contains tens of statements by people considered to be leading rabbis of their time, against the z-ists…
It’s very interesting reading.
Take a look HERE.
Here’s a couple that caught my eye:
Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Naftali Zilberberg, rabbi in Warsaw, Poland
רבי חיים יעקב נפתלי זילבערבערג מווארשא זצ ” ל
We have already shown that there has never been such a misfortune as Zionism and there never will be again. (Introduction to Daas Harabbanim, 1902, p. 22)
Imagine how it will be if, G-d forbid, the idea of Zionism becomes a reality.
Then the sinners will be kings, the troublemakers will be high officials, and the young snakes will be leaders. Then your enemies will rule over you! (Introduction to Daas Harabbanim, 1902)
==
Rabbi David Friedman, rabbi of Karlin-Pinsk, Russia (1828-1915)
רבי דוד פריעדמאן זצ ” ל אב ” ד קארלין פינסק
I am waiting and hoping for the salvation of G-d, who will save us from these destroyers [the Zionists], and brighten our eyes and let us see the shame of our enemies. (Ohr Layesharim)
My opinion about this is known: that Zionism is worse than the rest [of the heretical groups], because it claims that a person can be a Jew without the Torah, and many fell away because of this.
Lots and lots to unpick… and what’s interesting is that many of the rabbis quoted are actually speaking against the ‘apparently religious’ zionism of the Mizrahi and the Chovevei Zion groups, not the hard-core secularists.
Your destroyers will come from within you.
And it’s still happening today, with all these corrupt and bent ‘Chief Rabbis’ and ‘Jewish writers’ and media people, that are just puppets to manipulate the Jews into doing things that are not in accordance with Torah and halacha, by giving it a thin veneer of ‘religious authorisation’.
I am waiting and hoping for the salvation of G-d, who will save us from these destroyers.
