This is going to be a really interesting walk down the Sabbatean memory-hole… Buckle in.

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Let’s start with what prompted this post, namely the Rav’s shiur on the Get of Cleves, which you can read HERE and HERE.

Let’s start with the main story of what happened, with dates and names, and then with God’s help, we’ll start to unpick how the Sabbateans associated with Jonathan Eybshitz pulled this off, in detail. And also, we’ll see if there are more clues to pick up from the Rav, about ‘real Jewish history’.

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The story begins back in 1766, when two young German Jews apparently decide to get married.

Some of these details come from the Hebrew Wiki page on the Cleve Get, HERE, but as we go along, we’ll start to figure out that not all these details, including names, seem to be accurate.

According to Wiki, ISAAC (ITZIK) BEN ELIEZER NYBORG of Mannheim is the groom, and the bride is LEAH BAT YAAKOV GUNZHUISEN of Bonn.

The bride and her family come to Mannheim to meet the groom, he doesn’t seem very happy throughout, but goes ahead with the wedding – and then disappears in the middle of the joint Shabbat meal after the wedding, together with the money from the wedding.

A search party is sent out on Sunday, and exactly as the Rav mentioned, the groom has all the money in his hands minus the amount he spent on his night’s lodging. He comes back with the search party – and then faints when he reaches Mannheim.

He just tells his relatives that he’s scared to death, but he doesn’t say why.

The Rav gives us a crucial bit of info here, namely:

The groom said [he had to run away].

Because he was facing a death sentence, because he’d been with the housemaid, and at that time, whoever was with [a woman] without being married, they would kill him. They would hang him, mamash.

If someone would make a complaint, that someone had come to her, then they used to hang him [i.e. the accused man]. They simply hung him, they gave him a death sentence.

So, he needed to leave the country, [and that’s why he ran away on Shabbat]. He wanted to travel to London.

In the end, he opened up a synagogue there, in the name of R’ Itzhik Hamburger.

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This suggests the groom’s morals are not all that.

Back to the ‘official story’, where a financial dispute has apparently now broken out between the parents of both the bride and groom. R AARON SHIMON COPENHAGEN is the person who brokers a compromise – he’s referred to as a relative from the bride’s side, but we’ll learn a little more about him shortly.

Both parties agree the bridge and groom need a change of place, and that they should go and spend some time in Bonn, the bride’s hometown. They get there, and exactly as the week of Sheva Brachot comes to an end, ITZHIK the groom apparently tells R AARON SHIMON of COPENHAGEN that things aren’t going well with the bride, and he’s also in great danger in Bonn, and that he has to leave the country and go to England.

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He says he wants to give the bride a divorce, which the bride and her family agree to and that they get to keep all the wedding money.

Pay attention to this next bit, which seems to be deliberately confusing what’s going on:

Since Bonn had no recognized court, and in nearby Düsseldorf the groom did not agree to divorce because many of his acquaintances were there, it was decided that the divorce would take place in the town of Cleve, en route to the Netherlands.

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Just tuck that bit of info away for now, we’ll come back to Bonn in a moment, because yes indeed, it did have a ‘recognised Beit Din’, but if they tell you that, you’ll start wondering who was on it, and why they didn’t just sort it out there.

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So, who is the rabbi in Cleve?

That would be R ISRAEL LIFSHITZ Snr, the grandpa of the TIFERET YISRAEL who was just so enthusiastic about vaccines and Darwin, as we started to discuss HERE.

According to Wikipedia, R ISRAEL LIFSHITZ Snr is the:

[S[on of R. Eliezer AVD of Apta, and the author of the book “Damasek Eliezer”.

The Geni tree is HERE – and it’s the usual mess, and deliberately distorted dates. There is clearly something to hide here, the question, as always, is what. What’s the big deal with the ‘Damasek Eliezer’?

Let’s park that for now and stay focussed on the Get of Cleve.

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The story continues, that:

After financial matters were settled and the groom agreed to return all dowry money, the bride and her family returned to their home, and the groom went to England and began trading.

Except, now apparently the groom’s dad is very upset about all this, especially the money part, and goes to the rabbi of Mannheim, one R Tebele Hess, to invalidate the get by claiming his son was insane when he gave it.

(I’m going to skip all the ins and outs of the different arguments, go read the whole thing HERE if you’re interested in that side of things.)

Point is, this R’ Hess of Mannheim rules the get is not valid, and then sends a letter off to R Abish Frankfurter of Lissa, the ‘Birkat Avraham’, and the Frankfurt Beit Din to publically announce that they agreed the Cleve of Get was invalid, and the woman, Leah is still married to ‘Itzik’.

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Whoosh!

Just like that, instant, horrible machloket all over the orthodox Jewish world.

The cherry on the cake is that seven months later, ‘Itzik the groom’ returns from London, and apparently remarries Leah – but in a bastardised wedding service in Frankfurt that doesn’t include the traditional words at mekudeshet li – because the claim was, they were still married anyway.

Let’s quote one more thing from the Wiki page, then let’s try to unpack a bit more of what was going on here:

[S]ome historians believe that undermining the Rabbinate’s honor in the Get of Cleve case helped the rise of the maskilim and strengthened their criticism of the rabbinical world.

It sure did!

And probably, that was the point right from the start.

OK, let’s fill in some gaps from the Rav’s retelling of the story now.

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Quote 1, from the Rav’s shiur HERE:

And then he [the groom] said to R’ Shimshon of Copenhagen – he was from Copenhagen, he was from Denmark.

He was called Shimshon Copenhagen, this was the uncle of his bride. He told him that he needed to give a get, and if not, he was going to disappear, no-one would be able to find him, and then she would be an agunah for the rest of her life.

And then the grandfather of the Tiferet Yisrael, he was also called Yisrael, Yisrael Lipshitz, so he wrote the get. R’ Yisrael wrote the get, and the [dayanim who organised the get], they were the chassidim of R’ Abish of Frankfurt.

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Let’s start by trying to track down this ‘SHIMSHON of COPENHAGEN’, the bride’s uncle.

If you go to the Kestenbaum site HERE, you’ll find an edition of the book he wrote about the Get of Cleve, called ‘Or Yashar’ And it has his name as: AARON SHIMON of COPENHAGEN.

Here’s the description from the site:

Concerns The Cleves Get controversy, one of the great causes célèbres of the 18th century, which involved most of the great rabbinic adjudicators of the day. This work includes opinions by R. Ya’akov Emden, the Noda BeYehuda), (the Sha’agath Aryeh, R. Saul of Amsterdam, etc.

Shmuel Heller (1803-83) was a leading Chassidic presence in Safed and central to communal affairs both in the Land of Israel and Europe.

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I should tell you now, that the Vilna Gaon didn’t give an opinion – at all – on this cause celebre. Which is kind of strange, for a lot of reasons.

On a German-Jewish historical website HERE, that’s sourcing it’s info from the Leo Baeck Institute, we get more details, including these:

The story was of Leah’s brother, Aaron Simeon Copenhagen in the collection of his recorded rabbinical decisions Or ha-Yashar (Amsterdam, 1769).

Brother or uncle of the bride? I don’t know. Let’s see if we can figure out a bit more.

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On the Seforim blog HERE, we learn that Aaron Shimon is the son of a ‘Yaakov’.

And that excellent article on gets down the ages also brings the full name of the bride as:

Leah bas Jacob Guenzhausen of Bonn.

So, according to this, Aaron Shimon is the bride’s brother. The Seforim article also tells us:

Aaron Simon was the secretary of the Jewish community of Cologne.

However, the Rav tells us this:

R’ Shimshon Copenhagen – this was the uncle of the bride. He was the brother of her mother.

Given all the routine ‘twisting’ of info these people engage in to hide their family tracks, it’s probably going to be very difficult to figure out which version is correct.

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On another Kestenbaum page HERE, we learn who AARON SHIMON’s father-in-law is:

The author, R. (Aaron) Shimon of Copenhagen, was the son-in-law of R. Yehudah Miller of Bonn and a significant protagonist during the Cleves Get controversy.

On the National Library of Israel (NLI) site HERE, we get a bit more info about R YEHUDA MILER (1660-1751).

There’s this link on his profile to this book:

שאלות ותשובות מאת יהודה מילר מבינגא | Manuscript | NNL_ALEPH990000693670205171 | The National Library of Israel

It’s a book of his responsa, which includes this piece of information about R YEHUDA MILER:

על המחבר: “וזהו הסכמת הגאון אב”ד … מהור”ר יודא מילר … ואב”ד ור”מ מדינת בונא וגלילותיו” (19א)

Translation: About the author: “And this is the consent of the gaon Av Beit Din … from Rabbi Yuda Miller … an Av Beit Din And the Lord of the Land of Bonn and its Provinces.”

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And R YEHUDA MILER, the ABD of BONN, has some fantastic yichus. That intro to his book continues:

והוא מעיד על עצמו “שאני נין ונכד להגאון מהור”ר חיים ב”ר בצלאל ז”ל שהי’ אב”ד בק”ק פרידבורג והוא אחי הגאון מהור”ר יהודא לוי זצלל”ה אב”ד דק”

Translation: He testifies about himself, that ‘I am the great-grandson and grandson of the Gaon R Chaim ben Bezalel, zl, who was the ABD of the holy community of Freidburg, and he was the brother of R Yehuda Leib…

I.e. he descends from the brother of the MAHARAL of PRAGUE. With that bit of info, I finally tracked down this family on Geni HERE:

He’s called JUDA MEHLER / MEILER II and is married to one FROMMET GUMPRECHT, daughter of EPHRAIM GUMPRECHT[1].

His daughter FOGEL is indeed married to our AARON SHIMON COPENHAGEN.

You can see the tree for him HERE – and of course, he is totally cut off from his infamous sister / niece LEAH COPENHAGEN, and there is no mention anywhere of the connection with the Get of Cleve.

And the last thing to notice is that there WAS a Beit Din in Bonn.

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The other thing I can tell you, is that the MEHLER tree is crawling with Sabbatean families, and the ‘enlightened maskilim’ and Frankists they spawned.

As we know these families routinely married each other, that provides some support for the idea that the Get of Cleve was a Sabbatean plot, right from the start, to destroy the authority of the rabbis in the eyes of the public.

And lastly, I notice that there are SCHNAPPERs, CASSELLs, BINGENs  – and even a NATHAN MAYER in the YEHUDA MEHLER / MEILER / MILER tree.

I have a hunch we just hit the real ancestors of that famous banking family that is still causing the Jews so much hardship, even today. You can tootle around yourself, HERE.

Let’s see what clues we can pick up on the other side of the aisle now, with the groom.

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The Rav tells us this:

[T]he bride was called Leah Gushuisen from Bonn And he was called Itzhik ben R’ Eliezer Mannheim. The wedding was on the 8th of Elul 5522 (1762).

Later on, the Rav says this about the groom:

So he [her ex] built [in London] the synagogue of R’ Yitzhak Hamburger, he became a very wealthy man. A milionaire. A billionaire.

He built a synagogue, it’s still standing until this day, of R Yitzhak Hamburger, R’ Yitzhak Horowitz Hamburger.

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You can read an overview about the Jewish community of Mannheim HERE.

This is the snippet that took my eye:

The charter of 1717 (also including the Portuguese) raised the number of tolerated families to 200 and permitted an interest rate of 10%.

The favorable position of the Jews there is expressed in a contemporary reference to Mannheim as “New Jerusalem.”

There were many local followers of Shabbetai Ẓevi in the community, vigorously opposed by its rabbi, Samuel Helmann (172651). In 1708 the synagogue and ḥeder (Klaus), donated by Lemle Moses Rheinganum, was consecrated ad later endowed with 100,000 gulden.

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So, Mannheim is a Sabbatean stronghold, and also has a lot of the Portuguese ‘crypto Jewish’ families that have also been causing us so much trouble, for so very long.

That’s also an important link between Mannheim and London, where the Spanish-Portuguese Jews were heavily involved in a whole bunch of interesting things, involving trade, finance, ‘liberalism’ and international politics, generally.

I wasn’t expecting anything helpful to turn up on Geni, but whaddya know, there was THIS record for one ITZIK NEUBURG, married to a LEAH MARX, at exactly the right time – no details for either of their parents, but hey, they had a daughter together:

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The daughter is called JUDULA NEUBURGER (1772-1850), and she marries a MICHAEL MAY – and has two children, FANNY and SUSMAN.

Fanny marries a guy called: Mendel / Menachem Levi / Jehuda Levison (or Levy) (1786 – 1852), from Cologne – the place where AARON SIMON COPENHAGEN was the Jewish community’s ‘secretary’.

One of their kids is HERMAN MENDEL, who marries JOSEPHINE GOLDSMIDT – and voila, we are once again connected to the known Sabbatean GOLDSMIDT family (of London and Germany….), plus some Rothschilds and Oppenheimers.

Sadly, this is where Kevin Lawrence Hanit starts nobbling the wider connections on geni, as we have seen so very many times before.

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OK, let’s take a closer look at this next bit of the Rav’s comments:

So he [her ex] built [in London] the synagogue of R’ Yitzhak Hamburger, he became a very wealthy man. A milionaire. A billionaire.

He built a synagogue, it’s still standing until this day, of R Yitzhak Hamburger, R’ Yitzhak Horowitz Hamburger.

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I found a three part series on the Get of Cleve by Pini Dunner that gives us some more interesting details.

You can see the first part HERE. In the second part HERE, we get the extra detail that the Frankfurt rabbis ask R DAVID TEBELE SCHIFF formerly of Frankfurt, now ‘Chief Rabbi’ of London to interview the groom, ‘Itzik ben Eliezer Mannheim’ Neuborg.

Here’s a picture of R SCHIFF pulling the standard ‘Freemason’ hidden hand pose.

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It’s also interesting to note that when R SCHIFF moved from Frankfurt to London, he sold his ‘half of a house’ to…. The ROTHSCHILD family, who owned the other half of the house.

It’s a small world.

(And isn’t it funny, how many books and academic articles I had to read before I learned that piece of information.)

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I hadn’t realised that the Get of Cleves got so stuck and explosive because of the Frankfurt Rabbinate, who were under the sway of the Rothschilds of Frankfurt – known followers of Jacob Frank, the false messiah.

All of this is starting to make way more sense.

Let’s continue to Dunner’s third and concluding post, HERE.

Let’s quote a bit of how Dunner tells the story of how the NODAH B’ YEHUDAH gets involved, and starts issuing open rulings that LEAH (MARX) of Bonn can remarry, which don’t go down well at all in Frankfurt:

Rabbi Landau was not alone defending the Get of Cleve.

In the early Fall of 1767, Rabbi Yosef Steinhardt went public with his ruling in favor of the Get. The following month Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel of Ausbach did the same. Towards the end of the year ten rabbis from Brody in Poland validated the Get.

Rabbi Shlomo of Chelm, a renowned and respected halachic expert, was next to come out in support of the get, and he was followed by Rabbi Arye Leib of Hanover, son of the former Chief Rabbi of Frankfurt, Rabbi Yaakov Yehoshua Falk, author of Pnei Yehoshua, and whose students included the dayanim of Frankfurt.

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Dunner continues:

It had also become a matter of great concern among the rabbinic community that the Frankfurt beit din had refused to publish their legal arguments, or to publish refutations of the reasons published by those who opposed them. Especially because their stance was so contentious, it seemed odd – at best – that they refused to back up their views with solid evidence and source based material to support their views on the matter…..

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The main figure on the Frankfurt Beit Din writing the letters and causing the trouble was called R Nathan Maas, author of a book called ‘Binyan Shlomo’.

Dunner says that when R Abish passed away, the man who replaced him as Rav of Frankfurt was R Pinchas HaLevi Horowitz – and according to Dunner, the story with the ink spilling happened to him.

Here’s what the Rav said, apparently linking that story to the Pnei Yehoshua (whose son is the bad ‘Baal Shem’ Sabbatean of London, who is close friends with DAVID TEBELE SCHIFF and the GOLDSMID bankers, amongst others):

So, there was [the River Maine] in Frankfurt, that’s where the Pnei Yehoshua was.

And he didn’t agree to sign on the get (bill of divorce), because the inkwell turned over. All those who were against the get [were prevented from becoming the Rav of Frankfurt]. This was in Frankfurt.

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Another Frankfurt Rabbi, Marcus Horowitz (there’s that name again…) stirred the whole thing up again a century later, by writing a book claiming to be from the Frankfurt rabbinate’s perspective, that justified their actions.

See Dunner’s blog for more details of that, and let’s end with this interesting snippet from part 3:

There is quite a curious side story with regards to Rabbi Lipschuetz’s publication. In 1770 he published his work, which he called ‘Ohr Yisrael’. On pages 31 and 32, after he had accused the Frankfurt rabbis of spreading lies about him, and of being utterly dishonest, he included the text of a public declaration he had made in Cleves that described the ‘wickedness of these men’ in explicit detail, even referring to Rabbi Maas as ‘the evil and corrupt dayan of Frankfurt’.

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But that version of the ‘Ohr Yisrael’ was quickly pulled and replaced with a version that didn’t say this. Dunner apparently has both books in his personal collection.

This screenshot comes from the Kestenbaum site HERE.

Pay attention, that the Ohr Yisrael says this about NATHAN MAAS of Frankfurt:

1. Nathan Maas, of the Frankfurt Beth Din, is singled out for especially harsh invective and called “Nathan ha-Azati” – a reference to the infamous Sabbatian prophet Nathan of Gaza (see f. 9v.).

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If you go HERE, you’ll find a family tree on the ‘GOLDSCHMIDT’ site (!) you’ll find a family tree for R NATHAN MAAS, the ‘evil and corrupt dayan of Frankfurt’, who died in 1794. It looks like this:

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Here is where we saved the best for last.

NATHAN MAAS is the son of SALOMON NATHAN MAAS, and the grandson of NATHAN AMSCHEL ZUR WEISSEN SCHILD, d. 1714.

On the GENI site, grandpa NATHAN AMSCHEL is called:

Nathan Amschel Meise, zum goldenen Strauß (b. – 1714) – Genealogy

He is the husband of one FRUMET SCHNAPPER.

(One of his other wives is a SCHIFF).

We are straight back in the Sabbatean-Frankist family tree, with Bingens, Zunzs, Goldsmidts, Wertheims, Bacharachs, Adlers, Oppenheims, Sinzheims, Arnsteins – and a few others, too.

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HERE is the family tree for GUTLE SCHNAPPER – the wife of MAYER AMSCHEL ROTHSCHILD.

She is very close family with ‘the evil and corrupt dayan of Frankfurt’ behind the Get of Cleve machloket.

Fancy that!

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OK, we still didn’t get to to the Get of Galuna, or the Get of London, nor the ‘synagogue’ that Isaac NEUBORG apparently built in the name, or for, YITZHAK HALEVI HAMBURGER HOROWITZ, in London.

That will have to wait for next time.

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FOOTNOTE:

[1] I think this is EPHRAIM GUMPRECHT BACHARACH – the BACHARACHs are another link to that famous family of bankers – and many of them were also Sabbateans.

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UPDATE:

Here’s some more interesting snippets about R’ YEHUDA MEHLER / MILER, ABD of Bonn and father-in-law of AARON SHIMON COPENHAGEN, from another Jewish auction site:

YEHUDA MILLER. EXTREMELY RARE! BONN 1747! in United States

Snippet:

Yehuda Miller (1661-1751) was a talmid of R. Yaakov Reisher (Shvus Yaakov) and R. Gershon Ashkenazi (Avodas HaGershuni) both of which he quotes extensively in his responsa.

He served as Rav in various important Kehillos in Germany and was enormously revered as one of the pre-eminent Poskim of his era. He corresponded with many of the leading Poskim of his time who refer to him with extraordinary honorifics.

See Teshuvos Pnei Yehoshua (#27), Teshuvos Chacham Tzvi (#60) and Teshuvos Knesses Yechezkel (#93). Some of his responsa were published under the title Teshuvos R. Yehuda Miller.

 

This is the name of a famous song by Shuli Rand and Amir Dadon.

It means ‘between holy and secular’.

The words continue: I live. I live between holy and secular.

Here’s the song:

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The words are really speaking to me right now.

We are all stuck between ‘holy’ and ‘profane’, and that seems to be where God is keeping us, at least for now.

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Here’s another song that’s speaking to me right now:

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This version has excellent English translation subtitles – the words are so powerful.

Sadly, Eliezer Botzer passed away last month.

The big souls are still falling in this ongoing battle we are all fighting, on so many levels.

May this song be an ilui neshama for him.

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And then, an old playlist started up in the car, and lo and behold, there was this song from the Maccabeats, a cover of ‘Brave’:

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This was my anthem 10 years ago, when I was battling the ‘NARCISSIST KLIPA’ to the death, in my own dalet amot.

I’ve really been pondering on how much we all just keep flattering evil, in some misguided attempt to stay ‘polite’ and ‘nice’.

Thank God, living in Israel for 20 years is really curing me of this awful Anglo-European disability.

So yeah, I will continue calling out the stuff that seems wrong and bad and evil to me, regardless of who is doing it or saying it.

Because otherwise, I’m flattering evil.

And so are you.

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On that note, what is wrong with this picture, taken a few days ago on a Jerusalem Street:

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If you say ‘nothing’ – you have a real problem to address, spiritually.

Just ‘thinking good’ without putting God, and serious teshuva into the picture is going to get us precisely no-where.

At best.

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I am so, so sick of ‘Chabad marketing’ everywhere I turn.

And because we’re so used to it, we don’t even understand just how pernicious all the ‘messaging’ is, and just how much damage it’s done and continues to do to any real discussion of emuna, and what it really means to be serving God.

Here’s another example of ‘Chabad moshiach propaganda’, that we all see, all the time, every day:

[So, I have tried three different ways of uploading the mesichist yellow flag here… and it’s not working. It’s A-M-A-Z-I-N-G how much censorship I get, in so many different ways, when I bring this subject up. Mamash, the sort of censorship I get when I’m writing about masons and Frankists….]

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One of the commentators on the last post put up a link to a Zusha song, that’s kind of nice (Zusha songs usually take a while to grow on me).

Immediately it finished, some slick ad for a Chabad mashpia who teaches lots of obviously heretical ideas popped up.

Barf!

Enough already!

The Rebbe was not Moshiach, he wasn’t even the ‘presumptive’ Moshiach of his generation, as he didn’t descend father after father from King David.

The Rebbe also died a long time ago, and is not returning for a second coming.

This is all xtian emuna, not Jewish belief and understanding.

If you can’t say that out loud, or feel uncomfortable with me typing this so clearly – I suggest you take some time to explore why that is.

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It’s really hard to stop flattering evil.

Especially, when evil has so many misguided ‘good people’ working for it.

 

 

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, but BH, I am seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

Honestly, I’m not so unhappy about being mostly offline at the moment, as it’s kept me out of the stomach churning ‘Gaza Big Brother’ happening at the moment, that just feels so very wrong, for so very many reasons.

And it’s also keeping me out of all the pointless speculation about evil politicians who OF COURSE ARE EVIL.

Like, duh!!!!! a million times over.

That we even have to ponder this question is a sign of how ‘Amalek’ has confused us all, and sown so very much doubt in our minds that we literally think that ‘bad’ is ‘good’.

And vice-versa.

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So, lots of good has come out of me being mostly offline.

And I’m not planning on running back into the muck so fast, tell you the truth.

That said, BH, I am working on translating more of the Rav’s stuff, and I’m also continuing with my ‘real Jewish history’ stuff, behind the scenes.

But most of all, I’m planning on trying to see the ongoing good in my real, every-day life, and to make more of an effort to appreciate the good in the real people around me, and also, in myself.

There’s been such a ‘vibe’ of yeoush, such a down vibe of Jewish self-loathing raining down on us recently, in a million ways.

But so many Jews are still so awesome.

So many Jews are still getting up every day, and serving God (trying to…) and continuing to live life, and continuing to move forward, and continuing to do kindnesses for others, and continuing to try to improve things within themselves and around them, even though the media is painting such a horrible, depressing picture all the time.

Tachlis, most of the Jews are not giving up – at all.

Even though of course sometimes, we all have ‘down’ days when all we want to do is crawl under a rock somewhere and wait for the madness to pass.

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This is probably driving the Evils nuts.

I’m sure they were hoping we all would have just broken apart by now, with all the constant pressure they keep applying in a million different ways.

That’s not happening.

We are battered and bruised, for sure.

But the Jew is like an olive.

The more you squeeze, the more the good stuff is extracted.

And that’s what is happening now, albeit not in the media, and not for what passes as our public discourse and institutions.

But it’s happening in the homes and hearts of so many Jews, all over the world.

And every drop of ‘good’ extracted will be used to light the way forward, here.

Because we aren’t giving up.

And we are fast approaching the point when the Evils are finally going to be unmasked and punished for all the destruction and suffering they’ve caused, and are still trying to cause.

Personally, that’s the bit I’m really looking forward to.

 

About 6-7 weeks ago, a massive grasshopper appeared in the window of the downstairs toilet.

It was four inches long, unmissable, and just perched itself on the iron railing that covered the toilet window. The first week, I was worried it was going to try and make a break for it into the house, but it never did.

Then, I started wondering if it was dead, and from that point on, it was careful to move an inch or two in various directions every single day, to assure me it was very much alive and kicking. But inexplicably perched in my window, and not going anywhere.

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After two weeks of this, I went to look up the ‘Song of the Grasshopper’ in Perek Shira. This is what it said:

The Grasshopper says: “I lift my eyes to the mountains, from where shall my help come?” (Psalms 121:1)

The verse really resonated with me, for a few different reasons, but I didn’t really understand what that grasshopper was coming to tell me.

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At the same time all this was happening, baruch Hashem, my first grandchild was being born, and my daughter and family moved in with us for 2.5 weeks after the birth.

The day after the birth, I spent six hours with my daughter in the hospital, as she was kept in for observation for 3 days. I came out with the worse migraine I think I’ve ever had, and just felt totally crushed into the floor.

Even at home, even the next day, the migraine persisted.

I did a lot of hitbodedut on it, to try and figure out what on earth was going on, and eventually I realised I’d been ‘flashed back’ to all the trauma I’d carefully stored away and forgotten about, from when I’d been the one giving birth to my first child.

I got the pongers out, spent a good hour cleaning up the energetic traces of having to be at the mercy of the NHS, and felt way better, physically.

Except…

==

While all this was going on, I developed some weird ‘sore’ on my right hand, by the base of my thumb.

Initially, I just thought it was dry hands, or something, but then after a week, it refused to go away. And then it started oozing and crusting and looking really, really weird, but at the same time, wasn’t painful at all.

What the heck is this?!

I stuck clay on it. Stuck more clay on it. But it continued to spread, and I started to freak out. I started looking up things all over the place, and eventually, I came to believe it was ‘ringworm’ – which isn’t actually a worm at all, but a fungus that causes circular traces on the skin.

All this stuff ‘erupts’ when people are severely immuno-compromised from being stressed out of their skulls 24/7.

==

So, I try to live my life by doing my best to ‘decode’ all the hints Hashem is taking the trouble to send me all the time, like the grasshopper in the window, the weird ever-spreading sore on my hand.

I reached for Christine Beerlandt’s book, The Key to Self-Liberation, to see what she she said about ‘ringworm’, fishing for the clue God was sending me.

Here’s a bit of what she said:

“You are not able to set up your own structures, to border off your own terrain, because you don’t listen to your own authority, feel powerless, don’t build your life enough on your own basis…you feel restricted under the observing eye…you don’t really live freely and openly the way you would like, because you are afraid – possibly, also of the boss looking over your shoulder, or…a director who’s spying on you…”

==

Basically, powerlessness, powerlessness, and more totally overwhelming feelings of powerlessness. And I knew exactly which ‘director’, which ‘boss’, what ‘authority’ this was talking about.

I looked around the house we’d been renting for five years, which in and of itself, is a fantastic house.

Except…

==

Our landlord has been an abusive narc from day one, and refused to fix anything that broke.

As the house is 40+ years old, things break all the time. In the beginning, we entertained delusions that maybe one day, God would help us to buy it, so our attitude to fixing it up ourselves was very different.

Covid 19 began two weeks after we moved in, so we got the landlord’s permission to try to make the yard full of mile-high ancient weeds – so old, they had gnarled roots and half a trunk – into a livable garden.

That was our ‘Covid 19’ project, when I had a house full of frustrated teens.

We spent a fortune doing it, but it saved my sanity, and also, gave us another good outside place for the teenagers and others to ‘hang’, at the height of the lockdowns.

Our landlord didn’t appreciate all that time, money and effort, although he really loved the garden, because now it meant he could finally try and rent the downstairs ‘granny flat’ that was attached to our house – and our water and electricity bill.

==

In the meantime, more leaks, more cracks, more really bad mould, half the kitchen floor dug up by Sami, the cheap Arab handyman who could do magic with his screwdriver just by waving it a floor tile and muttering something in Arabic.

The aircon stopped working two years ago.

We asked the landlord to replace it, a few times, he ignored us.

And we, for our part, just swallowed it, because there was always too much going on in our own lives to add ‘moving house’ to the list. And the house itself was fantastic, not including the mould, lack of aircon, massive cracks, electric shocks you’d get randomly from very old sockets and inability to use half the kitchen.

We worked around all this, and in the meantime, my kids both got married, baruch Hashem, and all of a sudden, I found myself rattling around that space like a lone pea in the proverbial pod.

==

A year and a half ago, our landlord managed to rent the downstairs flat – also full of mould and cockroaches, but with the lovely, awesome garden that we’d planted and tended, to a new tenant.

Her contract stated that her water and electricity were included in her rent.

The landlord stuck an extra 500 shekels on her rent bill to cover utilities – and we were the ones paying for it. In the meantime, he’d told the new tenant she had exclusive access to the garden we’d planted – but both of them were expecting me to carry on being the (free…) gardener.

I did that for the first six months, trying very hard just to see all this as an advanced test of my middot.

(I didn’t always pass with flying colours, let’s be clear.)

But then, my second daughter got married, and I went back to school, and all of a sudden, I didn’t have the time to do anything with the garden any more. The downstairs neighbour put up a fence to ‘keep her dog in’, which also had the effect of ‘keeping me out’ – and so, I wished the garden downstairs goodbye, and planted a few containers on the mirpeset upstairs instead.

==

So, the grasshopper, the hand, all this going on, feeling lonely in the house, ‘Project Blue Beam’ every night, twice, straight into my window from the Peace Forest – and then to top it all off, my new downstairs neighbor asked me one day if I’d ever seen any people in the apartment directly facing mine.

It had the mamad iron window-covering permanently closed, the other window permanently with a drawn, heavy-duty blind – and two cameras installed underneath each window.

At that point, I realised in the summer I’d seen them installing those cameras, but never thought anything about it. And with the ‘Houthis’ (ahem…) I hadn’t paid attention to the permanently-barred mamad.

But my downstairs neighbor spent a lot of time in the garden, looking at stuff and being nosy.

I think they are military, she told me, with an arched eyebrow.

I think she’s right.

==

My anxiety tripled overnight.

I don’t think they were there for me, I think they are there to oversee the Project Blue Beam part of the fantastic final performance, over Jerusalem’s Peace Forest.

But no-one wants to live next to a closed military facility even when they’re not digging into deep state history. I stopped going out onto the balcony, and started to keep my own blinds half down during the day.

==

But…. The house was fantastic!

Not including the mould, lack of aircon, massive cracks, electric shocks you’d get randomly from very old sockets and inability to use half the kitchen, paying the utilities for the downstairs flat, Project Blue Beam, and now, spooks with surveillance cameras peering straight into my salon.

==

The last straw came four weeks ago.

That’s when yet another leak started up in some ancient pipe, and after two months of continuous seepage, the upstairs ceilings started developing interesting green, grey and sandy-orange coloured mould patterns.

And the cracks in the walls and ceilings started to multiply, and bits of plaster started flaking down on our heads in the bathroom.

That’s when I realised, without some serious, serious, remedial work, the house was literally coming down around our ears. If not this month, then next. But soon.

I sighed a deep sigh, and contacted the landlord about fixing the issue, and putting in a new aircon, as a precondition for us renewing the lease again, in July. (We’d been there five years, on a long term lease).

==

He responded with his usual abusive, narcissist-landlord shtick, ignoring what I’d said about the house needing urgent fixing etc, and said something like:

I haven’t been in Jerusalem in a while. I need to come and check the prices I’ve heard they’ve gone up a lot.

==

Two years ago, I had a feeling that when we’d leave the place, things were going to get tricky with him. The last tenant ended up suing him in court – and won a large amount.

So, for the last two years, I’d been putting everything on email that he owed us, including the neighbor’s bills, and stuff we’d had to fix ourselves, because otherwise the place would be unliveable. It came to around 17,000 shekels. Just in case, things were going to get ‘legal’, when we ended up finally having to call it a day.

==

But… The house was fantastic!!!

And moving is so expensive and exhausting and disheartening, especially when you see no end in sight to having to ‘squat’ in a property you don’t own, being controlled by abstentee landlords who only care about how much money you are paying every month.

The (only…) upside of living with that particular abusive narc landlord is that we never had to ask permission to hang a picture up, or drill into a wall. And that helped us to feel more ‘at home’.

We were still teetering between staying and going, when we got a ginormous water bill.

Why?

Because the never-ending leak had turned into a water feature, mamash, a trickling stream ithat gurgles prettily into the garden, and we were footing the bill for it. At that point, even we started to realise that the rent we were paying was only part of the real cost of staying in the house. When we did the comparison, we realised we could find somewhere ‘OK’ for the same sort of money.

But there was still the landlord to navigate, and because he’s such an abusive, passive-aggressive narc, we were honestly both scared of standing up to him.

==

Long story short…. The grasshopper came to tell me I could no longer put up with being the landlord’s whipping boy, and we had to take the plunge and move.

The hand came to tell me that while everything is up to God, ultimately, He still expects us humans to play an active part in resolving our own problems, too, and to not ‘rely on a miracle’ to save us, when we can actually do something ourselves, or at least, try to.

Rebbe Nachman says exactly the same thing, about needing to even pray for Hashem to send us a new button, if that’s lacking. I can’t find that quote right now, but here’s a related one, from ADVICE, that is also really speaking to me:

One should get into the habit of always praying for whatever one needs, be it livelihood, children or healing for someone who is sick at home, etc.

The main recourse should always be to prayer, in the faith that God is good to all. One should always put one’s main effort into searching for God and not go running after all kinds of other solutions.

==

Bottom line, God was sending me a whole bunch of hints that –

It was time to move.

==

I had a very emotional chat with my husband that Friday night, not least, because I know how much he loved the house, and I was scared he wouldn’t understand that things had moved into the realm of we need to move ASAP, I can’t take this any more.

BH, he graciously accepted the argument, and supported the decision to move.

The next day, the grasshopper disappeared, after a month of living in my window, and never came back.

==

I am typing this offline in my new apartment.

We moved two days ago, and it was the second hardest move I ever had. That’s a tale for another time.

The ex-landlord was the abusive narc he always is – except, God did a big miracle for us. It turns out the contract actually lapsed last year, not this year, and no-one realised because of the war.

We had no contractual obligation to him for his three months’ notice, and the bank released the 20,000 deposit to us, which we were worrying he’d just hold and not return, on one pretext or another.

With the 20,000 nis off the table – he’d lost his main weapon.

And for our part, we wrote him a big, long letter, listing all the expenses he should have paid us for (and that we’d actually asked him for, repeatedly) and didn’t, showing he was flagrantly in breach of the contract. (Like, a million times over.)

Even he realised things had got to the stage where he couldn’t just ignore our claims.

Because he can’t just continue bullying us now, he’s gone quiet instead. And that suits us both just fine.

==

I had huge mixed feelings leaving that house.

I came with two teenagers, and left with two married daughters and a grandson, bH.

I came before ‘Covid 19’ and now this war, which have both totally changed the picture of what is going on in the world, and just how evil the people controlling all this really are.

I came still hoping one day, we’d be able to buy a home of our own in Jerusalem, something that seems further off than ever.

And I came with more optimism and hope, that redemption was round the corner, and Moshiach was imminent.

==

And now?

I am feeling more and more, that God wants us to knuckle down, and to take responsibility for our lives, and our problems, and our own bad middot and fears.

And not just wait for Moshiach to show up and wave his magic wand, to fix everything that is so, so wrong with the world.

We have to stand up to the bullies ourselves. We have to stand up for what’s right, ourselves. We have to take a stand. We have to face down our own fallen fears and bad middot.

We have to do that, for the situation to finally really improve, and turnaround, with God’s help.

It seems to me, that was the main message the ‘song of the grasshopper’ came to tell me.

So now, I’m passing it along to you.