Slow posting here at the moment, as I am totally running all over the place.

All good stuff generally, BH, but just more ‘good stuff’ than I can generally fit into a day and still find the 6-7 hours required to sleep – and to blog.

So it is, I was meaning to stick this up a few days ago, and I just didn’t get to it.

It’s a request for kimcha de-pischa for the Rav”s Kollel Hatzot in the Old City.

And I feel a little guilty I didn’t get to this earlier, as I know they are so ‘low profile’ that they are far, far down most people’s priority list for kimcha de-pischa.

At the same time – I also know that everything is from Hashem, and it’s Hashem who decides what each person gets, or not.

Just, I haven’t been doing my histadlut to try and help out as well as I would have liked to.

==

Tov.

First, let me introduce to the ‘core group’ who literally spend their nights in the Shuvu Banim yeshiva in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, doing tikkun hatzot and generally praying for Am Yisrael.

(Incidentally, one of my ‘brainwaves’ is to see if I can set something up where people who regularly sponsor the kollel get prayers 40 days by the Kotel – where the yeshiva is located. That’s a very powerful thing, all by itself, but combined with giving some tzedaka to these guys, and all the zchut of supporting the tikkun hatzot prayers of Shuvu Banim…. I think that would be spiritual dynamite, and a huge zchut for whoever is moved to do that.)

==

OK, getting sidetracked again, here’s the main guys who belong to the Kollel Hatzot:

1. Y.R., aged 42 and has 11 children – really needs some help to get everything required for the Chag for his family.

2. D. S. aged 45 and has 15 children, baruch Hashem! 

3. Y. Z. C., aged 37 and has 4 children.

4. N. M., aged 35 and has 7 children.

5. U. D., aged 27 and has 2 children.

6. N. G., aged 42 and has 5 children.

7. N. D., aged 55, has 1 child.

8. E., aged 37 has 1 child.

9. G. H., aged 57, has 10 children.

10. B. Z., aged 57, has 1 child. 

11. M.Z., aged 32, has three children.

==

This is what my contact, one of the wives of the men of the Kollel Chatzot sent me, together with this list:

Everyone is in a situation that needs help and any help would be welcomed.

====

Giving tzedaka to ‘bad causes’ is one of the curses that Jeremiah cursed his enemies with.

Because a person thinks they are doing a ‘mitzvah’ by giving to this, or to that, but if it’s not really a ‘good cause’ spiritually, if it’s not really God-fearing people, it’s not people who are really doing their best to serve Hashem – then that tzedakah counts for way less, than it otherwise would.

And that’s assuming it even gets to the needy people in the first place.

The more I check into the murky world of charidee, the less I think that most people’s tzedakah is getting anywhere really useful….

====

Whatever else I can tell you, I can tell you that 100% of the donations you make to this link I’m going to give you, go straight to the members of the Kollel Hatzot and their families.

No-one else is getting it.

And these guys are doing amazing things for Am Yisrael down by the Kotel, every single night, BH,

Here’s the link to donate:

https://www.matara.pro/nedarimplus/online/?mosad=7014431

====

This is the new donation link, which is now working properly.

You can donate in English, it’s super-easy and straightforward.

====

A few weeks ago, one of the commentators asked me if I’d stopped donating to ‘SB INT’.

Because my brain was fried, I had no idea what that was.

It took me a while to realise he was talking about ‘Shuvu Banim International’.

Bottom line – I’m still donating to them.

And also to the Kollel.

And also, to the Shivivei Or Newsletter.

And bottom line: my life is full of blessings, baruch Hashem, in a way that is really not normal for the state of the world, and especially, the failed State and everything that’s going on right now.

====

So, do whatever your heart moves to do.

And I give you a blessing, that this Pesach, it should move you to donate to some real Torah Jews in Jerusalem, some really God-fearing avreichim whose mesirut nefesh is doing so much, for all of us.

Amen.

====

Here’s the link again, for the KOLLEL HATZOT’S KIMCHE DE PISCHA:

https://www.matara.pro/nedarimplus/online/?mosad=7014431

And may we all go out from darkness to light, this coming Pesach, and from slavery to freedom, mamash.

I went to the prayers down on Ido HaNavi two nights ago, and this is what I spied stuck up all over the lamp-posts close by:

==

Because everytime I try to post this stuff up on the blog, it gets ‘whited out’ – in exactly the same way the Deep State whites out stuff about masons and Frankists – I am going to avoid using any defining labels in this post, that will clue-in the censorship bot, to see if that makes a difference.

Let’s see.

==

Me being me, I ripped that sticker off, brought it home – and went to take a look at the website it’s advertising, called:

ani-maamin.co.il

I highly recommend you take a look at that website, you’ll learn a lot about the mesichist ‘elephant in the room’ that no-one can really talk about, without facing serious censorship and aggressive ‘push back’.

====

Here’s a machine-translated screenshot:

====

Assuming all this hasn’t already been ‘whited out’ by the Deep State censorship-bots, let’s click on ‘Number 11’ above, to see what happens next.

It brings us to this youtube video:

====

If you understand Hebrew, I highly recommend you listen, and see how Torah sources are being twisted and abused all over the place, to back up the deceitful statement that:

“The rules of Jewish law state that [you know who] is the Melech HaMoshiach.”

Really?!

Do they really?!

====

In case you think that this ‘twisting of Torah’ is a fringe phenomenon, let’s just go to Rav Ginsburgh’s site, for some clarification.

He’s got a whole Q+A up from 2024, on exactly the topic of ‘Moshiach’.

I highly recommend you take a look, HERE.

Snippet:

Q: Should we identify the Mashiach with a specific person? If so, does he have to be someone from this generation or can he be from the past?

A: In the Talmud, it is written that if Mashiach is from the living, he is so-and-so and if he is from the dead he is so-and-so. The example given of someone from the dead is Daniel and the example of someone from the living is Rebbe (Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi). The sages left this question open. If we try to find a Mashiach living now in this generation, we will have to work hard.

(Italics, mine.)

====

While this quote makes it sound like Jewish law allows for the possibility that Moshiach ‘can come back from the dead’, that’s misleading for a number of reasons.

The original quote is from Sanhedrin 98b, you can see a useful discussion on the subject HERE, but this basically sums up the problem:

There is no source that someone proclaimed to be moshiach vadai can die and then come back to complete their mission as moshiach.

There is a notion that moshiach may be someone who has passed away.

The gemara quoted from Sanhedrin 98b does show someone who has passed away may be resurrected in order to be moshiach.

This should explain to you the distinction between someone being moshiach, dying, and then coming back (not valid) versus someone who has passed away being the moshiach (valid).

====

Xtianity twisted the idea of the soul of ‘Moshiach’ coming back in each generation, into the idea that Yoshki will come back again for his second term in office….(no, my bad, that’s Trump. Sorry.)

The Sabbateans then latched on to this idea to teach that the soul of ‘Shabtai Tzvi’ returns in every generation, anew, until it completes its mission as ‘moshiach’.

I don’t know, really, what’s going on with the people I can’t even type the name of, because otherwise this post will get totally ‘whited out’.

Although, more and more pieces of the puzzle are slotting into place, that links them squarely to the Sabbatean-Frankists.

But one thing I do know:

It’s time to address the mesichist elephant in the room.

Because, these guys have ‘branded’ Moshiach as a certain person, one of their own – and they aren’t about to give up on that brand, and the billion-dollar annual income spinning off from it, any time soon.

And it’s hard to believe that this isn’t contributing significantly, to delaying geula, and obscuring other candidates for Moshiach who actually a) descend son-after-son from King David and b) are still alive.

====

The last time I was in Uman was July-time, 2022.

It was about five months after the war in Ukraine had begun, and about a month ahead of the annual kibbutz for Rosh Hashana. One of the tour companies owned by chassidim of the Rav were the only people trying to go there still, at that point, (as an organised tour) – with the Rav’s blessing.

Long story short, after the whole drama of being in Uman for Rosh Hashana 2020, when I’d got detained at the airport illegally, I’ve been having passport issues at the border.

That’s never fun, but my passport issues in the Ukraine had got to the point of making it very hard to believe I’d ever be going back.

==

And then…. I was sitting with my husband on our two day break up North, and I my heart started whispering to me you really need to go to Uman.

I was scared to go back, that’s the truth.

But, I also know that when you break your fears associated with the whole ‘trip to Uman’, you also break those fears in your actual real life back home, too.

And the last few months, I have been operating from a place of fallen fears, deep pessimism, and lack of emuna.

==

I did some hitbodedut on all this, and I came to the conclusion that the worst thing that happens, is that they don’t let me across the border, and I will go and spend Shabbos eating tuna with my husband, in Kishinev.

My husband had also missed his annual trip out to Uman for Rosh Hashana this year, when his flight got cancelled – twice! – because of ‘rockets from the houthis’, with the last ‘rockets from the houthis’ happening the day before Rosh Hashana literally as I was driving back home from dropping him at the airport.

So, we booked.

And I spent the last few weeks working on the notion that whatever God decides, that’s what is the best for me. Tuna in Kishineve, or cholent in Puskhina – it’s all in God’s hands.

==

Before the flight out, I asked my husband to pay a small pidyon to Shuvu, in the merit of getting across the border OK, and back safely.

I couldn’t do it myself, as I was going straight to the airport after a full day of school. In the meantime….

The night before the flight, the ‘rockets from [America]’ started up again, apparently, so at 4am, we were wide awake.

And the weather last week turned super-cold, windy and wet, in a dramatic and quite creepy way.

And I set out for Ben Gurion on Thursday after a day full of more sirens, and such crazy rain that I aqua-planed my way to the airport on some crazy route through the shtachim with hairpin bends that would be dangerous in full sunlight, with no ponds of water on the road.

The ‘overcoming fears’ lesson was already beginning.

==

Long story short, we got to Uman relatively easily, there were no problems any more with my passport, BH, and we settled into the hotel.

While the kosher hotels seemed to be packed for Shabbat – the rest of Uman was pretty dead. In fact, most of the Ukraine is pretty dead at the moment, except the big cities like Kiev.

I spent most of Friday in the Tziyon, feeling so grateful to be there, and just doing tikkun haklalis, and giving a pruta to tzekada, and doing some hitbodedut.

Very nice and chilled. Totally unlike my usual experiences of ‘Uman’.

Shabbat, we were still pretty knackered from all the travelling, so instead of doing what I usually do, and forcing us out for long walks to Gan Sofia etc – we just spent more time in the Tziyon, I started re-reading Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom, and we slept a bit – and talked.

Because things have been so crazy for so long, even finding the time to talk, in a relaxed way, has been pretty tricky.

==

Back in Jerusalem, the crazy weather and the sirens continued.

Meanwhile, the sun was shining in Uman, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and when the sirens in Uman went off – as they did at least three times – we all just ignored them.

What sort of crazy people come on holiday to a place with sirens, in the middle of a war?!

Go ask all the tourists to Israel.

==

Motzash, after one of the nicest, calm and relaxed shabbats I’ve ever had, I was getting ready for bed around 12am, when my husband came back from the Tziyon with a strange smile on his face.

‘Eli’, our neighbor across the hall, had travelled up in the lift with him, and asked him if he wanted to join a small group he was arranging to go and visit Rav Natan, Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev and the BESHT, on the way to getting back to the airport in Moldova.

The catch was – he was planning on leaving in 20 minutes, and we’d be travelling all night and day, to fit it all in.

One of us wasn’t so keen on the idea…. But I was still in the schwang of trying to go with God’s flow, wherever it takes you.

So I talked my husband into saying yes, (he’s a very good guy) – and we packed and went downstairs.

==

In the end, we finally left Uman around 3am, and we’d acquired another couple of ‘normal chareidim’ from Bet Shemesh, to join us in the meantime.

Eli and ‘Uri’ were the main organisers – really good people, smartly-dressed Sephardi-chareidim, who were not so much ‘Breslov’ as into visiting kivrei tzaddikim in general. Then, we had a pair of super-chassidic Breslovers, father-and-son, replete with the white socks and domed black kippahs.

Then, there was us – and this other husband and wife from Bet Shemesh.

The minibus had four ‘armchair’ super-comfortable seats, and then 4 ‘less comfortable’ seats at the back, with one sitting next to the driver.

==

The chassidic son took the uncomfortable seat next to the driver – and kept it for the whole trip, without any complaints, even though it was pretty impossible to sleep in it.

I was very impressed with his middot.

Me and my husband sat at the back with the wife from Bet Shemesh next to us, while her husband dove into one of the armchairs – and then started snoring really loudly, any time he was asleep, for the rest of the trip.

Meanwhile, it was 3am, and the wife simply made one phone call to another to various members of her family, for the next hour and a half.

I was perplexed.

One of the things I’d been asking God to help me with in Uman was seeing my fellow Jew with a better ‘eye’ – and apparently, here was Rabbenu giving me an advanced test in the subject.

==

After a few hours, Eli, Uri and the chassidic father switched chairs with us, so we could also try to get some sleep.

Meanwhile, the Bet Shemesh couple also exchanged places – but the wife kept up a steady stream of complaints and ‘issues’ pretty much the whole journey, regardless of where she was sitting.

Every place we went, they disappeared off for a bit to make pot noodles and eat, which cumulatively slowed us down more and more. And meanwhile, Eli had miscalculated how long it was going to take us to get back through the Ukrainian border.

He thought it would take two hours.

In the end, it took four.

As we finally cleared the border, Waze said we’d get to Kishinev at 8pm – exactly the time the flight was meant to take off.

==

Let’s back-up a moment, and see what happened in the minibus, while we were stuck at the border and starting to understand that there was a very real possibility that we were going to miss the flight home.

As good students of the Rav, me and my husband pulled out our tikkun haklalis, said three TKs each, then paid a small pidyon in the merit of being able to get across the border, and to make the flight on time.

Then, I spent the next three hours sitting there clapping gently, to ‘sweeten the dinim’.

There were a lot of dinim to sweeten, in that border-crossing bought and paid for by ‘USAID’, which had its signs and self-congratulatory texts pasted up all over the place.

==

Meanwhile, the chassidic father and son were murmuring some tehillim, and also on the phone telling their families they may miss the flight, and not to worry, and trying to find another later flight back from Kishinev.

At the same time, Eli-the-fixer, was doing his best to see if we could walk through on foot, and get met by a different minivan on the Moldovan side of the border. (We couldn’t). Or, whether there was someone to pay, ahem, that could speed things up for us. (Apparently, surprisingly, there wasn’t.)

Then, having tried all the gashmi options, he announced that we just needed to pray and leave it to Hashem, as we’d done all we could in terms of our own histadlut.

We’re all baal-teshuvas, we’ve all done stuff we need to have a tikkun for, he announced. I warmed to him more and more.

==

Meanwhile, there was Uri, who was a quiet man who’d been discretely paying the dollars required in one place and another, without making a fuss, who came over to my husband towards the end of the interminable wait at the border to tell him that he’d been waiting to have children for 15+ years.

Whatever God decides, it’s for the very best. He told us. These tests aren’t easy, but I know that whatever God decides should happen, it’s for the very best.

I was so impressed with this man’s real, sincere and humble emuna, words failed me.

I am really praying that very soon after this trip to Uman, ‘Uri’ and his wife will finally merit to have a child of their own.

==

And then, there was the couple from Bet Shemesh.

Who spent the time berating the driver for not getting out of the car to go and pay some bribes to get us through the line (the driver had no idea what they were saying… the whole exercise was pointless.)

And spent time on their phones doing who knows what.

And, spent time telling Eli he should go and try this tactic, or that tactic, or some other tactic, to get us through on time.

Once it was clear to all of us that the only ‘tactic’ left to try was praying and asking God to help us – they doubled-down on the whinging about how it was all the ‘bad driver’s’ fault, and then the wife started haranguing her husband to find different tickets from Kishinev, as they were certainly going to miss the flight, now.

==

At one point, I got so irritated by all this I started arguing with them.

It’s not just ‘because of the driver’ that all this is happening, all this is from God! Jews are above nature, we don’t have to be bound by ‘derech hateva’!

My husband started pulling my sleeve and told me to stay out of it.

So I returned to clapping, and kept my mouth shut from that point on.

==

As soon as we crossed the border, our driver started driving like a crazy person on the goat track that passes for a main road, in that part of the world.

I was literally bouncing a foot up out of my seat, for half an hour, and even took the strange step of starting to look for the seat belt.

(I found the bit with the buckle, but I couldn’t find the bit where you click it in, so I just carried on praying instead.)

==

Suddenly, WAZE was saying we’d be at the airport by 7.20pm – possibly, still in time to make the flight.

By that point, I didn’t so much care either way. Of course, I’d prefer to not have to spend another 2,000 shekels and wait another 5 hours in the Kishinev airport – but whatever God decided. OK.

==

Our driver was such a bad driver.

After that first burst of formula one – ‘goat track edition’ – he went back to driving slowly, probably scared he might get a ticket.

Then, he pulled to the side of the road as we were approaching the airport, and demanded more money.

Long story short… We got to the airport at 7.30pm, and they’d already closed the check-in.

Uri and the couple from Bet Shemesh had a big suitcase, so they couldn’t board the plane.

Eli decided to stay back with Uri, to keep him company (those two were such good people…. Both of them.)

And that left us and the chassidic father and son, with hand-luggage only.

==

In any other airport, we probably would have been arrested (or shot….)

My husband jumped the whole queue waiting to go through security, while I ran after him trying to mumble apologies, caught between my ‘polite British’ upbringing and being a secret adherent of Shuvu Banim.

At the security stand, my husband forgot to take off his belt, and got yelled at for a whole minute until he understood what they wanted.

Then, we sprinted to gate 1 (there are only 2 gates in Kishinev….), where the last bus going to the plane had been delayed for five minutes as some chassid with crooked teeth was arguing with the flight attendant about having to pay for his extra hand-luggage.

Long story short – we literally got on bus just as the gates closed.

We made the flight home, BH.

==

No-one else on our minibus did.

‘Eli’ and ‘Uri’ were such good guys, they had such genuine emuna, and middot way better than ours.

The chassid and his son were also God-fearing Torah learners – the dad was literally learning most of the time when he wasn’t sleeping.

What it boiled down to, I really believe, was following the etzot of the Rav, doing the three Tikkun Haklalis, clapping to ‘sweeten the judgments’ – and the tiny pidyon of 80 shekels, to Shuvu Banim.

There is no other way to explain it.

==

I am hoping that the reason the gates of Kishinev airport stayed closed for ‘Uri’, is because Hashem is going to use all this bizyonot and effort to open the gates of parenthood, to him and his wife, instead.

We can’t know God’s designs, but I’ve seen from my own life, how Rabbenu organises all these ‘tikkunim’ for a person on the way to and from Uman, in order to pay down the spiritual debts that are causing the person suffering in their ‘real life’ back home.

==

As for me, I have returned home with a lot more optimism again, and a real lesson in how prayers and following the advice of the real Tzaddikim literally makes miracles for a person, and can take a person ‘above nature’.

I am feeling happier and calmer than I’ve been feeling for a very long time.

And the last thing I learned, is that I am so grateful I never went to live in Bet Shemesh.

😉

 

 

 

 

Excerpt of a shiur given over on Monday, the week of Parshat Yitro 5785.

(The Rav has been speaking about Purim, and about how the Jews in Bavel despaired of ever being redeemed, and so started marrying non-Jews.)

==

There is the story of Rivkaleh, that she married a goy.

She had a massive cross like that, and her uncle Shmuel came to visit her. After the shoah, she married a goy. She didn’t give up [on Judaism] up until the age of 18. She was seven years old when the shoah erupted, and then her mother was sent to Auschwitz.

So, [her mother put Rivkaleh] with her brother, so that he would care for her.

And then the S.S. came, the S.S. showed up, the Nazis came, they came and took the children. This was in Lodz, or in Lublin. They took all the children to Auschwitz.

And her brother hid the children away – but they found them.

==

But her [the mother of Rivkaleh’s] daughter, they didn’t find.

She was called Rivkaleh, she was concealed under the sink. There was some sort of small cupboard, and she managed to push it [forwards], and the Nazis didn’t look there, the S.S.-nikim, the essessnakim didn’t find her.

[But] the Nazis came and found his children [i.e. the children of her uncle], hidden under the bed, and in the attic, and in the boydum (storage cupboards built into the ceiling of old apartments). He put everyone in the boydum.

They said to him, why are you concealing the children? We just want to take them to school! Here, it’s the ghetto, there is no learning here, we want to help them to develop, that they should learn English, and German, that they should be learned, professors, scientists.

==

Lisa Mitner (or Meitner) – she discovered the atom.

All of the atom was discovered by Jews. But in the end, the Nobel Prize was given to some Nazi, who was her partner. They wanted to appease the Nazis, [after] they’d destroyed Berlin for them.

They say, why did you destroy Gaza?!

Why did you destroy Berlin?!

They said, we made a mistake.

What mistake? [The Allies] destroyed it to its foundations, they turned it into a pile of sand. They turned the whole of Berlin into a mound of dust, they killed everyone. 25 million Germans were killed.

The Jews were also to blame for this. Tomorrow, there will be a hearing in the Hague about this.

25 million Germans were killed!

==

Now, Putin said that he’s cancelling the Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), because Yom HaShoah was on January 27th.

He said: how are you talking about a ‘Yom HaShoah’?! Hiroshima was an even greater shoah!

But they put the Jews in the oven without it being the war [i.e. they were not combatants, nor living in areas that were being bombed generally as part of the war]. There, [in Hiroshima], they died in the war.

OK, so Putin said that he’s not prepared anymore to mark Yom HaShoah.

[But] kings came from all over the world, even Biden said I was once in Auschwitz, with all my children.

Everyone came to see. Even today, they show the skulls, and the shoes and the spectacles, mamash a million Jews were burnt there.

==

So it’s written [in Yirmiyahu] chapter 29:10 when the malchut Bavel fulfills 70 years:

“For thus said Hashem: After seventy years for Bavel have been completed I will attend to you and I will fulfill for you My favorable promise, to return you to this place.”

But there needs to be 70 years [of galut]!

Where do they get the 70 years from?

==

[Yirmiyahu continues, 29:14]

“For I know the thoughts that I am thinking for you – the word of Hashem; thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope. You will call then out to Me and follow [Me]; you will pray to Me and I will listen to You.

“You will seek Me and you will find [Me], if you search for Me with all your hearts.

“I will make myself available to you – the word of Hashem – and I will return your captivity and I will gather you in from all the nations and from all the places where I have dispersed you – the word of Hashem – and I will return you to the place from which I exiled you.”

This is Chapter 29.

==

What is written in Chapter 25 [of Yirmiyahu]?

Also here, it’s written ‘70 years’, so we don’t know which ‘70 years’ is meant.

“The word that came to Yirmiyahu concerning all of the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Yehoyakim ben Yoshiyahu, king of Judah, this is the first year of Nevuchradezzar king of Bavel.” (25:1)

In the first year he conquered Nineveh, and in the second year, Yehoyakim.

[25:2-3]:

“That Yirmiyahu HaNavi spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying: ‘From the thirteenth year of Yoshiyahu ben Amon.”

I’m already castigating you, because Yoshiyahu, it’s written ‘behind the doors is your recollection’[1] – behind the doors, that’s where they concealed them [the idols they were still worshipping].

The messengers [sent by King Yoshiyahu to root out any household idols] would open the doors, to see if there were any idols there, on the table – and the idol was behind the door. They open the door – and the idol [is hidden from sight] behind the door!

They didn’t check, they just glanced in for a moment. They didn’t want to root out the avoda zara.

And so, the churban (destruction of the Temple) was decreed.

==

[Yirmiyahu] said this – I am already setting out [in the] thirteenth year of Yoshiyahu, I am rebuking you, I am explaining to you.

Yoshiyahu was king for 31 years, from the age of 8 he was the king until age 39. The words of Yirmiyahu were written in Anatot in the days of Yoshiyahu ben Amos, in the 13th year of his reign. The exact date was written, that day, that moment, everything was written.

==

Yoshiyahu the king, it’s written he was king 31 years.

And everyone was serving avoda zara, because he was the son of Amon [who caused the Torah to be forgotten]. There was no Torah, he didn’t see a Sefer Torah in his life. [Yoshiyahu only discovered a forgotten Torah scroll when he was 18.]

Today, there’s Chumash Bereishit, Chumash Shmot. Then, there wasn’t Chumash Bereishit, there was nothing. Kids grew up hefker (without oversight), they didn’t know there was such a thing as the Torah in the world.

He was eight years old, he already smashed all the idols – but he left the horses [the chariots of the sun]. The horses he left, because it appears these were the horses that Ahashverosh used to groom. He used to groom them each time, he was a horse-groomer, he was making progress in his life. He was making good parnassa, dafka. He had a salary of 10,000 a month, he had 10 children, he was sustaining them.

He managed to support his children, so he was a horse-groomer, so it appears that these were the horses of Ahashverosh, so he returned them.

==

So it’s written that at age 18, he killed the ‘sun horses’.

There used to be horse-drawn chariots, in honor of the sun, each year….

Now, it’s the Year of the Snake, it’s the Year of the Snake in China, the year of the snake. There is such a thing as ‘the year of the snake’, ‘the year of the pig’, ‘the year of the dog’, ‘the year of the scorpion’. They have 24 new years, every six months they do a new Rosh Hashana in China. So then, it was the Year of the Snake.

So, at the age of 18 he burnt all the horses.

==

All of this is written in Kings II, you need to learn a chapter every day.

Here, Kings II, verse 23:11:

“He also abolished the horses that the kings of Judah had designated for [worship of] the sun, [which would race] from the entrance of the Temple to the office of Nathan-melech, the officer in the outlying area of the city. He burned the chariots of the sun in fire.”

This was already at 18 years old

“And he let the horses live.” He left the horses, you don’t burn horses. Then, he broke all the idols, except for the horses, which were the chariots of the sun.

[Kings II:12:]

“And the altars that were on the roof of the upper story built by Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had set up, and the altars that Menashe had set up in the two courtyards of the Temple of Hashem, the king smashed. He eliminated from there and threw their dust into the Kidron Valley.”

All of the kings.

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Menashe [was king] for 55 years.

Now, Yoshiyahu came along, and he didn’t know anything. He never saw a book. At the age of 18, he found a Sefer Torah in the genizah, there in the middle of the stuff, in the middle of the wall. Someone had put it in the genizah.

When he went to Hulda Navia, she started off with curses, she read it to him, and he was aghast.[2]

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Hulda HaNavia was from [the descendents] of Rahav,[3] because Rahav hid the spies.

She concealed 200 families beneath the second ‘thread’, the thread of truth.

I want truth, I want to convert!

For Chana was the gilgul of Rahav,[4] and so she was barren for 130 years.

[Hulda HaNevia] was the wife of Shalom ben Tikvah. Shalom ben Tikvah was her husband, and he came from Rahav.

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[The Rav is now switching to the story of the relative of he Prophet Yirmiyahu, who came to sell him a field just as the Babylonians were literally breaching the walls of Jerusalem.]

And Hanamel ben Shalom, he came to sell the field,[5] and the Kasdim had already broken through the wall, the enemies were on the wall [of Jerusalem].

He said, buy the field tomorrow, now it’s cheap! Now, a field that is worth a billion dollars is now worth 10,000. Bring $10,000, bring the book and the seal.

From this, we learn [you need] a book and a seal, that you need a book of purchases, we learn everything from Yirmiyahu.[6] You need to know everything by heart, all the chapters.

“The word of Hashem came to me, saying: ‘Behold, Hanamel the son of your uncle Shalom is coming to you to say: ‘Buy for yourself my field that is in Anatot, for the law of redemption is upon you, to buy it.’” (Yirmiyahu 32:6-7.)

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This was Shalom ben Tikvah, this is the same ‘Shalom’ that’s written here [in the story of Yirmiyahu’s field], Shalom ben Tikvah.

This is Shalom ben Tikvah, the husband of Hulda. He was the son of Shalom.

Why?

Because he used to stand with a barrel of water. Once upon a time, there didn’t use to be [running water]. Once, it wasn’t like Savyon[7]. They have there kiosks, restaurants, bars, a bar that’s like a pub. The Leopards Pub, the Eagles Pub, the Wolves Pub.

Once, there was no such thing as this.

People used to walk for a week, and they didn’t drink a drop of water. So, he would stand, Shalom ben Tikvah, he would stand with a barrel of wine.

It’s written in the Pirkei de Rebbe Eliezer, verse 33 [16], that he used to stand with a barrel of water, and distribute water for free.

This was Shalom ben Tikvah.

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TBC

Translated from Shivivei Or, 400.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Midrash Rabbah Eicha, Introduction to Chapter 22.

[2] Kings II:22, 8-14.

“Hilkiah the Kohen Gadol said to Shaphan the scribe, ‘I have found a Scroll of the Torah in the Temple of Hashem.’ Hilkiah gave the Scroll to Shaphan and he read it. Shaphan the scribe came to the king and brought a report to the king and he said, ‘Your servants have counted the money that was found in the Temple, and have given it into the hand of the workmen-in-charge in the Temple of Hashem.’

Shaphan the scribe then told the king, saying, ‘Hilkiah the Kohen has given me a Scroll.’ Shaphan then read it before the king. It happened that when the king heard the words of the of the Scroll of the Torah, he rent his garments.

The king commanded Hilkiah the Kohen, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Achbor son of Micalah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah, the king’s servant, saying, ‘Go and inquire of Hashem on my behalf, and on behalf of the people and on behalf of all of Judah, concerning the words of this Scroll that was found; for great is the wrath of Hashem that has been incited against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this Scroll, to fulfill all that was written for us.’

So Hilkiah the Kohen, Ahikam, Achbor, Shapan and Asaiah went to Hulda the Prophetess, the wife of Shalom ben Tikva, ben Harhas, the keeper of the [royal] garments, who dwelled in Jerusalem, in the study house, and they spoke to her.”

[3] See Tractate Megillah, 14.

[4] See Homat An’ch Shmuel, 1-15.

[5] Yirmiyahu 32:6:

“Yirmiyahu said: The word of Hashem came to me, saying: ‘Behold, Hanamel the son of your uncle Shalom is coming to you to say: ‘Buy for yourself my field that is in Anatot, for the law of redemption is upon you, to buy it.’”

[6] Yirmiyahu 32:9-12:

“So, I bought the field that was in Anatot from Hanamel, my cousin. I weighed out the money for him, seven shekels and ten silver pieces. I wrote out the deed and sealed, and I designated witnesses. I then weighed out the money on a scale. I took the bill of sale, the one that was sealed [according to] the ordinance and the decrees, and the unsealed [bill], and I gave the bill of sale to Baruch ben Neriah, ben Mahseyah, before the eyes of Hanamel, [son of] my uncles, and before the eyes of the witnesses who signed the bill of sale and before the eyes of all the Jews who were sitting in the Courtyard of Confinement.”

[7] One of the most upscale, rich and ‘elite’ towns in Israel.

This year is going so fast, it’s hard to believe we’re at Purim already.

Rebbe Nachman teaches that really, all beginnings begin from Purim.

We need the ‘joy’ of Purim to have the ‘redemption’ of Pesach.

Most years, I usually find the first half of Adar really hard going – you can feel the din in the air, it’s very hard to feel ‘happy’ about anything much.

BH, this year, it feels different, at least in my dalet amot, at least in Jerusalem.

I would say there is a vibe of optimism, some how, that I haven’t picked up for most of the last five years, since the whole Covid nightmare began.

Talking to people, it also seems that many of my friends are coming to a stage where they just can’t hang for things to ‘change’ anymore any longer. They are moving out of passive mode, and stepping into a more active mode – that has fear of God at its foundation.

It’s not the same old ‘the strength and might of my own right hand’ that has got us all into so many difficulties.

It’s a deep understanding that we are absolutely nothing, dust and ashes, without God. But that God still created that ‘dust and ashes’ to make its best efforts to build the world and struggle mightily with overcoming our own bad middot, and developing some real emuna that EIN OD MILVADO – there is only Him.

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So, there is only Him – but God is still waiting for the ‘awakening below’, where we stop making excuses for why we aren’t at least trying to fix what’s so wrong, and putting God firmly back into that picture as we do it. And it seems to me, that more and more people are starting to realise this, in a myriad different ways.

This is the stuff that real transformations are made of.

And ‘transformation’ is really the theme of Purim.

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On that note, if you understand Hebrew (or can just read the translated subtitles in English) – this is a great shiur from R’ Ofer Erez on the connection between Purim, and understanding that we are really nothing, and it’s all God:

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Here in Jerusalem, we have Purim Meshulash – a triangulated Purim, spread over three days.

That means we hear the Megillah tonight and tomorrow morning, same as everyone else, but then we have the seuda and do the other mitzvot of Purim on Sunday.

The other mitzvot of Purim are:

1. The feast.
2. Giving mishloach manot – parcels of food to at least two different people. (These days, I give two mishloach manot to people on my street – and that’s it. It’s amazing how much I enjoy that mitzvah by keeping it simple.)
3. Machizikei HaShekel – the ‘half shekel’ payment.
4. Matanot l’evyanim – presents for the poor – the idea is, so they can afford to actually buy food for the ‘feast’, which is why matanot l’evyanim has to be given on the day of Purim itself.

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There are different opinions on when you do this on a Purim Meshulash in Jerusalem, but most people hold that the above four mitzvoth should be done on Sunday.

If you aren’t in Jerusalem (or Shiloh, or Hevron….), then you do all those four mitzvot tomorrow, ahead of Shabbat.

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If you want a good place to give the machizikei hashekel and the matanot l’evyanim, I highly recommend the Rav’s Kollel Hatzot, in the Old City of Jerusalem.

According to the CHIDA, the main beneficiaries of the machizikei hashekel are meant to be ‘poor sages’ – i.e. people who are seriously committed to their Torah learning, but don’t have a lot of cash.

The Kollel Hatzot fits the bill perfectly.

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I asked my friend whose husband learns there, and gets up at midnight to do the tikkun hatzot with the rest of the guys there, to give me a list of the core Kollel, so we could get to know them a little better.

I am thinking of trying to organise some sort of ‘adopt-an-avreich’ scheme, where you can sponsor a particular avreich‘s praying and learning at the Kollel HaTzot.  I know from my own experience, that when your tzedaka starts going to really ‘good’ sources, all sorts of hashgacha pratit starts happening to clear up even intractable problems.

So, more on that soon.

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In the meantime, here’s a nice tie-in, between the tikkun hatzot, and the spiritual transformation that turns everything around – and Purim:

The turn around dafka begins at midnight.

The whole miracle of Purim begins at midnight between Esther’s first banquet and the second, when Mordechai and his talmidim are praying and crying out, all night long.

And that night salvation, came to the people of Israel.

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Bezrat Hashem, this year too, we should also have the merit of seeing that spiritual transformation occur, mamash, with our own eyes, and somehow also have the merit of being a part of it.

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Here’s how you can donate to the KOLLEL HATZOT in the Old City:

Go HERE.

Now, Shuvu Banim is not a slick ‘fundraising’ operation. So while this page is 100% secure payment, it’s in Hebrew, not English.

So, let’s bring a screenshot of the Hebrew page, and then let’s translate it into English (in  red), so you can see what you need to do:

WHAT YOU’LL SEE, IN HEBREW, with my red translation:

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Then, you can pick how you want to make the payments by clicking these buttons:

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So, donate HERE.

Every penny is going to the avreichim that learn there, (and no, I don’t work for them at all, or anyone else, and I’m not getting any kick-backs in anyway, for posting this stuff up.)

And if you want this to count for matanot l’evyanim, you have to make the donation itself either Friday (if you don’t live in Jerusalem, Shiloh or Hevron) – or Sunday, if you live somewhere that is keeping Purim Meshulash.

And may all the evil decrees finally get overturned for good this Purim, and all the evil ‘Hamans’ hung on the highest lamp-posts in the realm.

Amen.