Each year on Shvi’i shel Pesach, the Rav gives over the story of the Baal Shem Tov.
Below, I am going to bring the versions of the story that he gave the year before the Meron death-trap was set up in Meron; and also in 2023, shortly before what happened on Oct 7th, Simchat Torah, of that same year.
Long story short – the Rav gives a ton of hints in these stories about what the Evils are up to, and what serious decrees need sweetening.
This year’s version of the story is also very interesting. I’m bringing the main excerpt of it below, then meet me at the bottom for my thoughts on what the Rav is saying.
(Just FYI, I fully encourage you to have your own thoughts on what the Rav is saying, too. The more the merrier.)
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In the meantime, the Baal Shem Tov got to Istanbul.
This wasn’t only in order to travel to Eretz Yisrael, there were another million reasons. In Istanbul, there was a terrible decree, that the Sultan made with all of his advisors, all his trusted people, to annihilate the Jews in one second.
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[The Rav now digresses to talk about how only the Tzaddik getting to Uman can cancel the decrees, then he returns to the story in Istanbul.]
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And this was a terrible decree, and they didn’t reveal it to anyone, they didn’t tell.
The goyim are always in a state of ‘being ready’, you don’t need to tell them. It’s written “to be prepared for that day.”[1] ‘Be prepared’ – he [Mordechai HaTzaddik] didn’t say that they were going to kill the Jews, because then the Jews would just run away….
By the Jews it’s written: “to avenge themselves on their enemies.”[2] But by the non-Jews it’s not written ‘to avenge themselves’, it’s written ‘be prepared’ – they are always ready, they are always in a state of readiness.[3]
They don’t lose focus, when it comes to this, they fulfill “Shaviti Hashem k’negdi tamid” (I always keep Hashem before my eyes.)
In order to annihilate Am Yisrael, they don’t lose focus for one second. They have no problem, they are always ready with axes, with guns, with knives. So you don’t need to tell them.
At 6:00 exactly, they announce [that it’s time to kill Jews] and by 6:01, there already wouldn’t be a single Jew [alive] in the whole of Istanbul. Each person would slaughter their neighbor, or the neighbor’s baby, with an axe, with a knife.
You don’t need to make any preparations, they are always in a state of ‘readiness’.
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At that time, whoever would reveal this to the Jews – they would hang him.
If someone would reveal it, if someone would tell the Jews, because then already it wouldn’t be possible to do anything. If the Jews would hear about this, they’d send bribes, billions.
All the money in the world – the Jews own it. All the banks belong to Jews, everything is by the Jews. So now, we’re [in trouble]… Whoever is going to reveal this to the Jews, they will immediately hang him. He’ll forfeit his head…
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Meanwhile, one of the ministers, who uncovered the secret, he was a lover of the Jews.
He said, Am Yisrael, this is a nation of tzaddikim, the ‘chosen people’, this is holy of holies. How is it possible to kill such holy Jews?!
He couldn’t sleep the whole night. And there [in Istanbul] they finished the seder early, not like here, where we sing ‘l’oseh nifla’ot’ (to do wonders), and ‘be’tzet Yisrael l’mitzrayim’ (when the Jews left Egypt).
This is half a minute, you don’t need a whole hour to sing this. There, by 10pm, they finished the seder. They started at 7pm, finished at 10pm, so everyone was asleep. 1am at night, everyone was already in the middle of their sleep.
At 1am, he decided that he was going to knock on the door of the head of the community – this was the minister who loved the Jews. He didn’t care, he was going to tell him about the decree. He would tell him that it was forbidden to reveal [who told them], even if they would break his head, that they should find some excuse.
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1am, he knocked at the head of the community, the head of the community was slumbering in a deep sleep, after seder night, with 10 grandchildren and 100 great-grandchildren. And in such a condition, so he was having the sweetest sleep possible.
Suddenly, there’s knocking at the door – he thought that it’s the gestapo, it’s the KGB, who knows, the z-ist police, who knows who’s there.
So he suddenly opens the door, sees the minister, one of the most important ministers, this minister who loves the Jews, who says to him:
Listen. I have exactly one second. There is a decree to annihilate all the jews at 6am in the morning, and I am running away. If I will be here even a moment longer, they will hang me. And don’t say that I said, I don’t care what you will do, how you will say it, but me, you are not to put into the mix. I don’t know anything, I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t see anything – and you, you didn’t see or hear anything, either.
A moment later, he was already a few kilometres away, you already couldn’t see him, he’d disappeared.
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The head of the community didn’t know what to do.
Now it was 1am, and they were going to kill all the Jews, to slaughter everyone. Where should he go? What should he do? It was totally forbidden to reveal that he even knew about it.
He went to wake up all the other leaders of the community, there were another 20 or 30 community leaders. He went from house to house, it was already 3am, until he’d managed to wake everyone up.
He said: There is a decree to kill all the Jews! And we only have two hours left, all together. What should we do?! What can we do?!
Suddenly, one of them said: Come, let’s go to the mother of the Sultan, we’ll go to the Ima, we’ll ask her advice. We’ll tell her the whole story, that in another two hours, they are going to kill all the Jews, so that she’ll give us some advice.
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OK, it’s already 3am.
There is a butka there [guard house] with a guard, with a few attendants.
It’s impossible to go into the Sultan’s mother in the middle of the night – 3am in the morning. What, did you go crazy?! Wait another hour or two, she will wake up. She’ll wake up at 6am, or at 7am. She’ll also pray, and to to the mosque. Maybe, even at 4am she’ll wake up, wait another hour, at least!
He told [the guard]: We don’t even have another second! Know, there is something here that is going to be a world-wide catastrophe, in every part of the globe! Wake her up immediately!
She was sleeping on the third floor, upstairs, with her robe, with her bed gown.
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He banged on the door of her bedroom, and she woke up.
[She said]: What’s going on, in the middle of my sleep you are waking me up?!
He said: I don’t know, but the Jews are saying that there is some terrible catastrophe here, some sort of destruction of the world, they are going to destroy the whole of planet earth. Get up immediately, and run to hear what’s going on.
She ran with her dressing gown, she went down three floors, within five minutes she was already downstairs.
What’s going on? What’s happening?
They told her: Listen, there is a decree to kill the Jews. We didn’t stam come to you at 3am, and it’s forbidden to reveal it. It’s forbidden to reveal that you know about, if you say you know, they will hang the minister. What can we do?!
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[The Sultan’s mother said:]
Don’t worry! Sit quietly, stop crowding me here, another second and I will kick you out! Sit quietly in the salon, here, they will bring you cups of cola, cups of tea, milk you don’t drink, halav akum.[4] OK, so drink tea.
She brought them a few cups of tea, she wanted to bring them meat and fish, they said we need a hechsher from Argentina. (Soon, we’re going to hear how they tried to slaughter Odel’ah [the daughter of the Baal Shem Tov], because they wanted kosher meat. The most kosher it could be, the most tasty.)
So, they didn’t taste the meat, and not the fish, they drank there some cup of tea, which it was permitted to drink. This is hot liquid, it’s a shaila (a halachic question). It’s permitted if it’s warm, so this is also permitted.
So they sat, and she disappeared on them. They didn’t know where she disappeared to, all of a sudden.
She said: Wait until I come back, and don’t ask questions.
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She took a carriage with four horses, and ran over five cats on the way, and ten dogs.
Of course, there is an organisation for preventing cruelty to animals, and there will be a trial in the Hague about this, and there is compensation that she needs to pay to every dog owner – a million dollars compensation. These were ‘aristocratic’ dogs, not just regular dogs. In Istanbul, every dog is worth a billion dollars, she ran over all the dogs.
Within five minutes, she got to the palace of her son, and she got to the butka. It was already 4am, another hour already passed, in another hour, they will kill all the Jews.
She yelled at the guard: Nu, open up for me! I am the mother of the Sultan!
He said: Now, he’s sleeping. It’s not possible to wake up the sultan in the middle of the night, there’s no such thing as this.
[She said] I am his mother! Open up immediately! I am going to kill you – open right now! Don’t ask questions! Run to him immediately!
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But now, another time, it’s the third floor, until they go up, until they come down again, until they wake him up in the middle of his sleep, until the Sultan comes down in his pyjamas, poor fellow…
[They said to him]: Your mother is downstairs, go downstairs quickly, there’s a catastrophe, world-wide destruction, they are going to destroy the whole of planet earth, who knows? They are firing a nuke or going to fire a nuke, who knows what is going to happen here, now?
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(The story continues in the usual way, with the Sultan’s mother ‘persuading’ her son to rip up the decree he made against the Jews.)
Translated from Shivivei Or, 405
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A few things jumped out at me here, in no particular order:
- It’s not just a decree against the Jews this time, it’s a decree of world-wide destruction, God forbid.
- The ‘Sultan’s mother’ makes a big point of telling the Jews to stay quiet, drink tea, avoid milk and ‘don’t ask questions’.
- The Sultan’s mother disappears, and the Jews have no idea where she’s going.
- The Rav seems to be stressing ‘the third floor’, on two different occasions.
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From past experience, these apparently ‘random’ details are NEVER random.
On that score, here is the version of the story from shortly before the murder of 45 Jews in the Meron death-trap:
(Taken from page 154 of OIAG 3.)
[The Rav is telling the famous story of the Baal Shem Tov’s trip to Eretz Yisrael with his daughter Odel and his sofer, R’ Hirsh. On the way they were captured by cannibals…]
This was about Odel’le, the daughter of the Baal Shem Tov, [the grandmother] of Rabbenu haKadosh, because they wanted to eat Odel’le. They wanted ‘shwarma’. This was Seder night, and they wanted ‘shwarma’, melaveh malka.
The cannibals came on the way to Eretz Yisrael and wanted to eat her. They said there is no other meat as tasty as this in the world. They were already preparing the fire. They were rolling up their sleeves, they were sharpening their knives.
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They tied her on the fire – Odel-le, the holy and pure one, the daughter of the Baal Shem Tov.
The Baal Shem Tov said about her…. [text in Yiddish] “All day she goes around with tremendous desire towards Hashem Yisborach, and she asks herself ‘what else can I do to fulfill the Will of Hashem’.”
From the day she was born, she was a pillar of flame, a pillar of flame. They saw a pillar of flame upon Odel’le. Now, they want to eat her, the bandits. They said to make ‘melave malka’ from Odel’le, the holy and pure one.
They were sharpening their knives, they tied her on the fire. The Baal Shem Tov… They said after this, [they also wanted] to eat the Baal Shem Tov, with Rabbi Hirsh. And R’ Hirsh said to the Baal Shem Tov:
Why are you silent? Start to sing a little, ‘Who alone performs great miracles, for His kindness is forever’![5] Because on that day, they decided to slaughter all the Jews. 100,000 Jews in five minutes.
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How long does it take to kill 100,000 Jews?
Each one takes an axe, he can cut off 10 heads, 20 heads. Every household has 20 babies. They can take off their heads in 20 seconds.
All the police will go on the microphone at 6 in the morning, on the megaphone – they still didn’t have a microphone, so they used a megaphone. And they will make an announcement to wipe out all the Jews, all the Jewish nation.
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“To be prepared for that day.”[6] To be prepared. The goyim are always prepared, they are always ready, they are always in a state of preparedness, ready to ‘leap’…The goyim are waiting all year to start chopping… To decapitate, to [separate] the Jews from their heads. Only [waiting] for permission from the king.
They are just waiting for the announcement, the megaphone, and then within 10 seconds there will not remain any Jews in all of ‘Istanbul’…
Each neighbor will cut off 10 heads, and then gomarnu, we’re finished. And each one has several axes, an axe for each Jew.
And so at 6 in the morning, no memory [of the Jews] will remain. Judenrein, Judenrein, Judenrein. Everything will be cleansed of Jews. And Jews will not live in ‘Istanbul’, until the end of their lifetimes.…
And so, we will have a city cleansed of Jews, and then we’ll have fun! And what a good life we will have!
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This is what they thought in their hearts – and it’s forbidden to reveal it. Whoever reveals it, oy va voy. The electric chair in the city square.
They would always say that there was one like this who used to tell things to the Jews, always!
And the Jews would then nullify the gezeira within five minutes. They would bring a few coins; they would collect at the wall (Kotel) a few agarot (pennies) and sweeten it all. What’s the problem? A Jew knows how to sweeten everything. In a thousandth of a second, he can sweeten all the gezeirot in the world – so [the Turks decided] don’t reveal it, and that’s it!
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There was a minister who couldn’t accept this decree under any circumstances, and he was a lover of Israel. I’m not sleeping, and I’m not eating. I can’t fall asleep. He was tossing from side to side.
It’s already 1 in the morning, and he can’t fall asleep. He cries out, hatzilu! Save us! Save us! Save us! Save us! They are going to destroy all the Jews, and they don’t know anything about it!
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So he ran to the head of the community. At 1 o’clock in the morning, everyone is already asleep.
In Istanbul, they finished the Seder at 11. They don’t finish the seder at 4 in the morning. 11 o’clock, already everyone is finished, without niggunim, without singing, without anything.
They’ve already eaten their kezayit of matzah, the kezayit of maror, the kezayit of Korech – and suddenly, BOOM! CRASH! What an incredible banging on the door! CRASH! BOOM! They are breaking down the door.
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And the head of the community doesn’t understand what’s going on. The FBI has arrived, the KGB has arrived – only the KGB would make such banging.
He ran in a panic to open the door in his pajamas. He sees the most important minister, the most important minister.
He says to him, Listen, in another five minutes no memory will remain from all Am Yisrael. Run quickly to the King! I’m fleeing from here. Oy va voy, maybe they will come after me! Today everything is recorded!
If they record me, I’m finished! I’m lost! The electric chair!
He called out to the minister, where are you running to?
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The minister with kol od nafsho bo (all the soul that was left in him) jumped all the stairs in one jump.
The head of the community did not know what to do. He did not know where to run. Where can we go? In another five minutes, there will be no trace left of all the Jews.
Six in the morning, 9.30 – there won’t remain the trace of even a single Jew.
Run quickly! Run quickly and save all the Jews! Just run, they need to run!
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How the head of the community ran! Wow! Not even the best athlete could catch up with him. He woke up all the heads of the community. It’s already 3 in the morning. Everyone is running.
They don’t know their right from their left, north or south, east, or west. They don’t know where to run to, in which direction, where to run, where to flee to, where to go...
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The heads of the community saw Shuvu Banim sing one verse for three hours, ‘Who performs wonders alone, because His kindnesses are forever’.
Everybody sing! Shimon is singing with us! [the Rav is singing with them] ‘Who performs wonders alone, because his kindnesses are forever’. There are still another 20 minutes before 7am, ‘to perform wonders alone, because His kindnesses are forever.’[7]
This is how they sang. They began to sing with him because they didn’t know what to do, or where to go to. North, South, East. Maybe we’ll go to Mars? There, we’ll sweeten the decree.
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They didn’t know where to go, or in which direction. It’s forbidden to speak of it.
Oy va voy, to anyone who will reveal what I told you. I will hang you in the middle of the square in Kikar Zion! Be warned not to tell anyone what they are doing! Where can we go? In another half hour, they will kill all the Jews. ‘Who performs wonders alone, because His kindnesses are forever.’
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Balfour sweetened the decrees.
He said to the Jews, the time has come for you to return to Eretz Yisrael. They wanted to kill him on the spot. He wrote this to Rothschild. He wanted to be a member of the English parliament, so today the most important road is Balfour.
There, they do all the demonstrations, there they destroy sifrei Torah. They use the luchot (i.e., Ten Commandments) and the sifrei Torah as armor.
Come, let’s run to Balfour! Maybe there, Bibi will sweeten something.
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B’kitzur, one said yallah, everyone go, everyone to the mother of the king! Everyone to the mother of the sultan! Everyone, yallah, run, run! How they ran! Wow!
I remember it, they ran, they stampeded over 10 cats and 5 dogs. There are indictments, to crush a cat is worse than murdering a human being, today.
B’kitzur, they bang to the gatekeeper, four in the morning. By six – they say there will already be no trace remaining of the Jews.
They didn’t talk about the decree because they couldn’t make the announcement five minutes before. They didn’t make the announcement – because people would cancel it. Only at that moment.
And then, they would all come, and gomarnu. He will decapitate 10 people, and slaughter, and within five seconds there will not remain one Jew in ‘Istanbul’.
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They knock for the gatekeeper.
The gatekeeper is at his post, asleep. He drank five bottles of champagne and 10 of whiskey and cocktails, and all types of wine in the world, he drank. And now, in the morning, this is the deepest sleep that there is in the world.
You should know that four in the morning, if you want to wake up a person, it’s impossible. Even kicking them doesn’t help. It’s a sleep like nothing in this world. At four in the morning, a person goes into a deep sleep.
Until he falls asleep, he begins to sleep at 10. After six hours, the body is finally relaxed, and he’s able to enter a deep, deep sleep. And they kicked the gate. They destroyed the gate. Wow.
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The guard wakes up. What’s going on here? Why are you breaking down the gate?! I’m going to bring the police on everyone!!
They said, no, no! There is a terrible decree here! Some decree on the Jews! We are messengers of the Jews! There is a decree to wipe out all of us!
Yes, I heard it. I heard something about this. They said it’s forbidden to reveal it. Yes.
So, what do you want to do?
Run to Ima! Wake up the Ima of the King! The Sultan! We will come after you! Yallah – he ran.
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He jumped 10 stairs in one jump.
He banged on the door. She came out in her pajamas, wearing her night robe.
What’s going on? Guests? I heard that the head of the community arrived.
Don’t ask! They are going to kill all the Jews!
What?! Bring them into the lobby. I’m coming down. She slid down all the 10 steps. She jumped it in one jump.
What’s going on?
They said there’s a decree!! They are killing the Jews!
They said it’s forbidden for us to reveal it. If we reveal it, they will hang us all in the city square.
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His mother said don’t worry. Yallah, sit, drink. Here, I’ve prepared some whiskey for you. Yallah, drink! It will be okay! Drink, relax, relax already!
Yallah, I’m already going with my chariot and my four horses, they travel at 200 km an hour. Wow. They crushed 20 cats. 100 dogs, on the way. She has 100 indictments until today. To run over dogs is worse than killing a human today.
She wakes up the king, and shouts at him. She says, wake him up.
What, I’m going to wake him up? Don’t you know how much he drank? 10 champagnes and 20 whiskeys, that night. He’s sleeping the sleep of Taramita. A sleep of half a year. You can kick him, hit him, kick him… In the end, they gave him such kicks until he woke up.
Yallah! Get up! Wake up the King! Here’s mother, mother has arrived! The Ima woke him up, with such kicks.
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She went up 10 floors, she ran 10 floors in 10 seconds.
Wake up the King! The Sultan came down 10 floors.
Ima, what’s going on?! Ima’leh, so sweet, my dear mother, what happened? What happened?
Do you want to kill the entire family?! What did you do! Tell me! What sin? I saw your father in a dream. Your father – in a dream I saw him. [Your father] said that there will not remain a memory, by six in the morning, there will not remain a trace of the whole family!
Ima! I fast on Ramadan!
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B’kitzur, she told him she dreamed that no trace would be left from the whole family. Immediately, he went and tore up the decree against the Jews.
He said, Ima, I can sweeten the awful gezeira. I made an awful decree against the Jews.
Did you go mad!? Look what happened to Pharoah! What happened to Sisera! This one drowned in the Kishon, that one drowned in the Sea of Reeds. What?! Did you go crazy?! You start up with the Jews?!
Look, Stalin started up with the Jews, and he had a stroke…
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And this is the abridged version of the story from Pesach 2023 (April 20th, 2023)– a few months before that awful Simchat Torah:
“In the meantime, in Istanbul, there was a decree.
The Baal Shem Tov, when he came to that place, he did there a whole bunch of sweetenings.
There was a decree there, like in Hebron, to wipe out all the Jews….the decree was at six in the morning. They were going to slaughter all the Jews. By seven there wouldn’t be even one Jew left alive.
In the meantime, it wasn’t revealed to a single person. They said, if the Jews would know that there was such a decree, they would nullify it within five minutes…. So, they made a ruling that this cannot be revealed to a single person.
There was one person, a very suspect person indeed, a renegade. He would always tell all the secrets of the king’s palace. What was going on there inside the Mossad, inside the Shabak. He would reveal to the Jews each time what there was decreed. They would then go and nullify it within five minutes. They would bring a billion dollars, two billion dollars, whatever was needed, and nullify every decree….”
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The Rav continued that this ‘suspect person’ who knew the big secret went to the head of the Jewish community to tell him about the awful decree and told him to find a way to nullify it. The Rav continued that he had to:
“Find a way of nullifying the decree without showing that you know anything about it.”
The Rav continued giving his ‘clues’ via that same story of the ‘decree in Istanbul’. This time, there was going to be ‘banging on the door’ at 1am…. Boom. Suddenly, an explosion, they’re blowing up the door! They woke them up in the middle of the night with banging on the door, terrible kicking. Everyone woke up.
The Rav continued:
“In Istanbul the Chief was called the Sultan. He ruled over half the world. He ruled over Mecca. He ruled over the Land of Israel. He ruled over half the world. So, now let’s go to the mother [of the Sultan]. We’ll relate to her the story as it is, and maybe she’ll find a way.
Ok. Three in the morning they knock on the door. They wake up the guard. The guard was also in a deep sleep. Three in the morning is the sweetest sleep in the world, the deepest. He asked them, what’s going on? It’s three in the morning…?”
And then as the story continued, the Rav continued to give more clues about what the ‘decree’ actually was:
“Within two hours we’ll all be destroyed. There’ll be here a fire. Everyone will be burnt alive.” And then continued: Tear up the decree!!… I’m running now to tear up the decree. He ran to the archives, there was the parchment. He tore it into shreds…. look, all the shreds, the decree is nullified. You have nothing to worry about.”
The Rav then concluded:
“There, the Jews were waiting. It was already five in the morning. In another five minutes, the sunrise minyan would start. She showed them the shards of the decree. She told them, everything’s okay, don’t worry…. So, after the prayers, they told the Jews what had happened.
They told everyone the whole story…. And then the Baal Shem Tov said, if it wasn’t for this surprising Jew, this meshuganeh [who sweetened everything] there wouldn’t have been a miracle.”
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If you compare the details above with what actually happened, both in Meron and also on Simchat Torah in the Gaza envelope, the parallels are obvious.
It looks like the world is on the brink of something enormous…
BH, our true tzaddikim will be able to sweeten it.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Megillat Esther, 3:14.
[2] Ibid, 8:13. The full verse reads: “Copies of the document were to be promulgated in every province, and to be published to all peoples, for the Jews to be prepared for that day, to avenge themselves on their enemies.”
[3] The Rav seems to be saying in a state of readiness to kill Jews.
[4] Halav akum is milk that is not under kosher supervision.
[5] From Tehillim 137.
[6] Megillat Esther, 3:14.
[7] This is a clear reference to the two coachloads of people from Shuvu Banim who went up to pray all night at Meron on April 11, 2021, on the instructions of the ‘hidden Tzaddik’.
