Excerpt of a shiur given during Kiddush, Shabbat Behar-Bechukatai 5785 (May 23, 2025)

With Bechukatai, now it’s Parshat Bechukatai – everything is curses, just curses, curses.

Here, this is 49 curses, and in Ki Tavo another 98 – 98, another 98 curses.

And so, we fire arrows on L’ag B’omer to cancel the 98 curses. So now, it’s 49 and another 98, this is 147 – this is ‘Nachman’ with the kollel [an extra 1, to make 148, the gematria of ‘Nachman’). Because only Rabbenu can cancel all the curses.

==

It’s written in the Zohar Hadash, in Ki Tavo, that everything will be transformed into blessings…

All the curses are blessing. There are no keilim (vessels), so all the combinations [of letters] turn into curses. The Heichal HaBracha explains how the curses turn into blessings, even if the Egyptians come on boats, that Egypt will be conquered.

This already happened, because they got to kilometre 101, this is 10 kms away from Cairo, they could have already conquered Cairo. In the end, they didn’t conquer it, but in the future, Egypt will also be conquered.

==

Each person has a million kooshiot (difficulties) about Hashem.

Why is it like this, and why was there a Shoah, and why was there a massacre on Simchat Torah?!

But all of this was only so they would merit to have Gan Eden, such heichalot (heavenly halls). There was such revelations, people came and revealed themselves to their family members, told them what a Gan Eden they have, what heichalot.

==

There was one girl who didn’t eat for three months, I don’t know why she didn’t eat, why she fasted for three months.

She wasn’t prepared to eat anything, because her brother had been killed.

This was two weeks ago, this story. So, her brother who was murdered came to her in a dream, and told her that he was in Gan Eden, and that he was in the heichal of Rabbi Akiva.

She didn’t know who ‘Rabbi Akiva’ was, she only knew who Charlie Chaplin was, not who Rabbi Akiva was.

So, she went to some Rav and told him the dream.

They don’t know anything.

==

We need to found a seminary in Be’eri and in Zikim and in Nirim – people don’t know anything.

They are tmimim, (innocents), they went to bathe in the sea on Simchat Torah, and then seven dinghies came with 25 terrorists on each – this is 145 terrorists.

Now, this is being seen, this is being seen via the cameras that were there.

20 soldiers from Golani – you can see how they ran away from there, because they knew that every terrorist that is killed, this gets you a year in jail, and they immediately take away your weapons for two years, and don’t give them back.

Because of this, everyone ran away.

==

Now, Yair Golan, he said in the media that the soldiers are murderers, that they are murdering children, cutting them up into bits and pieces.

This is being shown across the whole world, and he’s not sorry about it,  he’s not withdrawing his remarks. He’s still embarrassed about his Judaism, and he’s not prepared to take back what he said, because why should the terrrorist be killed?!

It’s possible to just cut his ear off!

==

Excerpted and translated from Shivivei Or, 410.

There is no question that times are currently quite challenging, in all parts of the world.

A part – a small part, even – of the evil of our modern media lifestyle is that we are fed 24/7 ‘drama’ and ‘danger’ and ‘worry’ prompts all the time.

These prompts keep us in a constant state of stress and agitation, impact our state of mind in a very negative way and also, influences a whole bunch of physical issues and problems, as we keep gnawing away at the worry bone.

If someone like Shimon Peres was so keen on dissing history, and trying to put people off from studying the lessons of the past, I can think of no better guarantee that studying history must be a very good, beneficial thing.

That’s pretty much what I’m spending most of my spare, and not so spare, time doing at the moment – getting to grips with the historical context that led up to what is going on right now, in May 2025.

As part of that process, I am learning something amazing:

Bad as things currently look, and feel – in no small part thanks to they lying masonic media – really?

We are currently in one of the very best times of Jewish history, ever.

==

A few weeks ago, I shared with you the ‘first pogrom’ that occurred in Alexandria in 38 CE – nearly 2,000 years ago!

The Temple was still standing then. Even then, there was so much horrible stuff going on to Jews all over the world – including in Eretz Yisrael, even before the Temple was destroyed.

==

So today, let’s bust another bit of romantic wishful thinking, about what was going on for immigrants to Eretz Yisrael around 200 years ago.

Long story short: the mortality rates for olim (and everyone else….) in places like Jerusalem was so high, families with 10 kids would be happy to have one or two stay alive until adulthood – and the parents themselves were also croaking, typically within five years of moving to Israel.

Let me quote you some stuff from a paper called ‘The Demography of Jerusalem Jews’, by Usiel Schmelz, published in a really interesting book called ‘Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period’, which is looking at the high rate of mortality in Jerusalem around the 1850s.

==

Here is what it was like to live in our holiest city, back then:

  • People lived overcrowded and cramped together (3-4 families per room) in ancient buildings with no light, fresh air or sewage facilities.
  • There was no garbage collection – rubbish was dumped in the street, and whatever animals died in the street were left there to rot.
  • The only water available was from cisterns – and even when there was a good rain, by the hot summer a lot of those cisterns were growing killer bacteria.
  • People didn’t have clothes to wear; couldn’t buy new ones for a lot of reasons, and not just lack of money, Jerusalem simply didn’t have ‘shops’ in the way we understand it today, and very little trade was going on, except via the Arabs.
  • They also didn’t have enough food, and were often totally dependent on the local Arabs to  bring food and water in to the city.
  • Jerusalem, and the Holy Land generally, was hit by wave after wave after wave of killer epidemics – people died of malaria, they died of dysentery, they died of cholera – even the black plague.

Of course, much of this wasn’t ‘unique’ to Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael – people were dying from lack of food and unsanitary conditions all over the world still, in the 1850s.

But, that kind of just adds more emphasis to the point of writing this, namely to encourage us all that in so many ways, we’ve never had it so good!

==

That’s health-wise and materialism-wise.

But even ‘spirituality’-wise  – we are being constantly fed a crock, that in the old days, there was no divorce, no bad middot, no immorality, all male Jews just spent all day long studying the holy books while their angelic wives stayed at home, ran a store, and also managed to pump out 12 kids back-to-back and make delicious kreplach every day from scratch, whilst reciting three whole books of tehillim….

For sure, there were some remarkable, holy people doing at least some of that, much of the time.

In our days, there also are a few rare people like this – and I know a few of them personally, via Shuvu Banim.

But, it was always a very small minority who was doing this, even back in the ‘good old days’, even back in Jerusalem.

==

One of the Jewish ‘enlightened’ medical doctors who was working to try and alleviate the mortality in Tsfat wrote this in his journal, from 1889:

“Early marriage and its consequences – divorce – are here even more common than in Jerusalem. One often finds 25 year old women that have already been divorced from 2-3 husbands.”

(He was blaming early marriage, i.e. marriage at 12 for girls or 13 for boys, and in many cases, even younger – they were marrying them at 8-9 years old. I have no idea how all that was meant to work, halachically. At the same time, Rabbenu and Rav Natan married at 13, so if that was good enough for them, katonti…)

==

Childlessness was also rife all over the Jewish community in Israel.

The highest rate of children for ‘Ashkenazi and Maghrabi’ families in 1839 was just 1.3 children, in Jerusalem.

People married young… They could be expected to have on average 6-8 children… And yet, 34% of the Ashkenazi Jewish families living in Jerusalem had no children at all. Which means both, that conditions were so bad that women were not falling pregnant, and also, conditions were so bad that many people saw all of their children die at very young ages.

==

And as we mentioned, the grown ups were also dying at a rapid rate.

Almost a third of all the Jewish children in Jerusalem in 1839 were orphans, either they had no parents, or their father had died, leaving the widow to try and struggle on alone.

By 1866, things had started to improve, a little, there were a few more children on average – up to 1.6 children a family – and the number of orphans went from 29% to 24%.

But the point is – life was so very difficult, so very hard, so very crushing.

==

I was reading this article on my sunny balcony, surrounded by plants, eating a goat’s yogurt with maple syrup, blueberries and my favourite cruncy granola.

What on earth am I moaning about?!?!?

I suddenly realised.

Baruch Hashem, life is fantastic!!!!

War, no war. Peace, no peace. Geula, no geula (God forbid….), ‘Houthis’, no ‘Houthis’ – life is currently fantastic!

If all I can say is that Baruch Hashem, I have indoor plumbing and potable water coming out of the tap – dayenu, just from that.

If all I can say, is that I can go buy a pint of milk, a loaf of bread, at any point, that there aren’t rotting cats, dogs and camels lying in the streets, that I don’t know anyone who died from malaria, cholera, typhus – dayenu, just from that.

But of course, the list of things to be grateful for actually stretches on and on….

For every single one of us.

==

We are in the middle of a spiritual war right now, and most of that is being fought via ‘the screen’.

The more I turn off the news and all the ‘scare story’ crud, the happier and better I feel about my real life, which is still so good.

I’m sure, whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, the same could be said for every single one of us.

God is good.

Life in Israel, even with all the craziness going on all the time, has still never been better.

And there has been no better, or easier time, to live a fully Jewish life (with a fridge and a shower….) in the Holy Land.

So, chin-up, dear reader!

Don’t let the evils steal your peace of mind, your emuna, your health, with all their masonic ‘bad news’.

Life is still good, BH.

And with God’s help, the best is still yet to come.

 

 

 

My contact at the Rav’s midnight kollel just sent me this:

רבי חיים פלאג’י שהיה צדיק גדול ומקובל כתב בספרו ‘מועד לכל חי’ סגולה שמובאת בספר הקדמון ‘ספר מעשה הצדקה’: “ערב שבועות – יפריש צ”א (91) פרוטות וישלים על שיעור ב’ פעמים ב”ן (בן בגימטריה 52. כלומר: 52*2=104) ויתנם לתלמיד חכם עני ועניו, והוא תיקון לעוון אדם הראשון ועוון העגל ולפגם הברית, והוא סגולה לחשוכי בנים ולקירוב הגאולה”.

על פי הספר הקדמון המצוטט על ידי רבי חיים פלאג’י, מי שנותן בערב חג שבועות לתלמידי חכמים 104 שקלים זוהי סגולה המסוגלת לכפרה על חטאים, לכל הישועות ברוחניות ובגשמיות ובפרט לחשוכי ילדים!
חוץ מעצם הסגולה הרי שאדם שנותן צדקה בערב חג הוא מקיים מצות עשה מהתורה: “ועשית חג שבועות ושמחת לפני ה’ אתה ובנך ובתך ועבדך ואמתך והלוי והגר היתום והאלמנה אשר בקרבך וכו'”. וכן הרמב”ם בהלכות יום טוב מפרש שבכלל חובת השמחה ביום טוב הוא לשמח את העניים. והזוהר הקדוש מאריך בשבח מי שנותן צדקה לעניים לחג שזוכה לברכה גדולה מהשמיים.

====

My free-wheeling English summation is this:

R Chaim Palaggi wrote in his book Sefer Ma’ase Tzedakah about a segula for erev Shavuot, where you give 104 prutot [shekels, dollars, pounds, euros – whatever currency you are operating in day to day] to a poor and humble scholar.

If someone out there wants to help me translate the Hebrew gematria explanation in the Hebrew, leave it in the comments and I’ll amend the post.

This is said to be a tikkun for the sin of Adam HaRishon, and the sin of the Golden Calf, and also for pgam habrit (immorality).

R Chaim Palaggi’s book states that giving 104 prutot to a poor and humble Torah scholar on the eve of Shavuot is especially good for those who lack children.

And in addition, giving tzedeka on the eve of Shavuot also fulfills a positive commandment from the Torah that:

“And you shall celebrate Shavuot and rejoice before the Lord, you and your son and your daughter. And your servant, and your maid, and the Levite, and the stranger, the orphan, and the widow who are among you, etc.”

Similarly, Maimonides, in the Laws of Yom Tov, explains that in general, the duty of joy on a holiday is to make the poor happy. And the Holy Zohar extends its praise to those who give charity to the poor on the holiday, who receive a great blessing from heaven.

====

Ad kan, the free-wheeling translation.

If you want to give the 104 prutot to the Rav’s Kollel Chatzot, here’s the link:

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

May we just hear good news!

====

(Just to reiterate, I get no kickbacks, money, nothing, nada, nega-nega torey from writing this stuff. Just I think it’s a good place to give tzedaka to, and I also give to them.)

 

I have been super-busy this week, so slow posting at the moment.

In the meantime, here’s some more comments from the Rav.

Enjoy!

==

A person can cancel every [decree of] Shoah.

Every destruction.

There is nothing that cannot be nullified.

Even the Baal Shem Tov – R’ Nachman Horodenka asked him is it possible to cancel the decree?! [See below]. Is it possible that she will live?

He said, of course it’s possible – just,  you don’t know how. I am not going to teach you how. If you want that – search [how to do it]. Ask. ‘How can I live for longer’?

He [the Baal Shem Tov] died at age 70, he could have lived until 120.

==

The Rebbe [Rebbe Nachman, he lived until] 38. The Rebbe for sure [could have lived for longer].

This was Nachman Horodenka, he was the father of Simcha [the father of Rebbe Nachman].

He ran away from the chuppa. He was a Breslover, he was Shuvu Banim – after the chuppa, he said wait a minute, I forgot a suitcase. He went down to get the suitcase – and disappeared. Where did he vanish too?

And he [the Baal Shem Tov], he made the shidduch.

Translated from Shivivei Or, 408.

==

This is from the footnotes in Shivivei Or footnotes:

Translation of Siach Sarfei Kodesh Volume I, (that the Rav is basing his above remarks on):

One time, a holy and noble woman (there are those who say that it was the sister of the holy rabbi Yitzhak Drohobyczer[1]) came to our Teacher the Baal Shem Tov, and said to him:

Rabbi, I want that you should make a shidduch between me and one of your company.

And she added, that she wasn’t looking for a wealthy groom, because her parnassa was plentiful, and it was within  her means to support her husband. But her wish was that it should be one of his company.

The Baal Shem Tov, who knew her spiritual level, picked out for her his holy talmid, Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka, who was then a widow. And the shidduch was settled between them.

After this, the Baal Shem Tov asked his student Rabbi Nachman: What will you give me, for making this shidduch? And Rebbe Nachman was silent. The Baal Shem Tov answered and said: When a daughter is born by me, and a son by you – so then we will shidduch them together!

==

Part 2:

And it was after the end of the chuppa, Rabbi Nachman Horodenka went on his way, and no-one knew where he went. And his spouse came in tears to the Baal Shem Tov, and complained, and said to him:

What is this?! And this is why I wanted to wed one of your company, just in order that he would disappear?!

The Baal Shem tov answered her:

Behold, Rabbi Nachman is from my talmidim, and he has a regular time that he comes to visit me, and so when that comes close, I will ask him about this.

And she told him, that she would also come then, at that time. And so it was, the day spoken of, and Rabbi Nachman came, and the Baal Shem Tov, about his wedding.

Rabbi Nachman answered him: I saw that as soon as she would give birth to a son, it would be [her time] to leave the world! So then, I had mercy upon her, and I left my house, in order that she should continue to live!

==

The Baal Shem Tov informed her of the wonderous words of her great husband, and she immediately responded and said:

If he is such a great man as this, that he knows wonderous things such as these – so then I agree to this, even if death will pass over me!

====

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is the father of R Yechiel Michel of Zlotchov.

Baruch Hashem, I made it up to Meron, in the car, with my husband.

For a change, it was actually quite a nice visit. The Tzion was packed on my side with a few busloads of Beis Yaakov girls, plus an assortment of women all trying to pray there, so it was pretty busy.

But the vibe was actually quite forgiving and ‘gentle’ this time, which is not something I’m used to experiencing at the Rashbi.

==

On the way back, we passed through Netanya, and I went to a second-hand book store there, where I found a copy of Roald Dahl’s ‘The Witches’ going cheap.

I bought it, brought it home, and read it.

Here is a synopsis of the main points from the chapter called: How to recognise a witch.

  1. They have long, curvy claws instead of fingernails (probably, the inspiration for the ‘gel lac’ fashion of our day).
  2. They are totally bald – but wear super-fancy wigs, that are so good they fool everyone into thinking they are real hair.
  3. They have bigger nostrils than most people, and a very heightened sense of smell.
  4. They have ‘fire and ice’ in their irises.
  5. They have feet but no toes (think of the ‘chicken feet’ demons possess described in the gemara…)
  6. Their spit is blue.

==

Probably, at least a couple of the details above are the products of Dahl’s imagination.

Probably.

==

In the next chapter, he goes on to describe what witches basically do all day:

They dream up all sorts of schemes to destroy as many children as possible.

And their most favorite ‘trick’ of all is fooling the parents into somehow destroying their own children.

In ‘The Witches’, they do this by turning the kids into slugs, mice, pheasant – all stuff that the parents happily kill, without knowing that really, it’s their kid.

The particular ‘twist’ of the witches in America, is that they turn the kids into hotdogs, which everyone then gobbles down without knowing that really, they are eating a human being.

==

Ho ho ho!

Such amazingly unbelievable stuff, Mr Dahl was writing about.

==

The last couple of things to tell you from ‘The Witches’, is that they pretend to be all in to charidee – and especially, charidee connected to helping children.

In The Witches, the annual convention of the British witches is held in a hotel in Bournemouth, under the guise of a meeting of the RSPCC – the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Ho ho ho!

And that convention is presided over by a ‘Grand High Witch’ who is the international head of all the witches worldwide, and who flies all over the world organising annual conferences in every country, where she gives the witches instructions on the latest plan they’ve cooked up, to kill all that country’s children.

==

The Grand High Witch wears a mask of a young, beautiful woman, that is so realistic, no-one can tell it’s not  her real, actual face – which is hideously evil beyond belief.

Ho ho ho!

==

Roald Dahl, amongst many other things, was a spy.

He was spying on the Roosevelt administration for Britain, during WW2. They even wrote a book about it in 2009, which is very hard to track down these days. He’s a snippet from the flyleaf:

Conant tells the story of young writer Roald Dahl who is assigned by His Majesty’s Government to Washington, D.C. as a diplomat to gather intelligence about America’s isolationist circles. In the course of his “spying,” he meets or works closely with David Ogilvy, Ian Fleming, and the great spymaster William Stephenson (aka Intrepid).

==

I’m guessing, Dahl knew a whole bunch about what was really going on in the world, from the inside-out.

Another, different book about him from 2010 says this:

Sturrock’s book reveals how Dahl’s spy work was somewhat at odds with the author’s tendency to spill the beans.

‘Dad never could keep his mouth shut,’ said daughter Lucy. ‘He gossiped like a girl.’

==

What to do, with all this information you gather, that you can’t tell about because if you do and you sound credible – they’ll come after you.

But in the meantime, you can’t keep your mouth shut?

Dahl hit on the perfect solution: write chldren’s books with incredible stories about the witches that really rule the world, running annual meetings to share the next big plan to annihilate all the children – preferably, by getting the parents of the children to kill them, themselves.

Ho ho ho.

Lucky it’s all just fiction, eh?

 

Yesterday, I was having a discussion with my husband about the word ‘antisemitism’.

Once I found out that it was ‘invented’ by Moritz Steinschneider in 1860, I started doing a bit more digging, about why, exactly, there was a need for this word, at that point in time.

HERE is the English wiki page for MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER – and here is his picture, too.

Here’s a couple of snippets about him:

Moritz Steinschneider was born in ProstějovMoravia, in 1816.

He received his early instruction in Hebrew from his father, Jacob Steinschneider (b. 1782; d. March 1856), who was not only an expert Talmudist, but was also well versed in secular science. The house of the elder Steinschneider was the rendezvous of a few progressive Hebraists, among whom was his brother-in-law, the physician and writer Gideon Brecher.

==

Prostejov / Prossnitz is the stamping ground of the ‘false sabbatean-prophet / MBJ’, Leibele Prossnitz, who probably ends in Pressburg.

Pressburg is where the ‘wunderworking’ rabbi Daniel Steinschneider, and his son Aaron, are writing out so many kabbalistic amulets, they use some sort of engraving on a precious stone to ink up and stamp the amulets out quickly. R Daniel Steinschneider is also the ABD of Pressburg, and the ‘good friend’ of the Chatam Sofer.

He is the g.g-grandpa of Moritz Steinschneider above, also born in Prossnitz, which Yaakov Emden and others described as being stuffed full of sabbateans.

==

Moritz is sent to the local xtian school aged six (kinda weird, for his rabbinical father to have done that… if you are not following the connections here….). Then, Wiki continues:

In 1836 Steinschneider went to Vienna to continue his studies, and, on the advice of his friend Leopold Dukes, he devoted himself especially to Oriental and Neo-Hebrew literatures, and most particularly to bibliography, which would become his principal focus.

His countryman Abraham Benisch and Moravian Albert Löwy also were studying there at the time. In Lowy’s room in 1838 they inaugurated among intimate (and lifelong) friends, a proto-Zionist society called “Die Einheit”. The society’s objective was to promote the welfare of the Jewish people, and in order to realize this objective, they advocated the settlement of Palestine by Austrian Jews. Their objective however, had to be kept secret for fear it would be put down by the government;

England became regarded as the country likely to welcome the new movement.

In 1841 Lowy was sent to London as an emissary of the Students’ Jewish National Society; Benisch also arrived in England the same year. Somewhat abandoned, Steinschneider would later withdraw from the society completely in 1842, viewing the scheme as impractical compared to his studies.

==

Vienna is where 50 years later, HERZL picks up the ‘proto-z-ist’ baton, with a lot of help from British xtian-z-ists, which I will tell you about another time.

On the French Wiki site, we learn that LEOPOLD DUKES – another maskil, mentioned above – got his talmudic training at the Chatam Sofer’s yeshiva, in Poszony, BEFORE the Chatam Sofer moves to Pressburg, when his ‘good friend’ Daniel Steinschneider puts a word in for him.

ABRAHAM BENISCH became the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, in England (which starts to explain a heck of a lot…).

Meanwhile, ALBERT LOWY, also mentioned above, becomes the first Reform rabbi of the first ‘Reform’ synagogue in England – London’s New West End.

==

I just tripped over another, fat, tentacle of the frankist-reformers who took over our Jewish community, and particularly the ‘Eretz Yisrael’ project, but we’ll park that for now, and return to the question we began with:

Why did Moritz Steinschneider feel the need to invent the new term ‘antisemitism’?

The short answer to that very intricate question, is because Steinschneider, and his neo-Sabbatean-Reform buddies were themselves, essentially ‘anti-Torah’ and ‘anti-Judaism’.

Until around 250 years ago, what we understand as ‘antisemitism’ was actually really ‘anti-Judaism’ and especially, ‘anti-Talmudism’.

If you go to sites like SOTT today and read the comments at the bottom about any of the ‘stories’ about Israel, you will inevitably find this type of ‘classical’ anti-Jewish sentiment on display. It’s misquoting Talmud, it’s tarring all Jews with the ‘bad’ brush, because of the ‘evil religion’ we follow.

It goes without saying, that this type of classic anti-Judaism is RELIGIOUS in nature, and very deeply rooted in the teachings of the xtian churches – pretty much all branches, except the Evangelical movement, who have a different theology that I will try and do a ‘Dummies Guide’ for very soon, God willing.

==

Long story short, Steinschneider and his neo-Sabbatean-Reform buddies, were trying to cut ‘Jews’ away from ‘Judaism’.

At this stage, post-Mendelssohn, there was a sizeable number of neo-Sabbatean-reformers who were upset that so many of their fellow ‘enlightened’ Jews were following Jacob Frank’s lead, and converting out to xtianity.

The brand of Frankist doctrine practised by the neo-Sabbateans of Prague – from who Steinschneider descends – called for Jews to stay Jewish right up until the end, and only then, to convert to xtianity.

This was quite the challenge.

To stay Jewish, when you’re actively destroying the foundation that Judaism rests on.

==

I mean that literally – Steinschneider was in the forefront of a movement romantically called the ‘science of Judaism’, or to give it its German name:

Wissenschaft des Judentums

Here’s a little snippet about that:

Wissenschaft des Judentums” (literally in German the expression means “Science of Judaism”) refers to a nineteenth-century movement premised on the critical investigation of Jewish literature and culture, including rabbinic literature, to analyze the origins of Jewish traditions.”

It’s all the yucky, secular, ‘biblical criticism’ and other stuff you have to deal with today, if you want to engage with Judaism in any form on the academic plane.

From personal experience, I can tell you it’s really, really bad.

It makes the soul shrivel up, coming anywhere close to this stuff.

I will do some more posts on this subject, soon.

==

Long story short – these ‘anti-Judaism’ neo-Sabbatean-reformers needed a new word that could be wielded to seperate their own, ‘Jewish anti-Judaism’ from the anti-Judaism of the non-Jewish world.

And so, the word ‘anti-semitism’ was born.

Semite being related to ‘Shem’, the tribe the Jews (and a bunch of other semitic people… ) came from.

And just like that, Steinschneider and his little buddies switched the argument away from religion and Judaism and the Talmud – which they were also against and trying to destroy.

And made the anti-Jewish argument all about race.

You know what happened next, a couple of generations later.

==

Tov.

Why does this matter to you and me, today?

A few reasons. First of all, definitions really do matter. Once you pin-down a definition, then you can really understand what it is you are arguing for, or against.

‘Anti-semite’ is the catch-all label that can be thrown at any non-Jew who is ‘anti’ the State of Israel, ‘anti’ secular Jews in Tel Aviv, ‘anti’ religious Jews in Stamford Hill, or Queens, or Meah Shearim.

It’s been weaponised by organisations like the ADL, and is now being used to shut down discussions that actually, are so important to have.

==

It’s easy to throw the word ‘anti-semite’ at people, to shut them up.

The State of Israel does that a lot.

But, if we moved back to more accurate definitions, like ‘anti-Judaism’, ‘anti-Torah’, ‘anti-Talmud’, even, ‘anti-war’, or ‘anti-State’ – the debate would change radically, and in a much healthier and better way.

I have lots more to write about this, but that will do for now, as a start.

Let me throw this out there: I challenge you to move away from using ‘anti-semitism’, and to finding other words to describe anti-Jewish, anti-Israel sentiments.

And I’d be very interested in hearing any insights you get, if and when you start trying to do this.

 

 

 

It’s strange, how so many things start to ‘open up’, once the Rav alludes to them in his shiurim.

Off the back of that series of posts that ‘Hitler only wanted peace’, where the Rav is making lots of connections between people who ‘only want peace’ and the destruction of the world, and particularly, the Jews, God forbid a billion times, I decided to take a closer look at ‘Erik Jan Hanussen’.

You’ll recall from HERE, that we started the basic investigation into him, and we already learned that his real name was Chaim Hermann STEINSCHNEIDER.

That’s not a common name….

==

We also learned, that he is a direct descendant of the Frankist royalty in Moravia, descending from ARON BEER WEHLE – side-kick of Jonathan Eibshitz in Prague, whose descendants became known leaders of the Frankists in Prague. Steinschneider’s’ ancestor appears to be that same JONAS WEHLE, who academics state is: “usually recognised as leader of Prague Sabbateanism”.[1]

Another Frankist chronicle, written by Moses Porges, talks of the Frankists writing a “compilation of The Prophecies of Isaiah, ascribing the book to Abraham, Akiba, and Joseph Wehle from Prague.”[2]

It’s remarkable, that Hitler’s ‘stage-craft’ coach, who helped make Hitler electable in 1933, should descend directly from one of the leading families of Frankists who remained behind in the Jewish community.

==

But what’s more remarkable, is that there are more ‘interesting’ members of ‘Erik’s’ direct STEINSCHNEIDER family hiding out in this story.

Before we get to the one we will be taking a closer look at today, Dr MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER, I just wanted to make a detour, to tell you about the ‘Red Letters’ that Jacob Frank wrote to the Jewish community, between 1767-1768, when he was imprisoned in the fortress of Czestochowa, in Poland.

So called, because they were written in red ink, and promised that the Jews of Poland, especially, would be annihilated, if they didn’t convert to xtianity.

==

Let’s quote a bit more of The Mixed Multitude:[3]

The first epistle was addressed to the Jews of Brody…the letter predicted imminent doom for the Jewish communities of Poland, especially “Krakow and its surroundings,” and an approaching war between “the nation of the sons of Edom”… And another ‘rebel nation’….As a result of this war, the latter stated, the Jews would suffer terribly: “the corpses shall lie like dung on the ground, and dogs shall like their blood.”

The only escape for the Jews will be conversion: “anyone who has the spark of the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob must enter into the holy faith of Edom, and whoever will accept this creed with love will be saved from all [the persecutions].”

==

Maciejko continues:

The second epistle, addressed to “all Jewry” (klal Yehudim), developed the same message.

Again, Frank warned of impending tribulations and predicted the increased hatred of the Jews by “all dukes and princesses of the world.” There will come troubles, he stated, the likes of which have never been seen in the world, and the Jews will find no safe haven in any country, great or small.

He concluded by saying that before the wheel of the world can make a full circle, the Law of Moses must be “exhausted” and Jacob must fulfill the promise given to Esau.

==

This refers to Jacob’s promise to follow Esav to Seir when they meet up upon Yaakov Avinu’s return from Haran.

It’s all warped kabbalah, and people with very bad middot attempting to delve into mysteries they don’t have the keilim to deal with, in a holy way.

But the point is – the ‘Red Letters’ of the Frankists were basically predicting the total annihilation of Polish Jewry and the Shoah, 170 years before it happened.

Isn’t that quite the CO-IN-CID-ENCE?

And what’s even more of a CO-IN-CID-ENCE, is that Hitler is then helped into power by the coaching of Erik Jan Hanussen – who just happens to be a direct descendent of Frankist royalty in Prague, via Prossnitz – another Sabbatean stronghold.

==

I’ve just got hold of an excellent book on ERIK JAN HANUSSEN, and I will be coming back to him shortly, BH.

In the meantime, let’s take a closer look at dear Erik’s uncle (according to Mel Gordon, but I think he’s probably his grandpa), a man named:

DR MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER (1816-1907).

Whaddya know?!

There’s a lot of pertinent information to learn about him, too. According to Mel Gordon, Moritz should be the brother of Siegfried Steinschneider, that wannabe Viennese actor who got Julie Kohen pregnant out of wedlock, resulting in the birth of ‘Erik Jan Hanussen’.

As usual, the two brothers (if that’s what they are – the timing seems to be off, and I think they are probably father and son) are kept very firmly apart, in any telling of their various stories, and especially on geni. They don’t want people to figure out how much of Jewish history is being shaped by exactly the same small group of people.

==

So, let’s start with this:

Do you know who was the first person to coin the term ‘anti-semitism’ in 1860?

If you said ‘Dr Moritz Steinschneider’, award yourself 50 brownie points.

There is a whole website devoted to this illustrious family, which you can find HERE. This is a snippet from that site, about Dr Moritz Steinschneider, the ‘famous orientalist’, who hung out with Abraham Geiger, Leopold Zunz, and a bunch of other people Marvin Antelmann wrote a lot about in ‘To Eliminate the Opiate’:

STEINSCHNEIDER, MORITZ (1816-1907), father of modern Jewish bibliography, one of’ the founders of modern Jewish scholarship. Born in Prossnitz, Moravia, Steinschneider received his early education in his native town and was influenced by his uncle Gideon Brecher. He attended a Christian school and studied music as well, maintaining his interest in music throughout his life. At the age of 13 he entered the yeshivah of R. Nehemiah Trebitsch. In 1833 he left for Prague to take up secular studies….

==

While he’s in the university of Berlin, he gets friendly with Zunz and Geiger, who take a keen interest in him. That snippet, which is copied from the Jewish Encyclopaedia, continues:

In 1843 he received a formal rabbinical diploma from the rabbi of his native town, Hirsch B. Fassel, and also, a very warm recommendation from S. L. Rapoport.

As soon as he gets his smicha, he apparently becomes ‘anti-orthodox’ Judaism. So now, he’s offered a job in 1859 at the ‘Veitel-Heine-Ephraimsche Lehranstalt’.

VEITEL HEINE EPHRAIM has been on the radar for a very long time… He’s a fellow mint-master (crook…) with Daniel Itzig, builds his own palace in Berlin, carefully scrubbed out of all the history books, despite the fund he began for ‘education’ in his lifetime still continuing to this day – here’s the website:

It is as full as full can be – of Frankists.

So, MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER teaches in that school for 48 years, and pay attention to who he teaches:

  1. Goldziher, Solomon Schechter, Hayyim Brody, Judah L.  Magnes, H. Malter, A. Marx, George A. Kohut, and others.

STEINSCHNEIDER also get a job at the Royal Library of Berlin in 1869. By 1894, he’s made an ‘honorary professor’ by the Prussian government, the honors are rolling in… And around this time, it seems that CHAIM HERMANN STEINSCHNEIDER, aka ERIK JAN HANUSSEN is born into the world.

==

Now, here’s the thing.

On the German Wiki page for the STEINSCHNEIDER family, it goes to great pains to say that even though ERIK  has a grandpa called MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER, it’s not this Moritz Steinschneider.

This is repeated on the family website, where you can see a gravestone HERE, where apparently grandpa Moritz dies, and is buried together with his 19 year old daughter ANTOINE, seemingly in the same grave. I don’t know what the real story is, but that seems like a very unlikely scenario to me. (Also, ‘Antoine’ is meant to be another name of Julie Kohen / Kohn, said to be Erik’s mum.)

So, you can buy that story if you want.

Me personally, I have been all over the family tree trying to figure out how this second ‘DR MORIZ’ (grandpa of Erik…) is meant to fit into the family tree. I can’t see it. I also can’t see where Erik’s dad, meant to be SIEGFRIED STEINSCHNEIDER, according to Erik’s own autobiography, is meant to fit into this tree. It’s distorted all over the place, as I’ve come to find in so many Frankist family trees, when they are trying to hide the real connections.

My current best guess is that yes, Erik is a grandson of the famous DR MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER, who was the first person to coin the term ‘anti-semitism’ – which then quickly got weaponised, and turned against the Jews in a whole bunch of ways.

==

In the process of trying to trace back more of this STEINSCHNEIDER family, I discovered that their progenitor is meant to be R DANIEL STEINSCHNEIDER (PROSSTITZ), ABD of PRESSBURG (1759-1846) – and the guy who is meant to get R MOSES SCHRIEBER, aka the CHATAM SOFER, his job as the rabbi of Pressburg.

That’s interesting for a whole lot of reasons. Over on the onthemainline blog (which I keep quoting here, solely because that is where I’m finding a bunch of interesting, relevant info, pertinent to what I’m writing) there is THIS strange story, which links Daniel Steinschneider and the Chatam Sofer to the VON ARNSTEIN family of Sabbatean bankers in Berlin, at least, tangentially.

Snippet:

The story, as told to the author by Rabbi Daniel Prosstitz (a close friend of the Chasam Sofer) takes place in 1785, when the 23 year old Moses Sofer accompanied his rebbe Rabbi Nathan Adler on his journey to Baskowitz, where he was to become rabbi. When in Vienna, they stayed in the home of a wealthy man, Reb Nathan Arnstein – who was none other than the banking giant Adam Isaac von Arnstein (1715-1785).

And Daniel Steinschneider’s siblings are busy marrying into that same family of Sabbatean Goldschmidts that I find myself writing a lot about here, for all sorts of reasons.

==

The STEINSCHNEIDERs apparently get their strange name, because they are distributing kabbalistic amulets, printed from an etched stone – this is the theory of Mel Gordon, who has written the book on Erik Jan Hanussen that contains a huge amount of first-hand information.

Gordon says that R DANIEL STEINSCHNEIDER / PROSSTITZ, ABD of Pressburg under R MESHULLAM IGRA, is known as a mystic and a ‘wunderworker’ – who prints off kabbalistic amulets, and that is family trait continued by his son, said to be ‘R AARON DANIEL STEINSCHNEIDER’ (1769-1809).

This little cottage industry struck me as distinctly Sabbatean

That’s when I remembered who apparently got buried in Pressburg.

==

That would be YEHUDA LEIB PROSSTITZ, the ‘false messiah’ / Sabbatean prophet, who is meant to have taught none other than JONATHAN EIBSHITZ, and been followed by MEIR EISENSTADT, the MEIR PANIM (descendant of the SHACH’s brother, and a known Sabbatean, whose descendants went on to run the MIR yeshiva, amongst many other things….)

R’ Emden said that PROSSTITZ slunk off to Hungary, somewhere….

We’ll park that for now, because unless more information shows up, I can’t prove for sure that he ended up in Pressburg (except, I remember a few years ago finding his grave there, and thinking that strange… I need to go back over my old blog.)

But, it’s surely a strange CO-IN-CID-ENCE that this family surnamed PROSSNITZ / PROSSTITZ are big rabbis in Pressburg, printing kabbalistic amulets for distribution, have effectively been ‘scrubbed’ out of Jewish history in a whole bunch of ways, have a severely distorted family tree – and gave us both the guy who literally invented ‘anti-semitism’, AND Hitler’s stage-craft coach, ERIK.

==

Tov.

Let’s stop there for now.

I am half-way through the book on ERIK JAN HANUSSEN, and it’s fascinating.

We’ll pick things back up then, BH.

==

PS: This is a quick little read on how STEINSCHNEIDER ‘came up’ with the word ‘anti-semitism’. It was part of the push to split Jews off from authentic Torah Judaism…

Something these guys were sadly, very good at.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, p. 251.

[2] Ibid, p. 246.

[3] Ibid., pp. 184-185.

A couple of weeks ago, I walked around the Jerusalem aquarium, and I realised how peaceful and calming it is, to watch fish swim.

In our crazy, stressed world, where even trying to ignore all the ‘stressful stuff’ going on is a source of stress in itself, I decided that it would be a great idea to buy a fish tank, and watch peaceful, calm fish at home.

The problem is: I forgot the rule that pets resemble their owners.

Or maybe, I figured that rule doesn’t apply to fish.

But I was wrong.

==

My husband took responsibility for sorting out the fish tank.

He set it up so nicely and methodically, with the gravel, the heater the filter, some bits of driftwood, a few real aquatic plants. It looked beautiful. We went to the fish place. He picked some angel fish, and some very colourful tiny fellows who spend most of their time motionless and staring at a wall.

At the last minute, I decided to add in two small koi carp, because I always liked the look of the fish in big ponds. How could it hurt?

==

We brought the fish home, settled them in.

One of the koi carp seems to go kinda ‘nuts’ – it’s all over the fish tank, not calm for a second.

The next day – it croaks. It was Friday morning, and my daughter was here. She decided to ask Chat GPT how to save it, spent the next 45 minutes stirring the fish around in a bucket of clean water, put it back in the tank, because that’s what Chat GPT told her to do – it died two seconds later.

Lovely!

==

So, we sent that fish to the big pond in the sky, one flush and it was there.

In the meantime, the other koi was going nuts in the tank.

I didn’t know if it was missing its buddy, or developing the same sort of ‘fish rabies’ that seemed to have taken out its friend, the day before. I decided to go back to the store, to buy it a new friend to swim with.

I get there, and there are four koi left in the tank – three of them look like they about to die.

Don’t buy another one today, I just gave them medicine, the fish owner told me, when I explained what happened. Wait for the new shipment to come in…

In the meantime, I was there in the store anyway, so I bought a pair of different fish, blue and coral-colored, that the store owner assured me were very chazak.

==

I bring them home.

Now, I have 3 psycho fish in the tank.

The koi is still going nuts, it’s doing ‘laps’ from one side of the tank to the other, non-stop, like he’s on cocaine. Then, he gets the munchies, and starts eating all the carefully planted (and expensive….] aquatic plants.

What in the world?!

This fish tank is meant to be calming me down, and in the meantime, the koi is so stressful to watch I have to throw a towel over the tank…

==

My husband, with his little smile on his face, reminded me then that pets resemble their owners.

His fish like to eat, swim a tiny bit, and spend a lot of time looking pretty, staring into space.

My fish don’t sit still for a minute, are in to every nook and cranny – and are clearly so frustrated, they are pulling the plants out by their roots.

==

Sunday, I said to my husband:

Let’s get the koi a friend. He’s driving himself nuts looking for his friend…

We go to a different fish store this time, near Mahane Yehuda, who has a lot more stock, and a lot more plants.

My husband gets a few bits, I get a new plant to add to the ones the koi is killing, and then point to a tank where there are more tiny koi, to pick out a replacement to keep the psycho company.

Either the fish, or the plant. You can’t have both, the store owner tells me, pointing to the leafy green thing in my hand. He’ll just eat it.

==

Aha!

So, now we know that the koi was born a psycho, and it’s not just PTSD.

What to do, what to do?

On the one hand, there is never a dull moment with that fish around, and as my son in law said on Shabbat (while he was watching him rip a plant out of the gravel by its roots…) he’s got a lot of character.

On the other hand…. The calming effect of the fish tank was not working as planned.

Over Shabbat and then Sunday morning, I was feeling stressed out of my skull.

==

Yesterday morning, doing some hitbodedut in the AM, I suddenly realised that the awful, overwhelming feeling of ‘stress’ I’ve been having the last few days was coming from the outside, in.

What I mean by that, is that I suddenly realised that I was not generating the stress organically myself, something was coming in from the ‘outside’ that was making me feel, subconsciously and physically, stressed out of my skull.

As soon as I realised that – I calmed down.

Strangely, the fish also calmed down.

I started to wonder if the first koi was also picking up the ‘zapped’ vibe, and that’s why it started acting like a frenetic coke addict – before it croaked.

Hmm.

==

In the afternoon, I got a call from someone in Jerusalem who saw two ambulances on two different occasions, trying to resuscitate people who apparently collapsed and died on the street…

Have you been feeling a bit unwell, the last few days? They wanted to know.

Truth is, I had.

I had been feeling totally exhausted and stressed out of my skull, but unable to sleep properly, since Thursday – Lag Bomer.

The day the first koi started acting like a psycho, mamash.

Hmm.

==

The world is how we believe it to be.

If we believe that the ‘bad’ can get us – then it can.

If we believe that Ein Od Milvado, and that even the ‘bad’ is just God dressing up, then that is the reality we live, and life gets much more pleasant and easier to deal with, even when it’s stressful.

Between you and me – they seem to be spraying like mad every Thursday night and Friday, to give us weird ‘cloudy’ Shabbats.

All the ‘dust’ has been bothering me, on some very deep level, for a month. That’s why I bought the vac-mop thing, and I am using it twice a week on the floor, particularly after shabbats, the way the Rav said.

(It’s strange, that dafka the Rav says to mop AFTER shabbat…. Not at all how things usually are.)

==

Cleaning the floor is helping my state of mind a lot.

Cleaning the car, every week, is also helping my state of mind.

I know weird stuff is going down all over the place, I know trees got fried from the inside-out a couple of weeks ago, I know there was a small plane flying so low over the roofs of Meah Shearim on Friday, repeatedly, round and round for half an hour, that looked like a crop-sprayer.

(There are no ‘crops’ in Meah Shearim. There is barely a tree or a blade of grass in Meah Shearim. What there are, is a bunch of ultra-chareidi, anti-State, anti-draft Jews, who are very disruptive and very motivated.)

You tell me, what that plane was doing.

==

But in the meantime, life must continue.

Ladies need to continue to get their gel lac, guys need to carry on hiking in nature, we all need to find some good, grounding hobbies to do, to keep us sane and a bit more happily ‘down here’, while the madness continues to build.

Do what you need to do, to enjoy the world as much as you can, while waiting for the denouement that is surely on the horizon.

Don’t be a lying-to-yourself-fool, but also, don’t listen too much to any type of news, even truthful accounts of what is really going on.

The world, our world, is how we view it. We make our own reality.

==

It’s sometimes quite an effort, to drown it all out, and to just focus on the every day stuff that is actually the essence of life – the prayers, the cleaning the floors, the getting the groceries, the conversations with spouses and kids and friends and others.

Underneath, we can all feel something is up.

But there is nothing to do, except to do some more hitbodedut, make some more teshuva, pay some more tzedeka to genuine causes…

I don’t want to croak just yet, or have a stress-induced heart attack.

I can’t stop the zapping, but i can sure do my bit to try to stop worrying about it, and to try to internalise Ein Od Milvado. If God wants me zapped, then so be it.

==

As usual, the goldfish ended up teaching me a really important lesson.

We can swim back and forth, super-frustrated, ripping-up all the beautiful things in our environment – but we still can’t leave the tank.

We either make our peace with the reality, look for the good, and work on our bad middot and lack of emuna – or we croak.

The choice is ours.

The last installment of the Rav’s awesome shiur.

At the end, we get the most important message of all:

A person can cancel every [decree of] Shoah.

With sincere teshuva, and heartfelt prayer – and some help from Rabbenu.

==

Mi’mekomech malkenu tofia

We sing this every Shabbat. He [the Klausenberger Rebbe] sang this, mi’mekomech malkenu tofia, after he’d recieved a kicking and they’d broken all his bones, and they stomped on him with their boots.

Because he’d managed to make a hole in the water pipe.

He sharpened – he took from the iron threads, he took one thread of iron and he managed to sharpen it with stones, and he filed it for a few days, until it was a point, and then made a hole in the water pipe, next to his hut, and every day he would day netilat yadayim (ritual hand washing).

He would take a crumb [of the bread ration] and do netilat yadayim every morning, and drink a little. Suddenly, one SS man came past, a big captain of the SS, he was wholly a ‘man of ideals’, and had motivation, and a ‘world view’ – suddenly, he saw damp earth.

What’s this? Why is this earth moist?

Suddenly, he saw that the pipe was dripping.

Who made a hole?

==

He waited for a few hours, then he saw some old man come out, with a white beard, do netilat yadayim.

He gave him a kick in the stomach, with his boots, and crushed him. He made him into a pita with falafel, he made him into a quiche, he made him into a pizza, for Seder Night.[1]

He made a pizza out of him, pizza, pizza, and then he was laid out on the ground – and he sung mi’mekomech malkenu tofia…

“From Your place is our kingship, [it] will appear, and You will reign over us, because we wait for You. When will You reign in Zion? Soon, in our days, forever and forever You will dwell. You will be enlarged and sanctified, within Jerusalem Your city.”

==

And he got to Jerusalem.

He built a town [in Netanya – Kiryat Sanz]. He merited, after they killed his 10 children, and everything, he managed to found a whole kingdom.

All those who last the course, they found a kingdom.

They revive the dead.

==

[The Rav returns to the story of how R Avraham Elimelech of Karlin came to Meron, to try to cancel the decree of the Shoah.]

[He said in Yiddish]: In Europe, not a Jew will remain alive!

Stop dancing, and stop singing! Come now to Meron, to the graves of the tzaddikim, come, let us cancel the decree, [with] a great, bitter cry!

[It seems that R Avraham Elimelech may have fainted from all his crying out, so his shamash] Ran to the Rebbe, ayir gayat avis. [The Rebbe answered him] avis ga’an.

Then, he arrived on the 1st of Elul. On erev Rosh Hashana who boarded a boat [headed back to Europe].

After a week, he got there, he travelled on the last train to Warsaw, from Constantinople. The Port was in Constanza, the Baal Shem Tov travelled by way of Galatz, the Rebbe [Nachman] travelled by way of Odessa.

He said, I’m going via Odessa. He said that the way that I’m going, that’s where they will travel from.

==

Everything was rocks and boulders.

Afterwards, they blew them all up. The boats used to have to thread their way through the rocks. Exactly before the Baal Shem Tov travelled, a boat sank with 50 people, there were shailot and teshuvot about the 50 agunot (widows), about how to free them. Everyone found the corpses of those who had died after three days. After three days, it’s already impossible to testify [who the corpse actually was]. But, if the body was whole, then it was possible to identify.

So, a whole boat sank, and then he travelled.

==

When R’ Elazar Rokeach got to Galatz, they told him pick which boat you want.

He said I want to pick by myself.

There was a wreck there – it was a ship graveyard. There are cemeteries for people, and also graveyards for ships. Around a thousand ships had worn out already, they were already rickety, already falling apart. They all had holes.

So, a sailor went along with the Rav, and [the Rokeach] said I want to travel to Eretz Yisrael.

This was the R’ Elazar Rokeach of Amsterdam. He was a rabbi in Tsfat. His signatures can be found in the [rulings of] the Tsfat Beit Din. He died in 5503. R’ Elazar Rokeach. There’s his book, all the commentaries, all the chiddushim on the Mishnayot.

He said that ‘mishnayot’ is [the gematria of] ‘Yehonatan.

Yehonatan is 521, mishnayot is 525, another 4 is missing.

[Later on in this same shiur, the Rav tells a long story of how Yonatan Eibshitz got a fortune from hiding stolen plate from churches in his basement…]

==

[The Rav continues the discussion about the gematriot, then starts to speak of King David, and how he nearly went to serve avoda zara, as a result of his terrible suffering and persecution, so that people wouldn’t say that people who served Hashem suffered so much. The Rav then continues by saying there was a Shoah 80 years ago, and there was another Shoah on October 7th, 2023. Then he returns to the story of R Avraham Elimelech of Karlin.]

==

Everything was clear prophecy.

[R Avraham Elimelech] said this after Tisha B’Av, when he got to Jerusalem. He got to Tel Aviv, and from there, he went to Meron. And nobody understood what he was saying!

Nobody believed, that something like this could even happen, at all.

That Hashem would destroy Am Yisrael – nobody believed this! Not in their darkest dreams! They couldn’t believe, that Am Yisrael would be annihilated – but Hashem destroyed everything. Everyone is in Gan Eden.

We want that they should be here, but the Choftetz Chaim said:

On Mount Zion, there will be a remnant.

==

So, we read all of this about R’ Avraham Elimelech [of Karlin].

His brother, R’ Yochanan, he became the Rebbe [of Karlin].

He was saved. He escaped to Siberia, he was there for four years, in Siberia. The KGB kept wanting to kill him. All those who went around with a beard and payot, [they said to them]:

Either, you take off the beard, or we’ll kill you.

He didn’t take off the beard, even once! He hid himself for four years, he himself in Siberia, in Ponza. He wrote that was the name of the village, where he hid. And there, he found a few Jews, and there was a beit knesset there.

==

[The Rav now talks about Hananel, Mishael and Azariah, and how they refused to bow to Nevuchadnezzer’s statue, but the Prophet Ezekiel told them they were going against halacha by openly flouting Nevuchadnezzer, and should have just made some excuse about why they couldn’t bow to the idol, or run away instead. Then the Rav continues:]

==

A person gets a draft notice – this should be torn up.

Home Command – they can’t [arrest everyone]. When you go across the border, that’s when you’ll be caught [by the army]. But digitali[2], is not ‘caught’. The digitali – this is not caught / recognised.

Digitali – it’s possilble to travel to Uman and return.

Already, hundreds of the hevrei travelled, and no-one caught them. So, digitali – this isn’t ‘caught / recognised’….

So, a person needs to move to digitali, and that’s that.

==

Now it’s going to be Rosh Hashana, another little while.

Travel via Kishinev, in the meantime, there is still not peace [between Russia and Ukraine].

He [Trump] wants to make ‘peace’, to get the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps, after Simchat Torah there will be peace. In the meantime, we need to travel via Kishinev.

Perhaps after Simchat Torah, we’ll travel direct, we’ll land straight in Uman.

Already, each person will have a private plane by then, now, everything is cheap, the prices are going down on everything.

==

[Skipping more comments about the Prophet Ezekiel].

==

A person can cancel every [decree of] Shoah.

Every destruction.

There is nothing that cannot be nullified.

==

Translated from Shivivei Or, 408.

==

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This might have occurred on Seder Night – I haven’t checked the original story, so this is a guess.

[2] It seems that the Rav is referring to the digital passports being rolled out in Israel.

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So much to digest and unpack!

And I still have a bunch of other interesting stuff to try to translate from that shiur, but more to do with the Sabbateans, again.

But that will do for now.

Continuing the translation of this awesome shiur from the Rav.

You can see Part 2 HERE.

[Skipping a discussion of how many holocaust survivors are still alive, the Rav says there are 120,000 still alive, and someone who was five years old at the time of the holocaust is now 85.]

==

[Haman] was a Caananite slave, he wanted to become a Jew, to convert and immerse, as is required.

He went to the mikvah to immerse – I saw Haman immersing, I was shocked.

They said, no, he wants to be a Jew.

A Caananite slave – he wants to keep Shabbat, he is obliged to keep Shabbat. It’s written “to see whether Mordechai’s words would prevail”[1], because he would tell them that he was a Jew.

The Chatam Sofer recounts that he said, I’m a Jew! I myself am a Jew!

==

Hitler – it was said that he was a Jew.

We don’t know, there are investigations into this. He had a brother, Edward, who said I know that the Savta, [her] son, [i.e. Hitler’s father] was called Heidler.

‘Hitler’ comes from the word ‘Heidler’. Whoever wrote it down made a mistake, instead of writing ‘Heidler’ he wrote ‘Hitler’. There is no name like this, ‘Hitler’.

At that time, his father was called ‘Heidler’, so he should have written ‘the son of Heidler’, but wrote ‘Hitler’. All this is written there, in the books. When it’s bein hazmanim, it’s possible to read this, [or on] Tisha B’Av, to know what happened, how everything developed.

==

He [Hitler] didn’t succeed in any exam, he always got a 4, 4, 4.

The Jews were getting 100, they were getting 10/10 – and he got a 4. He went out of his mind. Those Jews!! I am going to destroy them, gomarnu, I can’t stand them! I will just become the Chancellor, and the first thing, I will annihilate the Jews!

He used to paint pictures – no-one wanted to buy his pictures. He decided he would be a painter. They didn’t accept him at the university. In the university in Vienna, they didn’t accept him, they only accepted the Jews.

All the Jews got 100, and 10/10. He went out of his mind.

==

So now, Avraham Elimelech of Karlin arrived [to Eretz Yisrael].

He spoke Yiddish, he said aris ga’an, nisht gipoal, not the songs, stop singing!

Black clouds, I see black clouds. All of Europe is going to be finished, they are going to destroy the whole of Europe. The whole of Poland – no trace will remain, of Poland.

==

Now, there are 120,000 [holocaust survivors in the world].

These are Jews who were five years old, then.

Yisrael Meir Lau was seven years old, so today he’s 87. He was four [when he first entered the camp], seven, when he was already leaving Buchenwald. At nine, he got to Israel, with a gun. There’s a book.[2]

==

The English saw the gun, they were shocked. Are you coming to kill everyone?!

It was a gun without bullets, but the Arabs [perhaps, this should be ‘English’] are organised people, they aren’t crazy. They saw him with a gun, they took the gun away from him. A child of nine years old, he has a gun – what, are you a terrorist?!

A child of nine – he was photographed with the gun, like that, he was pictured.

He went around with that gun for two years, he went through all the camps [for displaced people, after the war]. France – everyone let him pass with the gun. The English said no, by us, there is no such thing as this. We are organised people, we are normal people, give us the gun.

They took the gun away as soon as he alighted from the boat.

==

And then they asked him, a bunch of hevrei from Israel, where is your abba and ima?

He said, they got burnt.

What do you mean, ‘burnt’?! Are you crazy?!

He said, everyone got burnt. Don’t you know, that all the Jews got burnt?!

Are you dreaming?! Are you crazy?! We need to section you.

That’s how he described it, in the book. How the journalists came to interview the people on the boats, they came from the Shoah, all of them were ‘remnants’ / refugees….

He was sick with typhus, he couldn’t stand up in the queue to get his registration.

==

[The mother of Yisrael Lau told his older brother]

Look after Luli.

Srulik was ‘Luli’. So, when the mother went to Auschwitz, she said, Tolly, look after Luli!

He was older than him by three years, he was four years old, and [the older brother] was seven years old, and he looked after him throughout the whole Shoah. He guarded him, everything.

They were together in Buchenwald. In the end, he [the brother of Yisrael Lau] became the Israeli Consul in America, and then, a car came and ran him over. He was standing there at the pedestrian crossing, at the junction there, an auto came up on the pavement and ran him over. He was laid out for three weeks, unconscious.

He said, now, I’m going to write a book, about everything that happened in the Shoah. All this happened, because I didn’t say what happened to me, and my brother.

His brother became the Chief Rabbi, and he became the Israeli Consul, and he was also the deputy of Moshe Dayan.

==

[Skipping some, about how Moshe Dayan kept Shabbat, in the end, and married a religious woman called Devorah.]

==

So now, the Rav Lau is 87, and just now, a woman died who was 110, so then, she was 30 years old.

She went through the whole Shoah.

The Rebbe of Belz said that whoever went through the Shoah, they can revive the dead.

But instead of ‘reviving the dead’, they went and became chilonim. If they would have kept going [as observant Jews] for another five minutes, they would have brought the Moshiach.

The Beit Yisrael said now, it’s the opportunity to bring Moshiach!

==

The Klausenberger Rebbe, when he saw the Americans [who liberated the death camps], he fainted.

Why did you faint?

[He said] I thought that Moshiach [would be liberating the camps]. This is Moshiach? This is America, this isn’t Moshiach.

So, he fainted. All day long, he couldn’t recover himself, he didn’t come out of the hut. He just cried.

I was sure that after such a Shoah, Moshiach would come, that I would see angels, that I would see tzaddikim, that I would see people with shtreimels, coming. All of a sudden, I see black American [soldiers], non-Jewish Americans, who don’t know anything about anything [about Jewish redemption].

He straight away fainted.

For 30 days, the Klausenberger was in bed, sick. He said:

I wasn’t waiting for this, why was I holding on?!

====

FOOTNOTES:

TBC

[1] Megillat Esther 3:4. The full passage reads: “[T]hey told Haman to see if Mordechai’s words would prevail; for he had told them that he was a Jew.”

[2] The Rav says the book is called in Hebrew Al tishlach yadecha al ha na’ar. I can’t find that book with that title, but Naftali Lau-Levie did write a book called ‘Balaam’s Prophecy’, in English, and Yisrael Meir Lau’s book in English is called ‘Out of the Depths’. On the cover of that last book, you can clearly see the tip of the rifle he carried behind Yisrael Lau’s back.

PS: I included the original picture included in the Shivivei Or newsletter, of R Lau with his rifle slung behind his back. The red arrow is pointing to the rifle’s strap over his left shoulder.