Continuing the awesome shiur.

Lots more hints here, for those can decode them, a little.

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[The Rav now starts to speak about the Kohen Hadols in the times of the Temple, and how in the Second Temple unworthy people bought the office of Kohen HaGadol, and so they would die when they entered the Holy of Holies, and would have to be pulled out by a chain.]

So, they used to pull the Kohen Gadols out with a golden chain.

They used to do hitbodedut [in the Holy of Holies], and would say there just three prayers [in order to minimize their time in the Holy of Holies, to avoid being struck down dead]: That a woman shouldn’t miscarry, that people wouldn’t need to use gemachs[1], and that there would be a Jewish government.

Even the very worst Jewish government, this is better than the British who were here.

They used to do pogroms here, every two years.

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[The Rav starts talking about the famous photograph from World War II, of the small Jewish boy in a cap with his hands raised.]

That child – they went to Poland [from living in Eretz Yisrael], they ran away from the pogroms in 5697. And there, there were also pogroms. On the 14th of Elul. B’kitzur, they killed his father and mother in front of him, and his brothers and sisters, and he was left an orphan in the house. There was no-one.

The aunt came, the sister of his mother, and took him to hers. And now, they had to register with the Nazis, everything was ‘organised’, there were registration lists, everything.

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And all those who came from Eretz Yisrael, they had Anglo-Palestine passports, British passports.

They were called ‘British Citizens’, whoever travelled to chul received an English passport. He was called ‘British’.

Now, the Germans – every Jew who was from Eretz Yisrael, they didn’t burn them in the crematoria. They made them a special place in Bergen-Belsen, a very special, special, special place.

They had a bounty of food there, so that they would stay alive, so it would be possible to exchange them.

You are British, you aren’t called ‘Jews’. You are Brits.

They didn’t do anything to them. They fed them, for four years, until the end of the war, when they were going to do a prisoners exchange.

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[The Rav refers back to the child with the arms up from the Warsaw Ghetto].

So he, when they were putting everyone else on the trucks from Warsaw to Bergen-Belsen, the Germans checked the lists [to see if he was on the lists of citizens of countries the Germans wanted to keep alive].

Everything was done according to the lists.

And he wasn’t registered on the list – his aunt hadn’t registered him. She didn’t know where they were going. To Auschwitz, to Treblinka, she didn’t know where. So, she decided not to register him, so they didn’t take him. They couldn’t find him [on their list].

So the Nazis said to him: Listen, according to the lists, you aren’t registered, a boy aged seven.

So, they took him off the truck, and then they told him to put his hands up, and then he was photographed.

That he was pictured with his hands up is because he was being allowed to live, not being sent to die.

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They knew that they were sending everyone to destruction.

But, the Israelis who came [from Eretz Yisrael], who escaped from the pogroms, they took those to a special place, and gave them special cabins in Bergen-Belsen, and looked after them so that they would stay alive.

So, this was this child, who stayed alive.

Then, he was seven years old, and today he’s already 97. 85 years have passed, this was 5700. Today, he would be 92 years old exactly, if he is still alive.

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So then he told us the story, how they ran away from the pogroms here [in Israel], the pogroms that the British themselves organised.

So the Kohen HaGadol used to pray that the rulership wouldn’t be removed from Jewish hands. Three prayers: that a woman wouldn’t miscarry, that the government wouldn’t be removed from the Jews, and also that people wouldn’t require gemachs.

That was it.

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TBC

Translated and excerpted from Shivivei Or 428.

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FOOTNOTE:

[1] I.e. that the nation’s parnassa would be so plentiful no-one would have to ask others for loans or assistance.

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UPDATE:

I went to check out more about that boy from the Warsaw ghetto, and whaddya know? The Rav was correct, that he survived.

This snippet comes from the Institute for Historical Review site, HERE:

Contrary to legend, though, the “ghetto boy” was not killed. He survived wartime internment in Warsaw and in a German concentration camp.

Several decades after it was taken, a New York physician, Tsvi C. Nussbaum, revealed that he was the lad in the famous photograph. “I remember there was a soldier in front of me, and he ordered me to raise my hands,” Nussbaum later recalled. After his uncle intervened, the seven-year-old boy was allowed to join the rest of his family. Along with relatives, young Nussbaum was deported from Warsaw in 1943 to the Bergen-Belsen camp in western Germany. After liberation at war’s end, he moved to Israel, from where he migrated to the United States in 1953.

In 1990 he was living in Rockland County, New York.

It’s a strange thing, but when you’re really trying to be part of Shuvu, you notice there are ‘themes’ that happen to kinda everyone connected, all at once.

Right now, the ‘theme’ really seems to be standing up to bullies.

Especially, that narcissist-type of Esav-bully who likes to pretend that they are a kosher pig, waving their split hooves around and asking how to tithe salt, whilst raping, pillaging and acting like the local mafia king-pin of whichever unfortunate village, country, or family got stuck with them.

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First, let’s give an example of where, just maybe, the Rav is finally starting to stand up *in the so-called ‘real world’* to the State bullies and persecutors that have been chasing him and his community for over a decade.

This comes from one of the Shuvu Banim Whatsapp groups, via a friend:

The Rav did Tikkun Haklalli by the Municipality. 1000 people joined. He said we will continue everyday until the government gives the property back.

Bulldozers came to break the shul down today

The Jewish municipality sent Arabs to destroy a shul in Yerushalyim Ir Hakodesh with its sifrei Kodesh after physically removing the mispallelim. With no warning and no explanation.

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Like every Succot, Shuvu Banim set up a big tent for the chag, to dance and pray in.

This year, they set it up on an empty lot at the end of Nevi’im street, which has been empty for a very long time…

I don’t know all the technicalities, but this is the tent that got bulldozed after the Jerusalem Iriya sent its usual bully-boys down, to kick-out the avreichim. The Iriya also then took the tent – which costs tens of thousands of shekels – and aren’t giving it back.

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So yesterday, literally a thousand Shuvu Banim descended on the Iriya, Safra Square, the place I used to call ‘Roman Plaza’ when I lived in Musrara.

Perhaps more interestingly, there was some of that old Shuvu spark in the air… the feeling that anything is possible, and that some strange and portentous events are in the offing again.

We’ll see.

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This photo is from Succot 5786:

I emailed the friend who sent me this that I feel as though the Rav’s personal Sefer Torah has somehow given him a new lease of life, and more ‘strength’ to start standing up to the Esav-Erev Rav bullies, spiritually, who have been tormenting the Jewish people for more than 3,500 years, already.

You know, those holy-than-thou hypocrites for whom appearance is the only thing that matters, and who pretend to be ‘tzaddikim’, and SOOOO very generous…. whilst bullying and pillaging and enslaving their way all over the planet.

Enough is really enough.

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In the meantime, let’s continue taking the discussion forward about standing up to the bullies in our own dalet amot.

It’s affecting way, way, way more people than most people can even guess at.

We are all so used to these sick, bad middot being ‘normal’, that they are flying under our radar most of the time, and then we have no idea why we feel so inexplicably exhausted, drained, anxious, upset, unhappy…

When I read it last week, this post really resonated, and mirrored almost exactly a whole bunch of stuff I set down in my journal, when the dam finally burst last week, and the penny finally dropped, about why so much of my family relations have been so very difficult and upsetting, for so long:

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Sure, some of this stuff sounds corny and ‘pop-psychology’-ish – but so much of it is an exact description of what is actually going on in the families of narcissists.

As the people who recognise what they are really dealing with can tell you, once you ‘out’ the problem, you will find that narcissists conform almost exactly to the ‘narcissist’ script…

To the point that it really starts to feel as though they are no so much individuals, but ‘channels’ for a singular, and singularly yucky type of spiritual energy, which is being vented into the world from all these different people – but originates in the same place.

To put the same idea into different words:

When someone becomes ‘disconnected’ from their own soul, and that can happen very easily with trauma and things like drug abuse (the experience of ‘getting high’) – then the vacuum in their soul doesn’t stay empty for long.

It’s quickly colonised by shedim and evil energy, and that evil energy is essentially a unified force that sounds and acts identically, wherever it happens to be ‘vented’ from, in your dalet amot.

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I am still pondering about all this, and working it through.

One of the things I am doing a lot of hitbodedut about at the moment is the question of reasonable expectations, as it seems to me ‘expectation’ lies at the heart of so much of the hurts we suffer in this world.

God for sure doesn’t owe us anything, and all the pain we endure is for sure a tikkun, and for our very best.

At the same time – it’s no mitzvah to let a bully continue to bully you, and make you physically sick, unhappy and miserable.

There is a distinct mitzva for a person to guard their own soul, and apart from parents, we have no commandment to ‘respect and honour’ anyone else who may be routinely hurting us at such a deep level.

If and when I have something worth sharing on this subject, I’ll write it up, BH.

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It’s a very narrow bridge, all this.

To have emuna that Ein Od Milvado, and to see the good, on the one hand.

But on the other, to stand up for yourself appropriately, and to not let Esav-Erev Rav bullies to continue to warp and destroy everything precious and holy they get close to, for their own ends and egos.

I give us all a bracha, that Hashem should give us the siyatta di shmeya required to figure this out appropriately, and in the way He wants us to.

Amen.

Bullying is as old as the mountains.

The Torah is full of accounts of yucky people bullying others, and manipulating them, and obsessing over honor and ‘keeping up appearances’, with Lavan and Esav coming to mind.

I’d love to pretend that bullying, manipulation, murderous rage fits – yeah, that was only happening 4,000 years ago… Or it’s only a problem for ‘non-Jews’… Or for people who aren’t dati….

But we all know that’s baloney.

Bullying and manipulation is going on all over the place, including in the so-called frum Jewish community, at ‘pandemic’ levels.

Why is this?

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Before we try to answer that, we need to take a small detour.

Many years ago, I started researching the whole ‘narcissicism’ thing, that was becoming a catch-phrase, and a kind of catch-all diagnosis to try and describe the behaviour and motivations of a particularly difficult type of individual.

After a lot of praying on it, and years of heartache, and more years of research, I came to realise that so-called ‘narcissistic traits’ perfectly overlap with the traits of the Erev Rav, as described by both Shimon bar Yohai and the Vilna Gaon (whoever that last guy ultimately turns out to be…).

I pulled all this information together in a book called Unlocking the Secret of the Erev Rav, because the ‘secret’, is that EVERYONE displays some narcissistic traits some of the time, especially if they grew up around narcissists.

And that the only real difference between a so-called ‘unfixable’ Erev Rav-narcissist and everyone eise, is that eventually, ‘everyone else’ makes some sincere teshuva, and can admit they aren’t always perfect.

That’s it.

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Now, if you are personally familiar with this subject (you have my sympathy), you will already know that getting this type of person to admit they ever hurt you, ever bullied you, ever controlled-manipulated-lied etc etc is literally impossible.

The only exception to this rule I have experienced myself, is when we paid a pidyon to Rav Berland for a few people we were having some great difficulties with, and somehow, miraculously, the relationship got ‘sweetened’- at least, for us.

That showed me that ‘Erev Rav-narcissist’ traits are actually a spiritual problem, at their root.

And that they CAN be ‘fixed’, or at least, radically ameliorated, by taking appropriate spiritual steps to do that – even from the outside.

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So now, let’s circle back around to talk about bullying.

It suits most of us to try to pretend that ‘bullying’ is something that only happens in schools.

But the truth is, ‘bullying’ is happening in most families, even the so-called ‘best’ families.

Just, it goes unrecognised unless it involves a component of physical violence.

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The people who ‘bully’ other people the most are husbands and wives, parents, and siblings.

Rav Arush always teaches that the ‘real you’ is the one behind closed doors, and not the shiny, ‘perfect’ external persona that narcissists in particular are very careful to cultivate.

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Let’s be clear: All of us are guilty of ‘bullying’ sometimes, defined as coercing another human being into doing something that’s good for us, but usually not experienced as ‘good’ for them.

The fine line between negative, egotistical bullying and properly disciplining or influencing a child is a huge grey area which I am not going to get into, in this post.

Whilst most parents would hope to keep their own bad middot out of the process of disciplining children, the truth is we are all human beings, and the more inner turmoil, anger, blame and rage we experience in ourselves, the more those bad middot, and more, will come out disguised as ‘discipline’.

So, let’s put the parent-child dynamic to one side for now, and focus-in on what non-physical bullying looks like between two adults.

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The soil bullying grows in is an arrogant sense of entitlement, that people, or God, or ‘the world’, somehow owes you something.

This translates into a mindset that permits an individual to use any tactics they can to get others to do what they want, including:

• Laying on guilt trips
• Playing the ‘poor me’ / victim card
• Getting angry, passively or obviously, if the other person doesn’t comply
• Trying to ‘cut the other person down to size’ with criticism or barbed comments, or open insults, to crush their self-esteem and make them easier to manipulate and control
• Not taking ‘no’ for an answer
• Threatening ‘consequences’ for daring to have their own opinions, or not doing what you want
• Angry outbursts / rage fits
• The silent treatment

The list could go on and on, but you get the idea.

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Again, even the most refined person who is working on their middot sincerely will occasionally feel aggrieved or upset or frustrated, if someone is not doing what they want, or what they promised, or what they objectively are responsible for doing.

I’m talking about relationships which are stuck in the sole mode of ‘Person A demands what they want, and Person B gives it to them, or there is trouble.’

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Thinking back to my interactions with The Vaccinator, our relationship has been based on the principle that he gets to say and act however he wants, however hurtful, or plain ‘wrong’, and that my choice boiled down to either keeping silent, or sparking off a huge row and ‘rage fit’ which can and does last for years and years and years.

All of us have been treading on eggshells around him for as long as anyone can remember.

It’s just how it was. No-one would ever dream of ‘arguing back’ to his face, or asking him to do something that would take him out of his way, or make him feel a little uncomfortable or put out.

All the bad behaviour – we all just excused it in a million different ways. It was always ‘poor Vaccinator, he’s got such a hard life…’

Externally, he really doesn’t. He’s way more set up, in a whole bunch of ways, than I am.

But ‘playing the victim’ – of life, of God, of ‘fate’, if you want to call it that, instead of taking responsibility for all the issues that our own bad middot are causing us on every level – that is a key part of how this scam works.

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Tov, I could carry on writing this for hours, as you can probably tell.

Let’s cut to the punchline.

Bullying grows out of:

1. A feeling that people / life / God / the world ‘owes us’, which can also be called ‘inflated entitlement’.
2. Anger issues that are not being acknowledged, addressed – and resolved.

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People like to stay angry, because angry people use their anger to intimidate, threaten and control others.

If you want to keep people ‘controllable’ and get them to say ‘how high?’ every time you command them to jump, by all means, stay angry and keep using it as leverage in your relationships.

But, if you want real relationships with other people…

If you want your spouse to be able to really open up, and tell you stuff that’s troubling them even when it’s close to home and hard to hear…

If you want your kid to be able to share their struggles and issues with you, before he gets dragged down to the bottom of the world by them…

If you want to be a real friend, and not just shopping for a free shrink that you get to dump all your issues on without any reciprocity, caring or empathy…

Then, two things need to happen.

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NUMBER 1: CREATE A ‘NO-TOLERANCE’ RULE FOR ANGER.

Especially, your own.

And even more especially, that brand of self-righteous anger that always paints you as the poor victim, and everyone else as abusers.

I will BH write a follow-up post to this, on the emunadik way of handling being bullied, where we can stand up for ourselves and create healthy boundaries, but still understand that everything is all from God, and ultimately, just designed as a test of our own emuna and middot.

I don’t hate The Vaccinator, not at all. I hate what he did and how he’s acted, but I still wish him the best, and I’ve even started praying for him now, that I finally got out of the ‘script’ that’s been controlling my family interactions for so long, and can write my own lines.

But it’s for sure a very narrow bridge to cross, and abusers can abuse the idea of their victims ‘having emuna’ very easily.

Anger is actually an appropriate emotion to feel in the healing process, but there is a huge difference between ‘getting the anger out’ in a safe way, and targeted correctly, than giving yourself permission to turn into the next ‘Mr / Mrs Angry’ who gets to rage at everyone because they are a poor victim.

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NUMBER 2: UNDERSTAND THAT GOD OWES US NOTHING

Every breath is a present.

Every time we can wiggle our fingers, get a good night’s sleep, have a roof over our head, a cup of coffee, a hot shower – God owes us absolutely nothing.

The more emuna we try to have, the more we try to see the tremendous good that still exists in every person’s own dalet amot – the more we see God’s kindnesses to us, the more we tap-in to our own souls, and the more we start to understand that even the ‘lacks’ contain tremendous kindness.

Just, understanding that can take a lifetime of hitbodedut, inner work and prayer.

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Point is: no-one ‘owes us’ a phone call or email.

No-one ‘owes us’ their time and attention.

No-one ‘owes us’ Shabbos invitations, or appearances at simchas, or shiva houses, or parties.

And God also doesn’t ‘owe us’ big houses, lots of cash, a million children, nice communities to live in, great jobs, wonderful shalom bayit…

Everything we have is a free gift from the Creator.

Everything.

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As you are probably starting to understand, this type of thinking is a million miles away from Erev Rav-narcissist thinking.

When God is behind everyone and everything, you don’t have to get stuck playing the blame game any more, for who to pin your misery and suffering on.

It’s from God, tachlis, and your soul and my soul agreed to every single bit of it, before we even got down here.

Instead of trying to ‘control others’, the whole equation becomes one of trying to control ourselves, and especially the bad middot and lack of emuna that are causing us so much suffering.

Instead of becoming permanent, and permanently-angry ‘victims’, we become empowered individuals who understand our experience of life is 100% in our own hands.

The more we work on overcoming our anger and other bad middot, the better our life will be, the more fulfilling and real our relationships will be, and the more good things there will be to rejoice in, and thank God for.

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I’ll stop there for now, I know it’s a lot to think about.

But this existential war that we’re in right now is really internal, not playing out in Gaza, or the Ukraine.

And we win it by uprooting anger and entitlement, and replacing it with emuna that Ein Od Milvado.

 

A picture speaks a thousand words:

The Rav, with his Torah, which was finally handed over to him yesterday, just as the ‘war ended’…

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Thanks to everyone who helped to make the Sefer Torah a reality.

I don’t know what happens  next, honestly – no-one does.

But, I have a very deep feeling that something huge has shifted since Rosh Hashana. At least, that’s been my experience within my own dalet amot. For example, I decided to stand up to someone who has been bullying me for a very long time, and to not let them do that any more.

And I’m also seeing big shifts in other friendships, where the emphasis has been skewed far too much in me being ‘Mrs CoDependent’ and just acting like an unpaid shrink.

BH, after Sukkot I plan to start writing way, way more about things like emotional neglect and how negative, toxic relationships can mamash cut a person off from God, and a real, loving connection with themselves.

In the meantime, chag sameach, everyone.

BH, we will have a very joyful chag, a ‘rectified experience’ for what happened two years ago.

And some hope in our hearts that regardless of all of Esav’s machinations, God has never abandoned His people to their designs. Just, we need to make some serious teshuva on our bad middot, and come under the sheltering tallit of the Tzaddik HaDor.

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