Yesterday, for the first time in like three years, we happened to be driving through Bnei Brak.

We were on the way to visit some people in Netanya, and we detoured to Petach Tikva first, so I could get an ergonomic mouse and hopefully avoid carpal tunnel syndrome.

We left Petach Tikva, headed down Jabotinski – which runs through Petach Tikva, Ramat Gan and Bnei Brak – in the direction of Route 2.

Suddenly, stand-still traffic.

Bnei Brak is always a nightmare to drive around, unless it’s 3am (and even then…) and honestly? Most of Israel is a nightmare to drive around at the moment. There are hundreds, literally, of cranes everywhere, building everything, roads getting dug up all over the place, roadworks everywhere you turn.

I have no idea who is paying for all this…

==

Point is, we’re in the car, in stand-still traffic, just by Hagai Street, where it joins Jabotinski.

We start hearing a bunch of sirens. Then some ambulances show up. Then a crowd starts to gather, and it looks like someone is pulling metal fences across the end of the road.

My husband turned to me and said, this is something ‘giyus’ related.

He had nevua.

==

Meanwhile, a bunch of those really mean looking cops started crossing the road in front of us – you know, the ones who wear black, and have grey helmets, and always but always some sort of ‘darth vader’ black thing covering most of their faces.

They looked really scary.

I turned to my husband and said, I’m pleased I’m not being chased by those guys, they look like psychos.

==

Of course, they were.

==

This morning, I went to the Tomer Devorah blog – and that’s when I read the story about what happened on Hagai Street yesterday.

Then, I saw videos of a group of our dear border police violently attacking a frum woman who made the mistake of trying to get past them, to walk down the street.

They pushed her, she pushed back – and instantly was surrounded by 10 border police, including at least six men, some of whom decided to try and pull off her wig – before arresting her, shamefully, and marching her down the street.

התקיפה בבני ברק ראויה לכל גינוי, אבל היי – תראו את זה: מג”בניקים מכים באלימות אשה חרדית, עוברת אורח תמימה, בבני ברק ומושכים בפאה שלה. האם נשמע גם כעת את גל הגינויים?
@itamarbengvir pic.twitter.com/e4guoqA6oQ

— מנדי ריזל (@mendi_rizel) February 15, 2026

(BTW – I wanted to post up other videos to show you what really happened in Bnei Brak, but they have already started cleansing the web of them. One X account deleted, the main videos on the YWN now buried so you can’t find them easily. But here’s the link:)

==

I’d love to tell you that I’m shocked, but I’m actually really not.

I was shocked a few years ago, when the police started riding their massive black Shire horses directly into a crowd of men, women and very small children in strollers, who were waiting outside the Jerusalem District Court where the latest miscarriage of justice involving the Rav was occurring.

I was also pretty shocked when the Yassamnikim showed up in Musrara at dawn, back in February 2020, to violently arrest the Rav during the morning prayers. Like this:

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(It’s really interesting, that YWN have taken down the video that accompanied this, where you can see exactly how brutal the police were behaving when they arrested the Rav. Now, all we have is the YWN write up, dictated by…. who exactly? Answers on a postcode.)

==

That shocked me.

Now, I’m not shocked about how our ‘security forces’ behave.

==

I’m old enough to remember the days, perhaps the daydream, when cops were supposed to help solve real crimes and protect the public.

These days, all the crims, pedos, corrupt ‘leaders’ – they all get a free pass, because they own the police. Or at least, that’s how it seems.

And in the meantime, the cops focus on…. Beating up frum Jews.

At least, here in Israel.

==

BH, more of us will wake up, realise that what we saw by the Rav 12 years ago, and 10 years ago, and 7 years ago, and what we are seeing today – all the miscarriages of justice, and the police brutality, and the corruption of the judicial process for political ends – it was always there.

Just now, in our times, it’s finally coming out of the shadows enough that a growing number of people can recognise it for what it is, and understand that the State seems to be waging a war, mamash, against it’s religious residents.

And especially, the leaders that can galvanise the religious community to continue to stick to the path of Torah and mitzvot.

And especially even more, the leaders who can bring people who are currently far away from that path, much, much closer to walking it.

==

BTW – I would say AT LEAST 95% of the ‘commentators’ on YWN, and other sites, who are ‘pro-beating up chareidim’ are actually working for the State to try to influence public opinion in the frum world.

Most people understand what is really going on here, so they have to add these ‘influencers’ in, to try and dilute the clarity.

==

UPDATE:

Two useful posts, also sourced via Tomer Devorah, that clarify what sparked all this off: 2 female soldiers sent around Bnei Brak with recruitment leaflets for the army…

https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/bnei-brak-riots-idf-police-clash

==

Me personally?

I am anti-violence, and anti-demonstrations.

These are both the weapons of ‘Esav’, and we’d do much, much better if we stopped rising to the bait, and instead focussed on the ‘voice of Yaakov’, to solve more of our issues.

That’s not always easy to do in practise, and sometimes, the brutality is so bad, people literally have to respond in some way just to try to protect themselves.

But the better way, whenever possible, is just to walk away and ignore them.

If they can’t get their propaganda headlines, they’ll stop trying to ‘create’ them.

Continuing the shiur from Shvat 10, 5786.

When we were in Beit Israel they still didn’t have showers.

We got there 70 years ago, there were no showers, when we came there in 5742, they still didn’t have showers, in Beit Israel. They had such basins in the mikvah! You would take a basin, pour [water], and that’s how you would wash, in honour of Shabbat, shisla[1].

==

R’ Avraham ben R’ Nachman saw skulls in the mikvah.

This was on his last Rosh Hashana. He said I saw skulls! [He was referring to the Shoah, where the Jews of Europe would be murdered.]

Run away from here!

They told him: No, shislach! (I.e. he just saw the bowls they used to pour water). He is seeing shislach, and he’s imagining [that he’s seeing skulls]. He’s sick, something is going wrong in his brain.

(Yes, this is how they spoke about R’ Avraham ben R’ Nachman!)

==

All of this, R’ Levi Yitzhak (Bender) gave over.

[R’ Avraham ben R’ Nachman] – he saw everything! He said, get away from here! Like that [if you get away from Europe and go to Israel], I will live, and your children will lay tefillin.

[But those who didn’t listen to him and stayed in Europe] – none of their children already were laying tefillin.

==

Even the children of Medini.

R’ Hezekiah Medini (the Sdei Chemed). When did he die? He died in Adar? I thought he died on the 1st of Iyyar. R’ Hezekiah Medini, all his children were big rabbis [in Crimea], and his grandchildren, we don’t know where they are. They became communists.

Some of them returned and came to Hevron, they stayed in Eretz Yisrael. They came back, and then the Iron Curtain fell, with Stalin.

==

Lenin said – on no account, not Stalin!

He wrote a letter, this is written, it’s written. He said, I request from you, that whoever comes after me, it shouldn’t be Stalin. He will destroy everything here. I don’t want there to be a dictatorship here, I am in favour of freedom of religion.

Lenin was in favour of freedom of religion. Each person should go according to the dictates of his own faith. Stalin said no! There is no ‘religion’!

In particular, he fought against the Christians, even more than he fought against the Jews.

Excerpted and translated from Shivivei Or 445.

==

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Shisla appears to a colloquial term for the bowls they used to use in the mikvah to pour water over the head.

And as of this writing, no-one knows where he is.

Or at least if they do, they aren’t telling anyone else.

When I know what’s happening, I’ll let you know.

Shabbat shalom.

Fear is a very normal human emotion.

In fact, it’s probably at the root of almost every negative trait and reaction we have. I’m talking about ‘fallen fears’ – the idea that something or someone can harm us or hurt us, in total isolation from belief in Hashem.

That Hashem is doing everything, running the whole world, deciding down to the very last tiny detail what happens to a person, how and when.

==

Our modern world is built on a huge, towering edifice of ‘fallen fears’.

We saw all that come sharply into focus during the plandemic, where people’s natural fears of falling ill, or being blamed for awful things happening to others, was stoked and manipulated in a very cruel and extreme way.

Me personally, I’ve always had a ton of secret, and not-so-secret fears to deal with, long before Covid showed up.

Some of those fears have been so debilitating, that if God hadn’t sent hitbodedut, trips to Uman and pidyonot with the Rav into the world, I would probably have ended up in a loonie bin.

(Probably, a lot of the people in Shuvu Banim could tell you the same thing ;-))

==

The point is – living in fear is a horrible way to live.

It’s really no life at all.

The problem is – our modern world is built on a huge, towering edifice of ‘fallen fears’.

That’s how they push parents into the vaccine schedule and dosing their kids with ritalin, getting people to stay home and mask-up for three years, scaring everyone, all the time, that they have cancer, and are causing global warming, and are killing all the dolphins with plastic bags, and Iran, Iran, Iran.

The list goes on and on.

==

In one of those strange paradoxes, the more ‘awake’ you are, the more your fears can multiply.

People who still trust doctors, still think their government is benevolent and here to serve them, still think Trump is playing 8D chess and put Epstein in a witness protection program to finally ‘clean the swamp’ (ho ho ho) – those people live in less fear than others.

Because they are still trusting in a corrupt, rotten system that has been carefully designed to drag them down to the very bottom of the world, without them even realising it.

==

Most of my readers probably don’t fit into that category.

(Except, maybe, ‘Jerusalem Resident’…)

Ergo, most of my readers probably worry a great deal, about a bunch of stuff that is objectively concerning.

But here is my big chiddush for this post:

We can’t live in fear.

Because living in fear is no way to live, at all.

It saps all of a person’s joy, their optimism, their strength, their potential to still act, and do and enjoy stuff in the world.

==

Last week, the Rav, who is 88 and just recovering from a 50 day treatment to eradicate cancer, got on a plane with his Rabbanit Tehilla, and tried to get into Uman again.

The plane landed in Moldova, the Rav tried to cross the Ukrainian border, and again, he was denied.

I’m not on the Whatsapp group, so I got all the info second hand, and not in real time.

Personally?

I didn’t think the Rav was going to make it across the border.

Why? Because as soon as that info is on the Whatsapp group, that he’s even trying, for sure the cholkim, who are connected at the State level, started pulling strings to get yet another ‘black visa’ arranged against him.

These black visas can apparently be arranged very fast, when the request comes in from the State level.

And undoing them takes a ton of time, effort and money.

So me personally, I didn’t think he was going to get across, but I still hoped he would, and did some TKs for him.

==

Then I started wondering to myself, why is the Rav, who is 88 and not well, putting himself through this all the time, when he knows, he really knows, that right now, he is still not going to get across the border?

The answer, or my answer anyway, came back to me in hitbodedut:

The Rav is showing us how we’re meant to be living life, in real time, even in our mad, crazy, unjust world.

Not in fear. Not in despair. Not giving up on trying or doing, and just living this pointless hefker life where we stumble through the day like a zombie, until we go back to sleep again.

Bottom line: we still need to LIVE. To do stuff. To try stuff. With God’s help.

And the TRYING is the whole point, not the achieving.

==

I can’t tell you how many times the trip to Uman, to give one example, has helped me overcome a whole bunch of ‘fallen fears’.

Right from the beginning.

(The people who have been know exactly what I’m talking about, and the people who haven’t should really try it for themselves.)

Even before wars and Covid, the Ukraine was not a friendly, welcoming place for Jews. Certainly not in the times of communism, and still not in the early 2000s, when there was no toilet paper and the potholes in the roads were so big they could swallow a coach whole.

The first time I went to Uman, there were continual electricity blackouts, no way of contacting Israel, the most snow and ice I have ever seen in my life (and I lived in Canada for a few years) – and a bunch of ‘fallen fears’ about life in general getting me, in some way.

The point is: whatever stops a person from getting to Uman, that same thing is stopping a person from moving forward in their life, generally.

==

Point is: we can’t live in fear anymore.

We can’t keep trying to peer around corners all the time.

Yes, stay awake, do hitbodedut, don’t be fooled by this awful, evil corrupt ‘system’ – but also, don’t focus on it 24/7.

If you need to play the game enough to move forward in life, then that is what you have to do.

Without putting yourself in unnecessary danger.

But also, without trying to live in your duvet 24/7, scared to leave the bed.

==

I give us all a bracha that Hashem should help us to keep on enjoying life in a kosher, holy way – to the max!

And that we should understand that really, God is all there is.

And all these fallen fears we have are the main motivator driving us to establish a relationship with our Creator, so He can make all those fallen fears disappear.

Amen.

I was doing some talking to God, about why I reacted so badly yesterday, when someone pushed in the queue.

At the head level, I know everything is from God, everything is for my good, it’s just mamash a message for me to explore something on my side of the equation, that I need to acknowledge and try to rectify.

At the heart level, when that woman pushed in so aggressively and unfairly, I suddenly got ‘flashed back’ to that horrible feeling of powerlessness I had when I was a child, and people used to bully me.

==

I got bullied a lot.

The only Jew in school… Going to a posh school where people had regularly ski-ing holidays and I had holes in my socks that had me living in fear of ever taking my shoes off in public… I had a knack of attracting attention, even without trying to, and saying or doing things that set me apart, and set me up to be bullied.

A lot.

Even by the teachers.

And that was just at school…

==

Point is, the last few months since I’ve been unpicking another layer of all this old, old stuff from childhood, I feel like I’ve got sensitized now to any hint that someone is trying to bully me.

It’s part of the process.

You have to swing from one side to the other, to find the right balance.

The problem is, if you stay ‘on the other side’ too long, or think it’s OK to turn into a rude, bullying old bag yourself, because at one point you were a ‘victim’.

At that point, the ‘victim’ becomes the aggressor, and they cycle starts up, all over again.

==

So where I got to yesterday, is I was having a flash-back to when I used to be bullied, a lot, and I couldn’t get away from it, or really fight back.

Now, I’m an adult, so I could walk away, and perhaps God arranged this whole palaver yesterday, simply to bring it to my attention that I am now an adult, and I have plenty more tools available to move away from being bullied.

That’s a very helpful insight.

It’s moving me forward a lot in this process, of trying to figure out how I can deal with yucky people in the world, with emuna, and without getting ‘flash-backed’ into a negative mochin de katnut state.

==

Something else that come up, is that I feel as the world is getting more and more ‘controlling’, in a billion different ways, the human need for freedom, to have ‘free choice’ is welling up more and more.

This is another process that has been going on for a while, and really ramped-up during Covid, with all the deep state enforcement and masks and lockdowns, that people just want to live freely.

Without a whole bunch of the laws of Sdom to contend with.

I only want to be subservient to Hashem and to His Torah, and to nothing and nobody else.

==

Rebbe Nachman teaches that free choice is the only reason God created the world.

All of us, from the youngest to the oldest, from the richest to the poorest, from the cleverest to the dumbest, from the ‘biggest success’ to the ‘biggest failure’ – all of us have a need to be able to express ourselves, and to choose for ourselves, without being controlled, bullied and manipulated from the outside.

Sometimes, that control and manipulation comes from parents, siblings, friends, the school bully, the yucky boss or teacher.

These days, we are also getting a heavy dose of it at the State level, reminiscent of communist times in the former Soviet Union, when everything was manipulation and lies to keep the population quiescent and controllable, cowering in fear.

But deep down, and also not so deep down – the human soul was built to be ‘free’, to be free to choose to serve Hashem, or not. To do good, or not. To think for itself, or not.

==

So, this is where I’ve got to in unpicking more of this ‘bad middot’ onion I’m currently still working through.

Ad 120.

I apologise, if anyone got offended that I called rude, selfish old narcissists names.

That’s very bad middot on my part, I’m working on it.

Ad 120.

But in the meantime, I also want to encourage us all to stop taking things too seriously, to lighten up, slow down, and understand that we are all down here because we have some serious work to do, to develop some real emuna and recognise our own bad middot.

==

The problem is not so much that we have bad middot.

We all have bad middot, and God gave them to us and created us exactly that way.

The real problem is that not enough people are admitting that yes, I also have this problem… I’m sorry I’m acting this way…I admit I’m also having unhelpful ‘flashbacks’ that cause me to react in less than optimal ways…

Instead, they take a page out of the NPD playbook, and turn into holier-than-thou hypocrites who severely criticise everyone else for their bad middot, but can’t admit that at least sometimes, they also aren’t perfect. They also hurt other people. They also do stuff wrong.

That’s the real problem here.

==

My supermarket is full of those people.

They are really yucky to be around, or even just to stand next to in line, by the till.

You can feel all their anger, and hakpada, and projected self-hatred shimmering around them, like a malevolent force-field, just waiting for the next poor sod to put a foot wrong and get ‘zapped’ with their wrath.

God forbid, I don’t want to turn into one of those people.

God forbid, I don’t want anyone else to, either.

==

So, I will continue to share what’s going on with unpeeling my own ‘bad middot onion’, here on the blog.

I know, I know, everyone else is perfect, and ‘normal’, and simply don’t have these issues (God bless the weed, wine and meds!)

But what can I do?

I don’t smoke, drink or take prescription medications.

So, I am stuck experiencing my bad middot in full force, and trying to figure out how I can really deal with them, with God’s help, and overcome them, mostly by following Rabbenu’s advice.

Ad 120.

(And then, plus another 800 reincarnations…)