For a change, we got to Uman fairly easily this time around.

Sure, our taxi never showed up, so we had to find someone else (who ended up being much nicer, spoke English, and was really a good experience, if you ever want an Uman driver. We took his number…)

But apart from that, we got to Uman around 7am Friday morning, and I dumped the bags in the hotel and rushed over to the Kever.

It wasn’t so full, but there was still a few people. I sat there, just trying to catch my breath and to kind of ground a bit, feel in the world a bit – not because of Uman, but because of everything that’s been going on back home, in Jerusalem.

I was pulling a blank.

==

Suddenly, the Kever was rent by the sound of a woman weeping.

She was bent over the tomb, just mamash weeping her heart out. It carried on for half an hour, and then people started to ask what’s going on, why does she have so much tza’ar? (suffering).

The answer got telegraphed back by friends or family she was with: she lost a son in Gaza. (I’m not sure if her son was one of the ‘kidnapped’ ones who were really kidnapped, and really murdered, I couldn’t make out the Hebrew so well.)

That woman was crying for all of Am Yisrael.

==

All of a sudden, I remembered the story of Rachel, in Egypt, who was treading the clay for the bricks when she gave birth in the clay pit and lost the foetus. Rachel let out such a cry, such a sob, that it rent the heavens.

The angel Michael took that ‘brick-baby’ and brought it up to Hashem’s throne of glory. That’s when God decided: it’s time to redeem My people.

Maybe, the ‘Rachel’ by Rabbenu did the same thing with her tears…

==

In the meantime, I felt totally out of it, and after 15 hours sitting, I really needed to walk around somewhere.

Or the shuk or Gan Sofia, I asked my husband. Where do you prefer?

It was a little cold (he thought…) so we went to the shuk, where I haven’t been for five years, since that horrible Rosh Hashana when we got detained in the airport surrounded by Ukrainian soldiers for a day.

I had mixed feelings – but I also really, really needed a walk in the fresh air.

So we went. We bought some so-so grapes for Shabbat, a couple of gifts for my grandchildren, I found a scarf.

The Ukrainians were the usual unfriendly, but so what? Is there anywhere in the world right now, that a Jew with peyot can walk around and the locals will be friendly?

We walked back to the Tzion, and as Shabbat was coming in at 4pm, we just had a bit of time to shower and get ready, and spend another hour or so by Rabbenu.

==

I went back and said 7 Tikkun Haklalis, each with a pruta (coin), for different people as well as myself, and hoped the Rabbenu would manage to pull us all out of gehinnom, like he promised he would.

I jotted some stuff down in my journal, and what came out was this:

The only place I feel real peace at the moment, is by Rabbenu.

I just felt calm and kind of ‘there’, present, which doesn’t happen very much at the moment.

==

Shabbat was nice.

We were in a cheaper hotel, on purpose, as I wanted to kind of prove to ourselves that we weren’t coming just for the fancy food and the nice room.

The food was still really good, the decor pretty shabby – but the hotel we were in was much closer to the Tzion, and with all the lights still turned off at night in Ukraine, that’s useful.

I ate, did hitbodedut, slept quite a bit – and started to worry that maybe, I was kind of wasting my time by Rabbenu sleeping instead of saying a million TKs, or something.

==

That’s when I realised: you have to take the body along for the ride with the soul.

Because if not, especially in our generation, the crack-up will not take long to catch up to you.

We were coming back early Sunday, and if I had three days in a row without some proper rest and sleep, that wouldn’t be good.

==

In hitbodedut on Shabbat, the insights started to bubble up about what’s been troubling me recently, but way more gently than I usually experience in Uman.

My husband read something in Likutey Halachot, that explained a person’s eyes ‘grow dim’ from lack of truth.

That explained a lot, why I’d been finding it a little hard to see the last few weeks. The lies have been sprouting so fast again, nationally and more close to home, it’s been pretty overwhelming.

==

Amongst other things, I also realised I have a ton of yeoush about the Rav’s books, which has been kinda slowing me down, on getting Conversations 3 ready and out there.

So, I did a ‘hitbodedut mind-map’ about the books, and long story short, I understood that this has always been the Breslov way.

Rav Natan didn’t even manage to print his own Likutey Halachot in his lifetime, because there was so much persecution against Breslov from the other ‘chassiduts’.

And, even Likutey Moharan was hunted down, ripped, burned and trampled on.

It’s the Breslov path, that sometimes books are written that no-one reads for a 100 or 200 years.

I started to feel better.

==

Motzash, I got a few more insights, some of which are suitable to share here.

I already told you about the hint to make some sort of routine, and to stick to it, because routine is what gives the subconscious mind the feeling of ‘security’ that is so desperately missing right now.

My husband also read some stuff from Rav Ofer Erez, about what a person needs to be asking for, when they visit Rabbenu.

Long story short (and based on a very deep understanding of the story of the Sixth Beggar), we need to ask for things to be ‘returned to us’, that we’ve lost. It’s shavas aveda – but the halachas of that is you have to be able to identify what you lost in the first place, what is truly yours.

==

So I sat down motzash, and wrote this list of things I feel I’ve lost over the last few months and years, that I want to have back:

• My emuna in things turning out for the good
• My belief that moshiach really is coming
• Enjoying my hitbodedut again (which has been like pulling teeth for months…)
• Believing in the goodness of people again
• Peace of mind
• True friends
• Koach
• The ability to buy a house of my own in Jerusalem without a ton of debt
• Ability to exercise enough
• Child-like excitement about being alive
• The determination to really work on my bad middot
• The holiness of shabbat
• The ‘joy’ of the chagim
• Dancing for at least five minutes a day
• Generosity of spirit – without worrying that people are going to take advantage of me, and keep demanding more than I can happily give
• Energy
• Will to get things ‘done’
• Hope for the future
• A sense of playfulness
• Feeling at home, safe, in the world.
• Emunat tzaddikim
• Yishuv hadaat
• Courage
• Appreciating the bracha that is Eretz Yisrael
• Appreciating the bracha that is my husband and kids

And last, but not least:

• The ability to buy clothes that I love wearing, but that are still tznius.

==

Back in Eretz Yisrael today, I woke up early, went for a hitbodedut ‘walk’ first thing, did two loads of laundry, typed this up, bought a new winter jacket that I really like, and printed out both the draft of Conversations 2 – and the ‘real Jewish history’ draft I put together 3 years ago, then left.

We’ll see what happens next, with God’s help.

==

Sure, it’s a shlep going to Uman.

Honestly, though? It’s a shlep going anywhere at all on a plane these days.

And at least, you come back from Uman with so many real treasures and real spiritual ‘gifts’ that nothing and no-one can take away from you.

People travel way further than Uman, in way worse circumstances, just so they can boast that they saw some old stone thing up a mountain, or spent a fortune eating traif in over-priced restaurants, or just for that ‘snap’ for their Instagram page that even if its popular, even if it ‘goes viral’, is totally forgotten about ten minutes later.

So… If you didn’t go yet, perhaps seriously consider it.

It’s actually a great time to go right now, not too busy, not too expensive (relatively…) and not too cold and snowing there, yet.

==

Ashrenu, that we have Rebbe Nachman – and ashrenu, that we have the Rav!

Fortunate are we.

It’s good to be able to remember that again, and to return to counting my blessings.