This week, I’ve been finding it really hard to sleep.

I keep waking up in the middle of the night.

It’s not the first time this happened – usually, it coincides with an uptick of ‘earthquake energy’ in the world.

While they are trying very hard to close down Dutchsinse, the earthquake forecaster I follow, he warned about the Japanese quake a week before it happened – and in comments he now removed, he also is warning that India could be in line for a big quake this week.

He’s not right 100% of the time, but he’s right enough that his warnings are credible.

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In the meantime, I am feeling kind of totally exhausted, spiritually and physically.

I’m just so tired of all the ‘lies’ and manipulation, and what I really would love to do is borrow ‘the wing of a dove’, and fly off to some quiet desert island somewhere (fully stocked with kosher food and kombucha, and 5 star air-conditioning and nice toilets. Of course.)

But as that’s not possible at the moment… I am trying to figure out more ‘coping strategies’ in the here and now.

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I’m still going with the tehillim for the soldiers – doing one of the ‘five books’ contained in the whole tehillim a day, as per the Rav’s instructions.

Yesterday, one of the acquaintances of my son-in-law took a direct hit in his tank, and was fighting for his life.

He’s still critically ill, but now seems to be out of immediate danger.

His name is YUVAL ben DEANA PAULINA.

Please pray for him – he’s 28.

His whole life is still ahead of him… (BH).

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Dafka, my kid told me this when I decided I was going to take a day off ‘in between’ completing books of tehillim – yesterday was the day off.

Saying tehillim every day is an effort… Recently, I was feeling a bit lazy and resentful about all the time it takes.

But now, YUVAL ben DEANA PAULINA has reminded me that even anglo housewives have a very important role to play in ‘keeping Am Yisrael’ safe.

If you slacked off on the tehillim – and I so get you, if you did – please consider going back to them again.

So many of our soldiers are literally having their hands and feet blown off in Gaza….

It’s so upsetting.

(The government here is now forecasting 12,500 – 20,000 soldiers will be seriously and permanently disabled because of fighting in Gaza…. And tachlis, for what?)

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But in the meantime…. ‘normal’ life has to continue.

I have to continue making shabbos, even though my interest in cooking has shrunk to almost nothing at the moment.

It didn’t help that my long-term butcher seems to have lost their regular supplier for chickens thanks to the war, and now is stocking only ‘Frankenchicken’.

A few weeks ago when I first saw those massive polkas busting out of their plastic packaging in the freezer cabinet, I already knew there was a problem.

I tried to get around it by buying the smallest bird parts I could find, so they look less ‘Frankie’, but they still taste weird.

And even my kids who usually argue against all my crazy ‘conspiracies’ with all their might gave the chicken a miss last week, because it looked and tasted ‘Frankie’.

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So, mince meat it is.

For the forseeable.

And if you have any good, healthy recipes for mincemeat that don’t take 500 hours prep, let me know.

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The truth is: we are actually doing better in our little ‘Rav bubble’ than pretty much anyone else I know.

There are 400,000 mothers in Israel currently not sleeping nights, because their kids are being sent into Gaza.

There are so many families struggling with parnassa, because the main breadwinner is being paid a pittance in the reserves – and it looks like all those billions of dollars fundraised abroad are not being directed to the people who really need it.

Quelle surprise.

Thousands of families are still ‘in exile’ in hotels – stuck in small rooms with multiple kids for three months already, and going totally and utterly nuts from the experience.

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So Baruch Hashem, I really have totally nothing to complain about, at all.

Baruch Hashem.

And every time I feel I might have something to worry about, I scoot over HERE and do a pidyon – even just a little one.

And then, I spend an hour a day trying to ‘get underneath’ what’s really bothering me, what’s really the problem.

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I did that this week with my tuning forks, and there was a lot of existential angst coming up.

A lot of wishing I could ‘escape’ from the madness that is this world, somehow.

But there is nowhere to run to…. except to Hashem.

And once I accepted that again – that everything that is happening is 100% under the hashgacha of Hashem, and 100% personally tailored to the soul-requirements of every single one of us – I started to feel much better and calmer again.

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This week, there’s been a strange vibe in Israel.

My kid summed it up like this:

We’re all waiting to see if Hezbollah was going to start sending a million rockets over the border, after the assassination of the Hamas Number 2 in Lebanon.

So far, they didn’t.

AND THAT IS AN OPEN MIRACLE.

Because everyone understands, that the ‘controllers in the shadows’ are desperately trying to ignite WW3 here in Israel – and they’ve been at it for years, already.

But things are continually being sweetened, on a super-natural level.

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There is still so much good, amidst the stress, fear and worry.

So many good Jews, doing good things, in so many good ways.

Even the secular people I know are starting to punctuate their conversations with ‘Baruch Hashem’ and ‘Bezrat Hashem’.

The ‘message’ is starting to penetrate, however slowly, that we really only have God to rely on.

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Let me leave you with this:

It’s another song from one of my kid’s very talented musical friends, called ‘MASA’ – the journey.

The chorus basically says this:

The journey itself is the real destination.

It’s a profound idea.

And basically describes what is going on right now, while we all keep holding our breath waiting for ‘the end’.

The journey itself – the teshuva itself, the changes we make in ourselves, the emuna we build, the mitzvot we do – this is the real destination, and the real point of what is going on right now.

Shabbat shalom.

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PS: This is a good article, and the headline basically sums up who keeps creating and ‘calling for’ all these wars:

Fake Intellectuals Working for Think Tanks Funded by the Arms Industry are Driving Support for War After War

Yup.

Just about covers all the bases in one sentence.