Baruch Hashem, just got back from Uman.

All told, it takes about 15 hours door-to-door, to get to Uman at the moment.

An hour to Ben Gurion…three hours check in…three hours flight…an hour in Chisinau airport figuring out the taxi to get across the border with Ukraine…6-8 hours in a taxi, depending on how long the border takes…

And whether you are driving before 5am in the Ukraine, when there is officially still a curfew.

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Why would a person do all this?

Again and again?

Really, you have to go to understand it yourself.

But let’s see if I can explain why I went this time.

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Long story short, I’ve been having a hard time the last weeks, in myself, and I needed some strength, emuna-recharging, and a ‘derech’ for where I go from here.

I will try to write more stuff up this week, but one of the big insights I got this visit was the importance of having a routine, in this time of increased chaos.

You know, like you ‘make yourself’ do hitbodedut for an hour a day, you ‘make yourself’ exercise twice a week, you ‘make yourself’ cook a nice supper on a wednesday… whatever it is.

But it’s these elements of ‘routine’ that help the mind calm down, and to feel more anchored in what can be a very disorientating world.

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Another insight I got, is that life is still pretty darned good, for most of us.

Just, it’s our own attitude problem that makes life so bitter and hard.

I really came back to appreciating that path of simple emuna, set out by Rebbe Nachman, where he basically says sleep on the floor, and eat bread with salt!

Everything else is a plus…

Or perhaps, everything else is actually even a minus…

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Another great reason to go to Uman is because it makes you so grateful to be back in Israel when you return.

I saw no sun today, at all, because the sky was just one big grey mass.

(Except this morning, when both me and my husband saw a very strange ‘ruby cloud’ in the pitch black, which we assumed was dawn, except it didn’t start at the horizon, lasted for a couple of hours, and was surrounded by a whole bunch of ‘black’ both above and below. It was pretty weird, I have to say.)

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And many, many people get open miracles when they go to Uman to pray.

I know I’ve had that in the past, and I could see there were a few ‘newcomers’ by the Tzion who were also getting some open miracles there.

Me personally, it was more of a quiet trip this time.

Not dramatic, not really the big story to tell this time.

We even got to the airport an hour early for check-in, which is the first time that has ever, ever happened, coming back from Uman.

I went for some peace of mind, and Rabbenu explained quite a few of the things I have been doing to myself, that have been preventing that from happening.

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I will write more tomorrow, BH.

But, back home, happy to be in Israel, understanding ‘airport travel’ is totally overrated, no matter where you are headed, and have a lot of food for thought to share here on the blog, hopefully this week.

Baruch Hashem, to be a Jew living in Israel.

Even with all the madness, we are still so very lucky to be here.

In so many ways.