The last day of Pesach, I got a notice from my landlady that ‘nextdoor’ would be starting serious renovation works early Sunday morning.
Sunday morning, as promised, the walls started shaking at 7am on the dot, as seven Arab workers started wrecking the apartment next door to its foundations. My husband went to ask them how long all this was going to last: One week of banging, and three weeks of work, they told him.
I got in such a bad mood.
Because yes, I know it’s all from God, it’s all for my best, it’s so much better than open heart surgery, shingles, problems with the kids, issues with the shalom bayit, lack of money – yes, yes, yes, I know all that.
And at the same time, my ‘lower self’ was rebelling that for the 4th time in 12 years, we were living next door to a noisy construction site. Literally the day before Pesach, we bought some new, nice chairs to sit on the balcony outside, we did it up with some plants and some bamboo for ‘privacy’…
And now, a week later, Ahmed & Ahmed are on that balcony for their cigarette breaks, while the dust from the de-construction wafts all over the house.
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I felt like God was taking away my peaceful space again.
(As I type, my desk is vibrating from the drilling next door.)
More than that, I started to have that niggling, unhappy feeling that my prayers don’t seem to work so well, because look at all these people who don’t do an hour of hitbodedut a day, but God is given them expensive apartments in Jerusalem, and teams of ‘de-constructionists’ to build their dream home….
And me?
I’m still sitting here paying an expensive rent, for a place I don’t own, and baring an open miracle, it’s probably going to continue that way until I pop my clogs.
The ‘it’s not fair’, self-pitying vibe took me down to a very low place.
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So, Sunday I sat at the Rav and did my hitbodedut there.
Usually, it’s loud and a little overwhelming at the Rav, but Sunday, I found a quiet corner in the ‘tent’ inside-outside, and sat there, talking to God about what needed to happen for me to cheer up again.
As I was sighing to myself at the top of the wooden bleachers about the state of the world, this small toddler appeared, and started climbing up the bleachers, step by gigantic step. It took a lot of effort.
Immediately he got to the top, he turned around and went back down again.
Immediately he got to the bottom, he turned around and climbed back up again.
I started to pay attention, because by the Rav, like you get by Rabbenu in Uman, the ‘messages’ come in all sorts of indirect ways.
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Why is this kid wasting so much time, on this pointless, tiring exercise? I wondered.
The answer came back like a bullet:
It’s called ‘being alive’….
Next, the kid found some bimba somewhere, and on his next climb up – which was hard going anyway – he decided he was going to drag that bimba up with him. And down again. At least another five times in a row, without stopping.
I was impressed at his determination and stamina.
This is why Rabbenu says its forbidden to be old, the little voice whispered at me.
It’s totally pointless –but it’s life, and he’s enjoying himself.
==
As I was thinking about that, and how sometimes the bitterness and disappointment can make me feel so old and despairing, and like I just want to give up and live in a cave, or something (with aircon, a makolet and a nice shower….) – I spotted Rav Elmaliach entering the Rav’s Beit HaMidrash.
I haven’t sat on those bleachers, inside-outside, since literally October 7th, 2023.
I haven’t seen Rav Elmaliach for literally a year, when all those strange ‘prophecies’ from Rivka HaTzaddika (who probably not coincidentally, is a chabadnik) started circulating before Purim last year.
Rav Elmaliach is kodesh kodeshim.
He went through so much with that whole episode, on so many levels, I didn’t know what had happened to him, and whether he was still with the Rav, and doing OK.
==
He came in to the Beit HaMidrash, grabbed some kodesh book from the library shelves, and stood there at a shtender, pouring over the pages and tracing the words with his finger, while I watched him through the mirrored glass that means women can see in, but the men can’t see out.
He looked fine, BH.
He was engrossed in Torah.
He was still with the Rav, BH.
I started to feel a bit happier again.
==
Don’t give up, Rivka, the little voice whispered in my head.
It’s tough going at the moment, but everything is for the best, and nothing a person does in this world is wasted.
==
Yesterday, I felt much happier.
I’m still getting angry each time the drilling goes on for more than half an hour, I still know I have a lot of work to do on expanding my ‘emuna bandwidth’ again, which seems to have shrunken to the point that stuff that used to ping off is making me really upset, at the moment.
But I have a derech now.
And more than that – the Pope died and Klaus Schwab resigned on the same day, yesterday.
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Having said all this, there is definitely a heavy vibe in the air again here, generally.
Lapid is making ‘ominous’ statements again, exactly as he did in the run up to October 7th:

Make of this what you will.
Personally, I’m curious to know how Lapid has the sort of ‘unambiguous intelligence’ that lets him warn everyone, publically, about what is going to happen, but apparently it’s not ‘unambiguous’ enough to stop the disaster from taking place.
Funny, that.
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Let’s end with a prayer that I’m saying a lot at the moment, that the satanic pedos who rule from the shadows should finally be unmasked and brought down, permanently.
That revealed good should start to show through in world events more and more.
And that God finally sends me a house of my own in Jerusalem, with a mortgage I can manage, where I can find more than a moment of peace and quiet.
Amen.
==
PS: There is something about the apparently fatal shark attack that happened in Hadera yesterday that is not making so much sense to me.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, this explains it, with video of a big shark swimming around small kids on Olga Beach a few minutes before the fatal attack on a diver.
https://thenightly.com.au/world/shark-attack-hadera-israel-footage-emerges-of-diver-in-rare-mediterranean-mauling–c-18448534
I’ll tell you what I’m finding strange about this.
First – that there was a diver in shallow water by the Hader power station.
Not a regular swimmer enjoying the hot weather, but a diver.
And second – that this diver has still not been identified in any way, shape or form.
He has no name, no identity, and there are not even any leads about who the victim could have been.
Israel is a small place, AND a police state with cameras everywhere.
I’m finding the lack of ID very curious.
And I’m wondering if the person attacked by the sharks was even Israeli.
Just sayin’.