It’s a time when ‘truth’ is becoming so much stranger than ‘fiction’.

In so many ways.

I went back to find the article I’d written five years ago, about ‘Mad Martin Radziwill’.

If you haven’t read the post before this, go back and read it before continuing, HERE.

In that post, we learned that ‘Mad Martin Radziwill’ was acting as the Polish noble benefactor of the Frankists, encouraging them to come and live on his estates and ‘learn kabbalah’ with him. That post also unearthed the information that Radziwill himself seems to have become a ‘convert’ to the Sabbatean cause, promoting some sort of satanic Judeo-Xtian-Sabbatean new religion.

And now, read the following, written almost five years ago.

Pay attention to the fact that ‘Mad Martin’ shows up in the Freideriker’s memoirs under the alias ‘Benedikt Radziwill’, and is described by him as a ‘friend of the Jews’.

We’ll come back to the rest in a future post, BH.

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Mystics, and Mad Martin, the Belarussian ‘Dracula’

With a title like that, anything is possible…

So, over Shabbat, I read through THIS part of the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe’s memoirs in English. It’s a second edition, and many facts and details have been changed and / or omitted from the original, so I made some notes to try to track down who the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe, R’ Yosef Yitzhak Shneerson, was really talking about. To keep the bat as straight as possible, I’m first just going to quote a few of the things that took my eye.

And then, we’ll concentrate on Mad Martin, the Belarussian ‘Dracula’.

Here we go.

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From page 25, part of a discussion about an organised underground group of ‘kabbalist mystics’ who are spreading out across Eastern Europe, to help people ‘reach a higher spiritual levell:

“And don’t imagine…that each of these mystics is merely following his own particular plan. I can tell you positively that every one of them has had his ‘mission’ assigned to him and has been told in which area is his ‘sphere of influence’. Taken collectively, they all form part or a large, comprehensive whole, with its inspiration emanating from their chief. “This particular society of people,” continued Wolf, in a way that showed he knew all there was to know about it, and even as if he were also one of them, “is quite an old one.

It was first established by the tzaddik, the gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Wurms, Germany. Thus the movement is about one hundred and ten years old. “Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem established this society upon the request of a certain Kabbalist, whose identity is unknown to this day. We are told that this Kabbalist requested that chosen gaonim and tzaddikim, who would be prepared to dedicate their whole lives to this sacred work, should be sent out among the poor, simple, uneducated and unawakened Jews, and make them aware of their Creator, and of the spiritual values in life. “It was about the year 5381 (1621) or 5383 (1623) that this society was established by Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem, and ever since, thousands and thousands of ordinary Jews have been brought back to the service of G-d!”

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Some historical context, to help you connect the dots for yourself:

Rabbi Israel ben Sarah, the Baal Shem Tov (BESHT) was only born in 1698. This ‘particular society of people’, apparently started up by ‘Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem’ was operating for 75 years before the BESHT was even alive. Even more interestingly, the standard dates given for ‘Shabtai Tzvi’ say he was born in 1626 – three years before this ‘particular society of people’ apparently started to operate across Jewish Eastern Europe.

So, who exactly were this ‘particular society of people’, and where did their teachings really come from?

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Next, I tried to pin down who ‘Eliyahu Baal Shem of Wurms’ actually is, in real life.

In various places, he’s described as the ‘grandfather’ or sometimes the ‘great-grandfather’ of none other than the Chacham Tzvi. While I’m trying to sort out which version is correct (which looks like it’s going to be a pretty long job…) I did manage to find ‘Eliyahu Baal Shem of Wurms’ in real life. If you go to Wikipedia, HERE, you’ll find an entry for one ‘Eliezer Loans’. Here’s a snippet: (Note: ‘Virmyze’ is another spelling of ‘Wurms’)

Elijah ben Moses Ashkenazi Loans also known as Elijah Ba’al Shem of Virmyze (1555 – July 1636) was a German rabbi and Kabbalist. He was born in Frankfurt-am-Main. He belonged to the family of Rashi, on his mother’s side was the grandson of Johanan Luria, and on his father’s ofJosel of Rosheim. After having studied in his native city under the direction of Jacob Ginzburg and Akiba Frankfort, Loans went to Cracow, where he attended the lectures of Menahem Mendel. While there he prepared for publication the “Darke Mosheh” of Moses Isserles.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century Loans was called to the rabbinate of Fulda, which he left in 1612, occupying successively the rabbinates of Hanau, Friedberg (1620), and Worms (1630), in which last-named city he remained until his death. Loans was a diligent student of Kabbalah, and for this reason was surnamed “Ba’al Shem.” He was also accomplished in music and calligraphy, and various legends circulated regarding his personality… Loans also edited the “‘Ammude Shelomoh” of Solomon Luria on the “Semag” (Basel, 1599), and the “Sha’are Dura” of Isaac ben Meïr of Dueren, to which he wrote a preface.

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But if you go to Wikipedia HERE, you’ll find another ‘mirror image’ profile for ‘Elijah Ba’al Shem of Chełm‘:

Elijah Ba’al Shem (1550 – 1583) was a Polish rabbi and kabbalist who served as chief rabbi of Chełm. One of the most eminent Talmudists of his generation, he is recorded as the first person known by the epithet “Ba’al Shem” having been considered a great saint and believed to have used miraculous powers to create a golem. Elijah was born to his father Aaron Judah in 1550. About 1565 he entered the yeshiva of Rabbi Solomon Luria of Lublin, and, after receiving his rabbinical ordination, became rabbi of Chełm, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.

In 1564, he gathered with other prominent rabbis, including his teacher, to co-sign the halachic rulings which allowed an agunah to remarry. His great-granddaughter married Rabbi Ephraim ha-Kohen (1616–1678), author of “Sha’ar Efrayim” and grandfather of Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi.

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There’s a few things to notice.

Firstly, ‘Elijah Ba’al Shem of Chelm’ appears to have died pretty young and is recorded as having no gravestone, despite having apparently risen from the dead during his funeral to make a church sink into the ground. That’s pretty weird, as we Jews venerate our saints, and visit their tombs.

So, it’s at least possible that these two ‘Elijah Baal Shems’ are really one and the same person.

The second thing is the connection between these two Elijahs, and Rabbi Solomon Luria of Lublin, (the MAHARSHAL) who apparently lived between 1510-1573. At least one of these Elijahs married the MAHARSHAL’s daughter, while another version has the MAHARSHAL marrying Elijah of Chelm’s daughter – which would be quite a feat, considering that even if the Baal Shem of Chelm got married at 13 and immediately had children, his oldest child would only be 10 years old when the MAHARSHAL died.

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According to the Freidiker Rebbe (page 34), ‘Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem’s father was:

“A certain Spanish Jew named Yosef Jospa“, who arrived in Cracow aged 50 years old, either in 5261 (1501) or 5265 (1505), and then married 30 years later, apparently aged 80 (!)

Elijah Loans grandpa is one Josel (Yosef) of Rosheim (1476 – 1554), who according to Wiki,

“Was considered as the most important advocate of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.”

This Yosel / Yosef styled himself ‘commander-in-chief’ of Germany Jewry, and is a very interesting character. This subject of who ‘R’ Eliyahu Baal Shem of Wurms’ really was requires a lot more clarification, and we’ll come back to it another time.

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Because now, I want to leave the Freideriker Rebbe’s ‘Baal Shems’ alone for a bit, and take a look at another strange story.

It starts in Chapter 30 (page 127) of the Freideriker’s memoirs, called ‘Prince Radziville and His Jewish Friend’. Earlier in the memoirs, the Freideriker explains how a place called ‘Harki’ is the secret central headquarters of these ‘kabbalist mystics’ who are wondering all over Eastern Europe spreading their unidentified creed that predates the Baal Shem Tov’s chassidut by at least a hundred years. The nearest I can find to a real ‘Harki’ is the city of Kharkiv, in Ukraine, but that apparently only had a Jewish community dating from the 1750s on, which doesn’t ‘fit’ the time frame in the memoirs. Otherwise, I can’t seem to find a real-life ‘Harki’. Here’s a snippet:

“Harki belonged to one of the Polish princes of the Radziwill family. He very rarely showed himself in these parts, spending most of his time in France. His estates just outside Harki were very valuable, including large forests which stretched for miles.

“One of these young noblemen of the Radziville family was named Benedict. He had a good friend in France, named Pierre Louis, who came from an assimilated Jewish family, had no connections with any Jews, and barely knew of his own Jewish origin. “Benedict married into the princely Russian family Demitrov who owned large estates in Russa, and palaces in Moscow. When he settled on the estates of his wife’s family, he brought his young friend of Jewish descent with him, as they were inseparable.”

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So, as part of trying to track down this real-life ‘Harki’, I started searching for Radziwill princes with Jewish ‘friends’.

And here’s where the story spirals off into crazy world.

There’s one person, one ‘Radziwill Prince’ who came up, in the right area, at the right time, with Jewish connections.

But he’s mamash not someone you’d want to boast about. Read on.

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First, here’s the ‘official’ Polish Wikipedia information about one ‘Martin Nicolai Radziwill’:

(I’ll do a compare and contrast with the English info in a moment, the below is Google translated from Polish, so it sounds a bit clunky).

Well-educated and erudite in his youth, [Martin] engaged in medicine, physics and alchemy in Lithuania [Vilna] After his father died, he inherited numerous estates. At a young age, he began to betray the symptoms of a mental disorder. He probably inherited it from his father John Santa. Over time, the disease began to drive him crazy. He imprisoned his second wife, along with his sons, for several years in an unfurnished room.

He also founded a harem consisting of abducted or purchased girls and imprisoned captured girls. He looted and set fire to the surrounding estates, practised robberies on the roads, abducted, imprisoned [and executed] people.  In his laboratory, he was looking for the Philosopher’s stone. He also took the talmud course and learned Hebrew, surrounded himself exclusively with Jews and observes religious practices with them.

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Aha! I thought to myself, when I stumbled over this. I think I’ve found a possible ‘real life’ candidate for ‘Benedict Radziville’, the good friend of the Jews. Maybe, he’s also connected to the mysterious ‘Abraham ben Abraham’, aka Count Potocki, the ger tzedek of Vilna… Sure, the ‘mental illness’ and ‘harem’ stuff sounded a little troubling, but I thought perhaps this was some Polish anti-semitism raising its head.

I decided to do some more research, to see what I could find. And that’s when I tripped over reams and reams of stories – all in Belarussian – describing how this Radziwille prince was heavily into practising satanic rituals, and ‘dark’ kabbalah – you know, all the stuff the Sabbean-Sabbatean-Frankist-Freemason nexus is so fond of. Here’s a translated snippet, from HERE:

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[Martin Radziwill] had no friends at the Vilna Academy, but when he played the violin, a crowd gathered under the windows of the house. He divided his free time between the library and the dens. Then, according to custom, went to travel around Europe. Looks like that’s where he got into alchemy. That’s what they called it — Science, with a capital letter.

Martin returned to his homeland, locked himself in his estate in Chernavchitsy, in the Brest region. What happened there is comparable to the legends that arose around the castles of Dracula and Gilles de Retz. Martin Radziwill started mining the Philosopher’s Stone. Clerics, tycoons, and even our Francysk Skaryna became fans of this process. Fortunes flew through the crucible tube, reputations collapsed…

==

Martin’s court alchemist, a certain Grabovsky, helped the prince in every possible way. He introduced him to his aunt, a practicing witch. And gradually, the noble practice of alchemy, which was not disdained even in monasteries, in the laboratories of the Chernavchitsky pan [prince], more and more resembled Satanic practices.

Not just chemical ingredients were used, but fragments of animals and even human corpses.

The prince, who was increasingly losing his mind because of his failures, learned about Kabbalah and wanted to master this powerful knowledge. On his orders, rabbis were brought to Chernavchitsy, who were supposed to teach the prince their wisdom.

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Long story short…. The guy sounded like a precursor for all the really yucky stuff connected to ritual abuse and murder that I’ve previously covered in posts like THIS. And this is the guy, the Radziwill Prince, who is hanging out with ‘the Jews’?!?!? How is that even possible? That’s when I remembered THIS post, about the ‘Bad Baal Shem‘ of London, Samuel Hayyim Falk (1710-1782) father-in-law of none other than Jacob Frank, Relevant snippet below:

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Samuel Falk is living in Podhajce, Poland – known as a hotbed of Sabbateans – while his son-in-law Jacob Frank was born in Korolowka, just 40 kms up the road, also to a Sabbatean family…

Falk is good friends with someone called Moses David of Podhajce, who is a notorious Sabbatean. These two hang out together doing ‘practical kabbalah’ – which we’ve already established is effectively black magic. Falk then moves from Podhajce to Furth in Germany – which was also known as a hotbed of secret Sabbateans – and from this point on, his reputation as a ‘Baal Shem’ starts to take off. He shows up in Westphalia claiming to be able to heal the sick, find buried treasure, and to have the secret of how to turn metal into gold. Falk is writing cabbalistic amulets for the people who flock to be healed by him, which also includes members of the non-Jewish landed gentry, like Count Rantzow.

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Here’s what Rantzow wrote about him:

“[M]y father frequently received the renowned prince and High Priest [sic] of the Jews, by the name of Hayim Samuel Falk. My father told me that this prince [sic] considers himself to be a scion of the line of King David.” Falk then starts quoting the New Testament at Count Rantzow, and then Rantzow recounts some of the (black magic…) miracles he’s told about, by another of Falk’s gentrified friends, Baron von Donop…

Donop tells Rantzow how Falk conjured up an ‘angel’ (aka demon…) when he brought him to his estate.

Then, he walked through his gardens, and said: “’I want to make you richer.’

He drew a circle and held in his hand a 30 ft long parchment scroll filled with letters. He prayed in Hebrew, and I immediately saw that a fire issued forth from the ground and rose to a height of 7 or 8 feet.” Then, Donop continues that the ground had opened by an oak tree, where he could see an enormous quantity of gold by its roots. Falk does other ‘black magic’ miracles for him, too, like making knives fly through the air, and performing ceremonies where ‘spirits’ suddenly fill empty parchments with writing. Donop concludes: “The greater my repugnance for this person, who is so renowned, the greater is my sense of trust in him.”

==

After spending a few years ‘finding gold’ for various members of the landed gentry (and it’s rumored, also the Jesuits) – Falk is charged with witchcraft and sorcery, and is forced to flee Europe before he’s burnt at the stake for being a wizard. Where does he show up next? London. And in London, the Spanish and Portuguese community greet him with open arms, and he quickly gets chummy with expat German banking Jews (and secret Sabbatians….), including Aaron and George Goldschmid, contemporaries of Nathan Mayer Rothschild. He also maintained close contact with the Chief Rabbi of England: “Rabbi David Tavli (our Rabbi and Teacher David Tavli the son of Shlomo Zalman HaKohen Shiff).”

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Sigh. We’ll stop there for now.

Again, the people who have hijacked the Jewish community, and who have thrust themselves into so very many of our leadership positions – for centuries, already – are Erev Rav.

The hypothesis I’m fleshing out here is that they are some sort of anti-Torah ‘Sabean‘ throwback, who have been pretending to be Jews – and xtians and muslims and Druze, and whatever else suits their purposes – for millenia. These people really are doing so much of what the anti-semites accuse the real Jews of doing. But they and their beliefs aren’t really ‘Jewish’ at all – and the Jewish community has to start that very painful process of finally identifying, and splitting away from, all this evil in our midst. Let the truth finally be told. Let the chips fall where they will.

And let Moshiach come the sweetest, and easiest way possible.

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Ad kan, from June 2021.

Harki could be ‘Gorki’ – or it could also be a ‘disguised’ reference to Horodenka.

I’m wondering, if Baruch Shick, Mad Martin’s ‘court physician’ is one and the same as this guy:

Martin’s court alchemist, a certain Grabovsky, helped the prince in every possible way. He introduced him to his aunt, a practicing witch. And gradually, the noble practice of alchemy, which was not disdained even in monasteries, in the laboratories of the Chernavchitsky pan [prince], more and more resembled Satanic practices.

And, I have a feeling the Freideriker’s memoirs talked quite a bit about this ‘Benedikt Radziwill’, aka patron saint of the Frankists.

I will have to go back and read it again.

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HERE is where you can borrow a version of the memoirs from the Internet Archive.

Screenshot of the contents page, where ‘Prince Radziwille’ seems to be deliberately mispelt:

This is a ten minute watch, shmirat eynayim friendly.

It’s not a frum guy, not even a Jewish guy, just a regular person, who did the experiment of locking their phone away for a month:

I Stopped Using My Phone. The results were shocking

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I’m also now researching the symptoms of Whatsapp addiction….

You might want to do that too.

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This is an even better video, 13 minutes (speed it up to make it even less time-wasting)… and shirat eynayim:

The ugly cost of smartphones

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It’s kind of depressing to me that I have to be arguing the obvious about smartphones here on the blog.

The Rav isn’t telling  us stuff to hurt us, make our lives harder, or give us impossible challenges to overcome.

He is simply stating the obvious.

Even enlightened non-Jews can recognise that it’s really, really bad to be on the smartphones… and on the Whatsapp… and all the rest of it.

BH, I give us all a bracha, that Hashem should help us break our smartphone addiction, stop making excuses for how much time we are wasting, and how much ‘real life’ we are missing out on…

Only with God’s help.

Perhaps, you’ve been wondering where I’ve got to the last couple of weeks.

The short answer is, I burned out, and I’ve been taking an extended break offline during ‘chochmas’, to work on re-energising mind, body and soul.

As part of that, I’ve begun doing the vision exercises in Meir Schneider’s book, Vision for Live, HERE.

His approach, and his story, have been very helpful, to trying to grope my way towards finding more balance between the panicked, fear-stoking ‘olam hadimayon’, aka the imaginary world online, and my real life, which is actually still doing pretty good, BH.

Yah, I know Trump kidnapped Maduro and took over Venezuela (incredible, that this is meant to be a serious headline in the so-called ‘real world’.).

I know, that Esav and other enemies are all over the place, up to their little tricks.

But what I know way more, is that Eretz Yisrael is actually booming at the moment, and the country is blossoming in a million different ways – even in YOSH, where I have lost count of the number of new farms and settlements that have gone up in the last few months.

The country is blossoming, and the headlines do not reflect the reality, not at all.

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As part of my reboot, I took 10 days offline to just focus on ‘real world’, and try to overcome a serious case of eye strain, that came about from trying to share so much information all the time, in a mad rush, like the world somehow depends on it, or something.

BH, I realise this is more of that ‘dimayon’ that I am trying to tackle now in my dalet amot, and I am trying to slow down, smell the roses more, balance, and stop getting pulled into other people’s ‘stress’ and dramas, that are mostly also based on dimayon and a blurry way of seeing the world.

Or to put it another way, I am working on developing some real eyes of emuna, and that is much harder work than you might think.

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But anyway, as part of the time off, we headed off to Mizpe Ramon for a bit, and the Ibex are all over the place there, thanks to Beresheet Hotel’s blurring the line between ‘wilderness’ and ‘tourism’.

What else changed in the last few years, is that most of the fast food places in Mizpe Ramon are now kosher.

I was discussing with my husband why that is, and part of the reason is that the frum population of the town is exploding.

But that’s only part of the reason.

The other part of the reason, is that the last few years, between Covid 19 lockdowns and Gaza Wars, most of the non-Jewish tourism has dried up here.

Which is actually fantastic news.

Because now, instead of pandering to tourists who eat traif and travel around on Shabbat in their coaches to all the tourism sites, any place that really wants to make parnassa has to deal with the full-time residents and local tourists.

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The people who stay in Israel, don’t tend to travel abroad for their holidays and are happy to go to Mizpe Ramon for a few nights, tend to be frummers.

In a million small ways like this, the Gaza War has actually helped Israel to wean-off the crusading tourism trade, and to start to cater to the locals.

To the frum locals, who keep kosher and shabbat.

We saw the same thing up North a few months ago, with a lot more kosher options and shabbat flexibility appearing up there, as the tourism industry gets to grip with who their core patrons are actually going to be, going forward.

It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

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So, here’s where I’ve got to, with what I’m doing here on the blog, with God’s help.

Still two translations from the Rav a week, wherever possible, BH.

FYI, the Rav has said precisely nothing about the incident in Bondi, and has been undergoing some serious medical treatment for the last month and a half which I hope has now ended, and been successful.

After this post, I will translate a couple of interesting snippets from the Shivivei Or two weeks ago, and stick them up here.

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Apart from that, I am planning to slow down a bit, to continue to write, but not to do it in the same ‘mad rush’.

That’s just playing into the olam hadimayon, and the mad pace of fake news, and manipulated headlines, designed to keep everyone stuck in panic and jumping to whatever tune the Evils try to play next.

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I am still doing my research, but with more discretion.

And I want to focus way more on Ha-good than Ha-bad, with God’s help, as I keep getting pulled back into that crud, no matter how hard I try to stay out of it.

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Bottom line: I think probably all of us need to take a serious pause for breath, re-evaluate what we are doing with ourselves, and especially how much time we spend online, engaging with ‘Candace’ and other BS, and try to put more of our focus on our real life relationships, and looking after ourselves and our loved ones, than breathlessly debating more stupid headlines.

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I don’t care that Trump kidnapped Maduro, honestly.

I am not playing that game, and if you still are, it’s a shame, because there are so many more useful and beautiful things that could be taking up your headspace.

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So, that’s where I got to, in my two week break.

I am really hoping God is going to help me stay above all the crud online, and to continue trying to share more practical Breslov teachings here, that I’ve found helpful, and that maybe, you will too.

No doubt, I will fall back into the crud at some point, but hopefully not for long.

Tachlis, I am trying to limit my time online to maximum three hours a day now (remember, I don’t have a smartphone…) so my eyes won’t get buggered from all the scrolling and blue light.

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In the meantime, I am starting to rediscover some hope and optimism about the future again.

Things are much better than they look, than how they are being portrayed online.

At least, for frum Jews in the Holy Land.

Redemption sprouts precisely when it seems the seed has totally rotted away, and there is nothing left.

If we’re not at that point already, we are fast approaching it.

I remembered this old article from Politico, written in April 2017.

Amazingly, it’s still up. For now.

You can find it HERE.

It’s entitled:

The-Happy-Go-Lucky-Jewish-Group-That-Connects-Trump-To-Putin

And most of those connections are happening around multi-million dollar real estate projects… just like what Kushner and Witkoff are planning for Gaza.

Go read it yourselves, now that we’ve established that the tov she be’esav is probably the biggest swamp creature of all, it makes very enlightening reading.

As usual, all hidden in plain view, for the best part of a decade.

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UPDATE:

So now, I went on an ‘old news stories from 2016-2017’ spree, and my oh my, what a lot of enlightening information is turning up, when we take off the blinders and see through all the 8-D chess psy-ops about the tov she be’esav.

THIS old article links to tens of old headlines about Trump, and Kushner, and ‘the Russians’ – and the connecting material between them…

Here are a few old articles I highly recommend re-reading:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190310092515/https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/78372/bin-exclusive-sanhedrin-asks-putin-trump-build-third-temple-jerusalem/

Snippet:

Rabbi Hillel Weiss, spokesman for the Sanhedrin, contacted Breaking Israel News to announce that the election of Trump, who has promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, coupled with Putin’s expressed desire for the Temple to be rebuilt, prompted the Jewish court to send a letter offering the two the opportunity to act as modern-day Cyrus figures: non-Jewish kings who recognize the importance of Israel and the Temple.

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Or this:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/11/vladimir-putin-chabad-whats-behind-the-russian-presidents-close-relationship-with-an-orthodox-jewish-sect.html

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Or this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170815025249/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/putin-and-netanyahu-to-strike-deal-on-leviathan-gas-field/news-story/

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I could carry on for hours….

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UPDATE 2:

Did you know that Trump gave a shout out to his ‘kabbalah teacher’, Eitan Yardeni, in his book The Way to the Top?

Screenshot:

No, I also didn’t know that.

Yardeni is a member of Berg’s Kabbalah Center, here’s his page: https://onehouse.kabbalah.com/en/people/eitan-yardeni/

This is getting weirder and weirder.

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In the meantime, HERE is where you can find a ‘CrownHeights’ official response to that Politico piece:

Snippet:

Politico took great pains to tie the Chabad movement to Putin, and in so doing, omits a few fairly crucial points that could have been fleshed out by actually speaking with a representative of the movement (this guy might have been a good person to start with). While there are outposts of the movement in Russia, there also exist outposts everywhere else in the world. Their emissaries, called schulchim, are technically titled “messengers” because they talk to anyone, anywhere, in an attempt to spread Judaism to Jews in far-flung corners of the Earth.

Chabad’s history in the former USSR is filled with persecution, arrest, and exile. To survive anywhere, but especially in a land as hostile to Jews as Russia is, it’s no wonder the group has worked hard to remain in the government’s good graces.

Blind to the blatant anti-Semitic tropes it trotted out, Politico then paints the movement as a large, rich, tightly woven organization, a depiction straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

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Personally, I don’t think it’s anti-semitic to report provable facts linking certain people and organisations to dangerous mafias who work behind the scenes to sow terror and destruction for the average Joe, just so they can get more leverage, money, power – and of course, real estate.

Do you?

Tov, I will leave this here for now.

It seems, there is nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to the Russian deep State.

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UPDATE 3: THE COLLIVE RESPONSE TO POLITICO

This is also very enlightening reading. Snippet:

Politico claims it’s the Chabad connections that cement the bond between Putin and Trump. But why stop there?

The article could have revealed the true depth of the Chassidic conspiracy. It didn’t mention the links between Chabad and the Democrats. Former Obama Chief of Staff Jack Lew, an observant Jew, attended the same synagogue that the Kushners do. Bernie Sanders‘ closest friend and college roommate is a Chabad Chassid, beard and all.

And what about Hollywood? Steven Spielberg dedicated a Chabad synagogue in LA, Beis Bezalel, in memory of his stepfather. His late mother was a member there. Mark Zuckerberg was caught dancing with the Chabad Rabbi at a Purim party in Harvard. It’s even at the New York Times! Tom Friedman recently attended the wedding of his niece in the Chassidic bastion of Crown Heights in Brooklyn.

If Politico had done the most basic fact checking it would have discovered that Chabad is unique amongst major Jewish groups — it never gets involved in politics.

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One of the comments gives a few more connections:

jack lew’s cousin is rabbi shmuel lew

Here’s a snippet about him, from HERE:

Rabbi Shmuel Lew is the senior Chabad emissary to London, England. Rabbi Lew spent many years with the Lubavitcher Rebbe and was present at many of the Chassidic gatherings during this time.   Rabbi Lew and his family had a very close relationship with the Rebbitzen during her years in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This was a friendship enjoyed by very few people.

Well, talk about connected.

And of course, it’s totally obvious that Chabad ‘never gets involved in politics’.

Isn’t it?

Baruch Hashem, I made it to the prayer gathering yesterday.

It was very good to be there, but the Rav unfortunately couldn’t come to join, as was advertised, because he is currently unwell again, and is in the middle of a course of 50 daily treatments for his condition at the hospital.

How the Rav stands up for hours and hours, in cold, rain, wind, heat, outside on his mirpeset during the evening prayers is something truly astounding.

But I would say a couple of thousand people came, and recited the 7 Tikkun Haklalis at the Me’arat HaMachpela.

That has to be a good thing, and BH, the prayers will help ‘sweeten’ whatever else is going on at the moment.

==

I go through cycles of trying to go totally ‘cold turkey’ on the news, even the two sources of information I still look at, because as things progress, the lies being told are just so big, and so obvious, they can totally ruin my day before it’s even begun.

The truth comes from within a person’s heart, within a person’s soul.

And it’s really a fool’s game, to keep trying to ‘persuade’ soul-dead morons into challenging even some of the lies we’re all being told.

That’s true of everything – but doubly true about any discussion about  making aliya, or making real teshuva.

At the end of the day, a person is led on the path they want to walk on.

If a person wants to stay stuck in their lies, there is absolutely no piece of information, no argument, no overwhelming fact, that can change their mind.

That’s the bottom line.

==

So, how do we ‘get out of Chelm’ in our own dalet amot, how do we start to see what’s true and what isn’t, tachlis?

The answer is: an hour a day of hitbodedut.

And if an hour is too much to start with, start with a minute, five minutes, ten minutes, every single day  but start, already!

Our time, our energy, is so precious.

We spend hours and hours ‘doom scrolling’ through internet crud that is nearly all concocted and scripted and staged (clearly, I’m talking about the ‘news’)… and then hours and hours more engaging with pointless speculation, to try and quell that uneasy feeling in the soul that ‘we’re being lied to, what’s really going on?’

The shortcut to clarity is to do hitbodedut.

And to just ask God, to show us what we need to be thinking about, focussing on, understanding.

God will give the answers, if a person keeps on sincerely asking for clarity.

==

For example, all this research into the ‘Badd – do you know how many times I go into hitbodedut and I’m really asking God what He wants from me with all this, because so often my personal inclination is to let sleeping dogs lies.

As outlined above, you can’t win arguments with soul-dead morons, no matter how much good information and archival documentation you might have.

So, why should I just carry on upsetting soul-dead morons by dragging skeletons out of 200 year old cupboards?

What’s the point, the tachlis, the positive outcome, from this?

In my hitbodedut, I keep getting the message: continue, and don’t give up.

==

Last week, before the first night of Chanuka, I started reading the scholarly book on the Alter Rebbe, that one of my readers managed to track down and send me (thanks!)

It was Friday night, and suddenly, I started to feel like I was going to throw up.

I went to bed, started to do some serious hitbodedut about what was going on, because I felt it was connected to that Alter Rebbe book.

Long story short – I had the distinct feeling I was under attack from the Alter Rebbe of ‘Badd, and that only Rabbenu, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, could save me.

I asked my husband to stick that Alter Rebbe book in a large copy of the Likutey Moharan – and within five minutes, I felt way way better.

==

So now, I did some more hitbodedut on what all this meant.

Clearly, it meant I should forget about that book and just carry on doing other stuff with myself.

Right?

Apparently not right.

In hitbodedut, I just got the same message over and over again: proceed with the research, but tread very carefully, as you dealing with things that are really evil.

I was kinda surprised myself, to be honest, at how ‘vehement’ this message was.

Sure, there’s a lot of mishandling funds, financial deception, ties to Frankists, Sabbatean theology that hasn’t been ‘rectified’, spying for the deep state, ties to the Catholic and Russian Orthodox church, ties to the evangelicals – but ‘evil’?!

That’s very strong language.

==

The next day, what happened, happened.

==

I am talking to God about this all the time.

I am trying to figure out what He wants me to do.

It could be, my own biases are still tripping me up, even so, that’s very possible.

Unlike a lot of the people who like to comment here, or send me holier-than-thou emails, I am not pretending to be a tzaddik, or anything approaching one.

And I can guarantee, that my critics are not doing hitbodedut themselves, because if they were, they’d at least be phrasing their criticisms with a tad more humility and self-awareness.

==

So, this is where we’re up to.

About to dive back into to another ‘saga from Chelm’, whether it’s ‘Covid 25’, more ‘war with Iran’, more ‘false messiahs’ – it’s all just on a loop, that goes round and round and round again, giving more people the chance to finally wake up, realise what’s true and what isn’t, and make the changes, the teshuva, God is requiring of them, to step into the world of truth.

A lot of people are not going to manage that transition, it seems.

I hope that I’m going to manage it, there are no guarantees here for any of us.

All I have going for me is my efforts to try to stay connected to real tzaddikim, the True Tzaddikim, especially Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, and Rav Berland.

==

But that counts for everything.