How many times have we seen all these people online go crazy ‘speculating’ about Moshiach stuff?

Hands up: I was also doing that a lot the first ten years I got to Israel, off the back of the autistics, who were preparing the ground for people like me to start taking the whole idea of ‘moshiach’ seriously enough to move to Israel.

If that’s the only thing the autistics did for me, and for many others, dayenu.

My grown-up daughter told me  yesterday she is so grateful we made aliyah 20 years ago, so her and her sister could grow up as ‘Israelis’.

Without all the struggles to fit in, speak the language, make friends, feel at home, get a job etc, that so many of us olim experience.

It’s honestly the biggest present I think me and my husband could have given our kids, that their home is ‘here’ and not ‘there’.

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So, if that’s all the autistics did, dayenu.

Before I started reading them, I was stuck being ‘modern orthodox’ in London, thinking I was a tzaddeket because I kept shabbat and gave some tzedeka…

And then all of a sudden, I started to realise that ‘geula’ was a real concept. ‘Moshiach’ is a real concept. ‘Sincere teshuva’, even, is a real concept.

And that understanding led me to make aliya, led me to Rebbe Nachman, led me to Rav Berland, led me to being way, way happier than I otherwise would be, even if the ‘externals’ of life would have remained a lot more comfortable, in many ways, if we’d stayed put.

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The suffering and difficulties we went through the last few years, the last 20 years, since we moved, are really what helped to break my yetzer hara, and to get me closer to at least trying to have a real relationship with Hashem.

I wouldn’t wish them on anyone, or want to go through it all again myself – but I recognise the huge spiritual value of what all the hardships did for me, because I had / have a lot of bad middot, and the difficulties is what has been reducing them, by making me more humble.

If I’d stayed a big external ‘success story’ in London, that simply wouldn’t have happened.

Either I’d be in the loony bin, or everyone around me would be.

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Which brings me to the point of this post.

Around 10 years ago, I finally realised that all this ‘geula speculation’ is:

1. Totally pointless.
2. Doing more harm than good.
3. Actually taking people away from making real, sincere teshuva
4. Is mostly engaged in by people who have a) no desire to change anything about their real life or bad middot b) like to crank up attention and drama, for their own reasons.

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This got reinforced two years ago, when a certain person started ‘channelling prophecies’ claiming they were from the Rav.

We all saw with our own eyes, how much trouble that caused spiritually, and at this point, I am of the view that the whole episode probably just obscured the truth even more.

‘Nuff said.

(Just to keep this ‘real’, I have no idea what really went all with that. It’s part of the ‘staying out of speculation’ to not starting slagging people off about any of these things, because who knows, what ‘great scheme’ is really happening here, with all this.)

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Point is: the speculation about Moshiach has always been the biggest stumbling block, to geula really happening.

That’s probably why the Rav tried to turn the heat down on the whole subject, by famously saying ‘only in another 200 years!!!’

Because in the meantime, we have so much work to do within our own dalet amot, and on our own bad middot.

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Rav Natan famously said that for him, the Moshiach had already come.

What does that mean, tachlis?

It means that for him, he was already living the reality that Ein Od Milvado, God is all there is, and trying to have that emuna every second of the day, and to live it as a reality.

I’m not claiming to be on the level of Rav Natan, I am currently struggling a lot with fallen fears, and occasionally, yeoush about what is happening or not happening – but one thing I know:

Waiting for ‘Moshiach’ to come and fix all the things that are wrong in my life, and with myself, is totally and utterly NOT what I’m meant to be doing right now.

God wants me, and everyone else, to take personal responsibility for their own lives, their own ‘mess’, and to stop blaming everyone else for what’s going wrong, and to stop acting like a ‘victim’, and to stop using ‘Moshiach coming’ as a crutch to keep ducking the necessity of getting real, and dealing with our problems ourselves.

Of course, with copious prayers and holding God’s hand, and tons and tons of hitbodedut and real soul searching.

There is no other way.

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So, if you prefer all the soul-draining speculation about ‘Moshiach coming’, feel free to carry on.

If it’s prompting you to move to Israel, to start making some sincere teshuva in other areas, to try to ‘fix’ all the stuff required to fix – then good stuff is still coming from it, spiritually.

But if you are just an armchair spectator of geula, thinking that it’s enough to constantly point to ‘signs and wonders’, while making zero progress on overcoming bad middot and having emuna – YOU ARE IN THE WRONG RELIGION.

That’s how xtians relate to the ‘end of days’.

And some of those xtians believe that they will be ‘caught up’ to heaven when all the bad stuff happens, where they can sit on their comfy sofas having a beer with ‘moshiach’ while humanity gets destroyed around them.

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If this sounds ridiculous, how different is it, really, to believe that when Moshiach comes, shuls in chul will somehow ‘grow wings’ and set everyone down inside the Holy Land, safe and sound, and also with a large luxury apartment, to boot, in Jerusalem?

That’s an uncomfortable parallel, I know.

It should be.

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Bottom line:

WE are here to work on overcoming bad middot and to develop some real emuna.

It’s the work of 120 years.

Endless ‘speculation’ about moshiach coming is actually far more akin to what evangelical xtians engage in, than Jews.

Jews yearn for moshiach to come every single day, and we don’t duck the ‘bad’ in the world. We know things are very broken, at the moment.

But, we also don’t think ‘moshiach’ is going to do all the hard work for us, to fix what is so obviously our own responsibility to fix, or try to fix, via hitbodedut, and deep, sincere teshuva.

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May we just hear good news.

And in the meantime, may God enable each one of us to make the teshuva required gently, so that at least in our own dalet amot, within ourselves, with our nearest and dearest, we can enjoy life to the max, and continue to learn Torah, perform mitzvot, and help others however God wants us to.

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PS: I don’t want to cast aspersions on the people stuck in the speculation klipah.

I’m sure many of them, most of them, are doing it with the best of intentions.

Just, it’s not helpful.

And the sooner more of us realise that, the better it will be.

Excerpt of a shiur given over on Shushan Purim, 5786 (March 5, 2026)

Here, it’s written in Yirmiyahu, 29, ‘seventy years’.[1]

“After seventy years for Babylonia have been completed I will attend to you.”

I will attend to you, and return you to Eretz Yisrael.

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And so, Yirmiyahu bought a field the day before [Jerusalem] was conquered – he bought a field. Now, a field is worth $10,000. In another 70 years, it will be worth a billion.

Hide it away, deep, deep within the ground.[2] If you will be around in another 70 years, it will be worth a billion!

Now, it’s the conquering of Jerusalem, like with Napoleon.

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Napoleon was going to conquer England.

So at that time, all the banks, a bank worth a billion was only worth $100,000. He was going to take the money, he made the attempt, he didn’t manage to do it. He was already waiting to cross the Channel.

This is Wellington, the most famous person was Wellington. There are 10 cities called ‘Wellington’ – in New Zealand, in Miami, in America there are perhaps 10 cities called ‘Wellington’.

It needs to be written down, how many cities are called ‘Wellington’. They are named after him.

He was the commander, and his sword was already broken, and the guns were finished, the bullets were used up.

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This was his [Napoleon’] second expedition.

He was on the Island of Alba. On the Island of Alba – he was there for 10 months, 100 days he was there. He was 100 days, this is three months, and they put him [there[ with 400 soldiers.

And then he went to conquer Paris all over again.

Because in 1805, that’s when they banished him to Alba. 1805 – this is 5565. The Rebbe [Rebbe Nachman of Breslov] said that some crazy person was ruling over the whole of France. 1805.

And then, there was the Vienna Conference, and then there was MUNICH ?, when they ruled to put him on the Island of Alba.

After this, they put him in Africa, on a solitary island. Then, he was on Santa Rosa, he was on a solitary island, and there, they replaced him. They managed to replace him, and then they straight away killed him. His sister sold the house.[3]

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This is a whole book.

That he was killed there, on Santa Helena, it was called ‘Santa Helena’. Santa Helena.

This is already in Africa, it’s opposite Africa. Santa Helena.

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So, after they they put him on Alba, and they didn’t manage to do anything [to kill him off], so he came with 400 soldiers to reconquer Paris – and he conquered Paris!

Each person that came to fight against him, he said to them, why are you fighting against the Emperor?!

After he’d lost 500,000 soldiers! That’s what he’d lost![4] From 500,00 soldiers, only 30,000 remained. Now, he was only recruiting children aged 16 to be soldiers, against England.

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He went to conquer England, at the Battle of Waterloo.

This is the most famous battle in the world. The ‘Battle of Waterloo’ – this is in Belgium. That’s where had his downfall.

The ‘Battle of Waterloo’ – and they also sold all the banks, the banks were all sold.[5]

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Because this was Anshel.

He was called ‘Anshel’, but his real name was with an ‘m’ – Amshel, not Anshel

Moshe Anshel, he was called. And he was the shamash (attendant) of Yaakov of Galuna. There is the get of Galuna, there is the get of Slavita. The get of Slavita and the get of Galuna.

Two gets.

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There, the Noda B’Yehuda was against the get.

The get of Galuna – because it was the son of his nephew, Yitzhak Hamburger. She decided she was going to become ‘modern’, she’d already raised her sleeves up a little. So, he immediately divorced her, and ‘threw’ a get at her.

So he [the Nodah B’Yehuda] ruled that the get didn’t take effect, because it was forbidden to ‘throw’ a get. The Nodah B’Yehuda, this was the daughter of his bat dodah (cousin).

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Translated from Shivivei Or, 449.

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Ad kan, from the Rav.

I asked AI to give me a total of the number of cities called Wellington, it came back with this:

• Major recognized towns/cities: ~15–20

• Including small towns, townships, and localities: 40–60+ worldwide

The major ones are:

• 🇳🇿 New Zealand: Wellington — southern North Island (capital city)

• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: Wellington — southwest England; Wellington — West Midlands; Wellington — near Hereford, west England

• 🇺🇸 United States: Wellington — southeast Florida; Wellington — northern Ohio; Wellington — south-central Kansas; Wellington — northern Colorado; Wellington — western Nevada; Wellington — eastern Utah

• 🇨🇦 Canada: Wellington — western PEI; Wellington — Prince Edward County, Ontario

• 🇦🇺 Australia: Wellington — inland NSW, northwest of Sydney

• 🇿🇦 South Africa: Wellington — northeast of Cape Town in wine region

• 🇮🇳 India: Wellington — Nilgiri Hills (military cantonment)

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Of the smaller Wellingtons, this one is the most interesting:

🇨🇱 Chile:

• Wellington Island — large island in southern Patagonia

Nothing the Rav says is ‘stam’.

I put this whole list of ‘Wellingtons’ into a PDF, that you can download HERE.

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In the meantime, I also went back to my copious notes on the get of Galuna, and I think I’ve finally figured out the ‘Mayer Amschel’ the Rav is talking about.

The main people stirring up the ‘Get of Cleves’ controversy in Frankfurt included a dayan called NATHAN MAAS, who died in 1794.

Rabbi Israel Lipschuetz published a work called ‘Ohr Yisrael’ in 1770. On pages 31 and 32, after he had accused the Frankfurt rabbis of spreading lies about him, and of being utterly dishonest, he included the text of a public declaration he had made in Cleves that described the ‘wickedness of these men’ in explicit detail, even referring to Rabbi Maas as ‘the evil and corrupt dayan of Frankfurt’.

That version of the ‘Ohr Yisrael’ was quickly pulled and replaced with a version that didn’t say this.

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Here is a family tree for NATHAN MAAS, which was from the Goldschmidt family tree site that has now been ‘scrubbed’ off the net:

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4.a.b: Is the entry for one MAYER AMSCHEL, d. 1790.

This is who I think the legendary shamash of ‘Yokel of Galuna’ actually was, in real life, who became the ancestor of the Rothschilds.

The ‘evil dayan’ of Frankfurt who stirred up the Get of Cleves controversy with R Abraham Abish can be found at 4. b. 1 – NATHAN SOLOMON MAAS, d. 1794.

He is the first cousin of ‘MAYOR AMSCHEL’s dad, ‘Amschel Herz im Goldenen Strauss, d. 1745’.

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Of course, MAYOR AMSCHEL has been completely scrubbed off the geni version of the family tree, HERE.

And his brother’s tombstone has been defaced, to who knows what other clues have been destroyed:

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Tov, we’ll stop there for now.

In other news, the Rescue Remedy has been working quite well the last three nights, so I’m getting a better sleep, big booms in the night notwithstanding.

Still a mad world we live in… so just, keep your eyes down, focussed on the dalet amot directly in front of you, and move forward a step at a time, holding God’s hand.

This too will pass.

Hopefully, before we all go nuts from the day-to-day stress of it.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] The full verse reads: (29:9-10): “For it is falsehood that they prophesy to you in My Name; I did not send them—the word of Hashem. For thus said Hashem: After seventy years for Babylonia have been completed I will attend to you and I will fulfill for you My favorable promise, to return you to this place.”

[2] I.e. the bill of sale stating that Jeremiah had bought the field.

[3] As often happens with the Rav, this doesn’t seem to be a straightforward telling of ‘conventional history’. It’s possible the Rav is using the cover of Napoleon’s story to sweeten something in our days, involving ‘rulers of the world’ who had isolated islands, and who got ‘exchanged’ shortly after being imprisoned…

[4] In the famous siege of Moscow, against Alexander I – who was a big evangelical with close connections to the ‘mystics’ and missionaries of Protestant Britain, particularly Lewis Way, patron of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews.

[5] In England, in anticipation of Napoleon’s invasion.

I want to make sure I’m touching on relevant stuff, in the Shalom Bayit segment of next week’s free Pesach webinar.

So, please take a mo and let me know what’s the biggest challenge Pesach is posing to your shalom bayit:

You can pick as many topics as are relevant, and it’s 100% anonymous.

Thankenchou.

This morning, I read this awesome prayer from the Rav.

The last few weeks, even before the latest round of ‘WAR WITH IRAN’, I’ve been feeling a lot of repressed anxiety.

Because it’s ‘repressed’, it tends to come out at night, when I suddenly can’t breathe so well, or find myself grinding my teeth again.

I already cracked a tooth last year because of 5+ years of ‘Covid plus Oct. 7’ repressed anxiety, I really don’t want to do that again.

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So, I paid my pid two days’ ago, yesterday I also asked the gabbai to ask the Rav if he could pray for me, to get past all this ‘anxiety’ that is so repressed I can’t even rustle it up in hitbodedut.

And for the last three days, I’ve also started saying a few pages of the Rav’s ‘prayers to overcome fears’.

This is the prayer I said this morning, and it spoke to me so very much.

I will put the original Hebrew underneath the English.

This took me two hours to translate, if you catch any mistakes let me know.

(And don’t tell me about AI…. I ran this through AI, and it translated about 50% correctly, then made up a bunch of other stuff and also took out and added in according to it’s own whim. The stuff it was very careful to remove was any reference to Rebbe Nachman and the true tzaddikim… Basically, I did all this from scratch myself, to make sure it was as accurate as I could get it.)

Enjoy!

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How great are Your mercies, Ribono Shel Olam, You know the depth of compassion needed for me, and for my brother[s] and sister[s], that there is nobody who can illuminate a person’s body today, just Rabbenu HaKadosh [Rebbe Nachman of Breslov].

And if the body is not ‘lit up’, then the neshama also can’t shine.

And so, Master of Mercies, who can do anything and from whom nothing is withheld, place true mercy within my heart, upon me and upon all my brothers and sisters, that we should search for the real truth.

We should wake up for chatzot and be awake until the morning, and we shouldn’t let any person, and no brazen one, stand between us and the magnificent advice [of Rebbe Nachman.]

And that I should have the strength, and my brother[s] and sister[s] should have the strength, to stand up to the ‘brazen-faced’ ones of the generation, who want to take us away from the True Tzaddikim.

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And rescue us and differentiate us from the ‘evil shepherds’, and from the ‘false leaders’, that all their leadership and loftiness comes only from the ‘advice’ of the Sitra Achra, which is ‘kingship without a crown.’

And they dominate and exalt themselves in front of the people with no basis. And You alone know just how much evil they are causing by this, chas v’shalom.

And it’s not enough that they don’t bring us closer to the True Tzaddikim, rather, they even distance me, and my brother[s] and sister[s] further from the True Tzaddikim, and from the point of truth, and from the truly upright.

Have mercy on me, and on my brothers and sisters, with innumerable mercies, and differentiate us from the pious hypocrites and liars, from the false leaders, and give us ‘holy brazenness’, so that we can stand up to their brazenness.

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And help us, that we should have the strength, by way of ‘holy brazenness’, to gather our might, and our holy power from above, and that You should influence us to have strength and power, and it’s written, ‘Give strength to God’.

And by way of this, we should merit to overpower [the bad] and to exert ourselves to perform Your work and [learn] Your Torah, and to fear You, with great strength and courage, and with great and holy brazenness.

And that we shouldn’t be embarrassed in front of the mockers, and that no terror, fear or shame should fall upon us, and no weakening of our faith, because of any person, or creation, in the whole world.

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Because we should only be afraid and scared and ashamed before You alone – that we shouldn’t turn away from doing Your holy will, to the right, nor to the left, for ever and ever.

Fulfill within us the verse that says: “Give strength to God; He gives strength and might to His people.”

And give me and my wife [husband] the merit, and my brother[s] and sister[s] to experience the clearest of clear light put out by the True Tzaddik.

And don’t let any hinderer or inciter prevent us from experiencing the pleasant and wonderful light of Rabbenu, the holiest of holies. [Rebbe Nachman].

And sanctify all of us with the kedusha of the holy of holies, even though we aren’t worthy to come close to such a great light.

But You, in Your infinite mercy, bring close also those who aren’t worthy.

And remove the barrier that stands at the entrance, and we should become infused with yirat shemayim (fear of Heaven), that will drive me and my brother[s] and sister[s] on to the path of the Etz HaChaim (the Tree of Life).

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Merciful and Compassionate One, who can do anything and from whom nothing is withheld, Attacker of all the attackers, Victor over all the victorious, You can make it that in the blink of an eye, that my brother[s] and sister[s] will return to the true path, to the path of the Tree of Life.

And please remove the heat of the threatening sword hanging over my brother[s] and sister[s], because You can do anything, and You can bring things to pass as part of Your enormous wonders that in the blink of an eye, their eyes should be opened.

“Because we have nobody else to rely on, except for our Father in Heaven.”

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That You should do like Your great and wonderful kindnesses and mercies, and do it for Your sake, not for ours, “for the sake of your Name, Hashem…”

And give us the merit to win over our enemies, and to overcome them, and to subdue them, and to lower them to the dust, and they shouldn’t have any power to move us away at all, chas v’shalom, from any holy matter – and not from doing anything that You want us to do.

And be our Helper, to really return us to You in complete teshuva,

And may the ‘distancing’ be the beginning of the ‘coming closer’.

And may the ‘downs’ transform into ‘ups’.

And we should perform Your will, always, and for ever.

As it is written: “Your kindness, Hashem, fills the earth; teach me Your statutes.” [Tehillim 119]

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“Deliverance is the L‑rd’s; may Your blessing be upon Your people forever.” [From the Havdala blessing.]

“Rise up, Hashem, save me, my God, for You struck all of my enemies on the cheek. The teeth of the wicked You broke.” [Tehillim 3.]

“I don’t fear the myriads of people that are all around, deployed against me.” [Tehillim 3].

“All the nations surround me; it is in the Name of Hashem that I cut them down! They encircle me, also they surround me; it is in the Name of Hashem that I cut them down! They encircle me like bees, but they are extinguished as a fire of thorns; it is in the Name of Hashem that I cut them down!” [Tehillim 118].

And please have mercy on my brother[s] and sister[s], that they will crave You with all their heart. They are pursued to the very neck by those who seek their blood and speak violence.

But it is Your way to advocate for the persecuted, and so take them out from the innards of the Samech Mem.

“From the belly of the grave I cried out – You heard my voice!” [Yonah, 2:3.]

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And do with us according to Your kindnesses, in a way that we will be able to totally escape from the evil, and that then we shall fulfill the verse:

“For Hashem knows the way of the Tzaddikim, but the way of the wicked will perish.” (Tehillim 1:6].

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I am sure I’m not the only one who is feeling as though the events of the last couple of weeks has totally blown me out of the water.

I literally feel like I couldn’t think straight since all this started, couldn’t remember stuff, couldn’t really ‘deal’ with things, but of course, still having to do things like make a Purim seuda and host kids who were scared to stay in their panel houses with all the booms going on overhead, with a baby.

The kids returned home two days ago.

I spent a morning in the library, getting back on top of some of my research.

I came home, managed to even make a nice supper, which believe me, is not so straightforward at the moment.

And then, I managed to breathe a bit.

Literally, just to sit in the sun, and to breathe a bit.

And to remember again, life is still good, and all this is going in a good direction, despite how it looks.

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Last week, after Purim, the Rav gave one of his shiurim after the evening prayers, where I couldn’t catch a lot, but what I did hear, repeatedly was this message:

The whole inyan of Purim is to have an ayin tovah – a good eye.

Because Haman had everything in the world, literally, except for that one pesky Jew who wouldn’t bow down to him, and because of that one ‘fly’ in his ointment – he felt he had nothing.

This is the klipat Haman that we’re all still up against between now and Pesach.

That nagging feeling that ‘life sucks’, just because we can’t do exactly what we want, have exactly what we want, exactly when we want it.

Personally, I’ve been having a big struggle with that, the last two weeks.

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First week of this latest episode of WAR WITH IRAN, a lot of things were shut down again.

I suddenly had a strange urge to go shopping and to buy a smoothie – and I couldn’t do it.

Mamash, I had Covid lockdown vibes again, and started to feel a bit claustrophobic, miserable and despairing, because how many times are they just going to keep doing this to us all, and nothing can apparently stop them?!?!?

It took me a few days of trying to work things through in my hitbodedut, to understand I was dealing with a big dose of the ‘klipat Haman’, and that the Rav had already pointed out the antidote:

Have an ayin tovah – a good eye.

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Just keeping seeing the tremendous good in life.

Keep being grateful for all the small and big blessings that literally crowd every day, for every single person.

Can you breathe? Can you see? Can you use your teeth to chew stuff? Can you walk around?

That’s even before we get into all the more gashmi stuff, like a nice, hot shower, a cup of coffee, a crisp, green apple, a yummy butter croissant…

Life is still good, bottom line.

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But I  have to wake up each day anew, and remind myself about this all over again, at the moment.

There was some big siren in the middle of the night here in Jerusalem yesterday, after two nights of quiet.

You feel some yeoush when that happens, because it feels you are being pulled back into that state of sleep deprivation and engineered ‘panic’.

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What’s the antidote to all this madness?

Get back on the horse.

Get on with your day, your life.

Sit in the sun and breathe a bit.

Have a ‘good eye’, to notice all the continued blessings in life.

And if you have energy to get a bit deeper, the ‘good eye’ can then look a little further up the road ahead, to understand that some very good things are coming out of all this madness and suffering.

Not least, that the mask is coming of a whole bunch of people, that the ‘idols’ are smashing on all sides of the equation.

And that the real people, you and me, are finally starting to shake off the brainwashing, and to understand there is only God, and God is orchestrating all this to bring people back to Him.

In the kindest, gentlest way possible.

Which is why this is being shmeared across two decades of ‘small wars’ and painful waiting, instead of one short, sharp shock that wouldn’t leave many people standing at the end of it.

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B’kitzur: get back on the horse.

Get back into ‘life’.

And do your best to have a ‘good eye’ about everything that is going on.

And especially, about your own good self, and all the things you are doing to keep going to put food on the table, serve Hashem, help others, even in the midst of the madness.

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PS: I’ve been feeling too overwhelmed to translate stuff from the Rav, but hopefully, that is starting to wear off now. I hope to put something up by the end of the week, God willing.