The last few weeks, I have been making a huge effort to get ‘offline’ more, and to do things in the real world.

I joined a gym, I’m doing pilates, volunteering a little, once a week, and doing an art chug.

All this means that I am now coming into way more contact with what I’ll call ‘normies’.

You know, people who still think that voting in elections actually changes stuff, and that the Daily Mail still writes ‘news stories’, and that Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon way back when.

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I know better than to start shooting my mouth off about…. Well, anything.

Pretty much.

I started learning that lesson with what happened with the Rav, and it only intensified over Covid.

The world is so full of lies at this point, it’s hard to talk about anything that’s actually ‘true’ with a normie. Even the weather – that perennial fall-back for small talk – is out of bounds these days.

So, I generally just keep my mouth shut.

But sometimes, I can’t.

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Last week, I tried to invite one of the ‘normie’ women I’d met for a shabbat meal. She’s from the UK, sweet, single….

Then, she made the mistake of asking me that question that all Londoners are programmed to ask:

So, what do you do?

And I made the mistake of actually trying to answer it:

I write a blog, and a bunch of books that nobody buys.

Oh, what do you write about?

Maybe I was tired, or just a bit ‘out of it’, or maybe I forgot that ‘normies’ are literally breathing and eating lies 24/7, that there is nothing I could have said to have kept the conversation in safe, ‘normal’ land.

I write about Sabbateans and real Jewish history. Amongst other things.

Really?

I could see the first flicker of anxiety sparking in her eyes.

What do you mean ‘real Jewish history’?

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Long story short, even though I gave her the super canned ‘plain vanilla’ version that goes like this:

Our community got hijacked by a bunch of Sabbteans 350 years ago, and they are still running the show in Israel and everywhere else….

Even the ‘plain vanilla’ was too much to handle.

She kind of ran away, then texted me much later in the day that she wasn’t feeling so good and would raincheck on Shabbos lunch.

(I am not holding my breath).

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I wasn’t really surprised.

But I was still a little disappointed, that even after Covid 19, even after ‘the war’, even after everything that is so clearly going nuts in the world – even after all this, it’s mostly impossible to have a conversation about anything ‘real’ with the so-called normies out there.

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But it also showed me, just how amazing my husband and my kids are, that they can keep up with the so-not-normie information I keep kind of just shoving in their faces.

But it’s not easy for any of us.

One of my kids had a go at me on Shabbat for always challenging the narrative, and ‘looking for conspiracies’.

We nearly had a ding-dong about it all – but then I remembered that ‘normie’ nearly Shabbos guest, and the fear I saw in her face that I was coming to burst her bubble of ‘normie’ beliefs about what’s really going on in the world – and I held back from blasting my kid.

Because deep down, we both know that my version of events is way closer to ‘the truth’ than the ‘normie’ version of events.

And that is a terrifying thought for a lot of people.

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In the meantime….’Disease X’ hovers on the horizon, exactly as scripted, and no doubt coming to a social media influencer or ‘news’ site near you, very soon.

In the meantime…. The army is literally rationing bullets, whilst the government continues to spend a fortune on massive red signs of Hersh.

In the meantime…. The spiritual corruption gets more and more pronounced each day, and even when I quote ‘real news stories’ like that one about ‘pumping sperm’ out of dead soldiers in Gaza from the Ynet site – none of us believe that could actually be happening.

(Add to that list ‘cultivated meat’ printed from what ‘ink’ exactly? What’s in that ink? Is the printing material for all this ‘cultivated meat’ derived from animals, or derived from human beings? Whoops…. Just asked another question that is not allowed in ‘normie’ world, even as they prepare to chow down on whatever ‘cultivated meat’ actually is….

What could be wrong with it?! It’s got a hechsher!!!)

Sigh.

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But the good news is, the last few days, I am finally feeling the cloud starting to lift, a little, here in Israel.

For sure, we are not out of the woods yet, not by a long way.

But, it seems to me that the Rav’s campaign to write a Sefer Torah for the soldiers is already bearing fruit, at least in some modest way.

One of my friends has been watching the headlines, and was convinced ‘they’ were going to start a war on the Northern border this Shabbat.

They for sure have been trying to do that for weeks….

But so far, it hasn’t caught.

Bezrat Hashem, may that continue forever, Amen!

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But in the meantime, I realise it’s best if I continue to keep myself to myself, and try and avoid real conversations with ‘normies’ for at least a little while longer.

One of these days, the veil is going to fall away, from the world of lies.

And when that happens, even the normies will finally have to acknowledge that maybe the weirdos who kept telling them all these ‘conspiracy theories’ about why the world is in such a horrible mess weren’t quite as crazy as they seemed.

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REMINDER:

You can help to write the Rav’s Sefer Torah for the soldiers in the following ways:

20,000 nis – donates a whole section of parchment (including the actual writing), and gets your names transcribed as donors.

5,000 nis – donates a page (parchment and writing).

OR, donate whatever amount you can afford.

In all cases, just go to THIS link, and make it clear in the comments that the donation is for the Rav’s Sefer Torah.

YOU CAN ALSO MAKE A ‘STAGED’ DONATION OVER A FEW MONTHS, IF YOU WANT TO BUY A PAGE ETC, BUT CAN’T AFFORD TO DO IT IN ONE SHOT.

A parchment:

https://buy.stripe.com/eVa9CMglm1RJ4kU00d

A page:

https://buy.stripe.com/dR67uE2uw0NFdVueV8

Anything smaller:

https://ravberland.com/shop/donate/