Yesterday, we found out that the Rav is having a short break for a few days.

He’ll be back after Wednesday, braving the cold and rain for hours every night, at the age of 88, davening from his mirpesset with the community down in the courtyard…

As we don’t have Whatsapp, we found that out the hard way – when we showed up for prayers two nights ago, there was nobody there.

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That’s OK, tho, because it’s always the effort that really counts, not the outcome, and there was still enough of a minyan for my husband to daven ma’ariv.

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Yesterday, my husband came back from the morning davening (which the Rav doesn’t attend) with the news that the Rabbanit had gone down to Eilat for a short break, with a group of Shuvu Banim women.

Because, even Shuvu Banim sometimes needs a break.

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I have been feeling that very strongly myself, the last few weeks.

That I have to slow down the pace here, at least at the moment, and gather my strength again.

BH, I will put up some more stuff from the Rav this week, but I am absolutely, categorically, unequivocally, refusing to get pulled into more pointless speculations about ‘Iran’ or ‘WW3’.

Dafka, the Rav told us last week, at the funeral of R Tzanani, zt’l, that his passing has cancelled the very serious decree of shmad that so many connected people could feel has been hanging over us all for months.

I don’t know what happens next, but I do know that Shuvu Banim, under the Rav, have been working tirelessly, for years and years and years, to get things cancelled and ‘sweetened’ the spiritual way.

Hours upon hours of standing in the Rav’s courtyard, clapping, dancing and singing for long stretches, no matter what the weather.

Tens upon tens of prayer gatherings, in Hevron and other places, often called last minute and requiring a lot of mesirut nefesh to attend.

Literally millions of tikkun haklalis recited, including that 40 days of saying 7 TKs a day that so many Shuvu Banim people did, and which ended around Rosh Hashana 5786.

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We are all knackered, and in need of a small break to recharge a little.

After years and years of saying a minimum of 3 TKs a day, I actually stopped saying any for a couple of weeks, and now I am working my way back to saying one every day.

Because we aren’t robots, we are human beings.

And the human beings being guided by the Rav, in whatever way you understand that, even if you aren’t formally part of the physical community in Jerusalem, have been working very hard for years, with a lot of mesirut nefesh, to get things ‘sweetened’.

And specifically, this ‘WW3 / Iran’ thing, which the Rav has been warning about and talking about for years and years and years.

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Tachlis, 2012 was the year all this was meant to kick off.

That’s when tzaddikim like the late R Chaim Dovid Stern, zt’l, told his visitors to just give all their money away to charity, because they weren’t going to need it anymore…

(OIAG 1 and 2 brings a lot of the ‘pronouncements’ that were being made by big tzaddikim around this time.)

Instead, the Rav went into exile in 2012 – and the gezeirot kind of got shmeered over the last 14 years, which have been pretty trying for most people, especially, the last 7, which kicked off with ‘Covid 19’.

But the point is: stuff is, was and is still being ‘sweetened’, by all of the Rav and Shuvu’s mesirut nefesh, since 2012.

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As a side note, 2012 was when my F-I-L died, which signalled the beginning of a really, really difficult time for me and my family, in a million different ways.

We really started climbing out of the whole only in 2017-2018… and then slid straight into ‘Covid 19’.

As Jude mentioned in a comment, there is a strange ‘synchronisity’ between the Rav and Shuvu.

We all go through the ‘ups’, in some way, and we all go through the ‘downs’, too.

Even though I wasn’t part of the Shuvu community back in 2012, but still with R Arush and Chut Shel Chesed.

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But the point is: even Shuvu needs a holiday.

And the fact that the Rav and the Rabbanit are actually taking one suggests that maybe, things are not as bad for the Jews in Israel as they are being portrayed.

And that the ‘turnaround’ is actually already underway, regardless of how it seems in the lying media.

I’m actually starting to cheer up again, finally.

But, I really need to slow down for a while, and smell the roses again.

So, I am still here, and still writing stuff, and still translating stuff from the Rav.

But not in a rush, at the moment.

The world is a far more beautiful, optimistic and gentle place off-line.

And that’s where I increasingly want to be.