I just got back from two nights up North.

We were by the Kinneret, not mamash in Kiryat Shemona, but we went to Meron, went past Tsfat, went up to Katzrin….

Everything was peaceful and calm.

And beautiful.

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Sure, there were some burnt patches of ground.

Where I live here in Jerusalem, there are also some large patches of burnt scrubland close by, and unless ‘Hezbollah’ also did that and I missed it…. it just underlines, again, that ‘fires’ are a common thing in Eretz Yisrael in the Summer.

It’s A-M-A-Z-I-N-G how none of these ‘Hezbollah’ rockets (ahem….) actually fall on cities.

Always just on patches of scrubland.

And always, just enough to ‘scare people away from the area’, but nothing more.

Baruch Hashem.

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We got a good deal on the place we were staying, because so many tourists are staying away this year.

Yet again, it underlines this strange ‘dual reality’ where the people who believe the news, and are continuing to live in fear, are actually just creating their own really bad version of ‘reality’ – unnecessarily.

We had a great time up North just now.

Because we aren’t following the news, and we’re just taking it day by day.

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One of the days, I went off to just ‘float’ in the Kinneret, at the separate beach.

I had a rubber ring, the water was perfect, there were about 50+ young teenage girls there – and almost no-one else.

(On the men’s side, my husband said there were like 10 people, max.)

So I just held on to the ring, floated around, and talked to God for an hour and a half.

It was pure bliss.

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I realised a few things, while I was doing that.

One: was just how much I have to be grateful for.

Even just the ability to steal two nights away from ‘the busy’ that is my regular life, and go somewhere where I can float at a separate beach, and then eat badatz kosher icecreams…. That is awesome.

And it’s not like my regular life is awful, because BH, it’s so good in so many ways.

Living in Jerusalem is for sure intense and often stressful – but it’s also the biggest zchut a person can have.

Pretty much any time I want, I can go to the Kotel, go to Rav, go to Kever Rachel, l’havdil mamash, go to the National Library and track down all the books that I’d otherwise have to pay a fortune for.

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The second thing I realised is just how much ‘fear’ there is in the world at the moment.

Away from the Rav for a couple of days, and in a more ‘quiet’ space, I could detect more of my own fear bubbling up.

My husband brought his laptop for a bit of work, and stupid me, I checked in with a couple of the blogs I follow, plus Daniel Amram.

It all instantly put me in a stressed, bad mood again – because it’s all just breathless, despairing ‘bad news’ headlines.

I am so done with that.

Especially, as so much of it is just plain lies and deceit, while the rest is pointless speculation and guessing – based on all the lies and deceit.

What’s the point of all this, exactly?

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The third thing I realised while I was floating in the Kinneret is that:

God has this all covered.

100%.

That doesn’t mean that everything turns out exactly how you and me want it to.

That’s ‘Disney-emuna’, it’s fake emuna.

What it means, is that everything is going to turn out exactly how it needs to, to help each person rectify their soul in the best possible way for them, based on the choices they make, and the amount of ‘sins’ they need to have scrubbed off.

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There’s a whole interesting discussion in Avodah Zarah 17a, about whether ‘heresy’ is the only sin where a person usually dies immediately after making teshuva for it.

Why would a person die immediately after making teshuva for anything?!

Because at some point, the soul becomes so weighed down by the understanding of what sins have been committed, it no longer wants to continue to exist in this world.

There are other explanations, too, including that a person can make such real, wonderful teshuva – but then can’t stand up in the test of staying on the ‘good path’ again afterwards.

Like Chanoch, if Hashem sees that a person is kind of at the ‘top of their spiritual game’, then He can arrange for that person to be taken from the world, before they start back-sliding again.

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Of course, it’s not the ideal.

The ideal is that we serve God to the best of our ability, do an hour a day of hitbodedut, don’t let all our ‘sins’ and misdemeanors build up into such a terrible spiritual burden in the first place, and continue to live a blessed, holy, healthy simple life of emuna until 120.

That’s the ideal.

And following Rebbe Nachman’s practical advice is the best way of achieving it (if not the only way of achieving it, tachlis.)

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But to come back to Avodah Zara 17a, here’s what is going on over there:

They said about R Elazar ben Durdia that he did not leave over one harlot in the world, without cohabiting with her.

Once, he heard that there was one particular harlot in on of the overseas cities who would take a purse of dinarii as her fee. So [Elazar] too a purse of dinarii and went, and crossed seven rivers along the way, for her sake.

Later, at the moment of the onset of cohabitation, [the harlot] blew with her mouth, and said to Elazar: just as this puff of air cannot return to its original place, so they will not recieve Elazar ben Durdia in repentance.

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Then, Elazar went and sat between two ranges of mountains and foothills, and he said to them:

Mountains and foothills, ask for mercy for me, from Above!

And they said to him: Before we ask for mercy for you, we shall ask it for ourselves…..

Elazar ben Durdia then said:

Heavens and earth, ask for mercy for me!

They said to him, Before we ask for mercy for you, we shall ask it for ourselves….

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[Elazar ben Durdia then asks the sun and moon, and the stars and the constellations, but gets the same answer from all of them. The Gemara then continues:]

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[Elazar ben Durdia] exclaimed:

The matter depends solely on me!

Then he put is head between his knees and burst forth in crying, until his soul departed his body.

A heavenly voice then issued forth and proclaimed:

Rabbi Elazar ben Durdia has now been readied for the life of the world to come!

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He got a good deal.

Because the soul is eternal, and the body really isn’t.

People don’t like to hear this, I know.

They prefer to keep operating out of the ‘Disney-fake-emuna’ paradigm, where we all just carry on going to harlots, and thinking like heretics, and inflicting our bad middot and yucky actions on the world, because Moshiach is going to show up and save us all….

People love xtianity precisely because this is what it teaches.

Bud, just polish some buttons and genuflex a little, because the Messiah has this covered…. and you don’t need to do anything at all, to get the world to come…..

That’s not how it works.

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When all is said and done?

The only person we can really change is ourselves.

The matter depends solely on me!

And in the meantime, God is continuing to ‘invite’ all of humanity, in a whole bunch of ways, to finally pull themselves, a little, out of the fake i-Phone reality, and start making the teshuva really required to get into the world to come.

And God knows what He’s doing, however it may seem to us.

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We listened to a few more recent messages from R Elmaliach on the way back down to Jerusalem.

In the one from two days ago, the message was the Rav is still not ready to be openly revealed, because not enough people have made the real teshuva required, still.

I don’t know what all this means, I’m just passing on the information.

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In the second, longer video we listened to below, R Elmaliach was bringing some more v interesting chiddushim from the Rav.

(I just went to link to it… and now I can’t find it up anymore.)

Anyhu, it was talking about how Rebbe Nachman WASN’T Moshiach ben David, he was the person who was ‘preparing the way’ for the soul of Moshiach ben David to come into the world.

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Rav Elmaliach also then said the Rav stressed again that the real war of Gog and Magog is the war of emuna vs heresy – not bombs and rockets, and all the rest of the ‘phony, stage-managed war’ currently going on Israel.

And that the Rav said that the next stage of the ‘war of Gog and Magog’ is going to be around money, and overcoming the ta’avat mamon.

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Rav Elmaliach then went into a discussion about how the ‘Kochav Yaakov’ is approaching, and will cause some massive earthquakes.

Then, he said property will be worthless.

And the banks will fail (not necessarily in this order, btw) – and the real test of emuna will be if we think Hashem can sustain us without money.

It’s going to be a very, very hard test.

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I’m not writing this to get you down, BTW.

I’m writing it to encourage us all that:

The matter depends solely on me!

Every tiny bit of work we do now, today, to strengthen our emuna reflex, and to develop a real relationship with Hashem, is going to make the next stage of the process so much easier to get through in once piece.

At least, for us.

And ultimately, that’s where our efforts have to go right now.

We all have our hands full right now, of stuff we need to work on and pray about, and pay pidyonot for.

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In the meantime, the 7 daily TKS are helping everyone, generally.

And giving the Rav and the other True Tzaddikim the spiritual ammo required to really keep the battle against the side of evil in this war of Gog and Magog going.

And to BH, turn things around as quickly and as sweetly as possible, for all of Am Yisrael.

But bottom line:

Everyone needs to make their own teshuva.

And to change themselves.

And to get real.

Because no-one is going to show up to ‘save us’, while we just continue stuck in our same old heretical, evil ways.

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I know people don’t like to hear this.

But that doesn’t change the reality, namely:

The matter depends solely on me!

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May God help us all to do what’s required, in order to make the teshuva required, while still staying happy, healthy and holy until 120.

Amen.

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PS: The minute I posted this up, I found out that ‘Hezbollah’ is meant to have sent a barrage of 200 rockets to a lot of the places I was literally hanging out in, so peacefully, yesterday.

I don’t know what to make of all this, to be honest, as if you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll notice a pattern.

My experience is nothing, really, is going on – in Netivot, in Meron, in Katzrin…..

And then the very next day, or that same afternoon, there’s meant to have been a ‘massive barrage’…..

Eretz Yisrael is a miraculous land, we know.

It’s the ‘land of emuna’.

It’s so strange, that my reality is so different from ‘the reality’ on the news.

Repeatedly.

Maybe, it has something to do with the 7 TKs a day….