Shavua Tov!

First things first, despite all the scary news headlines, balagan in the middle of the night and other stuff you are seeing on screens – life is continuing in the Holy Land, albeit with a disrupted schedule, because we’ve been forced into a a semi-lockdown state again.

They closed the Kotel on Shabbat, they closed Meir Baal HaNess, they told people to stop praying!!! Stop gathering together, but definitely, definitely, stop praying or learning Torah!!! And many people listened.

But, the good news is – many more people are actually just getting on with their lives, even in the current state of balagan that is unfolding here.

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Let me tell you about my Shabbat, and then we’ll discuss a bit more what’s going on, and what the spiritual response should be.

Shabbat – I was in a hotel by the Kinneret. I’d literally had my last day of classes Thursday, and before the exam period, my husband arranged for us to go and have a ‘relaxing’ weekend up in Tiberius. I wouldn’t have to cook, I could just chill by the Kinneret, go to R Meir Baal HaNess, go to the women’s separate beach before Shabbat came in.

Paradise!

Except….

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We already knew storm clouds were gathering Friday morning, so we called the hotel to see if they were still operating.

We are open, but the pool, hotsprings and beaches are closed, they told us.

Bseder– we’d do kivrei tzaddikim instead of the separate beach, no problem. On the drive up the 90, we played the Rav’s TKs three times in a row, load, as we passed by the Jordanian border where everyone was waiting for 100 ‘Iranian drones’ to show up. (Like, from 3am Friday morning, which is when all the State-sponsored hysteria began in earnest, with a ‘warning message’ from Home Front Command on the phones.)

By the time shabbat came in – nothing, nada, nega nega torey.

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Both of my kids decided to be in our home in Jerusalem for Shabbat, as there is a convenient bomb shelter in the building, and they otherwise live in caravans on hills.

They sorted themselves out, we walked around Tiberius that was most deserted except for a few hot-looking chareidim visiting the kivrei tzaddikim in the old graveyard of Tiberius – and we were there too. Looking at graves of R Avraham Kalisker, Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and R Nachman Horodenka, Rabbenu’s paternal grandfather.

It was really, really hot, so we came back to the hotel, and got ready for Shabbat.

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A bunch of people had cancelled, so it was mostly us, plus an extended family who had booked the hotel for a Shabbat Chatan.

Friday night, I was sitting outside doing some prayers, when I thought I heard some ‘booms’ in the distance. Are we being bombed? I thought to myself. I hadn’t heard any sirens.

I am not a big believer in mamads – I stay put, and I say Tikkun Haklalis, or start doing some hitbodedut, to lift up my fallen fears to something at least approaching yirat shemayim, that God is behind all of this, and if God wants me blown to bits, God forbid – nothing is going to change that honestly. (Except, teshuva, tzedaka and tikkun haklalis).

But I went into the hotel lobby at that point, to see if anyone could tell me what was going on.

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I was greeted by the site of tens of hysterical people, all clutching their iPhones, blaring out messages of impending doom, trying to rush downstairs to level minus 2, where the bomb shelter was.

What in the world?!

The hotel had 10 storeys and we were already on ground level. And in the meantime, the nice Arab hotel manager and staff were trying to calm down the hysterical Jews that they didn’t need to push and shove, everything was ok.

(Most of the people pushing and shoving were chiloni, btw. This was not a chareidi establishment.)

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A few minutes later, there was some muffled booms, a long way off.

The usual.

My husband came back half an hour later from shul (where 10 men from the shabbat chatan, old-school sephardim, had still gone to pray) – and we went down to the dining room.

The atmosphere was really stressful.

You know why?

Because most of the people Friday night didn’t keep shabbat, and were clutching their i-Phones tightly in their hands, and were reading messages from the government like: some time in the next three weeks, Iran is probably going to do something really, really scary and dangerous, so please get hysterically stressed out of your brain in the meantime, scream at your children every two seconds, have a nervous breakdown and put your whole life on hold. Oh, and btw, definitely don’t pray, go to shul, or do anything to strengthen your emuna. Regards, the Motherland.

Another warning for another siren came – not even the siren itself – and the dining room emptied out, except for the Shabbat Chatan’s extended table, and a couple of other people who were keeping Shabbat and doing Friday night (or trying to…. The way it should be done.)

But you could feel the ‘fear’ in the air, and it was yucky to be around.

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After the meal, me and my husband went for a walk up the road.

The street was deserted. There was barely a car anywhere, barely a noise to be heard. No happy revellers by the Kinneret.

B’kitzur – Tiberius was keeping Shabbat properly, for once.

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Friday night, my husband slept through the first two sirens, but woke up at 5.30 for the really loud one, which is when he is used to waking up anyway.

I heard all the sirens – but I didn’t have any intention of going down to the mamad, with all the hysterical people with their i-Phones, on my ‘relaxing’ Shabbat. So instead, I started mumbling some words of hitbodedut, and by 5.30, when the ‘boom’ was quite loud, I decided to do the three TKs for the day, and get them out of the way.

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By 11 AM – the hotel was a ghost town.

Only the shomer shabbat people stayed.

And of them, some of them had left their TVs on before Shabbat, so they could have a never-ending stream of hysterical speculation and media hype ruin whatever peace of mind they may have still had.

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After lunch, me and the husband walked down to R Meir Baal HaNess.

It was closed. On the instructions of the Home Front Command.

We went back to the hotel, read the parsha, read the Shivivei Or, did some hitbodedut, chilled. This was meant to be my ‘relaxing Shabbat’ after all, before all the papers and the exams begin.

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Motzash in the lobby, one of the older Sephardi ladies who’d left her TV on all day told me what was going on.

A rocket in Rishon, 3 dead, 30 wounded.

Hmm. That sounded serious. I called the girls back in Jerusalem, they were OK, exhausted, a little, but OK.

We drove home Saturday night, still blaring the TKs from the Rav all down Route Six. There were other people on the roads, we saw no rockets.

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Just as we got home – all the kids’ smartphones started vibrating with more ‘warnings’ from Homefront Command.

Turn them off, it’s enough already!!! If you hear a siren and you want to go to the bomb shelter, be my guest. But I am NOT sitting here stressing out over a ‘maybe’ rocket for hours!!!

There was stuff to do, cases to unpack, showers to have.

Baruch Hashem, the kids were also sick of the scaremongering, so they switched off the phones, and I gave them (and myself) a bracha they should sleep through the sirens and get a good night’s sleep.

Mostly, they did.

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3 AM – I woke up to a muffled siren, and then I really woke up when my hysterical neighbors downstairs were rushing their terrified children (6 and 9) into the bombshelter.

They have to come up from their basement flat via stairs outside, then come into our building to the bombshelter.

As they were outside, the booms and window rattling began.

It was quite a scary-sounding noise. I was too tired to do more TKs, so I started trying to mumble a bit of hitbodedut, and I relied on the fact that I’d done 3 TKs already that day (and pretty much every day, for the last 7 years….) If that’s not enough… What can I do?

I went back to sleep.

Those kids, tho, were so terrified by their rush into the bomb shelter, they refused to come out again and to go back home.

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One of my friends sent me a short message the Rav put out on Friday afternoon, below:

The Rav just said it’s Gog Umagog and in a month from now they’ll have an atom bomb they plan to destroy Israel, that not one jew will survive. But Hashem will do miracles and wonders and we will be saved. But the final Gog Umagog will be in year תתקעב Hashem is fighting for us. 5972 187 years from now. Year 2212.

It seems the balagan could last for a month, God forbid, and could be building to quite the crescendo, quite the quintessential test of emuna.

What’s going on here at the moment is, objectively, quite scary.

And at the same time – 99% of the fear and panic and hysteria is being self-generated and exacerbated by stupid phone messages designed to paralyze people’s analytical abilities and emuna – for hours before there is even anything concrete to worry about.

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You want to rush to a mamad in the middle of the night, fine, no problem.

But I want to state here, that the Rav has been telling the ‘story’ for years, of a woman who rushed to a mamad with her small kid a few years ago and dropped the kid on its head, and the kid is still in a coma.

I don’t know if that story is true, btw, but what I do know, is that the Rav is telling it over as a message and a guideline about how much damage fear itself does to a person.

Walk to the mamad slowly, take your Tikkun HaKlali, ask God to protect you and your family while you’re on the way. You’ll do wonders for your peace of mind, if you put God back in the picture and stop relying on the reinforced concrete to save you from the baddies.

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Bottom line:

Things seem to be moving up a level.

Me personally, I am staying away from pointless speculation. I am still trying to stay away from pointless ‘news’ which is designed to manipulate us all into jumping when they tell us to jump, and most of all – I am trying to work on building up my emuna more, that Ein Od Milvado.

This is a very big test going on, make no mistake about it.

I saw on Shabbat, the people with God in the picture on any level are already in a much better place. The people with the Rav and Rabbenu in the picture are in a much, much better place. And the people who take this opportunity to do their darndest to raise their ‘fallen fears’ about Iranian rockets and nukes to true yirah shemayim – they are in the best place of all.

I’m not in that space yet myself, I still have more fear welling up than I’d like.

But at least, I know where I want to get to, and that every additional prayer, bit of teshuva, pidyon and TK is moving me closer – and making me feel happier and calmer than otherwise.

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My suggestions?

1. Get into the habit of saying 3 TKs a day. I will BH post something up later this week where the Rav advised doing that for previous wars. Long story short – tehillim stop the tillim.
2. If you are freaking out – consider paying a pidyon for yourself, to take the fear down. Try HERE or HERE.
3. Turn off the evil phones – especially at night – and also, stop obsessing over the news. We have no idea how much of what we are being told and shown is true, or the real story, on so many levels.
4. Start doing hitbodedut for at least five minutes a day. If you get woken up by a siren in the middle of the night, that’s the perfect time to give this a try.
5. WALK, don’t run to a mamad. Understand that the fear and panic is far more dangerous, most of the time, than anything the Iranians can do to anyone.

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BH, the balagan will stop soon.

God is moving us all out of the crass, tattoo’d, materialistic ‘holiday land’ and into the ‘holy land’, mamash, and it’s quite a long and painful process.

But in the meantime, make a huge effort to calm yourself down, get on top of the fear, and to stop jumping every time they tell you to ‘jump’.

Buy some earplugs, or get a ‘white noise’ thing going, and get a good nights’ sleep.

And then you’ll see, that even when it’s scary, it’s way more manageable, and life can still continue.

With God’s help.