I’ve been in a pretty strange mood the last few days.

I’ve been running away from Hashem in my hitbodedut. 

I can’t sit still for more than five minutes, and I’ve been talking to Him as I walk through Ikea, or buying my chickens near Mahane Yehuda.

(Yup, I look like the original Jerusalem crazy woman, mumbling to ‘myself’ in public….)

==

That’s not all that’s going on.

I keep bursting into tears for no obvious reason when I’m doing my hitbodedut.

My life is truly great right now, if a little exhausting.

Yet I realised yesterday that I’m apparently feeling angry at Hashem.

And also scared about what’s coming next, especially if Rav Berland doesn’t get into Uman for Rosh Hashana this year.

I’m the original Jerusalem crazy woman…. remember?

==

When a person is operating out of a paradigm of fake emuna, where it’s all big words about ‘having emuna’ and ‘relying on Hashem’ – but disconnected from a deep understanding that all of us have such massive spiritual work still to do in this world, and so many massive mitzvot that we throw behind us and crush with our heels (without even noticing…) – that is so dangerous.

Don’t you think the frum Jews in the Polish shtetls also believed in God?

And also had emuna, probably many of them at a much deeper level than most of us in 2024?

People like the Breslov mashpia R Yitzhak Breiter, to give just one example?

====

R Breiter was killed al kiddush Hashem by the Nazis, in 1943, en route to Treblinka.

And he was someone who was really trying to serve Hashem with everything he had.

Ditto R Alter Tepliker, another Breslov mashpia who was killed in shul, holding a Sefer Torah, by the Cossacks in 1919.

==

Just ‘having emuna’, just seeing Hashem behind everything and everyone – that doesn’t automatically mean a person gets through what is going on in our world totally unscathed.

Mamash  not.

==

People don’t like to hear this stuff.

They tell themselves stories about how they are ‘good people’, who ‘have emuna’.

And in the meantime, instead of grasping the opportunities Hashem is giving us right now, to make some real, sincere teshuva, not just ‘lip-service’ teshuva, where we always come out of the equation with another degree of arrogance about what a ‘good, emunadik person’ we are – we waste so much precious time talking nonsense about ‘crushing Hezbollah’.

==

I have no idea what’s going on in Lebanon, or up North right now.

But when I see bloggers like Tomer Devorah gleefully beating the ‘yippee!!! we are going to war again!!!’ drum, time and time again, it honestly fills me with despair, that even apparently intelligent people are still buying into this ‘war is good’ paradigm.

War is good?!

Really?!

Sending more of our children off to get their legs and arms blown off in booby-trapped houses where their commanders either care more about saving a sniffer dog’s life than a Jewish soldier’s? At best?

If the plan all along isn’t just to inflict maximum casualties on the Jews in the IDF, with nothing to show for it?

(700+ soldiers dead, 15,000+ soldiers seriously injured and counting….)

That’s ‘good’?!

Really?

====

The answer, the only answer, is prayer and teshuva.

War always was, and always will be, the ‘craft of Esav’ – unless we have a genuine prophet in our midst on the level of Moshe Rabbenu or David HaMelech, and that guy tells us to go to war.

Then it’s a real ‘holy’ war, a really ‘Jewish’ war.

Otherwise?

It’s just the puppets of the satanic masons who control the governments and militaries of all sides in all these conflicts who are giving the marching orders, while the morons in the crowd cheer on more death and destruction.

====

There was another atzeret for Rav Berland at the Kotel yesterday night.

This time, it clashed with my kid’s chanukat habayit, at 8pm, so me and my husband couldn’t attend.

So instead, I went two hours early to say 7 TKs at the Kotel, while my husband said them in his office, before I went to pick him up for the chanukat habayit.

Last week, we drove down from our two day holiday in the Kinneret straight to Hevron, for the prayer gathering there.

It’s really, really tiring to keep doing all this stuff, to keep saying the prayers for the Rav to get to Uman, and the 7 TKs.

Why am I doing it?

Because I know there are no guarantees, even for ‘good people’ who ‘have emuna’.

====

There are big decrees hanging over us right now.

So many of us can feel it, even if they are off the news (like I’m trying to be.)

Yesterday, one of my daughter’s friends told me she’s had a dream twice this week where she’s crying her eyes out – and then she wakes up and finds she really is crying her eyes out.

Another guy, nice but secular, told us that he had a dream this week where he woke up gasping for air and feeling like he was being choked.

My daughter had exactly the same experience, on exactly the same night, at exactly the same time.

====

Is all this ‘frequency-induced’ neuro modulation?

Or people tapping into a spiritual reality that tells us there are some very difficult times ahead for Am Israel, if things don’t get radically sweetened?

Perhaps, it’s both.

====

The point is, ‘being busy’ is no excuse for not putting more effort, more focus, into prayers and teshuva – and especially, the prayers and teshuva we are being directed towards by Rav Berland, the Tzaddik HaDor.

We are all run off our feet and stressed-out at the moment.

Don’t let apathy and the prophets of ‘false emuna’ lull you in to a false sense of security, because right now is probably the most dangerous period of time, until and unless the Rav gets into Uman, and there things can be radically sweetened, BH.

(I’m the crazy woman from Jerusalem, remember? That’s why I talk to God for an hour a day and rush down to Hevron from my annual holiday, just to say 7 TKs for Rav Berland to get to the Tzion.)

====

Let’s end with this song from the UNDERGROUND MEAH SHEARIM soundtrack, HERE.

It’s called ‘ECHAD’ – and the lyrics are awesome.

====

This is a machine-translation of the lyrics:

One – words:

Dear brothers, how did we get here? We are already standing on the edge of the abyss
The earth crumbles under us, and above the sun stands a gallows
Two roads ahead, one snowy on the way to Mount Hermon
And one that descends in fire that will burn step by step on the way to Sodom

So what do you choose eh? In body or soul?
The choice is yours, dear Jew… just choose, the time has come

=

And in the snow I saw a clear view and everything there was pure and pure
Until they found my heart frozen and said it must have died from a cold
And in the fire I saw a life of pleasure and full of love for me
By the time they found me dead they said I was too drunk

life and death before us,
And where are we headed?
Abyss to the abyss calls
Hear O Israel, the name of our God

one. one. One and His name is one
one. one. One and His name is one

There is internal voltage, electricity caution! Because one more moment and I explode
They say faith is only for the weak and insecure, and it’s not shiny
And don’t talk about peace, because instead of hope it makes my heart angry
Everyone is really right and in the name of truth justice is served

so what do you want huh? Peace or truth?
The choice is yours dear brother… answer only the truth

It is well known that measure of victory does not bear truth in any way
And if peace is another kind of compromise, then we are all just in a lot of trouble

=

Half happy and half sad
I am half loving and half loved
Say you don’t think so
Is that a bit shabby?
Spin myself over and over
like a lion in a cage.

And a wolf lived with a lamb
And truth and peace loved
And on that day… on that day there will be God

one. one. One and His name is one
one. one. One and His name is one

=

So decide what the purpose [of life] is. And tell me, so I will know too
They are still trying to convince me that there is no God on the basis of science
We all sleep with our eyes open, facing all the problems
Rabbenu [Rebbe Nachman] will wake us up with stories from ancient years (Sipurei Ma’asiot)

=

So where are you running to? eh?
Or rather… what are you running from?
We are all brothers, remember?
It seems that sometimes you forget

Let’s talk for a moment without judging
Without an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
You know this world is simple
We are the ones making it difficult

So I am here and now free
For love that does not depend on any other thing
I take it personally
I hear you and something in my heart breaks

“And you shall chose life.”
All of us, each and every one.
“Who is like your people Israel, one nation”, one nation…

one. one. One and His name is one
one. one. One and His name is one

Awesome.

May Hashem help us to make the right choices.

And to stop seeing more ‘war’ as the solution to our problems.