Yesterday, I saw a small clip of IDF soldiers launching a burning ‘bundle’ over a wall with a catapult.

Here’s how that looked:

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Yah, they are burning trees in LEBANON, sure they are…

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Yesterday, I had a big chat with my husband about how everything that is going on right now is an illusion, a test of emuna.

I don’t mean that there are no refugees, that there are no soldiers being killed in Gaza (may there be no more soldiers killed and wounded anywhere…), or that evil isn’t running riot at the moment.

All that is true.

But the ‘illusion’ is what all this means for us, and our state of mind.

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Take all the hysterical headlines about ‘the North is burning’.

Objectively, it’s not great that there are a ton of fires up North.

We can argue about what’s causing them – but the point is, there are ALWAYS fires in Israel in summer time, like the one that consumed the Carmel back in 2010 and killed 40+ policemen.

(Trying to type that last bit with a straight face.)

Those fires weren’t ‘Hezbollah’, and there was no hysterical hyping everything up, that people need to leave their homes permanently, because some trees were burning.

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Remember 2016, when there was another massive fire in Haifa?

More than 500+ apartments were burnt down.

Was that also ‘Hezbollah’?

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Point is, the Rav told us all right at the beginning of all this, that whoever would listen to him, and would just focus on doing teshuva and praying, instead of following all the lying news, wouldn’t need to leave their homes.

At the time, it sounded kind of incredible, even to me.

But now, it’s becoming more and more obvious, that just like the plandemic beforehand, we are being fed manipulated images and BS storylines, to achieve an end, a goal, that is the whole point of all this.

And just like with the plandemic, if you can drown out the news and just carry on with normal life, as much as possible – eventually, the ‘illusion’ will crumble, and you’ll come through all this in one piece.

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I know, I know.

So many people are still buying the illusion at full price, and paying very dearly for it.

There is nothing to do for others, except to pray for them, that God will open their eyes in time before they get their eyes ‘opened’ in some other, way more painful way.

And if it’s that last option – then so be it.

Everyone has free choice.

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What I was talking about with my husband yesterday is that there are no ‘free rides’ to cross the narrow bridge to the world of truth.

When we started this journey more than 20 years ago, crossing the bridge meant we had to get to grips with making aliya.

Then, we had to get to grips with really starting to make some real teshuva, including developing a real relationship with God and understanding just how arrogant we really were, and just how stuffed full of bad middot.

And then, we had to get to grips with being ‘Breslov weirdos’, which in turn led to us turning into ‘Breslov outcasts’, because 18 years ago, you could count the number of Anglos who were into Breslov and going to Uman on one hand.

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And then, we had to get to grips with understanding that so many of our relationships were actually majorly ‘toxic’.

Literally when that realisation hit, we lost pretty much everyone we knew, overnight.

And then, we had to get to grips with how ‘toxic’ many of our own habits and ideas were too, especially when it came to parenting our kids.

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I’m giving the short version here, but it includes:

• Losing our house twice over because we were following the dictates of our soul, which means we’ve been renting ever since.
• Moving to Jerusalem the day before the ‘stabbing intifida’ kicked off, to a 65 sqm rented apartment from a house that was 200+ sqm – while our kids thought we were insane.
• Multiple miscarriages.
• A failed business.
• Tremendous confusion and doubts and bilbulim about what we were doing, and if we were taking the right path, considering just how many difficulties were multiplying every day.
• Tremendous social isolation and loneliness.

But in the end, all that got us to the Rav and to Shuvu Banim.

And that is when life really started to sweeten in a radical way, albeit with still some challenges, because you don’t get anything for free with the Rav.

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And now?

Life is good.

Even right now, Baruch Hashem.

And why is it ‘good’ right now?

Because we aren’t invested in the world of lies, mostly, and we’re not being pulled down by it (too much….)

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When my S-I-L was debating whether to ‘volunteer’ to go to Gaza after Simchat Torah (because he’s not a combat soldier by training, and didn’t get called up) – we told him emphatically NO WAY!!!!!

Of course, he could still have gone anyway, but the point is that if we’d been cheering on ‘ground invasions’ and encouraging him to go and fight – we would now be dealing with a very different situation, in so many ways.

But we followed what the Rav was saying, all the hints, and we understood all this is an illusion. And a thousand soldiers can be killed, just from ‘friendly fire’.

Exactly as we are all seeing happening, that ‘Hamas’ is not the entity that is killing and maiming our soldiers in Gaza.

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Life is built step-by-step, from the choices we all choose to make.

20 years ago when we made aliya – leaving good jobs, good friends, family, ‘the good life’ – people thought we were totally nuts.

As our aliya has played out with all its difficulties, until pretty recently, people thought we were totally nuts.

And now?

My brother in London who has a nice house / job / friends / family / ‘the good life’ is permanently stressed, and looking for some way he can get here that won’t be too big a sacrifice for the rest of his family.

No-one speaks Hebrew.

They are teenagers.

It’s not easy.

At all.

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But the point is, even in chul, it’s still all an illusion.

The battle right now is to understand the value of every small mitzvah we do, every small bit of yearning we have, to do better, be better, get closer to Hashem, to our souls, to others.

And to not get pulled under by the massive wave of yeoush that is trying to pull everyone down.

Breslov teaches that at the time when ‘the test’ is about to end, you have an experience, a day, where you literally feel like you can’t stand up in this for a second more.

If you hang on to God at that point – that is when it all breaks, and turns around for the good.

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So, hang on, dear reader.

And even, do more than that.

Start to enjoy life again.

Start to focus on the good, start to make whatever teshuva you really need to make, especially in terms of ‘how we think’, to see that each of our lives is so very full of ‘good’.

Right now.

And if that’s not your experience, then do some hitbodedut to see what is stopping you from feeling happy with your life, and what’s really in your hands to fix or change.

Don’t wait for Moshiach to show up and come and ‘rescue you’ from your misery and despair.

That’s not his job.

It’s ours.

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God wants us to take responsibility for ourselves, and to knuckle down to the hard work of trying to develop more real emuna, more humility, more honesty and more gratitude.

The less lies we tell ourselves, the easier it gets to spot what is ‘an illusion’ and what isn’t.

And then, the easier it is to ‘live real’, and to not get pulled into the yetzer’s net, telling us all that ‘fires only happen because of Hezbollah’, or ‘people need to leave their homes because there might be a war in [fill in the year]’. Or, ‘you can’t be happy, because so many people are suffering right now.’

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For that last one, let’s change it to this:

You can’t be apathetic, because so many people are suffering right now.

There are a lot of tikkunim going on, and some of them are v.v. painful.

I am praying every day for soldiers, hostages, refugees, young men with their legs blown off, to be able to come through their tests in good shape, and still enjoy their lives.

That’s the focus of the 7 Tikkun Haklalis I try to say every day.

But the rest of the time?

I need to search out ‘the good points’, and to be happy and grateful for all the tremendous good God is giving to me right now.

Even in the midst of the madness.

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It’s up and down, all this.

It’s a massive test, a massive emuna-rollercoaster-ride.

But ultimately, this world is just an illusion.

And if we can remember that, at least more of the time, it’ll help us to weather the storm, until the evil finally breaks, or even, just ‘this current incarnation of evil’ finally breaks, as it always does, and the revealed ‘good’ can start to ascend in the world again.

May it be speedily, in our days.