A few years back, Rav Shalom Arush put out a catchy song.

***IMPORTANT UPDATES BELOW***

It was called ‘Or Emuna, or Gehinnom’.

I can’t find the original, but here is an updated version, from a couple of years ago, that gives the idea:

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The basic idea, is that a person either has emuna – really believes in Hashem, and Hashem’s hashgacha pratit over every small detail of their lives – or they live a totally hellish life.

The last few months, this idea is coming into clearer and clearer focus.

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A lot of people have been experiencing high levels of fear, anxiety, panic, depression, despair, sadness the last few months, here in Israel.

The ones who are making teshuva, at least on some sort of basic level, and bringing it back to Hashem, and understanding that God runs the world – those people are still suffering, but they are doing wayyyyyy better than the people for whom God is totally out of the picture.

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Don’t misunderstand me – it’s still hard, even for people with emuna, and trying to have emuna.

Me and my husband went through a couple of months of feeling tremendous fear that our close neighbors down the street were going to try ‘Hebron 1929’ in the days after Simchat Torah 5784.

At that time, the army set up concrete blocks on Route 1 by the Old City, with soldiers with M16s trained on ‘the neighbors’ literally on the other side of the street.

It’s not easy to experience all this stuff, all this uncertainty, all this fear, day in, day out.

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People I know started to experience what we figured out, with God’s help, were ‘panic attacks’.

But before we figured out it was panic attacks, the people we know were convinced they were about to have a heart attack from all the stress.

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What turned that around?

A few things:

1. Simply the understanding that ‘this is a panic attack, not a heart attack’.
2. Taking the whole fear, the whole situation, back to God and telling God ‘It’s all in Your hands, Hashem!! We are totally powerless to do anything about this on the ‘physical’ level, but we are throwing ourselves on Your mercy, and we are praying that You will have mercy on us!”
3. Total immersion in saying a whole book of tehillim every day for a month, as per the Rav’s instructions, and / or trying to get through 10 blatt of Gemara a day.
4. Doing a pidyon nefesh on the ravberland.com site.

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That’s what worked for some people we know, to get rid of most of the really bad panic and fear.

Other people we know personally are ‘secular’, don’t believe in God and didn’t follow this route.

Their panic and fear is now so big, they can’t stay in the country.

Or emuna, or gehinnom.

Emuna, or gehinnom.

Emuna, or gehinnom  – because if  you don’t at least try to have some emuna, then you are literally going to be living a life of gehinnom right now.

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Apart from the fact that I live in Jerusalem, which is really helpful, as very few rockets get here, and it’s mostly been pretty quiet, Baruch Hashem and may that continue for a very long time, these are other things that are helping me cope with the tremendous stress of ‘war in Israel’:

1. Totally ignore and avoid the news – and if you can’t totally ignore and avoid it, listen to it always in full sceptical mode, ready to catch all the lies and misinformation and stuff that just doesn’t make sense, logically.
2. Spend a fair bit of your time acknowledging your real emotions, while talking to God every day. (Because whatever we try to ‘push down’ just has a habit of coming out either as ‘panic attacks’, other mental illnesses like depression, or even actual physical health issues.
3. Following the instructions of the Rav – if he says ‘3 tikkun haklalis a day’ – do that. Or ‘learn more Gemara’ – do that. Or, ‘come and pray ma’ariv with me at least once a week down on Ido HaNavi – do that.
4. Make more of an effort to up your game, spiritually – teshuva, tzedaka and prayer overcome the evil decrees, remember.
5. And when it all starts to get too much – the shortcut is to pay a pidyon. (I am literally doing this every couple of weeks, for different members of my family, as the need arises.)

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Or emuna, or gehinnom.

Pick what you prefer.

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The last thing for today’s post, is that Baruch Hashem, I am really starting to notice that even at the grass roots ‘normie’ level of society here – more and more people are calling out the BS.

Like, yah, 5000 terrorists can cross over to Israel from Gaza and apparently *no-one noticed for a day* – but our army could still take out some Hamas big-wig in the middle of Beirut who was driving his car around yesterday, no problem….

Of course, exactly at the time when peace talks were on the table to bring the remaining hostages out of Gaza (if any of them are still alive….), and to get our soldiers back home safe and sound, without any more of them getting killed or their hands and feet blown off.

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My feeling is, the charade can’t continue for too much longer.

The lies are getting too big, even for the world of lies.

But in the meantime, every bit of effort regular people like you and me make to have emuna will limit the amount of gehinnom we have to  live through, in the meantime.

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And also, the amount of gehinnom our fighting forces have to go through in Gaza.

And if that doesn’t motivate us all to do what’s required spiritually – then I don’t know what will.

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PS: Keep an eye on all the frankly totally disturbing stories coming about ‘organ transplants’ and other yuck things inovling the soldiers in Gaza.

Like THIS ONE, in Hebrew, on Ynet.

It’s about ‘pumping sperm’ out of dead soldiers in Gaza, and then encouraging single women in Israel to use that sperm to become single mothers…..

Who can make this stuff up?

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This totally gross-making article is basically social-engineering propaganda.

The article talks about all this being ‘encouraged’ by an organisation called ‘New Family’.

HERE  is the Wiki page for that NGO, in Hebrew.

And here is a Google-translated snippet:

The organization works, among other things, to recognize civil marriage, including same-sex marriage, full recognition of publicly known spouses as married spouses, expanding parental rights through adoption and surrogacy, and expanding the right to the family through the use of medical technologies for fertility, such as egg freezing, sperm freezing, and arranging sperm donations of soldiers for the placement of offspring after loss of birth capacity or death.

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New Family has this spiffy idea, where they want to replace a ketuba with an ersatz pseudo-marriage ‘certificate’ that they themselves produce, to ‘prove’ that the parents of any particular egg-meets-sperm are in a formal relationship – so they can get all the legal benefits that are otherwise reserved for people in a formal marriage relationship.

They’ve been trying to get this idea off the ground for over a decade, already, here in the Holy Land.

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They  have one employee – the CEO – and whoever that person is, they are being paid a salary of close to half a million shekels a year, according to Guidestar.

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Let me leave you with another Google-translated quote from that super-disturbing ‘story’ on Ynet:

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You got that?

Even if you yourself DOESN’T WANT THIS TO HAPPEN, the medical industry in Israel can now extract all the sperm they want from your dead body, if you die in combat or during a terrorist attack, on the say-so of your mum. Or sister. Or cat.

And of course, you have absolutely no say in what really happens to all that sperm – because you are dead.

And the medical industry can of course be 100% trusted to only do what is ethical and correct with this most precious element of a human being – their ability to create life.

(Sarcasm: off).

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Tatty, come and rescue us already.

This is starting to make what went on in the pandemic look like child’s play.