Shavua Tov!

***UPDATE: Scroll down to download the full English / Hebrew Kuntres as a PDF***

You probably noticed that I’ve been in kind of a bad mood the last couple of weeks.

On the one hand, that’s totally understandable. The stress of ‘whatever that was’ when the ‘Iranians’ bombed the country combined with the stress of Pesach, combined with the ongoing stress of ‘the war’, combined with a bunch of other more regular stresses – no wonder I’ve been losing it the last few weeks.

And I’m not alone.

==

One of my friends is a VERY nice person.

Really.

She whispered to me down the phone on Friday that she’s also having a lot of anger flaring up at the moment, particularly in her home setting.

And she sent me this shiur by Rav Ofer Erez, which talks about how Enoch merited to become the Angel Matat by overcoming the test of anger:

====

There’s hope for us, Rivka!

I was in such a bad mood on Friday, I didn’t really believe her.

Everyone and everything was annoying me.

And then, I got a text an hour before Shabbat with the story (that turned out to be another media fabrication…) that the Rav had been stabbed – and all of a sudden, I got a massive headache and started to feel even more grumpy.

I decided to try and do a long hitbodedut on Shabbat, to try and figure out what is going on here.

====

After a couple of hours of pondering why I’m feeling so angry, and understanding that the underlying stress here in Israel is actually very difficult to deal with, day in and day out, even if I’m trying to ‘filter out’ the news manipulations as much as possible, I decided to re-read the Rav’s Tefilla L’ani.

It’s subtitled: Prayers and lessons to get rid of ANGER.

I refer to it a lot on the blog, because it literally works like magic, to defuse my angry feelings, and move me into a much better and calmer space again.

(Download the English translation of it HERE.)

====

As I was reading through it, the following section caught my eye:

When a person gets angry, he is in a state of lacking self-control, and evil forces control him.

But when a person prays and pleads to overcome anger, then he will merit to see the face of our righteous Moshiach, about whom it’s written:

“He will be imbued with a spirit of fear of Hashem, the breath of our nostrils, Hashem’s annointed.”

==

And he gives strength to the kingdom of Moshiach to reveal itself in the world, and all of this comes by way of his nullifying his anger with mercy.

====

That then leads into a beautiful prayer, which says this:

Please Hashem, give us the merit to not ever get angry, and by doing this we will merit: “the breath of our nostrils, Hashem’s annointed.”

Because it’s only by having the patience to never get angry, and that no thought of anger should ever cross our heart or mind, that the soul of Moshiach can be brought forth to the world.

And if we never, ever have anger, we will merit the spirit of Moshiach.

And when a person gets angry, he brings upon himself the spirit of hell, “that anyone who gets angry, all sorts of hell (demons) control him.”

====

Xtians believe that ‘the Savior’ shows up and does all the work, while they just sit there with their bad middot, anger, arrogance, selfishness, all the rest of is, and still ‘get saved’.

This is not a Jewish idea.

One of the things that has been annoying me so much the last few weeks is reading all this stuff online from apparently ‘Jewish sources’ that relate to the geula as though it’s some sort of spectator sport.

Yeah, you just sit in your armchair, wherever you happen to be in the world, and make pointless predictions based on stuff you see on Youtube about ‘moshiach’ and ‘the geula’…. And don’t worry about working on yourself, or fixing your bad middot. Moshiach’s gonna take care of everything, all by himself….

This is a xtian idea.

It’s not a Jewish idea.

====

Many of us, most of us, are having massive tests with bad middot at the moment, and especially, massive tests with patience and anger, because overcoming these tests in our own private lives is what is actually going to bring the ‘soul of Moshiach’ out into the world.

Geula is not a ‘spectator sport’, it’s not a theatrical production put on for the audience watching via Youtube.

It’s a spiritual process of refinement where every single one of us has a job to do, to ‘clean out’ our own souls, so we can actually make it into the world-to-come, the world of truth, the amazing spiritual reality that Moshiach is going to usher into the world.

And that boils down to us having a real relationship with God, and asking Him, begging Him, to remove our bad middot, and especially our anger and lack of patience.

====

That is the real fight here, the real battle, the real war.

The IDF going into Rafah is a sideshow.

(And while we’re on the subject, the Rav said very clearly in one of his recent shiurim that he is totally against the idea of ‘going into Rafah‘. I will try and translate more stuff from the Rav over the next few days, BH.)

==

‘Aza’ = Gaza.

Aza is one of the fallen angels, and the more powerful of the two, who was chained up in the place of the Dark Mountains, where the sun doesn’t shine.

He and Azazel teach ‘black magic’ to all the reshaim who come and visit them. 

There is a reason we are so bogged-down in ‘Gaza’ – and that’s because it’s our bad middot that are keeping us there.

Again, here is what the Rav wrote in the prayer above:

[W]hen a person gets angry, he brings upon himself the spirit of hell, “that anyone who gets angry, all sorts of hell (demons) control him.

That is exactly the situation in our failed State right now – and probably, also in your part of the world, too.

====

We are being ‘controlled’ and manipulated by demons, and especially the demonic forces online that excel in making us feel angry, despairing about Moshiach every showing up, and complacent, that all we need to do is sit back and wait for Moshiach to ‘clean up the world.’

Really?

We have a job to do.

The more we make an effort to overcome our own anger and impatience, the more we pray on this, and ask God to help us overcome it – the faster the soul of Moshiach is going to be revealed in the world.

====

As my mum reminded me, there is free choice.

The people who choose to work on their own bad middot, and to really try to connect to God, and to not just relate to geula like a ‘spectator sport’, will most likely make it through what’s coming down the pipe in one piece, wherever they happen to live.

It’s not me saying this, it’s the Rav.

He wrote:

[W]hen a person prays and pleads to overcome anger, then he will merit to see the face of our righteous Moshiach.

====

So, if you actually want to see the face of our righteous Moshiach, instead of just pointlessly speculating online, I suggest you download a copy of the Rav’s prayers to overcome anger, and spend a little time going through it.

(HERE.)

Moshiach’s job is to teach the rest of us how to fix our souls, and our bad middot, how to pray properly, and how to have a real relationship with God.

But he’s not going to do that job for us.

We aren’t xtians.

And geula is not just a ‘spectator sport’ for armchair commentators.

====

PS: The Rav put out a message on Friday afternoon via R Elmaliach about the importance of keeping emuna alive in our hearts, even though all the stress of the situation here is making it hard to have emuna intellectually.

Because then, we have to ‘raise up’ that emuna in our hearts back to our minds, where it’s way more powerful.

The Rav also emphasises again how important it is to keep Shabbat, work on shmirat habrit– and to come and pray with the Rav down on Ido HaNavi.

I will BH translate that later, and stick it up.

Here’s the video in the meantime:

====

UPDATE: I just got sent the full English / Hebrew Kuntres of the Rav’s Tefilla L’ani to overcome anger.

Download that as a PDF HERE.

This is the one I personally use, and it works like magic to ‘disappear’ the anger – even the totally overwhelming, volcanic type of anger.

What I do personally is read the lessons in English, then pray the prayers in Hebrew.

And then you’ll see, the anger will totally defuse in the half an hour it takes you to do that, dissolved at its spiritual root.

(And you did you bit to get the soul of Moshiach revealed in the world, and for the enemies of the Jewish people to fall all by themselves. Bargain.)