Rav’s prayer against lashon hara, my thoughts on L’ag B’omer
Shavua Tov!
First up, the Rav’s Prayer against Lashon Hara – from last week
Ribonu shel olam, Who can do anything, and from Whom nothing is withheld, give us the merit to not speak lashon hara.
And not to believe lashon hara, because a covenant is made with the lips, and this is a decree from above – that a person will believe all the lashon hara that he hears, after Adam HaRishon believed the snake, that [Hashem] ate from the Tree of Knowledge and created the world.
For this is the most difficult decree, even harder than immorality, and more than avoda zara, and more than spilling blood, because the words immediately are transformed into deeds.
And the moment that we accept upon ourselves not to speak lashon hara, the awful disasters will stop.
==
Like, the two children who drowned in the sea at Netanya, and the child who drowned in a mayan (spring) in the Negev, and the three children who were killed in Bet Shemesh[1], and the wife of Rav Chaim Zinger, and Moshe Tzanani, and Eliyahu Mashaal, and Erez Ravia, and Avraham Hananya, and Eliyahu Meirav – and other important avreichim, and important and dear young people.
And everything is because of the sin of lashon hara, that has struck roots amongst everyone, without any remedy or cure.
And the moment that the holy community will accept upon itself, from the smallest to the greatest, to stop speaking lashon hara, immediately, all the strange deaths in the community and in Am Yisrael will stop.
Amen, netzach, selah v’ed.
==
==
I have been feeling kinda strange all last week, just quite tired still, but also, super-busy every single day, with lots of ‘real life’ stuff, mostly good, BH, that is keeping me off line.
Mostly.
I was talking to my friend about the Rav’s prayer to get off the internet, that I was saying every day solidly for about three years, up until about two years ago. When it really started to kick in, and I started to develop a real life ‘offline’ again, in a bunch of different ways.
She told me her experience, which is when she says the prayer to stay off the internet, even when she starts surfing Youtube, she can’t find anything interesting to watch.
It’s very powerful! She told me. Perhaps a bit too powerful!
==
In the meantime, looks like the failed state has done its best to kill Meron again this year.
3 bonfires with 200 people each, because of security concerns. Puhleese.
Does anyone still believe them? About anything?
I heard the Rav is lighting quite early in Jerusalem on L’ag B’omer, and I also heard that he said that wherever the Rav is – that’s where the Rashbi is also hanging out.
Which made me feel a little better.
==
You can see very clearly the ruach hakodesh here, because every single year, even when the State was doing it’s best to close it, like it’s done every year since ‘Covid 19’, for different reasons and using different excuses, the Rav has encouraged people to make every effort to go.
This year – he didn’t say a word, pretty much. At least, not in any of the shiurim I’ve been reading over the last few months.
There were no Shuvu buses arranged, no sign ups, no words from the Rav telling people to make every effort to go.
Just a story from World War II, oft repeated, that in 1945, the Rebbe who was lighting the main bonfire in Meron refused to light for hours and hours…. Until word finally reached Eretz Yisrael that Hitler had just killed himself in his bunker.
I don’t know what the Rav is hinting too, with that oft repeated story.
I guess, we’ll find out.
==
The last thing to say, is that everyone I know seems to be going through quite an emotional rollercoaster at the moment.
It seems to be more than just a very natural reaction to the ‘end of the war’ – which looks like it really has ended, even though they keep trying to get it restarted.
Again, this demonstrates the Rav’s ruach hakodesh, because he said that Leah Zinger’s death ended the war with Iran and last week, he said that Avraham Hananya’s death last week finished the war in Lebanon.
It’s touch and go, we all know that.
And we all know, the Evils don’t give up that easily on their plans. But in the meantime, in the same way we saw Covid 19 fizzle, when they wanted to keep it going for ever and ever, looks like ‘the war’ is also fizzling out here.
==
By ‘here’, I mean Israel.
I have a feeling the Jews in the diaspora may be getting their own encouragement to make some of the sincere and massive teshuva that’s been happening here, the last few years. Because God doesn’t give up on anyone, anywhere.
My mum sent me pictures of the crime scene on Golders Green Road, shot from her window. She was locked down for eight hours (!) in the house, until the police finally let people leave their homes again.
It’s not ‘simple’ wherever you happen to live at the moment.
==
All this is very tiring, of course.
And on top of trying to process the bog-standard PTSD of ‘being in a war for three years’, there seems to be more, deeper stuff, coming up and moving through, for most of the people I know at the moment.
All we can do is hold God’s hand, keep chipping away at the bad middot, and keep finding productive stuff to do ‘in the meantime’.
Until God finally gives us a few more clues about what’s really going on here.
==
BH, I have more stuff to translate from the Rav this week, so look out for that.
And go celebrate L’ag B’omer however you can, this year!
The more they try to crush Meron, the more it just really shows the rest of us how very special and important, spiritually, it actually must be.
==
FOOTNOTES:
[1] From the Biton family. They were killed as a result of the shul in Bet Shemesh sustaining a direct hit from a rocket.
Thank you for the chizuk Rivka! Is it possible to post the prayer against lashon hara also in Hebrew? Thank you in advance and shavua tov!
It’s up under the English translation, thanks for the nudge, Chana.
I unexpectedly and miraculously ended up in meron for shabbos! I hadn’t been by rashbi for shabbos before at all nevermind shabbos lag baomer. apparently it was more full this year than usual. vibes were good and on shabbos itself there were no police or sadranim.
on paper there should be no issues with meron this year. certainly 5 years out from the “stampede” the govt “learned lessons” and the ceasefire was holding enough to let yom haatzmaut go on and a 4 day festival at yam hamelech is in the works. the media is excited about that! but the story in the media on meron has changed by the day – first the infrastructure wasn’t up to code, then there were fears of “war” and now the claim is there’s a transportation dispute.
so if there’s a transportation dispute for monday what does that have to do with people already in meron? why were police forcibly removing people from the tziyun last night? I left the tziyun around 8:30pm motzash so I missed it.
erev shabbos all the police barriers created an unbearable traffic situation as they berated drivers just trying to get home. we barely made it to our tzimmer because we couldn’t get a tremp. I witnessed trigger happy police aggressively blocking entrance to meron residents who clearly showed their official documentation to enter – digital and hard copies! cops didn’t look, screamed at them to move on and threatened citations and tickets. it was a scary thing to watch.
I also noticed there’s no ticket sales from shuvu… curious to see what will be. in the meantime I’m happy I was there for shabbos. it was a huge miracle.
That’s a huge zchut. I heard there were 10,000 people at Meron, and another 9,000 by the gates, this Shabbat. Still way less than at any of the big Yom HaAtzmaut events… but big gatherings of frum Jews are ‘dangerous’, we all know that.
The war in Levanon is not over by any measure. There are still very frequent, large, house-shaking booms coming from just over the border. They are still shooting at us every day. We have nearly constant IDF drones and jets flying over us. It has slowed a lot, but in no sense has it ended. This “ceasefire” is a complete lie.
Also, the Rav said late last week that while the Iran war ended, but that a new one could start. This time with different players. He also said something about this week, but was unclear. The consensus is that when the Rav speaks, it is to mitigate or stop something and that is what was going on there.
Large booms does not equate ‘a war’.
Even five drones coming over the border of Israel, as happened last week, does not equate ‘a war’.
But if you prefer to carry on living in the war mindset regardless, be my guest.
The real war is internal, of course. We just project our inner reality outwards.
==
BTW, on reflection I thought I should explain to you why your comments often draw an irate response from me: you write as though you know everything, and often imply that I am either just plain stoopid, or ‘wrong’, or trying to mislead people.
Your comments about ‘the war in Gaza’ are still here on the site, and still searchable for anyone who cares enough to do that (probably outside of you and me, nobody…) But, I would perhaps take a few moments to go and see how many of your previous comments on ‘the matzav’ have actually panned out in reality, and then, perhaps take it into hitbodedut.
No-one knows what is really going on, not you, and not me. And each time you state confidently ‘the consensus’ blah blah blah, what does that actually mean, in practise? The more you hang out at Shuvu, the more you come to understand that ‘the consensus’ is not a simple matter at all.
For me, if the Rav said, repeatedly, ‘Leah Zinger’s passing ended the war with Iran’ – I believe that, until I have reason not to. For sure, our sins can always cause more decrees to be made, lo alenu, that result in more problems and ‘wars’.
But in the meantime, that’s what the Rav said. And it’s no sin for a person to try their best to believe it, because our thoughts make our reality.
https://www.shuvubanimint.com/en/blog/the-secret-of-erech-apayim-divine-patience-and-the-control-over-the-heavenly-sph
Wisdom (represented by the Hebrew letter Chet) is worth nothing without bittul (represented by the letter Nun of “Before the sun, his name is Yinnon”). If wisdom does not come from the side of bittul, from the recognition of “he has nothing of his own,” then it is a wisdom that falls into the klipos (forces of impurity) and gives them life
THE ANSWER TO THE CHET NUN QUESTION