You already know that I had 2 kids and 3 grandkids under 1 1/2 by me for Rosh, while the men went to Uman.

Baruch Hashem, ‘official estimates’ reckon that at least 65k got to Uman, but I always add 20,000 onto the ‘official estimates’, which means this year was the biggest Rosh Hashana, ever, by Rabbenu.

Which is incredible, when you really understand a) just how expensive and b) just how difficult, logistically, all the travel is because of the never-ending war in the Ukraine.

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One of my SILs went via Italy, another went via Poland, and my husband turned up in Bulgaria…

It’s at least six days of travel – and often, literally 24 hours + of travel in and out. Massive, massive mesirut nefesh from Am Yisrael, and it really does sweeten the judgements for all of us, whether we know it or not.

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In one of his comments from previous years, the Rav said this:

“A person comes to Uman, or even those who didn’t merit [to go], but they are bound to Uman, and thinking about the kibbutz (gathering) in Uman… The Rebbe already revealed that “I already bring everyone across on Erev Rosh Hashana, [to be sealed in the book of life], already on Erev Rosh Hashana, the moment that someone mitkashrim (binds themselves) to me, the moment that they come into me, in the ‘Heichal HaYechida’.”[1]

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By Zchor Brit, Rabbenu has taken his peeps ‘across’ to the best possible judgement they could expect on Rosh Hashana.

But let’s be clear, that this deal doesn’t come ‘for free’, and a huge amount of effort and mesirut nefesh and ‘suffering’ can and does happen on the trip to and from Uman, in order to scrub off the harsh dinim, and give the person a ‘vessel’ to catch all the blessings of the coming year.

Every step towards the True Tzaddik makes another angel, and adds to the spiritual ‘vessel’.

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So, that’s for all the guys who travelled.

And what about the women and families they leave behind?

Well, there is usually also a huge amount of pre-Rosh Hashana ‘scrubbing’ going on back home, too.

I already told you about the snot and diarrhea, which BH cleared up, mostly, after the first day. So then, I was just left with 3 babies of varying ages, including a newborn that wasn’t letting anyone sleep, and that would have been plenty to handle, all by itself.

But then…. We had a ‘bed bugs’ issue on Erev Rosh Hashana. This is how that played out:

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Three weeks ago, one of my kids finally realised that her house had become infested with bed bugs.

It’s a long story where they came from, let’s just say relatives of relatives, who were in deep, deep denial that anything was going on by them for months and months, which enabled the critters to spread to other households, before my daughter understood what was happening.

To her credit, the minute she figured it out, she called an exterminator, and two weeks before Rosh, she had to put every scrap of clothing, bedding and towels into sealed bin bags and leave them outside in the sun for two days, chuck out mattresses etc, and vacate her apartment for three days (it’s a minimum 24 hours, but with a crawling baby, she wasn’t taking any chances) while the guy ‘zapped them’.

Of course, we all got paranoid in the meantime that somehow, they’d got to us, too.

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I washed all the bedding and towels on 60 degrees (less doesn’t kill the eggs), checked the mattresses super thoroughly, and reassured myself that with God’s help, we’d been spared the scourge.

Just, it plays on your peace of mind, once you know that ‘bed bugs’ have invaded the home of someone in your inner circle, so I wasn’t 100% calm.

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Fast-forward to erev Rosh Hashana, and the kid who had bed bugs two weeks ago had a massive paranoid fit, that she’d somehow brought them to me after all.

Apparently, this is very common with people who have been through all this, it’s a traumatic response, where every speck of dirt becomes a potential critter-in-waiting.

So of course – of course! – that paranoid fit had to wax on the morning of Erev Rosh Hashana, when I came back from buying the challahs to see both my daughters wearing the same weird face.

Sit down, Ima, we have a crisis on our hands…

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I sat, as one kid told me she’d found ‘3 eggs’ on her mattress, while the other one told me she’d checked where to go for Chag, and there were cheap hotels in Eilat….

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God helped me.

That, and the donation I’d just made to help feed the Shuvu avreichim in Uman. And the hour I’d just spent at Shimon HaTzaddik doing vidui, and really understanding just how many sins I really still struggle with.

It can’t be bad, however this is going to end… That’s what I kept telling myself.

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As the hysteria mounted, I told my kid to call in an exterminator immediately, to assess if there really was a problem, and how bad it might be, so we could figure out next moves.

It was 10am, at this point.

The very nice guy showed up half an hour later, checked every bed and mattress super thoroughly, even checked my hysterical daughter’s car – then gave us the verdict:

I am 90% sure you have no bed bugs, he said.

(The extra 10% was to save face for my daughter, who had been describing luridly how she’d seen ‘eggs with legs’ etc.)

It’s very common after people have bed bugs that they get traumatised by it, he let us know, on the way out.

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Turns out, we do have a problem with tiny, biting fire ants, but compared to bed bugs, no-one cared at that point.

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At this point, it was midday.

There was a bunch of cooking left to do.

But I was totally wiped-out from all that, and the lack of sleep, and the ongoing work of just keeping up with 3 small kids, including the one at the stage of climbing everything and shoving everything he can in his mouth…

I decided, I am accepting reality this year, and making the priority my kids and grandkids, and not totally cracking up over Chag.

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I bought some dips and a cake.

We ate on paper. (There was still more than enough washing up, don’t worry).

I swept the floor every few hours, to try to keep the massive amount of food and ‘yuck’ down, I even had to do some sponga second day chag, as I was still fighting the battle against the biting red ants.

Every hour in the night, some other kid was awake and crying – and of course, I heard it all.

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Second day chag, we all went to shul for shofar blowing.

It was a total bust. After the first few blasts, the young guy blowing couldn’t get his shofar to make a noise. Then, we had a few minutes of what sounded like heaving, weeping noises. It was awful. Both my kids started crying.

Me?

I was relying on Rabbenu, and Uman, Rosh Hashana, so I actually felt maybe it was useful, that people left shul feeling far more contrition and apprehension than they came with, after that awful shofar blowing.

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We did the simanim both nights. We did tashlich. I got the day wrong, for when and how to do havdalah, I didn’t even know what time the chag came out, so we kept an extra 15 minutes past when it went really dark, just in case.

Was it a ‘good’ Rosh Hashana?

Only God knows.

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What I can tell you, is that part way through, when I was making one nursing mother a cup of tea, while the other one was feeding her kid, that story about the ‘long spoons’ popped into my head.

Long story short, there’s a guy who is offered to see ‘heaven’ and offered to see ‘hell’.

They take him to hell first, and the tables are filled with a sumptuous feast – but no-one can eat anything, as they all have spoons that are two feet long, which means they can’t spoon the food into their mouths.

Then, the guy goes to ‘heaven’ – and is surprised to see the exact same tables, same feast, same long-handled spoons.

But there in heaven, everyone was feeding each other, instead of just thinking about themselves, so they were as happy as could be.

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Post-chag, I had a lot of soul-searching going on, about how I want my life to change, and how I need to take responsibility for that.

I am totally sick of renting. I am totally sick of dealing with greedy people trying to sell their houses for 58 million-gazillion, but forgetting to tell you small details like half the property is built on the neighbour’s land…

I am totally sick of putting the emphasis on things that actually don’t matter, at least to me.

I am sick of ‘keeping up appearances’, fake friendships and disappointing relationships that just stay in superficial mode, because most people would rather keep their emotions and true feelings trapped behind a screen, instead of owning them, and taking responsibility for the mess their life is in.

I don’t know how this all looks, yet, in practise, but that’s where I want to be headed this year, with God’s help.

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So now, my thoughts on AI.

I think that AI IS really ‘clever’, efficient at many things, has certain abilities way beyond what most people can do, in some areas.

Is it being created as a tool for mass-surveillance and intelligence gathering? Of course! Do the Evils have a whole bunch of bad plans for how to use it? Of course!

Is it going to ‘take over the world’? Maybe. Can it replace humans? In some ways – in the crappy, robotic, soul-deadening jobs that no human should really be wasting their time in, anyway.

Am I ‘scared’ of AI? No – not at all.

Here’s why.

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AI is a machine-based intelligence.

Even if it gets really, really ‘clever’, even if it IS channelling demonic entities etc, as it really might be doing – bottom line, those ‘demonic entities’ also serve Hashem.

Bottom line, if you know anything about anything, spiritually, you also know that demonic entities inevitably turn on the people who are serving them.

It’s like that yetzer that gets you to speak lashon hara, and then disappears upstairs to bring a claim against you in the heavenly court, for doing so.

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Small people like you and me – what secrets do we really have to hide, honestly?

I have no offshore bank accounts in Panama or the Bahamas. I don’t engage in criminal enterprises on an international scale. I try to respect the sanctity and holiness of the human being, in all the big and small ways God presents me with.

If AI wants to rat on me, that I asked for some healthy eating ideas – so be it.

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But you know who really stands to lose everything, if AI goes ‘rogue’ and starts turning against its creators?

That would be the Evils.

The same Evils, who have so many secrets, so much yucky, horrible stuff to hide, so much ‘evil’ that they have been engaged in, behind the scenes, for decades, centuries – and even, millennia.

When God decides, I am now convinced that AI will be the route that brings all that ‘truth’ out into the light of day.

Jeffrey Epstein is just the very tip of that massive iceberg.

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So, don’t use AI like a shrink, don’t feed it any information that you don’t want the dark web to have, and for sure, don’t discuss ‘spiritual issues’ with it, as that is a shortcut to channelling demonic entities.

But otherwise, relax, connect everything back to God – and wait for the real fireworks to begin, hopefully, some time very soon.

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This ended up being a super-long post.

I probably won’t be writing much here now, as I also decided to get on with ‘Conversations 4’. If anyone wants to help pay for printing that, when it’s ready, be in touch.

But bottom line: for the people connected to Rabbenu in any small way, I think it’s probably going to be a much better year than it perhaps currently seems.

All the difficulties are just ‘scrubbing away’ the sins and gezeirot.

For people like me, clearly, there is still a lot of scrubbing required… But this doesn’t continue like this forever.

And dawn is surely about to break.

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FOOTNOTE:

[1] Excerpted from Shivivei Or, #472a.