Baruch Hashem, Conversations III is live.

You can get it HERE.

If you live in Israel, it will cost you around 120 NIs – 43 shekels for the book itself, which is kept as low as I can make it for Print on Demand, and the rest is for shipping and delivery.

If 120 shekels is too much for you to spend on a new Rav Berland book – I get it. Life’s expensive, it’s not your priority, there’s a bunch more stuff you could be spending 120 shekels on, that you would prefer to have, or do.

No problem.

But let me explain why I am not spending literally thousands of shekels of my own money, to print hard copies of this book in Israel, this time around.

Because the penny has finally dropped, that being connected with Rav Berland in any way, reading his shiurim, going to his prayers, giving tzedeka to the institutions and people connected with the Rav and Shuvu – this is a huge, massive spiritual zchut.

And it leads to huge, massive spiritual blessings, on so many levels.

And not everyone is on the level to appreciate that.

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The last 10+ years, I have been doing my darndest to make the books cheap, free even, to get them seen by as many people as possible.

I am now moving out of that space, and into a space of being satisfied with the tremendous effort and expense it takes simply to publish a Rav book, via Print on Demand, on Amazon.

Each book literally takes months of time, tons of prayers and effort, and even without printing costs, I am spending thousands of shekels to ‘get it made’.

And I totally feel the zchut of doing that, and I can tell you a whole bunch of ‘open miracles’ that I’ve seen happen, personally and nationally, each time one of the Rav’s books came out.

At this stage, that’s enough for me. I’ve done my bit to spread the Rav’s light in the world. I have got to a stage where I now realise and accept that I don’t have to spend thousands more shekels of my own money to make the book cheaper to buy in Israel, for people who probably need to work on their relationship with giving money for good causes.

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If buying Conversations III doesn’t speak to you – don’t buy it.

Simple as that.

But, also don’t lie to yourself that if it was free, or being sold for 20 shekels you’d be turning over heaven and earth to track down a copy. Based on the other score of books, that’s not exactly been happening.

And that’s also ok, because these books are a zchut, a present.

And most people just aren’t in a place where they understand that.

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In the same vein, I’ve also been toning down my offers to ‘take people to the Rav’ the last few months.

Partially, this is because life has been so hectic in so many ways, that I literally couldn’t get my head around running an extra taxi service on the side.

But partially, it’s also because I’ve been realising that me killing myself in all sorts of ways like this is not sustainable, and that if people really want a relationship with the Rav, they will have to find the way of forging it independently.

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Similar but different, me and my husband joined a hiking group recently, as one of our ‘date things’ that we do to spend some much-needed quality time, just the two of us.

The last trip, I had a whole struggle in myself, about whether to ‘offer a lift’ to people asking for one from Jerusalem.

It’s not simple to say yes, because having strangers in the car for two hours there, and two hours back, kind of ‘kills’ the time we have to talk – and also, means we can’t do spontaneous things like head off to the Baba Sali, like we did at the end of the last hike a few weeks’ back.

I was doing some hitbodedut on it, because I really want to be a ‘good’ person, and a ‘helpful’ person.

But that’s when I realised that keeping ‘date time’ for me and my husband is actually the priority, and if I start to let other people bounce me into giving them a lift, I will just stop going hiking.

(I’m not blaming ‘other people’, btw. Just acknowledging where my own weak boundaries have been causing me issues.)

No-one signed up for the group with the promise that they could get a lift with me to the trailhead… if it’s important enough for them to do the hike, they can figure things out without me.

Sure enough – that’s what happened.

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So, all this comes back to many of the things currently being discussed on the blog.

Including, me trying to tone down the ‘over-helping’, and letting other people decide if having a new book from the Rav is something they really actually want, or not, even if they have to pay for delivery.

Sometimes, the yetzer drives us mad by dressing up bad middot and co-dependent traits as chesed.

BH, I have a lot of work to do to carry on unpicking all this, and finding the right balance.

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Go HERE, to buy Conversations III.

If you want.