It’s a strange thing, but when you’re really trying to be part of Shuvu, you notice there are ‘themes’ that happen to kinda everyone connected, all at once.

Right now, the ‘theme’ really seems to be standing up to bullies.

Especially, that narcissist-type of Esav-bully who likes to pretend that they are a kosher pig, waving their split hooves around and asking how to tithe salt, whilst raping, pillaging and acting like the local mafia king-pin of whichever unfortunate village, country, or family got stuck with them.

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First, let’s give an example of where, just maybe, the Rav is finally starting to stand up *in the so-called ‘real world’* to the State bullies and persecutors that have been chasing him and his community for over a decade.

This comes from one of the Shuvu Banim Whatsapp groups, via a friend:

The Rav did Tikkun Haklalli by the Municipality. 1000 people joined. He said we will continue everyday until the government gives the property back.

Bulldozers came to break the shul down today

The Jewish municipality sent Arabs to destroy a shul in Yerushalyim Ir Hakodesh with its sifrei Kodesh after physically removing the mispallelim. With no warning and no explanation.

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Like every Succot, Shuvu Banim set up a big tent for the chag, to dance and pray in.

This year, they set it up on an empty lot at the end of Nevi’im street, which has been empty for a very long time…

I don’t know all the technicalities, but this is the tent that got bulldozed after the Jerusalem Iriya sent its usual bully-boys down, to kick-out the avreichim. The Iriya also then took the tent – which costs tens of thousands of shekels – and aren’t giving it back.

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So yesterday, literally a thousand Shuvu Banim descended on the Iriya, Safra Square, the place I used to call ‘Roman Plaza’ when I lived in Musrara.

Perhaps more interestingly, there was some of that old Shuvu spark in the air… the feeling that anything is possible, and that some strange and portentous events are in the offing again.

We’ll see.

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This photo is from Succot 5786:

I emailed the friend who sent me this that I feel as though the Rav’s personal Sefer Torah has somehow given him a new lease of life, and more ‘strength’ to start standing up to the Esav-Erev Rav bullies, spiritually, who have been tormenting the Jewish people for more than 3,500 years, already.

You know, those holy-than-thou hypocrites for whom appearance is the only thing that matters, and who pretend to be ‘tzaddikim’, and SOOOO very generous…. whilst bullying and pillaging and enslaving their way all over the planet.

Enough is really enough.

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In the meantime, let’s continue taking the discussion forward about standing up to the bullies in our own dalet amot.

It’s affecting way, way, way more people than most people can even guess at.

We are all so used to these sick, bad middot being ‘normal’, that they are flying under our radar most of the time, and then we have no idea why we feel so inexplicably exhausted, drained, anxious, upset, unhappy…

When I read it last week, this post really resonated, and mirrored almost exactly a whole bunch of stuff I set down in my journal, when the dam finally burst last week, and the penny finally dropped, about why so much of my family relations have been so very difficult and upsetting, for so long:

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Sure, some of this stuff sounds corny and ‘pop-psychology’-ish – but so much of it is an exact description of what is actually going on in the families of narcissists.

As the people who recognise what they are really dealing with can tell you, once you ‘out’ the problem, you will find that narcissists conform almost exactly to the ‘narcissist’ script…

To the point that it really starts to feel as though they are no so much individuals, but ‘channels’ for a singular, and singularly yucky type of spiritual energy, which is being vented into the world from all these different people – but originates in the same place.

To put the same idea into different words:

When someone becomes ‘disconnected’ from their own soul, and that can happen very easily with trauma and things like drug abuse (the experience of ‘getting high’) – then the vacuum in their soul doesn’t stay empty for long.

It’s quickly colonised by shedim and evil energy, and that evil energy is essentially a unified force that sounds and acts identically, wherever it happens to be ‘vented’ from, in your dalet amot.

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I am still pondering about all this, and working it through.

One of the things I am doing a lot of hitbodedut about at the moment is the question of reasonable expectations, as it seems to me ‘expectation’ lies at the heart of so much of the hurts we suffer in this world.

God for sure doesn’t owe us anything, and all the pain we endure is for sure a tikkun, and for our very best.

At the same time – it’s no mitzvah to let a bully continue to bully you, and make you physically sick, unhappy and miserable.

There is a distinct mitzva for a person to guard their own soul, and apart from parents, we have no commandment to ‘respect and honour’ anyone else who may be routinely hurting us at such a deep level.

If and when I have something worth sharing on this subject, I’ll write it up, BH.

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It’s a very narrow bridge, all this.

To have emuna that Ein Od Milvado, and to see the good, on the one hand.

But on the other, to stand up for yourself appropriately, and to not let Esav-Erev Rav bullies to continue to warp and destroy everything precious and holy they get close to, for their own ends and egos.

I give us all a bracha, that Hashem should give us the siyatta di shmeya required to figure this out appropriately, and in the way He wants us to.

Amen.