It’s hard to believe that Shavuot was just a week ago…

In my dalet amot, so much has happened since then, I can’t really keep up with myself. First, we went on a family holiday for two days, to the Kinneret.

The Kinneret is actually very low this year, surprisingly low, given all the rain we had. I saw all the new reservoirs along the sides of the roads as we went up, Chinese-built, and hardly discussed anywhere, so who knows what’s really going on. But I can’t help but wonder if the new reservoirs and the poor state of the Kinneret are somehow connected.

The husband and SILs decided to do a bit of fishing, and they even caught something.

I was helping out with the grandsons, and it reminded me again, just how much energy small kids generate, and require. It was really nice, but also quite tiring.

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For once, I didn’t rush around doing a million things on holiday.

I went to the separate beach twice, for an hour, and that was basically it, apart from a trip to Rabbi Meir Baal HaNess on the way out.

But it was enough to feel very grateful, for the gift of living in Eretz Yisrael, and underscored again how what you read online and what you experience in your own dalet amot can be so radically different, these days. Especially in Israel.

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We got home – and then, Kosher Kingdom burned down.

I know Kosher Kingdom well, because my parents have been living on top of it for the last few years.

Their flat didn’t burn down, as far as we know (it took the fire brigade a whole day to contain the fire). But, the whole building was severely and structurally damaged.

My parents and everyone else got ‘evacuated’ at 7am Wednesday morning, my mum was out in the street just in her nightie and slippers, as she didn’t have time to get dressed – and that was the last time they, or anyone else, was allowed in the building.

Now, we’re waiting for updates, but the fire was so intense it’s apparently warped the foundations of the whole building.

Bottom line: they will have to find somewhere else to live.

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Just like that, everything can change.

Just like that, everything we think is settled, comfortable, never-changing – it can change in the blink of an eye.

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Two weeks ago, my mother was taking pictures of King Charles getting a challah from Grodzinsky bakery, across the road, and glad-handing a crowd of frum London Jews.

Three weeks ago (?), she was sending me pictures of the stabbing on Golders Green Road, where the stabber was being tasered in the street and then the police cordoned off the area for like, 10 hours, and no-one could get in or out again.

Wednesday, ‘Kosher Kingdom’ burned down.

Yesterday, an Iranian man got run over on Golders Green Road, on purpose.

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My mother told me that the Iranian community and the Jewish community in London have actually been getting quite ‘close’ the last few months, feeling solidarity for each other in this crazy world.

There was a empty lot with boarding around it on Golders Green Road, that for months and months, had pictures of the hatufim, kidnapped to Gaza.

As the hatufim were returned, the pictures were slowly taken down – and then, when the Iranian regime started murdering protesters in the streets a couple of months ago, the Iranian community of London started sticking up their posters of the slain.

My mother told me there were hundreds of them stuck on the boarding, and it became a kind of ‘shrine’ to the Iranian protesters.

So, in our strange world, the expat Iranians in London and the London Jews in galut are getting on like a house on fire, at the moment, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Peace is truly possible, when the evil politicians, and those controlling them from the shadows, are out of the picture.

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Was the fire really just an ‘electrical fault’?

From what I’m hearing, it seems to be yes, it was just an electrical fault. The UK has been going through a heatwave for a few days, temperatures in the high 30s.

And 15 years ago, there was another electrical fire at the previous Kosher Kingdom premises, so it could be lightning struck twice.

But even so, most people don’t believe that. And even if it was just an electrical fault, God was clearly arranging things, still, that the iconic ‘Kosher Kingdom’ of Golders Green would publically burn down.

The ‘comfort zone’ in chul is shrinking radically.

The ‘comfort zone’ in Israel has never really existed, if we’re honest.

We’ve always been going through wars, intifadas, terrorist attacks, skirmishes from Bedouin tribes…

And it’s like this, because when people feel ‘uncomfortable’, they start to turn to God a lot more.

I guess, that’s the real point.

The only point, of what is currently going on.

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I know I’m not posting a lot here at the moment.

There’s a few reasons for that. I am just really, really busy offline these days, which is a very good thing and a blessing.

But like you, I also don’t know what on earth is going on, and I don’t want to waste my breath, or anyone else’s time, by pointlessly speculating.

Things will start to get more clarified soon.

But when change comes, it really does come in the blink of an eye.

And that is why the Chofetz Chaim kept a packed suitcase in his hallway, apparently, waiting for the message that Moshiach had come, and geulah had commenced in earnest.

With all the current uncertainty going on, especially in chul, that’s not a bad idea.

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PS: The Rav was back at the davening yesterday and out of hospital, Baruch Hashem.