Rabbenu teaches that when there is ‘war’ in the world, that plays out within a person’s family.

And if that person lives alone, then it plays out within the individual themselves, and drives them mad.

I would like to add to this, that having observed the fish tank for three weeks now, I think the ‘war vibes’ in the world are also playing out in the aquarium.

Last week, I noticed there were shalom bayit issues happening with two of the three psychos I bought to make up for the dead goldfish. There’s a blue one (the man….) and an orangey-peach one (the woman….) – and my social worker daughter was horrified to see the domestic abuse going on in the tank.

The blue thing chases the peach thing all over the place, non-stop, unless she can find somewhere to hide herself away for a couple of hours. And it’s always that way around.

If there was social services for fish, my social worker daughter would have called them in.

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In the meantime, I also bought a black ‘cleaning fish’ three weeks ago, and while it’s externally quite ugly, of all the fish in the tank, it’s the most selfless and helpful.

It spends its whole time cleaning stuff up, and also helped the original psycho goldfish to calm down by suckering itself firmly into the spot where otherwise the reflection from the corner drives the goldfish mad.

Three days ago, before Shavuot, I christened it the ‘tzaddik’ of the tank.

The next day – one cute-looking tiny angel fish started cholek-ing on the tzaddik. It literally started pecking it to death. Yesterday, the ‘tzaddik’ went to the big goldfish bowl in the sky, having been killed by the angel fish.

And another fish also got caught up in the carnage – we fished out what was left of it and spent a couple of minutes trying to guess what it used to look like.

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What in the world?!

I bought this tank to ‘relax’ and ‘calm down’, and now, I had a double-homicide to deal with, plus ongoing domestic abuse.

I decided to do some hitbodedut on what God was showing me, via the aquarium, because everything, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g is a message, if we can just quiet our minds, our lives, for a few minutes to ponder it.

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What came to mind was Rabbenu’s teaching about how ‘war’ plays out even in our family dynamics, even in ourselves – even, it seems, within our fish tank.

There are vibes in the world that we are all picking up, and if we aren’t taking the time, making the effort, to really deal with them, spiritually – then, we can find ourselves in big trouble.

That same day that the tzaddik and another fish got pecked to death, there were two suicide-homicides reported here in Israel, in Bat Yam and in Modiin, where the husbands went nuts, killed their wives and then killed themselves.

That same day, I remember hearing what felt like all my neighbours having massive arguments.

There was a ‘vibe’ of violence and strife.

It played out in a whole bunch of ways.

(This was the same day that Ukraine reportedly attacked Russia with a bunch of drones… Not saying that happened as reported, but saying there were definitely war vibes in the air.)

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Another thing I’ve learnt from the goldfish experiment is that even being a fish is not simple.

With all the stress of the last few years, I’m sure many of us have had a quiet daydream of turning into some bird and flying away from it all…. Or some carp, and just swimming serenely through life, without having to deal with all this aggro and tension all the time.

I am now seeing that is another illusion of the yetzer hara.

Even the fish are having bad days, abuse, starvation (that one day I forgot to feed them….) and even, murder.

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Tachlis, we are down here to work.

There are no ‘free rides’ in this world, not even for a goldfish, and certainly not for a sentient human being.

(It’s a discussion for another time, but fish have personalities, mamash. There is no way that their personality is possible, given the size of their brains, so it’s clearly a function of the soul that’s inhabiting the fish. It’s very interesting to consider what is going on in our world, spiritually, and also explains why my bunny rabbit a few years’ back was also a psycho.)

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In the meantime – there is a tzaddik in every generation.

I am sending my husband back to the store to buy another cleaning fish, to replace the one that got attacked and killed.

Because life continues, the world goes on – and the point is to just do our best, and to try and stay close to God, and to continue to do our bit to nullify and neutralise all the ‘war’ around us right now, and especially, the war within.

Maybe, the goldfish are stuck being psychos, chasing their tails all day long, doomed to repeat the same abusive patterns, until their friend eats them.

But we aren’t goldfish.

We are human beings, we are Jews, with a Torah, with a True Tzaddik in every generation to guide us and protect us, and help us clean up the mess that is being made all around us.

And probably unlike a goldfish (but who knows, at this point), God expects us to recognise our bad middot, and to overcome them.

With prayer.

With hitbodedut.

With teshuva.

With God’s help.

Only, truthfully, with God’s help.

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God gave us the power of speech for a reason, after all.

And it’s the words of Torah, sincere teshuva and heartfelt prayer that we utter that truly separate us from the bottom-feeders of the world.