BH, while I’ve started to feel better the last couple of days, after a month of snot, headaches, phlegm and funny eyes, I’m still feeling a little ‘off’.

As though I am being ‘irradiated’. Or something.

As of course we all are these days, 24/7. I guess they have another pandemic waiting in the wings, and they are really throwing everything they have at getting it going this winter.

But long story short, after a month of not feeling so hot, I finally started to feel better this week and more upbeat.

==

I went with my husband to get our usual bread for Shabbat this morning, and came away with a huge, huge lesson on life.

The main guy in the bakery, who we’ll call Ron, is a cheerful 50+ chiloni. The guy doesn’t wear a kippa. It took him a while to warm up to us and to not mind wishing us ‘Shabbat shalom’ on a Friday morning.

I had him pegged as a ‘typical chiloni’, whatever that is meant to mean, if I had to guess, I would say he’s a former kibbutznik who moved out to a city.

==

This morning, there was a teenager on the till, who was learning the ropes.

He said something that made me think he was the son of Ron – so me being me, I asked them:

Are you related?

Ron looked at me with a smile, and said Baruch Hashem, I don’t have any kids.

I said back to him not yet…

He looked at me with another smile, and told me:

My wife and I are 57. God decided that we weren’t going to have kids and I have no questions against Him. There are no punishments in this world, just life lessons.

And he smiled again, and went to serve someone else.

==

Me?

I was totally blown away.

I got such a profound lesson in real emuna, from this apparently chiloni guy, who used to struggle to wish me ‘Shabbat shalom’.

I came out of there today muttering to myself who is like your people, Hashem?!

Like, really?

==

What’s a shame, is that there are so many apparently frum people, including yours truly, who don’t have emuna and bitachon in Hashem anywhere near the level of Ron.

Ron is ALWAYS smiling.

Always.

Even during the worst of the war, the worst of the last couple of  years, he’s had a smile on his careworn face, and not because his life is a total garden of roses.

Nobody’s life is a garden of roses these days, no matter how it may appear from outside.

==

It was a very powerful lesson, and so, I thought I’d come and share it with you, dear reader.

I am at a stage in life where having seen so many of these ‘Youtube rabbis’, and other ‘leaders’, who just get the non-stop propaganda befitting deep state actors and agents, I now find it very, very hard to listen to ‘Torah’ from any source that is not actually Rav Berland, or Rav Ofer Erez, or people who are 100% connected to real tzaddikim.

(You can tell who they are, as they usually have very small followings, and lots of ‘obstacles’ put in their way any time they try to branch out.)

==

I am at a stage in life, where the more ‘Youtube videos’ I see people put out, the more ‘hype’ they get, the bigger their social media following, or their exposure on propaganda sites like YWN – the less I want anything to do with them.

BH, I have enough good reading material in Breslov, especially in the Hebrew, to last me a million years. I am not feeling a ‘lack’ in that way.

But sometimes, I am missing these real, practical ‘life lessons’ in emuna that you used to get a lot of, from ‘Youtube rabbis’ who could talk a great game, but sadly, were not practising what they preach.

This morning, I realised that here in Eretz Yisrael, you don’t need ‘Youtube rabbis’ to tell you this stuff.

Hashem serves these lessons up for you with your challah for Shabbos.

If you let Him.

==

BH, I give us all a blessing, that we should feel good and healthy, and be able to repel whatever ‘bad energy’ is currently being directed at us, in any which way.

And, that we should also continue to strengthen our emuna and bitachon in God, to the level where we can be as sincerely happy and  joyful as Ron is, every day.

And, I give us a blessing that we should manage to clear away the klipot, and the lies, at least enough, to be able to discern who the True Tzaddikim are in our world.

And to draw close to them, and follow their advice, on how to draw closer to God, and to emuna, and to our real, happy and holy selves.

Amen.

==

PS: This week, the chemtrail-spraying drones here in Israel got creative – they were mamash drawing menorahs in the sky, with the full complement of 8 candles… Ah, bless.

Even the deep state has its pintele yid.