Yesterday morning, I woke up feeling ‘down’.

Traditionally, I get seriously depressed every single year around the time of pre-Purim, for reasons that are still not totally obvious.

Regardless of whether there is ‘stuff’ going on or not (although of course usually, there is always ‘stuff’ going on), when Adar begins, I start to sink under the klipat Haman-Amalek, that tells me I’m worthless, nothing I do is worth anything – and there is no point hoping, aspiring, trying, praying, as nothing is ever going to turn around.

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This year, I thought maybe Hashem was giving me a break from the klipat Haman-Amalek.

Seeing as it runs the country, powers the media, gets recycled and repeated at me 24/7 from all the influencers on social media, I thought maybe God was giving me Adar off from having to deal with it.

But no.

Sunday morning rolled around, the morning of ‘Purim Meshulash’ here in Jerusalem, where we did the Purim seuda but didn’t bench al hanissim – and I woke up feeling as though my life is totally pointless.

I had a mound of cooking to do for the seuda. I had to go and deliver my standard two mishloach manot. I had to get my house together – and I was just feeling like there is no point to anything, and why am I even bothering?!

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Of course, that’s not a new issue for me.

I routinely have that challenge every few weeks, because that’s the world we live in, where you get kudos only if you are somehow serving the agenda of the Evils – both knowingly or unknowingly.

But on Sunday morning, it hit me with the force of a hurricane.

What to do, what to do?! How can I get out of this negative state of mind, when I have so much to do today, and barely a moment to myself?!

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First, I remembered what Rav Berland had said the previous week, that you can only overcome the klipat Haman-Amalek by dancing.

So, I put a couple of songs on repeat for 20 minutes, and danced and clapped around.

That made a big difference. It helped me to get going. But I could still feel the ‘down’ dragging at my heels. I went to do my ‘Purim chores’, and then I came back to the house, and realised that before I started cooking, I needed to try and kick the klipat Haman-Amalek more into touch.

The little voice whispered to me that I should shut the door to my office, and sit for an hour to start translating some of the Rav’s Shivivei Or, from the last week.

So that’s what I did.

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As I was flipping through to see what shiur was calling to me this week, for translating, I hit the section that begins with ‘Rivkaleh’s Story’ – the story of a young woman who experienced such crushing despair after WW2, that she gave up on being a Jew, and married a goy.

I will put up the first bit of the translation separately, but the shiur is a whole mussar and history lesson from the Rav, about times in the past when it seemed that all was lost – but eventually, things turned around.

Post-WW2 is just one example.

The Rav also referred to the story of King Yoshiyahu, who didn’t even see a Torah scroll until he was 18 years old, because his idol-worshipping forbears had done such a fantastic job of uprooting Torah from the land.

And, the Rav brought the story of Hanamel’s field in Anatot, which the Prophet Yirmiyahu bought and redeemed, even as the Babylonians were scaling the walls of Jerusalem.

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Long story short, after an hour of translating all this stuff, I started to feel way happier.

See if it has the same impact on you.

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In the meantime, I decided I am continuing to stay away from pointless speculation about what is going on in the world.

I’ve called out a lot of BS in the past, but with hindsight, I see it just makes me more enemies, because no-one likes to be told this stuff. (Including me…)

And then, even if you are right, so then are you going to turn into some carping example of ‘I told you so’, rubbing it in everyone’s faces all the time?

What’s the point?

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People come to ‘truth’ as a function of making teshuva.

If they don’t really make teshuva, if they don’t really make ‘peace with God’ at the fundamental level of their soul, then they never really get close to ‘truth’.

Because God’s seal is truth.

So, even though sometimes it’s tempting to feel like I’ll be more ‘relevant’ again if I start joining in on all the pointless speculation still going on, or wasting my time by calling out all the puppet-influencers who are just misleading and confusing so many of us – I’m keeping my mouth shut.

And focussing on sticking up more translations of the Rav, and more research into ‘real Jewish history’.

Because at least, it makes me happy, mostly, to be spending my time doing that stuff.

While I’m waiting for the klipat-Haman-Amalek to finally get the permanent heave-ho.