I spoke to my brother in London yesterday.

I was telling him how it feels like we’ve all turned into ‘emotional zombies’ on some level, here in Israel, because it’s been such a difficult couple of years.

On the one hand, what’s going on hurts and upsets so much, especially the lies, and the fact that Jews are dying because they are being set up to die. The whole thing is scripted, and BH, more and more people are waking up to that.

At the same time, if we fall too much into the ‘rabbit hole’ of all the evil gushing out of the political and military echelons here, that can make a person so angry, depressed and despairing, or panicked, that they can’t function properly.

It’s a very narrow bridge.

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I know from myself, I seem to have very little bandwidth to really talk to people at the moment, even people that I really love and like.

Perhaps more important, now that I’ve realised what is going on, and how it’s closing down my world, I am starting the push-back in earnest, with God’s help.

I am starting to talk again, feel again, really talk to God about all this again, to set aside a bit of time to explore my true feelings about what is going on.

It’s hard going.

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At the same time, I am seeing so much good in Am Yisrael.

The media here are going out of their way to keep harping on about all the pointless, low-level cack that makes it seem we are a nation of thugs and yucky people. But the people I meet day to day in Israel are mostly amazing.

I am amazed, that my daughters’ generation is just moving forward, getting married, having families continuing to try to build the world, when so much chaos and destruction is all around.

I am amazed, that so many people are continuing to move here from abroad (more on that in a moment). So many people here are not going abroad for a break in the summer, not just because the plane tickets are so expensive, but because they don’t want to get stuck outside of the country, if things kick off again…

That’s amazing.

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I’m amazed at the resilience.

I’m amazed at all the mothers who are keeping their families together in very trying circumstances, mamash acting as the shock-absorber, so their kids can just carry on in semi-normality.

(BTW, being the ‘shock-absorber’ starts to take its toll. I am encouraging all the women out there to take as much time as they can for themselves, and to ‘pamper themselves’ a little, in any way they can. Without guilt, and without worrying about how much a bit of ‘pampering’ costs’.)

I’m amazed at all the men still seriously learning Torah – when our corrupt government is doing everything in its power to punish them for doing so.

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The list could go on and on – but b’kitzur, I am seeing so many things happening going on right now, so much good, so much basic emuna, flowing out of so many people, in such ‘mundane’ circumstances that is mostly going unremarked and unrecognised.

But it’s truly amazing.

Who is like Your people, Israel?

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So now, back to the phone call with my brother in London.

I told him about how we’re all ‘emotional zombies’ in Israel at the moment, as it’s been so much to deal with.

Not easy, to face the prospect that some B-2 bomber flown by ‘Iranians’ might toast your mamad and poof! Either you’re dead or seriously wounded. Not easy, to have sons in Gaza, knowing that the army is playing fast and loose with their lives. Not easy, to deal with the reality that when they switch the ‘war on’ button again, life-threatening chaos can descend in an instant.

Not easy at all.

So, I was surprised when he told me that fear-induced ‘emotional zombie-ism’ is happening all over the British Jewish community, too.

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People are scared, but they don’t want to admit what’s going on.

And I don’t think they will ever snap out of it, because it’s willful blindness, at this point. They don’t want to know what’s really happening.

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That’s what he told me.

My brother has a plan to leave the UK as soon as his kids finish an important stage of their education. He has a big house in a wealthy ‘Jewish’ suburb, and he follows the property market closely for work. He told me, he might already have missed the window for trying to get a good price for his house.

I told him about my SIL, who was saying the exact same thing about her big property in the UK– and then paid a pidyon to the Rav, and got a cash buyer two days later. The one and only offer, in three years of the house being on the market.

That’s a miracle! He told me.

I could see it gave him some hope, that he won’t get stuck in the UK, weighed down by his property. Bezrat Hashem.

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According to him, a lot of people are starting to talk about moving, but without really addressing the reason why they want to move.

That’s still way too scary.

So, they talk about the economy, the cost of living (my brother told me everything has doubled here, the last few years, I really don’t know how people are managing). They talk about the lack of prospects for young people, generally. The more frum people talk about the terrible ‘anti-Israel bias of the BBC’, while the less frum people basically just believe all the ‘anti Israel bias of the BBC’, and are blaming ‘the settlers’ for all of Israel’s problems.

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So then, they get to the question of where to move to?

Apparently, some Jews in the UK, including another brother, think that America is still the goldeneh medina. The grass is always greener, even when ‘the grass’ is actually full of poisonous vipers…

Many people are talking about Israel – but are scared to come here, so they say. Partially, because of ‘the war’, and partially,  because they don’t want their sons being forced into an army where they are being killed like sitting ducks.

These are not ‘chareidim’, these are solid, modern orthodox / dati leumi types, that can see the picture clearer from the outside, at least on this subject, because they aren’t bombarded with the same brainwashing and censorship we get in the medina.

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The chareidim here who are not going to the army are not just standing up against tyranny ‘for chareidim in Israel’.

They are standing up for a whole bunch of Jews who know our current system is corrupt from start to finish.

The police recently sent to ‘catch deserters’ at the airport are not actually catching a lot of chareidim. Israeli chareidim, unless they come from abroad in the first place, have very little interest in going out of Israel.

They have big families, not very big incomes, they use mikvaot, keep properly kosher, like their davening – going abroad has very little attraction, for most of them (unless they go to Uman).

Who is going abroad are all the dati leumi, and regular masorti Israelis. I.e., the backbone of the miluim system.

And as more of them start to push-back against the terrible corruption and mistreatment of the soldiers in combat, and are refusing to continue with their miluim, those are the ones the State is now trying to intimidate, with arrests at the airport.

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B’kitzur – it’s a complicated, convoluted hot mess.

But this is also totally by Hashem’s design.

If there was no war here in Israel right now, the gates would be stormed by many, many more Jews from chul, who can see things are getting very dodgy, in chul.

So to keep it all balanced, and to keep ‘free choice’ operating at the correct level, there is a horrible war in Israel, horrible corruption, horrible State-sponsored tyranny, that is not a simple thing to deal with.

On the other side of that equation – so many people here are amazing.

The open miracles are still coming thick and fast.

Life is continuing here, despite it all, and Israel, incredibly, is still kind of ‘blooming’, although I honestly have no idea how that can be the case, given two years of war, and all the political corruption.

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I just want to end by returning to the idea of ‘willful blindness’.

Because all of us have our own ‘blindspots’, whether it’s believing in ‘Mr Maga’ and his 5-D chess; or telling ourselves bubbe meises that 770 is going to grow wings and transport everyone to Jerusalem, as soon as moshiach shows up (or to be more accurate, ‘climbs out of his grave in the Queens’ cemetery’.)

I was pondering the source of the ‘willful blindness’ going on in Jewish communities in London, and Melbourne, and Flatbush, where the cost of failing to understand the current sea-change in the attitude towards Jews could be catastrophic, God forbid.

I thought it mostly boiled down to ‘fear of change’.

My brother in London disagreed. He thinks it’s coming from most Jews being ‘woke’, and also, being overly-invested in property and status.

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His crowd all have ‘big houses’, ‘good jobs in the City’.

They all worry about their ‘carbon footprint’.

They all go on 2-3 expensive holidays a year.

It goes without saying, they took every shot offered, and made my brother a pariah for refusing to go along with the Covid scam.

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Deep down, they know they got conned, and that they are still being conned, but they don’t want to admit it, he told me.

Even if you put facts and information in their faces, they still won’t admit it.

It’s willful blindness – and that’s why I don’t think they are ever going to change. Until it’s too late.

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Me?

I believe God is so great, even the ‘willfully blind’ can wake up, in theory, before it’s ‘too late’.

There are no guarantees of anything, wherever we happen to live – although the last two years have proven repeatedly, that even when our enemies are throwing everything they have at Am Israel in Eretz Israel – somehow, we are still standing, living, growing, moving forward.

It must be driving them bonkers.

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In chul?

I’m not so sure.

My brother keeps telling me more stories of bent Jews who lose their morals whenever money comes into the picture.

(Of course, there are bent Jews in Israel who also lose their morals whenever money comes into the picture. That’s basically a requirement to sit in the Knesset.)

But here, it’s balanced out by so very many ‘good Jews’, good people, with simple faith in God, even if they don’t dress frum or look ‘religious’.

Here, there is a basic level of kedusha, of God’s protection, that is helping us, even when our personal morality is not what it could be.

There is nothing like sitting in a mamad at 4am, listening to booms all around, to cut through the superficiality, and to get to the tachlit of why am I really here? If it all ends now, what did I do with myself? How am I living? What’s the point?!

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That’s why I guarantee, there is a huge wave of teshuva building in the Jewish world.

Not only in Israel – everywhere where a Jew has been forced into a situation where they have to face themselves, and get to the tachlit.

Everywhere where a Jew has been forced out of their ‘comfort zone’.

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BH, I pray even the ‘willfully blind’ will leave the comfort zone, before it’s too late.

I pray that God will give us all the koach to stick close to Him, and His True Tzaddikim, and to not get drowned in all the pain, suffering and fear that we are still swimming against.

And that all of us will develop the emuna to understand we can’t run away from God, or suffering, wherever we happen to live in the world, and however big our bank accounts are.

Am Yisrael are amazing.

And bottom line: God loves us, and all this ultimately leading to a very good place.

Just, it takes an hour of doing hitbodedut everysingle day to keep hold of our souls while the storm is raging, and to keep noticing the tremendous light shining out of the darkness.