In Breslov, we take a look at some of the core Breslov beliefs, explore some Rebbe Nachman books, and some Rebbe Nachman quotes, meet some of the leading Breslov Rabbis of modern times, including Rabbi Eliezer Berland, and look at:

  • Breslov hasidim
  • Breslov Torah
  • Breslov Books
  • Azamra Breslov
  • Breslov customs
  • Everything Breslov
  • Breslov Rabbi Eliezer Berland
  • Breslov hitbodedut
  • Breslov communities in Israel
  • Breslov Jew
  • Breslov Jerusalem
  • Breslov Leaders
  • Breslov Learning
  • Breslov Lectures
  • Breslov Meditation
  • Breslov Mea Shearim
  • Breslov News
  • Breslov Nachman
  • Breslev Noahide
  • Breslov Quotes
  • Breslov Stories
  • Breslov Teachings
  • Breslov Therapy
  • Breslov Zionism
, , , ,

The opening shots in the next war

Sometimes, it’s hard to keep going, isn’t it?

I think the hardest part of this current exile we’re in is that so much of our effort for good just seems to get ‘swallowed’ by bad, and we’re left scratching our heads and wondering where it all went.

The ‘bad’ is swallowing so much kedusha, so much good, so much truth, and it’s gulping it down at a never-before-seen pace.

And then I remember what Rebbe Nachman explained, that at some point, it will gulp down too much, and something will get stuck in its throat, and then it will be forced to regurgitate every last bit of good it swallowed.

More and more, I think the something that will get stuck in its throat is Rabbi Berland.

====

In case you don’t already know, the State of Israel, aided and abetted by the Pravda Israeli media, has decided to begin a new war against Rabbi Berland, and his Shuvu Banim community.

This time, they are using a secular woman whose baal teshuva daughter died from gallbladder cancer a couple of months ago.

Shoshie, the daughter, and her husband became baal teshuvas a few years ago – much to the mother’s displeasure. Then, they became Breslovers – which upset the mother even more. And then, the crowning insult – they joined Rabbi Berland’s Shuvu Banim community, and grew their payot really long.

This, the mother could never forgive.

====

Before we continue, some facts on gallbladder cancer, the type of cancer Shoshie had.

The following comes from uptodate.com, a website that is used by medical professionals to stay up to date, easily, on the latest research and advice for different illnesses:

Gallbladder cancer (GBC) is an uncommon but highly fatal malignancy; fewer than 5000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. The majority are found incidentally in patients undergoing exploration for cholelithiasis; a tumor will be found in 1 to 2 percent of such cases [1-4]. The poor prognosis is thought to be related to advanced stage at diagnosis, which is due both to the anatomic position of the gallbladder and to the vagueness and nonspecificity of symptoms.

Surgery is the only potentially curative modality for patients with GBC. However, only a minority of patients are eligible for curative-intent surgery because of disease extent (either locoregionally advanced and unresectable because of local invasion into critical structures or metastasized beyond locoregional confines). For the remainder, treatment is palliative in nature.

====

I bolded the sentence that you should pay particular attention to. In plain English, it says that the only way you can potentially cure gallbladder cancer is to surgically remove the diseased gallbladder.

If you can’t do that, you have no chance of curing the cancer, according to natural laws.

The following stats come from the cancer.net website:

If the cancer has spread outside the gallbladder to the lymph nodes, the 5-year survival rate is between 7% and 8%. Gallbladder cancer that has spread to other parts of the body has a 5-year survival rate of 4% or less.

====

What these stats say is that just 4-8% of people with gallbladder cancer live longer than 5 years after their diagnosis.

Or to put it another way, it kills 92-96% of people within five years, regardless of the treatment they receive.

Chemotherapy doesn’t work to ‘cure’ gallbladder cancer (whether it works under any circumstances is a post for another time). The medical professionals know this, and many of them will not ‘force’ people with gallbladder cancer to have chemo, as the side effects are horrendous and it’s really not helping them to live longer, anyway.

These are the facts.

The facts that you won’t see reported anywhere, in the Pravda propaganda media here in Israel, and in many other places in the West.

====

Cancer is a big industry.

This comes from an article on the newstarget site in 2016:

Last year, the cancer industry was valued at $100 billion, and is predicted to reach $147 billion in sales by 2018, according to data released by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

====

Meanwhile, this comes from the marketwatch website from January this year:

Global Oncology Drugs Market to Surpass US$ 196.2 Billion by 2026

The cancer industry is extremely lucrative, and is doubling in the 10 years between 2016-2026.

Why is it so profitable? The following article from October 2019, on the statnews website might shed some light on this:

Americans are rightly furious about the high and unsustainable price of cancer drugs, which now routinely cost more than $100,000 per year of therapy. Those prices are made worse by the fact that most cancer drugs offer only modest benefits — one study put the median benefit at 2.1 extra months of life — along with the fact that expert physicians frequently recommend these drugs for off-label uses, meaning using a drug for a purpose it was not initially approved for.

You got that?

You get an extra 2.1 months of life, on average, and it will cost you $100,000, if you go the ‘cancer drugs’ route.

====

So now, let’s return to the sad case of Shoshie, who paid a pidyon to Rabbi Berland, which was really her only chance of surviving her cancer in any way, shape or form.

The Rav advised her to follow a strict ‘no toxin’ diet, to try to encourage the gallbladder to heal, and according to the testimony of Shoshie’s husband, for as long as she was following the diet, her health was actually stable and even strengthening.

But the mother couldn’t leave things alone, and put her daughter under tremendous psychological pressure to have chemotherapy.

The same chemotherapy that even the medical profession admits doesn’t work to ‘cure’ gallbladder cancer in any way, shape or form, and that floods the body with a tremendous dose of literal poison.

That poison collapsed Shoshie’s weakened immune system, and she died two weeks after the chemotherapy.

Let me ask you:

When you know these facts about gallbladder cancer, who should really be in the frame for ‘murdering’ Shoshie?

====

So in this instance, the pidyon didn’t work.

Occasionally, this happens, and Rebbe Nachman clearly explains why this happens, at least in the spiritual realm, as you can read about HERE.

In the meantime, anti-chareidi journalists from Israel’s Channel 13 News decided to make a patently misleading ‘expose’ into what happened; then anti-chareidi politicians (who used to be anti-chareidi journalists) got up in the Knesset to ‘demand’ that the State of Israel stop the ‘Rabbi Berland cult’ –

And whaddya know?!

Barely two weeks later, Nurit Ben Moshe has filed a complaint with the Israel Police that Rabbi Berland should be investigated for manslaughter.

====

Again, let’s break down the complaint in plain English:

  • Rabbi Berland took money to effect a spiritual cure known as a pidon nefesh – that thousands of people, including terminally-ill cancer patients who the doctors had given up on can tell you first-hand worked to permanently cure them of their illness.
  • Rabbi Berland advised the patient, Shoshi, to follow a strict ‘all natural’ diet – to avoid over-taxing an already very weak immune system, and try to get her body to heal.
  • Nurit Ben-Moshe complained that Rabbi Berland was ‘stopping her daughter’ from having ‘life-saving chemotherapy’ – both claims are totally false. As soon as Shoshie succumbed to the pressure from her mother to have the chemo, she had the chemotherapy. No-one was stopping her from doing anything. And the chemo wasn’t ‘life-saving’ at all – in fact, it’s highly likely that having the chemo radically shortened Shoshi’s life.
  • Ergo, the pidyon didn’t work.

In any other country, the police would throw this complaint out as delusional.

But of course, the State of Israel is run by an anti-chareidi mafia, so instead, the media is full of stories rehashing the old lies and spicing them up with new ones.

====

So, why do I say that Rabbi Berland is the ‘bone in the throat’ of the Sitra Achra?

Because last time the State of Israel fabricated a case against him, the Israeli judicial system started to unravel publically. Just last week, Israel’s own Justice Minister had this to say about the ‘justice’ system in Israel (quoting something President Rivlin wrote in Haaretz back in 2004!):

“Almost no one dared uncover the dangerous symbiosis between figures in the police major crimes unit, the State Prosecutor’s Office and the media.”….  How can we accept a situation in which senior officials in the judicial establishment, who are obligated to uphold standards, who preach at the gate against corruption, see and hear about institutional corruption on such a scale and say, there’s nothing to be done. The answer is that we cannot.”

No-one believes in the courts or the cops here anymore. Five years ago, most people believed that fair trials and honest investigations occurred in the State of Israel.

Not any more.

====

And now, this latest calumny against the Rav is going to highlight all the terrible lies the West likes to tell about its medical profession.

Start researching ‘cure’ rates for chemo, and for radiation oncology, and see what you find. And while you’re at it, take a look at this link a reader just sent me about cells from an aborted fetus that died in 1966, that are being cloned and routinely added to vaccines.

Even Wikipedia confirms that this is happening, known as ‘MCR-5’ on your vaccine information inserts.

Can someone please tell me why that’s happening?

What on earth is the medical justification, the medical rationale, for adding the whole cloned dna from an aborted fetus to vaccines?

I have to admit, I can’t think of anything that would justify this, and I can think of a whole bunch of reasons why I find this idea disturbing in the extreme.

====

So, I think this latest blood libel against the Rav is going to start shining the spotlight on the corrupt medical profession, and all the lies they like to tell about what’s really causing illnesses, and what’s really curing them.

In the meantime, Rabbi Berland has been warning for months that the situation is so bad, he’s going to have to take on a new disgrace that will make the last one look like a walk in the park.

I wrote about that months ago, here.

And it seems, that time has now come.

====

UPDATE:

Someone just sent me this flyer. If you’re in Israel, and you’re interested in at least asking some questions about why they are putting the full DNA from an aborted fetus from 1966 into vaccines we’re all happily syringing into our children, this could be the place to go for some more information:

UPDATE #2:

Within 10 minutes of me linking to the scholarly article that simply explained that the MCR-5 cells were taken from the aborted, 14 week old male of a 27 year old woman with severe mental illness, that article disappeared! The censorship is totally insane.

Here’s what that scholarly article said:

The MRC-5 cell line was developed in September 1966 from lung tissue taken from a 14 week fetus aborted for psychiatric reason from a 27 year old physically healthy woman. The cell morphology is fibroblast-like.

====

You might also like these articles:

Blue and White’s Enemy #1: Rabbi Berland

/2 Comments/by
, , ,

Talking To God

A few weeks’ ago, I got an invitation to come see a private screening of a film called Talking to God.

I haven’t been to a movie for somewhere around 12 years…. so of course I said ‘yes’. Hey, I get to do something Rabbenu related and still get to watch a film with no guilt or teshuva required? Are you kidding?!

So, I settled into for the 90 or so minutes expecting to see something cute, with its heart in the right place, around the AmDram level – and boy o boy, was I surprised. Talking to God had superb casting, a real plot, and was a real film, in every sense of the word.

The story revolves around a woman from New York, Rebecca, who is having troubles sleeping and can’t figure out what she’s supposed to be doing in life. Long story short, she gets to Uman, and Rebbe Nachman starts showing her some profound insights via one of his Tales, that end up turning her whole life around.

But what was truly amazing to me is that the film didn’t feel like a mussar lesson in the least, and actually had a lot of laugh-out-loud moments.

Between you and me, I’m at that stage of life where I can’t take any more of the ‘fake piety’ stuff anymore, where angels start strumming their harps as another saintly figure takes the stage to lecture everyone else on how to act.

AAAARGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!

But this film had a strong enough story that the moral of the story kind of slipped in unnoticed – like it does with all the best movies.

I was thinking about it for a good few days afterwards, which is when I decided to get in touch with the movie’s director and producer, Maya Batash, to find out how it came to be made.

====

We met for a coffee at Cinema City (man, I can’t stand that place…) and Maya explained the genesis of Talking to God.

====

The story begins back in 2010, when Rav Arush’s Garden of Emuna was just starting to take the English-speaking world by storm. A few years’ beforehand, Maya had shifted from her job as a successful neurologist to start to develop her long-forgotten creative side.

She’d gone back to school to study painting, and then decided she wanted to learn how to make indie films. In 2010, she’d just released ‘Out of the Fog’, a film with a theme of emotional healing, and was looking forward to working on a new comedy.

Instead, after a year of reading the Garden of Emuna, Maya found herself taking a trip to Uman, and then the whole plan changed.

====

“I went to Uman despite my lack of any initial desire to be there’” she recalls.

“A friend invited me on a group trip and despite my hesitation, somehow I ended up there just a few months later”.  That trip led to three months of what Maya politely calls ‘spiritual surgery’, as the answer to that question, and others, started to swim into view. It wasn’t an easy experience, but perhaps strangely when another trip to Uman was announced the following year, in 2011, Maya explains; “I ran to go on it. And while I was in Uman the second time, I got the idea that I should make a film. Initially, I thought it should be some sort of documentary about people in Uman, and all their miraculous stories.”

Maya started taping videos of big Breslov rabbis like Rav Arush, and Rav Brody, to use in the documentary, like this clip below:

====

Maya also returned to Uman for a third time, this time with a camera, and a plan to interview some of the people there about their experiences of being by Rabbenu. “I wanted to interview ‘big’ people, the people who other people listen to, because I was finding it hard to get regular women to agree to talk to me,” she says.

But at some point, that plan fell by the wayside. “I didn’t have enough footage for a full documentary, and then I remembered I hate documentaries,” says Maya. But what she loved, was some of the stories that Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach used to tell from the Baal Shem Tov, and from Rebbe Nachman. And in particular, the story of ‘The Fixer’.

Slowly, Maya realized that while she didn’t want to make a documentary about emuna, she really did want to tell some of Rebbe Nachman’s stories.

The screenplay was written in Jerusalem’s cafes in 2012, and then Maya spent the next few years trying to raise the money required to start filming.

“This film had 30 actors, and a massive crew,” she says. “It was a huge undertaking, and I really needed some help to make it happen.”

====

Help came in the form of a producer called Kim Jackson who brought on another producer named Jonathan Federico, and then Talking to God really started to come together. A week before filming was due to begin, Maya finally found the right actor for the starring role of the Fixer, called Zebedee Row  In the fall of 2014, Uman was transplanted to Staten Island, the film was shot, and Maya got on with the lengthy process of post-production and film editing.

And that’s when a few more miniot bobbed up to slow things down. Maya mother passed away in 2015, and Maya was also still trying to raise the funds required to get the film’s original music score written, and to complete the post-production.

“It took a lot of praying, a lot of hitbodedut, and a lot of trips to Uman,” she says. And now, Maya is trying to find a distributor who will get the films into theatres around the world. “I could release it online, but I really want it to be taken seriously. This film is for anyone who is looking for growth, healing, or meaning in their lives. There is a huge audience here, and the film needs the right distributor to be able to tap into it.”

====

In the meantime, Maya is submitting Talking to God to film festivals, and is continuing to pray that the right someone, somewhere, will notice it, and help to get it out there to a wider audience.

So, eight years after she first began the project, Talking to God is finally poised to go mainstream.

“What did making this movie teach you?” I asked her, over a cup of something hot at Cinema City.

“I’ve learned to talk to God daily which allows me to let go of whatever’s bothering me, whether it’s fear, anger, pain etc and give it over to the Source,” says Maya. “I’ve learned the importance of doing everything in my power to make myself happy.  And how dancing and singing regularly can miraculously bring a person to real joy. Happiness is a choice,” she says.

What I can tell you is that watching the ‘private screening for feedback’ of Talking to God made me very happy. And I have a feeling that the film might have that effect on a few million other people, too.

To learn more, visit: www.talkingtoGodmovie.com

====

You might also like these articles:

FAQS on Hitbodedut

 

The How and Why of Hitbodedut (aka talking to God)

/0 Comments/by
, , , ,

Channel 13 prepares another hatchet job against Rabbi Berland

The media has been unusually quiet in their ongoing campaign against the Rav in recent months.

But that’s about to change. After two whole months of almost no negative stories about Rabbi Berland, Channel 13 has decided to do an ‘expose’ of the Rav doing pidyonot for people and advising them to avoid doctors.

What can we do?

Channel 13 clearly never read Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom, where the Rebbe warned his followers in the starkest terms:

“A physician may use many hazardous treatments and still be totally ignorant of their effect. It is not surprising that they often do more damage than good. Why depend on a natural cure when it is most likely to cause harm?…

“Doctors are agents of death and do little more. Happy is the man who avoids them and depends on God alone.”

====

Channel 13 clearly also knows precisely zippy-dee-do-da about what a pidyon nefesh actually is, and what it actually does – and also why sometimes, it doesn’t work.

Rav Yaakov Selma goes through a lot of the sources from Likutey Moharan in Hebrew, below:

But in Lesson I:215 of Likutey Moharan, Rebbe Nachman tells us:

“Know: There are 24 types of pidyon nefesh, corresponding to 24 courts of justice. For each and every court, there is a unique corresponding pidyon nefesh to ameliorate its judgments. Therefore, a ransom is not always effective, since not everyone knows all 24 pidyon nefesh, and even if one does, he cannot perform them, and when one does not perform the specific ransom required by a specific court, it is not effective.

But know: there is a certain ransom that includes all the twenty-four courts of justice and is able to ameliorate [the judgments] of all the twenty-four courts….

“….Only one in a generation knows of it, and sometimes even when this tzaddik performs the ransom, it is ineffective. The reason for this is that this ransom is greatly desired Above, for such a ransom does not frequently come from below that is able to ameliorate all 24 courts simultaneously. Therefore, when this amelioration does come, it is used for other purposes, such as to make converts….[W]hen judgment and wrath are ameliorated, idolatry is ameliorated and people convert.”

====

Of course, the secular journalists at Channel 13 who hate the Torah-observant world and everything it stands for aren’t fully conversant with Chassidic thought and Likutey Moharan, and they are also part of this huge, Godless conspiracy being pushed on us all that people are 100% in charge of their own health, and their own destiny.

If Channel 13 would do an expose of all the iatrogenic illnesses and deaths occurring in Israel’s hospitals, then we’d very quickly see who the real ‘killers’ are, who are freely walking around the country.

I’ve lost count of the number of people I know who have been killed or maimed by the treatment they received from doctors.

Like the woman who was talked into having a replacement knee, but wasn’t told she’d need pain-killing injections every month for the rest of her life… Like the woman who had her stomach cut out because of cancer, and then was bombarded with round after round of chemotherapy, only to die shortly afterwards in excrutiating agony from all the surgery and poison anyway… Like the man who went into hospital with an exploded gallbladder and who died on the operating table because the anesthetist misjudged what was going on, and the patient had a fatal heart attack as a result.

I could go on and on. And please, let’s not even get started on anti-depressants, or ‘gender re-assignment’ surgery, or all the weird stuff they are putting in vaccines (go and research MCR 5), and a million other things that are lauded as medical panaceas, but usually are anything but.

====

Modern medicine is God-less, modern medicine is far more limited and clumsy than it likes to pretend, and often does far more damage than good, especially when it comes to chronic illnesses.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this, for starters:

The third-leading cause of death in US most doctors don’t want you to know about

Let Channel 13 gird their loins and do an expose on all the horrendous medical malpractice happening in Israel (and everywhere else…). Like the doctor in Shaarei Chesed who I met over Shabbat lunch a decade ago, who boasted about going around quietly killing people that she’d decided were suffering ‘unnecessarily’.

Don’t hold your breath.

====

But in the meantime, let’s return to the question of whether Rabbi Berland’s pidyons always work.

The answer, as provided by Rabbenu, is no. They don’t always work.

Why not?

Because God is still running the world, and sometimes, God decides to take the Rav’s pidyonot and to use them for a greater good, i.e. fighting the general forces of evil in the world and causing non-Jews to want to convert.

Who are we, to think we can fathom the mind of Hashem, the Creator of the world?

So then, does this mean that Rav Berland is doing pidyon nefesh under false pretences?

No.

The vast majority of time, what he says will happen actually occurs. Sometimes, you have to wait a while, often, the miracle is ‘hidden’ in some way, but sooner or later, it shows up.

And on the rare occasions when it doesn’t, of course that’s upsetting to the people involved, especially if they don’t have a lot of emunat tzaddikim, and are really only interested in using the Rav like a miracles-caspomat.

Of course, it requires a lot of emuna tzaddikim to navigate that situation and not come out as an ‘opponent’, who feels justified in dissing the Rav, God forbid. That’s part of how the birur process is working, especially for those who dress themselves up as ‘mega-frum’, at least externally.

At the end of the day, Rebbe Nachman clearly explains that there is no such thing as a pidyon that is 100% guaranteed to work, even when you do it with the One in a Generation who actually controls the 24 heavenly courts.

Why not?

Because God is still running the world, and people aren’t in control, and free choice has to be maintained.

====

So, this expose will air Monday night in Israel, and when it does, the people who have weak-to-zero emunat tzaddikim; and the people who hate Torah and religious Jews; and the people who have a vested interest in ‘proving’ that they were right all along, when they were passing off slander and falsehood as self-righteous ‘troof’ all across Facebook will come out swinging.

You know what?

Let them.

It’s all just part of the birur, or clarification process that precedes the coming of Moshiach.

You want to believe Channel 13 over Rebbe Nachman?

Go right ahead.

There’s a special place in gehinnom that’s been set up especially for all these anti-Torah journalists who spend months, years and decades putting so much effort into trying to make Rabbis look bad.

I have no problem with honest journalism.

Like I said, some people don’t see obvious results from doing a pidyon nefesh with the Rav, for the reasons explained above. So sure, cover that angle – but then balance it out by interviewing some of the hundreds and even thousands of people who have mamash seen open miracles from doing a pidyon nefesh with the Rav.

That’s responsible journalism. That’s ethical reporting. That’s enabling people to make up their own minds about something, and not just trying to push your anti-Torah brainwashing agenda down people’s throats.

That is not at all what you’re going to get on Monday night from Channel 13.

But it’s not all their fault. People don’t buy into their brainwashing agenda because it’s particularly convincing or well-reasoned, but because they have their own vested interest in making Rabbi Berland ‘wrong’, and themselves right.

And you know what? Let them.

At this stage, I can’t be bothered fighting or arguing with them, because the faster all the yucky people get birured properly, the sooner we’ll get to the geula.

====

Last week, one of my extended family members asked me to enquire about doing a pidyon with Rav Berland for someone they know who doesn’t really believe in God, or the tzaddikim, but who is rich and extremely desperate for something to change.

The message I got back was ‘no pidyon’.

If Rabbi Berland was really doing pidyonot just for the money, chas v’shalom, how do we explain this?

I know others, too, that simply didn’t have the merit to be able to do a pidyon nefesh with Rav Berland. God stops them by filling their heads full of doubts, or filling their mouths full of slander, or doesn’t even let them get to the point of being told a sum of money to pay.

Every time a person gets the chance to do a pidyon with the Rav, it’s a huge merit, a massive spiritual gift.

I haven’t seen the fruits of all my pidyonot yet, honestly, but I would say that 4/5 of the ones I’ve done have worked tremendously.

And as for the rest?

I accept that either their time hasn’t come yet, and / or they are being put to a higher use, right now, to fight evil in the world.

And judging by Channel 13’s output, there’s still a way to go before it’s totally defeated.

====

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

====

You might also like these articles:

Understanding Pidyon Nefesh – Part 1

How Pidyon Nefesh works, Part 2

/4 Comments/by
, , ,

The Vilna Gaon VS Chassidut

What was really the disagreement, between the Vilna Gaon and the early leaders of chassidut?

If we’ve learnt anything at all about the fight between the followers of the Baal Shem Tov and chassidut, and the followers of the Lithuanian path of mitnagdim, as exemplified by the Vilna Gaon and his followers, this is probably what we believe:

The Vilna Gaon and the mitnagdim became ‘anti’ the chassidim and the followers of the Baal Shem Tov, because they were worried about ‘false messiahs’ in the wake of the Shabtai Tzvi affair.

Right?

That’s what we think the whole disagreement was about? That the Baal Shem Tov started this new ‘Tzaddik-centric’ approach to Judaism, and all the Litvak rabbis decided to excommunicate the people practicing chassidut because they were worried that another ‘false religion’ would spring up.

Guess what…that’s not really what happened. Or at least, not at the beginning of this whole story, back in the 1700s. As I started to set out in THIS POST, geula-fever was alive and well in the 18th century, fueled by kabbalistic speculation that the time for ‘the End’ had come, and geula was about to happen.

As I covered in that post, there were a few key dates that the kabbalists had pegged for the final coming of Moshiach, all based on the gematria of the word ‘dawn’, and allusions to that word in the Zohar and in the book of Daniel.

These years were:

1748 – which was proceeded by an ‘elite aliya’ of the Jewish world’s leading kabbalists to Israel, including the Ohr HaChaim from Morocco, the RaMCHaL from Italy, and many kabbalists and mystics from the Ashkenazi world too, including Rabbi Gershon of Kutow, the BESHT’s brother-in-law.

1753 – when three huge kabbalists in Israel including the CHIDA, Rabbi Shalom Sharabi (the Rashash), and Rabbi Chaim de la Roza tried to ‘force’ the end of days via kabbalistic uses of Hashem’s mystical names. Heaven forced them to stop, and the CHIDA had to go into exile for 5 years.

1781 – which was again proceeded by a ‘chassidic’ aliya from the Ashkenazi world, which was led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk.

(The last official ‘date’ as the last possible date for the ‘in its time’ redemption, was 1840, but we’ll leave that alone for this post.)

====

Between 1748 and 1781, so many of our leading rabbis believed that the geula was imminent, and the Vilna Gaon and the Lithuanian rabbis were counted firmly amongst them.

In fact, pretty much the only leading rabbi at that time who was saying that geula was NOT going to happen imminently was the Baal Shem Tov. I know I quoted this in the previous post, but let’s bring his letter written to Rabbi Gershon in 1747 again here, to keep all the pieces together in one place. The BESHT wrote:

“I asked the Messiah when he would be coming. “This is how you will know,” he replied. “When your teachings become public and revealed to the world, and your wellsprings of my teachings, which you will have mastered, overflow to the outside, so that [others], too, will be able to perform mystical unifications and ascents of the soul like you. Then all the klipot will be eradicated and a time of [Divine] desire and salvation will come.”

The Baal Shem Tov continues:

“[This reply] left me puzzled and severely troubled. Such a long time! When can it possibly come to pass?”

The Baal Shem Tov was explaining to Reb Gershon that the Moshiach is going to come, and the end of days is going to happen, only when the Jews start to really connect to God, and experience ‘ascents of the soul’, and to really learn and understand Torah on the deep level of chassidut.

Moshiach wasn’t just going to show up, regardless of the spiritual state of the Jews, and regardless of all their bad middot and lack of emuna. He was only going to come when the Jews got real, learned some humility, and started talking to God sincerely every single day, and including Him in every aspect of their life.

====

So now, the question is:

Why did the mitnagdim fall out so badly with the chassidim, if everyone at that time was eagerly anticipating Moshiach and geula, and the Lithuanian rabbis were pressing for aliya and for ‘the end’ to come just as much as the chassidim?

The answer lies in the different approaches the Vilna Gaon and the chassidim were trying to take, to bring the geula.

We can set it out like this:

1747 – The Baal Shem Tov writes a letter explaining that Moshiach is only going to come when the Jews make teshuva, and approach their yiddishkeit in a more ‘chassidic’ way.

The BESHT’s leading student, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye, sat on that letter for over 30 years, but then published it in 1780, when it started to become obvious that Moshiach was not coming imminently, after all.

In the meantime, the Vilna Gaon had spent years trying to resolve all the kooshiot, or difficulties in the Torah, using just his superb logical abilities and ‘cleverness’. According to documents found by researcher Arie Morgenstern which quotes the Vilna Gaon’s students and sons, as brought in his book The Gaon of Vilna and his Messianic Vision, the Vilna Gaon believed he could bring the Moshiach:

“[B]y force of his supreme halachic authority. [T]he Gaon proposed to move to Eretz Yisrael and write the final halacha there, in order to hasten the redemption. As Joseph Karo[1] had done, so would the Gaon of Vilna do. He wished to be the final arbiter, not in order to write the halacha for its own sake, but rather to hasten the redemption and conclude the ‘sorting’ (birur) process that would usher in the Messiah.”

Here’s what the Vilna Gaon himself wrote, about his aspirations[2]:

“Every unresolved issue is a klipah, and emanates from the Erev Rav that intermingled with the Israelites…This is how unresolved issues insinuated themselves into the halacha. The answer to the unresolved issues is the repair of the klipah.”

Elsewhere, he wrote[3]:

“At the end of the galut, in the footsteps of the Moshiach, the tree of life, the Law of Moses will be revealed.”

One of the Vilna Gaon’s senior students, Rabbi Israel of Shklov, explained[4] that his mentor had managed to resolve all the issues in the whole Torah (!) except for in two passages in the Zohar. The Rabbi of Shklov says:

“Had the Gaon resolved these issues, he would have brought the birur (‘sorting process’) to its end, and the path to the Messiah’s arrival would have been readied for use.”

As it was – he didn’t, and it wasn’t.

====

The Vilna Gaon set out for Israel in 1778.

But first travelled to Amsterdam, where he hoped to track down copies of the books and manuscripts that would help him resolve his two last remaining ‘issues’, before he made aliya, wrote a new ‘perfect’ Shulchan Aruch in Israel, and ushered in the redemption.

But God didn’t let him do that, his mission to Amsterdam was a failure, and the Gaon returned home to Vilna, without attempting the trip to Israel.

Once home, he decided to take a different tack, and for the first time in his scholarly career, he decided to teach an elite group of students his approach to learning Torah, with a particular emphasis on these students moving to Israel, and helping to lay the practical foundations for the Jews to return to their land.

====

In the meantime, nearly all the Chassidic rebbes dealt with the ‘moshiach let-down’ of 1781 by starting to put the emphasis on personal redemption, as opposed to national redemption, and taking the emphasis off of moving to Israel.

Everyone, that is, except Rabbenu and Breslov chassidut.

Rebbe Nachman continued to stress the importance of living in Eretz Yisrael, as well as the importance of working on the ‘inner dimension’ and developing the good middot that would enable each person to achieve their ‘personal redemption’, too.

====

1781 approaches, the make-or-break date for ‘geula in its time’, and the Vilna Gaon realizes that his approach of trying to ‘perfect’ Torah, and engage in ‘perfect’ mitzvah observance is out of reach, and that he can’t bring Moshiach this way. Instead, he looks to kick-start redemption by placing ‘boots on the ground’ in Eretz Yisrael, and directs a group of his elite students to make aliya after his death.

Meanwhile, after 1781, the different Chassidic leaders put much more focus on the idea that redemption is internal, not necessarily land-based.

Israel is out of reach, so turn inwards and work on your personal and communal redemption instead, wherever you live!

Only Breslov chassidut actually combined these two, very different approaches, continuing to stress the practical aspects of aliya to the real Eretz Yisrael, together with emphasizing the inner work and importance of being connected to the True Tzaddik and praying for redemption.

But there was so much opposition to Rebbe Nachman, and then to Breslov, that this message was muted back then, and really has only begun to flourish in our days.

====

So now, what happened with the excommunication of the chassidim by the Lithuanian rabbis, headed by the Vilna Gaon?

As usual, it’s a sordid tale of petty politics and ego-mania.

In the years leading up to the first ‘excommunication’ of the chassidim, in 1772, The Vilna ‘kahal’, or community leaders had been locked in a vicious struggle with the town’s chief rabbi and rabbinical judge, a fellow by the name of Shmuel ben Avigdor.

Shmuel ben Avigdor had been ‘bought’ his position – as was the custom of the time then, and in many ways still is today – by his wealthy father-in-law. The kahal leaders felt that Shmuel ben Avigdor was throwing his weight around, was out of his depth when it came to making halachically-binding decisions, and – most crucially of all – was impinging on their income by trying to butt into communal affairs that they felt he should play no part in.

So, the kahal went to war against their very wealthy, very connected chief rabbi, to try to get him ousted. His father-in-law had bought him the rabbinate ‘for life’, so the kahal leaders could only get him out of the way if they could prove his was guilty of gross, ‘anti-Torah’ misconduct. So that’s what they set about trying to show.

According to Arie Morgenstern[5]:

“The methods used were illegitimate:…false testimonies, silencing of witnesses, preventing the presentation of exculpatory evidence about the defendants under threat of excommunication, forbidding the lodging of complaints with the rabbinical court by the same means, and even forbidding the rabbinical judges to listen to cries of protest against the abuse being committed.”

Plus ca change.

And having waged war against their town rabbi by dirty means, the kahal then just applied their ‘abilities’ against the chassidim in their midst, too.

====

Why did the Vilna kahal turn against the chassidim?

Some researchers claim they were egged on by the Vilna Gaon (more on that in a moment), while others claim that the kahal leadership were worried that people flocking to chassidut would diminish their clout in the Jewish community, and their own legal status vis-à-vis their non-Jewish rulers. (Which in turn, would diminish their ability to levy taxes on the Jewish community….)

In the meantime, the horrible, dirty machloket between the Vilna kahal leaders and their chief rabbi Shmuel ben Avigdor raged almost without let up for approximately 30 years (!) It was so poisonous, Vilna’s Jewish residents were frequently arguing on street corners, and fights would regularly break out in public, even between the women.

That only stopped when the community was hit by a terrible tragedy.

In 1771, an outbreak of plague killed hundreds of small children in Vilna’s Jewish community. It was clear to the kahal leaders that this was some ‘punishment from Heaven’, but rather than accept that their own machloket against the Chief Rabbi could be the cause, they searched around for a scapegoat – and found one, in the nascent movement of chassidim.

According to the mitnaged Maggid of Makow, the reclusive Vilna Gaon was totally unaware of any problem with the chassidim, until the kahal leaders – who were giving the Vilna Gaon a salary of 1400 guilders a year and a rent-free home, even though the Vilna Gaon fulfilled no public duties as rabbi – brought a bunch of false witnesses to slander the chassidim as a ‘deviant cult’.

Rabbi David the Maggid writes:

“Due to his devotion to the Torah and his perseverance, the holy Pious One [the Vilna Gaon] was oblivious to all these matters, until the righteous and honest learners cried out… Then he became their enemy, fighting them and pronouncing the great excommunication of all their rabbis and students… The excommunication went into effect in 1772, after Pesach.”

But none of the other four major Jewish communities in Lithuania, including Horodno, Brisk, Slutsk and Pinsk, joined in with the excommunication of 1772, because they understood that the Vilna kahal was trying to deflect the spiritual heat off its own bad behavior, by using the chassidim as scapegoats. Very quickly, the excommunication died away, and the Lithuanian communities happily sent money to support the Chassidic aliya that began in 1777 – ahead of the ‘end of times’ date of 1781.

====

THE SECOND EXCOMMUNICATION

But then, there was a second excommunication of the chassidim that happened in 1781 – and that one stuck, and widened out into a veritable war against chassidut.

What triggered this second attack against chassidut? A few different things:

  • More and more people were flocking to the ranks of chassidut.
  • Chassidut became increasingly organized as a communal force within the Jewish community, and so appeared to be more of a threat to the existing leaders’ status, influence, and ability to use their communal position to make money.
  • The Baal Shem Tov’s students started to print and disseminate some of their ideas and teachings – notably Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye, who published Toledot Yaakov Yosef in 1780.
  • May 1781 came and went without Moshiach showing up, and a wave of frustration overtook the Jewish community and led to a whole bunch of internecine fighting.

====

The chassidim were not totally blameless, for the war erupting.

By this point, many of them were openly mocking the Lithuanian rabbis for being out of touch with their communities and overly hung-up on pietism and asceticism, instead of serving God joyfully, with their hearts. There were also some Chassidic leaders who were publically complaining about the behavior of other Chassidic leaders, and that might also have fueled external criticism of the movement.

Meanwhile, the mitnagdim communities and their rabbis were having to deal with all these ‘miracle stories’ that started circulating about the Baal Shem Tov – including his infamous ‘conversation’ with Moshiach, in 1747 – after Rabbi Yaakov Yosef’s books came out. To put it bluntly, it was hard for the Lithuanian rabbis to compete, when there was a Tzaddik of the caliber of the Baal Shem Tov wooing their congregants away with his supernatural abilities and awesome, soul-inspiring advice.

In other words: they got jealous.

Plus ca change

====

There’s one last thing I want to add here, because clearly what I’m describing above has continued to play itself out in our day and time, too.

At its highest level, there was a dispute for the sake of heaven going on, between the Vilna Gaon and the Baal Shem Tov, about the way to bring Moshiach and geula.

The BESHT said:

Geula will only come when all the Jews make teshuva, and start to serve God sincerely, and not just to pay ‘lip service’ to the external commandments and mitzvoth. And God will wait as long as it takes, for that to happen.

The Vilna Gaon said:

Geula will come ‘in its time’, once we fix the halacha perfectly. And whoever is not on that level of perfection at that time, won’t make it through to the world-to-come.

(I should mention here, that the Vilna Gaon was kind of obsessed with the Erev Rav, and that he and his students both talked and wrote about them a great deal.)

This mirrored the debate that took place in Sanhedrin 97b, between Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol, and Rabbi Yehoshua, that you can read about HERE.

And we are still having that debate today in the Jewish world.

====

On the one hand, there are the people saying geula is ready to come NOW!!! Today!!! And that the world is full of evil erev rav types that just can’t change, and won’t make it through, and that millions of people are going to die before Moshiach is revealed, because they just aren’t on the level to make it.

This is the ‘Rabbi Yehoshua’ approach.

On the other hand, we can see with our own eyes that each of these ‘end times’ keeps coming and going; and that the predicted wars keep fading away. And, that the whole ‘erev rav’ approach is basically unworkable in practice (as I cover in my book), and that with daily hitbodedut, regular visits to Uman, and a strong connection to our True Tzaddikim, people can and do transform into better Jews in some fantastic ways.

This is the ‘Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol’ approach.

====

The note from Rav Kook, describing Rabbi Berland as a'spark' of Eliezer HaGadolA few years’ ago, Rabbi Dov Kook of Tiveria famously wrote a note where he stated that Rabbi Eliezer Berland is a spark, or reincarnation, of that selfsame Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol.

God is waiting for us all to open our eyes, and see what’s right in front of them.

After 200 years of trying the ‘Rabbi Yehoshua’ approach – which has clearly not worked to bring Moshiach and redemption – God is waiting for more of us to adopt the ‘Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol’ approach of sincere teshuva, talking to God, and connecting to our True Tzaddikim, instead.

And when we get that message, geula will finally happen.

====

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The author of the Shulchan Aruch.

[2] Vilna Gaon’s commentary on Ra’aya Mehemana, Konigsberg, 1858, 28a.

[3] Yahel Or, Commentaries on the Zohar, Parshat Mishpatim 114b (Vilna, 1882).

[4] In his preface to the book: Pe’at Ha’Shulchan.

[5] Page 237, The Gaon of Vilna and his Messianic Vision

====

You might also like these articles:

More Rebbe Nachman on Israel

/3 Comments/by
, , ,

Luminaries of Fire vs Luminaries of Light

Rebbe Nachman on real Jewish leaders.

Reposting this article on the difference between luminaries of fire and luminaries of light, from 2016.

In Part 2 of Likutey Moharan, Lesson 67, he writes:

“There are luminaries of light and luminaries of fire, and they are antagonistic [i.e. opposing each other.] When the luminaries of light are empowered, the luminaries of fire are subdued, and inversely, when the luminaries of light are subdued and diminished, the luminaries of fire are empowered.”

A little later on in that same lesson, Rebbe Nachman explains that:

“When someone who totally lacks God’s name becomes renowned – when his name becomes renowned and exalted – God’s name becomes diminished and disappears. Then, pseudo-miracle workers and magicians become exalted, and things happen in the world against which only the names of demonic powers are able to protect….

“Fires are caused in the world on account of the names of these ignominiously renowned people becoming great and enhanced, for this causes God’s name to disappear, the luminaries of light to be subdued, and the luminaries of fire to become empowered.”

What is Rabbenu telling us here?

Firstly, he’s telling us that some of the rabbis, leaders and spiritual mentors in the world are the good guys – the ‘luminaries of light’, and that some of them are the bad guys, or the ‘luminaries of fire’.

This is a fact, however upsetting, and the sooner we come to terms with it, the easier it will be to spot the ‘luminaries of fire’ before they burn us up with their bad advice, false judgment and heretical ideas that are really the antithesis of emuna and serving Hashem.

Rabbenu is also telling us that when the ‘famous’ people in the world are essentially God-less heretics, that’s when these ‘luminaries of fire’ will come to the fore, and that’s when all the pseudo-miracle workers etc will start pouring out of the cracks to confuse us even more.

It’s hard to think of a more secular bunch of ‘elites’ than we have in the world today, whether in Israel or elsewhere.

Who talks about God these days, or includes Him in any policy decisions? Certainly not the politicians, pundits, academics and journalists in Israel, and certainly not the politicians, pundits, academics and journalists anywhere else, either.

So that’s the situation we’re currently in.

====

But Rebbe Nachman is also telling us HOW we can spot who is a faker, and who isn’t:

A luminary of light does just that: they light you up. They exude spiritual light. They shine in the darkness – really literally as well as figuratively.

Unaltered image taken of Rabbi Eliezer Berland

I remember a few years’ back one of the first times I went to see Rav Arush giving a shiur, his face was mamash shining, and I spent most of the night trying to figure out where the spotlight was…. There was no spotlight.

The same with Rav Berland. So many people describe meeting him in the same way: they were instantly struck by the light of holiness coming off him. It was enough to affect powerful spiritual changes in them without him even saying a word.

Luminaries of fire don’t have that light.

What they have instead is thunderous rhetoric, quick one-liners, heapings of blame, self-righteousness, arrogance, and often very quick tempers for anyone who dares to challenge them, take up too much of their time, or otherwise upset them in some way.

Luminaries of fire are scary people, once you peel off all the ‘fake nice’ that they go to great pains to cover it up with.  They roast you for not being good enough. They blast you for not being tznius enough, or having enough emuna (or simply, for being a flawed human being.)

They dole out judgment and advice with narrowed eyes and an obvious dislike (all carefully concealed). Also, whatever ‘spiritual uplift’ they do possess, it doesn’t illuminate so much as completely burn you out.

Your rapt attention, your obvious devotion and respect – it’s all just fuel for the insatiable fire of their own ego and self-interest.

====

Before I knew all this, I used to occasionally have phone calls with a ‘luminary of fire’ that would leave me feeling very weird afterwards, like I’d just been mugged somehow, but couldn’t for the life of me work out how, or who’d done it.

It was the luminary of fire, taking all of my respect for them to build a bigger bonfire for themselves. There was some light, too, but it was so hot and uncomfortable speaking to them I subconsciously decided to keep my distance.

It’s only when I overcame that reticence, to have the first ‘real’ conversation with them in all the time I’d been following them, that it became shockingly obvious that I was dealing with a faker, a luminary of fire, not a luminary of light.

Let’s end with this: Luminaries of light can hold their candle up even in your darkest hour, and give you a path out of despair.

Luminaries of fire can’t.

The only thing they can do is ‘explode’ in some way – at you, for being such a useless, worthless, imperfect sinner. Fire is anger. Fire is intolerance. Fire is harsh words, and criticism and machloket.

May the luminaries of light be empowered again very soon, may God’s name be exalted and spoken about once again, and may we all have illumination instead of destruction in our lives.

====

You might also like these articles:

 

/0 Comments/by
, , , , ,

What the Lubavitcher Rebbe Really Said about Geula b’Rachamim

What did the Lubavitcher Rebbe mean, when he said there would never be another holocaust?

One day, Rebbe Nachman was walking along with a group of his students, when they happened to walk past a home where someone had just passed away. The bereaved family members were crying and shrieking, and beseeching God in a very distraught way. Rebbe Nachman turned to his followers and told them:

“What they are doing at the end, I want you to do at the beginning!”

It’s human nature to want to stick our head in the sand, and to avoid all the unpleasantness and the scary things going on around us. Why think about it? Why worry ourselves?

But Rebbe Nachman made many statements where he urged his followers to do the exact opposite.

“Why do we allow God to bring evil decrees to the world?!” he once said to them.

We should be praying, and beseeching, and clapping our hands, and dancing, and making the teshuva required to really sweeten these decrees!

==

Right now, we can still do something about the ‘scary stuff’ we can see looming in the future, and that every single one of us can feel lurking under the surface. 

God doesn’t want us to put our heads in the sand and pretend everything is A-OK, and that people can continue spitting in God’s face in a million different ways but it’ll still all end up being fine and dandy.

How can that be?

God created the world according to certain rules, and one of the biggest is the concept of reward and punishment. There are real consequences for bad behavior, sometimes very big consequences. If a person continues to go against what God really wants for them, and how He really wants them to be living their lives – and they don’t wake up and make some sincere teshuva – then they will have to deal with the consequences of their bad behavior.

====

In the meantime, putting our head in the sand is not helping anyone – not even ourselves!

God wants us to be crying out to Him, and making teshuva, and realizing that unless we are really holding firm to the Tzaddik of the generation, we could honestly get flung a million miles away, as God continues to shake the world.

“Regarding the Messianic age it is written: ‘To grasp the ends of the earth and shake the wicked from it.’  However, one who is attracted to a True Tzaddik can grasp hold of him and not be cast off. Holding on to the Tzaddik, he can remain firm.”[1]

==

Rabbi Berland isn’t telling us about the thousands of rockets pointed at Eretz Yisrael because he wants to pointlessly scare the pants off us.

He’s just pointing out the obvious – the bleedingly obvious – to rouse us to really start praying, and working on all the bad middot and teshuva we need to make to get these harsh decrees sweetened.

That’s why I get a little frustrated when I read emails like this:

“I’m keeping up with all the world news, craziness and all like always but I try to bring myself away from the doomsday stuff. It’s so scary when it’s so close to the end. The words Rav Berland is sending out now are really making me nervous. It makes me daven harder but I can’t imagine Hashem taking out anything on his children at this point. We just passed כ סיון which I learned all about recently. So many horrors have happened to us, I just can’t see anymore happening. Too many earlier tzaddikim like the Lubavicher Rebbe said it will be with rachamim and all Jews will be ok, I am trying to keep calm with that. I know what the autistics are saying but I am hoping Hashem will only fulfill the good.”

====

Do I understand that all this stuff is scary, and that we’d for sure all prefer things to come the sweeter way with no more bloodshed and suffering?

Of course!

Is the ‘sweeter way’ going to happen, if we don’t make every effort to do all the things I keep pointing out again and again and again, namely:

  • Praying our socks off – and making every effort to join in with Rabbi Berland’s prayer gatherings, however we can manage it.
  • Making some real teshuva, including working on our bad middot and ‘getting real’ about just how imperfect we actually are. 
  • Hanging on to the true tzaddik of the generation – whoever that guy might be – and telling other people about him, too?

Nope, it isn’t.

====

Which brings me to another point of clarification.

Over the years, I’ve read so many comments from people who are convinced that the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, z’tl, (who was unquestionably a giant Tzaddik and probably the Moshiach of his generation) apparently said that the geula  is only going to come totally the sweet way, with no more death or suffering.

Even my correspondent, above, mentioned this:

“Too many earlier tzaddikim like the Lubavicher Rebbe said it will be with rachamim and all Jews will be ok.”

(Incidentally, apart from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, I don’t know of the other tzaddikim who have said anything like this. If any reader wants to share me some sources, I’d be very grateful.)

Now, I’ve been trying to track down the statement, or statements, that the Rebbe actually said, to give people this impression, and so far, this is what I’ve turned up (with some help from my friend, C.A. – ta!)

Before we continue, let me just point out that wherever possible, I’ve been trying to track down verifiable statements that were made by the Rebbe himself, and not just other people’s explanations of what they think he was saying.

There is certainly a time and a place for interpreting our Sages words, but the starting point has to be a clear explanation of what they actually said to begin with.

==

What the Lubavitcher Rebbe said about ‘no Jew being left behind’ when geula comes:

“Leah, ‘for now my husband will be united with me.’ In an ultimate sense, this verse refers to the unity of the Jewish people with G‑d. That unity will be revealed in the Messianic age, when all the Jews will leave the exile; not one Jew will remain. In the redemption from the Babylonian exile, many Jews, among them the Torah sages and the Levi’im, remained in Babylon. However, in regard to the future redemption ‘a great congregation will return,’ ‘you, children of Israel, will be gathered one by one,’ no Jew will remain in exile. Thus, in preparation for this redemption, efforts must be made to increase Jewish unity as explained above in regard to the Ushpizin related to the present evening.”

From here:

5th Night of Sukkos, 5745 (1984)

====

What the Lubavitcher Rebbe said about every THING being redeemed:

“The redemption will involve freeing all the elements of existence that have been subjugated in the exile. Nothing will be lost.2 On the contrary, everything will be redeemed. Every single Jew will be redeemed. We will leave “with our youth and with our elders… with our sons and with our daughters.” And “their gold and silver will accompany them.” All the positive activities and achievements of the Jews (and also the non-Jews) in the exile will not be nullified. What will be nullified is the concealment of the world’s true inner being which is brought on by the material substance of the world and the subjugation to the rules of nature that exists at present. But all the positive aspects of the exile will remain, and indeed will be elevated.”

From here:

Shabbos Parshas Acharei-Kedoshim, 13th Day of Iyar, 5751 (1991)

==

The Lubavitcher Rebbe on the holocaust:

I also found this news report from December 31st, 1990 on the JTA website, which quoted the Lubavitcher Rebbe as disagreeing with a statement made by the late Rabbi Schach, z’tl, that the holocaust came about as a form of Divine retribution because of the millions of Jews who had thrown off the Yoke of Torah and Mitzvot. Rabbi Shach also said that something similar could happen again, God forbid.

This is how the Lubavitcher Rebbe was quoted as responding to those statements, in the report:

“[Rabbi] Schneerson was especially vociferous in his attack on the notion, expounded by [Rabbi] Schach, that further retributive suffering might befall the Jewish people if they fail to abide by Jewish law.

“This suggestion is unconscionable,” the rebbe declared, without mentioning who had made it. “The future bodes only well for the Jewish people. There will never be another Holocaust. There will be redemption and joy.””

==

It makes for interesting reading, doesn’t it?

If this last news report I brought was accurate, then the Rebbe does seem to be clearly saying there will never by another Holocaust. Let’s take each part of this last statement and explore it a little more closely:

The future bodes only well for the Jewish people.

 Who can argue with this? The principles of emuna state clearly that God is doing everything, and that everything that God does – even the bad, apparently yucky stuff – is ultimately for our own good. And of course, the ultimate ‘future’ is redemption, Moshiach, world peace etc.

But the Lubavitcher Rebbe is NOT saying that there won’t be any more suffering or death before we get there.

There will never be another Holocaust.

Amen, let’s really hope so.

Rabbi Berland has said on a few occasions that if you look through Jewish history, you see there was some sort of terrible destruction, pogrom or holocaust every 70 years or so.

A big part of why he went into exile and willingly took so much disgrace upon himself was to prevent this next ‘holocaust’ from happening. And that effort is continuing today, with the prayer gatherings, and all the terrible physical suffering the Rav is going through with his non-stop serious illnesses.

A couple of months ago, he also stated that unless more of Am Yisrael get with the program and start doing our bit to help sweeten the harsh judgments on the horizon, he may well have to take yet more disgrace and exile on to himself, and that it will be much, much harder even than what came before.

The mind boggles as to what that could actually mean.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe was an enormous Tzaddik, and he overlapped with Rabbi Berland.

He certainly knew about Rabbi Berland, and he could see what was coming.

(It’s a side note, but my Lubavitch friend told me that the Rebbe always used to get very upset when people referred to him as being Moshiach. Even though the Rebbe often said that the Moshiach was here, he NEVER said that he himself was the Moshiach. It’s just more interesting food for thought, that I’m putting out there to mull over.)

Is it too far-fetched to say that the Rebbe could see there would be a Tzaddik 30 years in the future who would sacrifice himself totally for the Jewish people, in order to prevent an otherwise ‘inevitable’ holocaust from happening again?

Or to put it another way, both Rav Shach and the Lubavitcher Rebbe were right.

But we only get to avoid the ‘inevitable’ holocaust if we’re take the threat of it very seriously, and cry out to Hashem and making the appropriate teshuva. Sticking our heads in the sand and kind of hoping for the best just isn’t going to work.

Lastly, we have:

“There will be redemption and joy.”

Again, who can argue with this? Amen and amen and amen.

BUT – that doesn’t mean there won’t also be more suffering and people dying.

In the 29 years since the Rebbe first made this statement, has there only been ‘redemption and joy’? Has there been no suffering?

Since 1990, Israel has gone through three Intifadas, and a number of wars.

Since 1990, so many people have lost their loved ones in tragic circumstances.

So many marriages have gone to the wall. So many people have lost their faith, or their minds. So many people have had to deal with challenges of an enormous magnitude.

It just isn’t realistic to sit there saying “all Jews will be OK” without qualifying that statement by adding but only if they make the necessary teshuva. Only if they stop destroying the world and spitting in God’s face. Only if they get close to the true tzaddikim.

====

Otherwise, how exactly is this meant to work?

That a totally unrepentant Mr Rainbow-Chasing-Chazer-Eating-Haredi-Hater with the worst middot in the world also gets the red carpet rolled out for them, to come and have a VIP tour of the Beit HaMikdash and personal meeting with Moshiach?

Really?

When the Lubavitcher Rebbe says that every single Jew will be redeemed, and that no Jew will be left behind, we need to remember that the same could be said of the Exodus from Egypt.

Every single Israelite who made it through the plague of darkness alive, was redeemed.

But four fifths were lost, before things even got to that stage.

There’s a scary midrash that “predicts” only 700 Jews will live to see the coming of Moshiach and the Temple being rebuilt. Now THAT is a scary thought, even for me.

But what if the geula coming b’rachamim just means anything over 700 people make it through to the finish line?

==

Like I said, the point of this post isn’t doom or gloom.

Rather, it’s to snap us out of all the unhelpful and unrealistic wishful thinking about geula, to make the point that until and unless more of us wake up, start joining in the prayer gatherings, start rallying more Jews around the flag of the real tzaddikim and start working on the enormous bad middot that are preventing us from really doing what’s required, here, the geula coming the sweet way j- with no more suffering – just isn’t going to happen.

Rav Avigdor Miller noted something similar about what occurred just before WWII. He said that God didn’t want to bring the harsh decree of Hitler and the holocaust, but He was waiting for the Jews to band together, make teshuva, and to start crying out for mercy, the same way they did at the time of Haman.

Sadly, that didn’t happen.

Why not? According to Rabbi Miller – the secular Jewish media and Jewish atheists were to blame. They wasted an ocean of ink denouncing Hitler, but couldn’t spare a single drop to encourage the Jews to rally around their true tzaddikim, and return to God.

God forbid, that should happen again.

[1] #22, His Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom, published by the Breslov Research Institute

====

UPDATE:

A reader just sent me a translated Kuntres apparently written and edited by the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s own hand, with the following message:

“Regarding your most recent blog of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, there is unquestionably evidence throughout the Rebbe’s sichos where he indeed strongly hinted that he could be Moshiach. Several places he said that that Nosi HaDor is the Moshiach of the Dor. There is an entire kuntres called Beis Rabeinu Shebebavel , entirely edited by his own hand, with this concept, where he explains the uniqueness of 770, among other things it being Beis Moshiach. Anyone who learns this kuntres, it’s hard to arrive at any other conclusion besides the Rebbe hinting that he could be Moshiach. Here it is, in the original, and with an English translation, if you would like to take a look for yourself:”

You can download it as a PDF here: Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Kuntres on Beit Rabbenu

(The last link ‘broke’, so this is a PDF that will automatically download. I found it very interesting reading.)

There’s a lot of confusion about this subject, but I want to stress that the sources talk very clearly about their being TWO moshiachs, Moshiach ben Yosef, and Moshiach ben David.

In the post I wrote about who’s holding up the geula, I brought the following quote:

In Kol HaTor Chapter 2, Section 2, Letter bet, the Vilna Gaon says the following:

 “The general purpose of the two moshiachs, Moshiach ben Yosef and Moshiach ben David, throughout all the generations has been to protect and fight against the three ‘heads’ of the klipot (evil husks): Eisav, Yishmael and the Erev Rav…..

“….the Erev Rav is our greatest enemy, the one who separates the two moshiachs. The klipah of the Erev Rav works only through deception and roundabout ways. Therefore, the war against the Erev Rav is the most difficult and bitterest of all. We must strengthen ourselves for this war, anyone who does not participate in the battle against the Erev Rav becomes, defacto, a partner with the klipah of the Erev Rav, and was better off not being born in the first place.”

It’s important to understand that these two moshiachs are not in ‘competition’.

It’s not a case of ‘my Rebbe is bigger than your Rebbe’.  The two Moshiachs are on the same side, and trying to work together, to bring the geula, but they both have different approaches and achieve different results. Rebbe Nachman explains this concept in a beautiful way in one of his stories, which I covered in this article: Moshiach ben Yosef vs Moshiach ben David.

I think maybe the time has also come to take a closer look at whether it’s possible for a Moshiach to come from the dead.

This is a very sensitive topic, I know. But I think it needs airing out respectfully, and with as many sources behind it as possible to see what conclusions our Sages came to, and how they got there.

A big part of the problem is that so many people have ideas about ‘Moshiach’ and geula that aren’t at all rooted in Torah sources. For example, there is a discussion in the Gemara (Sanhedrin 98b) that closely examines the idea of whether the Moshiach can come back from the dead. It’s not a ‘lunatic fringe’ issue, like it’s so often made out to be, it was a serious question that was debated by some of the biggest Sages that ever lived.

The ultimate conclusion is ‘no’, but if you follow the debate, you can see it’s not at all as black and white as it’s often portrayed to be.

BH, I will put together as many Torah sources on the subject as I can over the next few days, and we will learn about it together. As much as possible, it’s time to build some bridges, to put all the ‘hysteria’ to one side, and to take a calm, gentle and measured look at this topic.

With an awful lot of help from Hashem.

====

You might also like these articles:

Who Is Really Holding Up The Geula?

The Enemy Within

/1 Comment/by
, , ,

Rabbi Shalom Arush needs our help

Help to keep Rabbi Arush and Chut Shel Chesed Yeshiva going.

Yesterday, I got an email from someone I know from way back when, during the time my husband and I were a part of Rabbi Shalom Arush’s Chut Shel Chesed Yeshiva, telling me the Rav needs our help.

Here’s what she sent me to post up here, which I’m going to cut and paste below:

====

Everyone knows Rabbi Arush for his books including “The Garden of Emuna,” and his classes. What you may not know, is that Rabbi Arush runs an entire organization centered in Jerusalem, whose reach is all over the world, called “Chut shel Chessed.”

> The sounds of Torah learning that fill Rabbi Arush’s Yeshiva 24/6 – you can have a portion in the merit of all that Torah.
> The sounds of small children learning in Rabbi Arush’s preschools, the breath of the children that sustains the world – you can have a portion in their learning.
> The sounds of school children, high school, and seminary/Beit Midrash girls and boys busy at their studies – you can have a portion in that too.
> The hundreds of food baskets and thousands of hot meals served to the poor of Jerusalem, many of them the families of Torah scholars – you can have a portion in all of that chesed, made even more important by supporting the poor of the Land of Israel.
? The almost one thousand classes given monthly by Rabbi Arush and his students, plus tens of thousands of books distributed and thousands of readers of the website in five languages – you can have a portion in all of that outreach.

No other organization gives you everything, all under one roof!

By donating to the Campaign “The Fire of Emuna” you become a full partner in everything that Rabbi Arush does.

And he wants to do more! He has a rare opportunity to build a new building for the boys school, which right now is squeezed into a makeshift space out of a few apartments – he needs the money NOW, or it won’t happen. He has an amazing opportunity to do special classes in the Israeli army, something that no one gets security clearance for – he got the clearance, and now we need the funds. He wants to greatly expand his efforts spreading emuna around the world.

He has already done so much, and he can do much more – but he cannot do it alone.

====

Rabbi Arush has promised something huge back in return: A guarantee that anyone who donates to the Campaign will see miracles already this year! 

He will also pray for each and every person who donates. You can also receive special gifts like a mezuzah or Kiddush Cup specially blessed by Rabbi Arush, a personally signed and blessed Book of Psalms or “The Garden of Emuna,” or even a special, personal prayer for you at the Kotel.

In every way that you increase your donation, and even more so by encouraging other people to donate as well, so too do you increase your level of partnership, thus increasing your merit and the salvations that will inevitably come as a result.

Click here to donate via the Charidy website or to donate by phone using credit card, bank transfer, or horat keva (last two are Israeli only), or for more information on the special gifts, or to break your donation into monthly payments, call my personal contact for the Campaign on: (323) 992-6090 from the US or 058-320-5057 in Israel.

Remember, it’s all or nothing! The Campaign ends 12AM Midnight Israel time on Thurs. 6/27!

====

Some more of my personal thoughts to add on this:

In case you don’t know how these charity campaigns run in Israel, they basically work along the lines of a Vegas game of poker. The site offers to match the donations brought in – but only if your campaign makes its target amount within 36 hours. If it doesn’t – then it’s really, really bad news.

Personally, I don’t like the idea so much, but it appeals to the Israeli ‘high stakes’ mindset, and I know most of the charity campaigns I’ve contributed to the last few years all over the orthodox Jewish world in Israel have been run along the same lines.

So, Rav Arush really needs our help.

I heard a whisper on the grapevine that the people behind the persecution of Rabbi Berland basically went after many of Rav Arush’s donors, after he came out – repeatedly – in public support of him. If you want to know why he suddenly fell quiet a couple of years’ back, it’s because the Meah Shearim Mafiosos targeted him and his institutions for retribution, and also threatened to get his books removed from shelves and stores in Israel for being ‘religiously coercive’.

This stuff would be funny, if it wasn’t so very, very serious.

And it makes me very sad to see that so many gullible people fell for their tactics, and that the yeshiva is now in such a bad way, financially.

Are we going to stand back, yawn and let the bad guys win?

I hope not.

And I hope you’ll consider giving something to the campaign, and letting other people know about it.

For once, the fundraising bumpf is not lying:

It really is all or nothing.

====

Go HERE to donate, or follow the instructions above, to deal with a real, English-speaking helpful person.

PS: Just to say, this email really made me think about how much ‘good’ I got from the Garden of Emuna, and especially ‘Education with Love’, amongst Rav Arush’s other books. I can’t do much, but the little I could give I was very happy to do with tremendous gratitude. Rav Arush really did change my world for the best. I hope I can return the favor, at least a tiny bit.

/0 Comments/by
, , , , ,

Between two worlds

Increasingly, I’m feeling between two worlds at the moment.

Rebbe Nachman tells the story[1] of a man who plays host to a strange visitor who he’s half-scared of, and half in awe of. This strange visitor entices him out of his house, and then grabs him and starts flying all over the world with him. Then, the host starts to notice that he’s kind of in two worlds at once – flying around with the strange man, but also in his house, at one and the same time.

“He couldn’t believe that this was he himself, in his own house. But he looked carefully, and sure enough he was speaking with ordinary human beings and eating and drinking normally. But then, he again noticed he was flying like before. Then he looked again, and lo and behold! He was in his house. Again, he noticed that he was flying…and so it went on for quite a time.”

====

I can’t help thinking about this story a lot at the moment, as it seems to be describing what’s going on, at least in my life.

One minute, I’m ‘flying’ with the tzaddikim, and with visions of Moshiach and geula, and God forbid, Gog and Magog and all that supernatural end-of-days stuff. And then, I’m back in my house, trying to figure out what to make for supper, and how best to sell some books so I could actually make 5 cents at some point in my life.

And so it continues from day to day: I’m flying around with thoughts of Beit HaMikdash, and how good life will truly be once all the lies and all the horrible people who enjoy telling them, and turning people against each other, disappear once and for all. And then, I snap back to the so-called ‘real world’ and realise I need to hang my washing up, get the shower door sorted out, deal with more of the mindless bureaucracy that’s taking up more and more of the bandwidth of the world.

“Meanwhile, he noticed that he was in house. It was something extraordinary for him. How was it, that one moment he could here, and the next moment there? He wanted to speak about it to other human being, but how can one explain something incredible like this to other people? They would find it hard to believe.”

====

Friday morning, World War III almost started.

Trump almost sent American planes in to directly bomb Iran after they shot down an American spy drone. If he’d done that, we’d be dealing with World War III / Gog and Magog right now, instead of me sitting here in my pyjamas typing this out.

I know so many of us prefer a sugar-coated version of reality, and especially of geula, but if wasn’t for the tremendous self-sacrifice of the Gadol HaDor, who went into hospital with what appears to be some sort of kidney failure Thursday night – and the thousands of people who are spending their time travelling to prayer gatherings, and reciting tehillim on behalf of the Rav and the nation – we’d be dealing with a scenario where millions of people could already have been incinerated with an Iranian nuke.

They already have nukes.

Rabbi Berland has been telling us that for years, already, but no-one wanted to believe him.

====

This past Sunday, the world could already have lunged off the cliff of war, and we’d be dealing with many thousands of casualties, already.

Instead, I took Sunday off and went up North with my girls, to a quiet little stream where I sat in the water for hours and swam widths across from one clump of bulrushes to another.

My girls and their friends disappeared up-stream for a while, so I was there by myself, listening to the radio playing ‘Don’t worry, be happy’, followed by: “Don’t worry, about a thing. Every little thing’s gonna be alright.”

Really, God? Is it really? How can that be true?

That’s what I wondered to myself, as I swam backwards and forwards in perfect weather, under blue skies, with nary a person or a mosquito to disturb my personal piece of Gan Eden.

How can I be enjoying myself like this, when two days ago we nearly had Gog and Magog and the whole world is slipping into more chaos and evil every day?

That’s when God reminded me about this Rebbe Nachman story, quoted above.

Life is pretty challenging for all of us. It’s challenging when it is challenging, and it’s also challenging when it’s not challenging, as that kind of feels plain wrong, given the momentous things going on all around us.

What, I should still take some time to buy a pair of new shoes, and to spend a lazy afternoon swimming somewhere quiet in nature with my kids?

Yup.

But what about all the tehillim I need to be saying? What about all the insights I need to be sharing? All the teshuva I need to be making?

There’s a time and a place for everything, I guess.

And God is also showing me the value of my small efforts.

Like, last week the Rav put out a call for 200 people to say the whole book of tehillim every single day, until Rosh Hashana, to help him continue going until then.

I heard that and I was awe-struck.

What, there are people out there who could actually do that? Who are willing to do that? 200 of them?!?!

Me? I can’t. It takes me 5 hours to read through the book of tehillim, so it’s strictly for special occasions when I have nothing else to do and no-one else to look after. That said, I could certainly fit a few tehillim in for the Rav every day, so that’s what I’m doing instead – I’m trying to finish a whole book a week.

It’s not everything, but it’s something, and I know God values the effort very much.

And in the meantime, I’m continuing to ‘fly’ into that much deeper spiritual world, where the soul holds sway, and where the miraculous is normal, while all the time still trying to keep the fridge stocked with milk.

It’s not easy. It’s really not easy to be caught between two worlds like this.

“[H]ow can one explain something incredible like this to other people? They would find it hard to believe.”

But that’s where we’re holding.

[1] New Stories – Tzaddik, pages 213-215

====

You might also like these other articles:

BREAKING: The autistics just announced the identity of Moshiach ben David

Our feet don’t touch the ground

 

Christophe Ferron

/1 Comment/by
, , , , ,

How Yeshiva World News is Creating More Anti-Semites

The Jewish media outlets are creating more anti-Semites every day.

In a year’s time, or two years’ time, or ten years’ time – however long it’s going to take for this current, horrible period of time to come to its apex and lead to whatever it’s going to lead to, we’ll look back and wonder: “why did things have to happen this way? Why did the anti-Semites have to come roaring back, the way they did?”

Just like people did with the holocaust, a few years after the inferno had erupted and engulfed 6 million Jews, people sat there incredulous, angry at God, wondering: “why did it have to happen like that?”

Why couldn’t God have just bought all the Jews back to the land of Israel, without that awful precursor, without all that death and destruction, without all that terrible, anti-Semitism?

I also used to wonder these things. But increasingly, I’m starting to see how so much of the destruction happened because we brought it upon ourselves.

And I’m increasingly concerned that history is about to repeat it itself.

====

A few days’ ago, a ‘pro-Rabbi Berland’ reader sent me a couple of new ‘shocking videos’ that are now doing the rounds.

In one, you can see Rabbi Berland repeatedly slapping one of his followers, at an event that happened in Eilat a few months ago. Again, the disgusting YeshivaWorldNews made sure to upload this video with a nice heaping dose of derision and slander as their official ‘comment’ on it, and then they sent it out to the world at large, on their Instagram account, to encourage more anti-semitism.

In the second, Rabbi Berland appears to be comparing a woman to a donkey – which is actually part of a Torah lesson that was being taught based on the Midrash and Talmud.

First, let’s deal with what happened. Here’s what I emailed my reader about these two ‘shocking videos’:

“The first one, where the Rav is hitting someone in Eilat, it certainly looks shocking if people aren’t aware of the concept of tzaddikim taking off harsh judgments in this way.

My husband got slapped in the face twice by Rav Arush just before Rosh Hashana in Uman a few years ago – and he was very  happy that happened, because he instantly felt the ‘din’ (harsh judgment) lift off of him.

There’s also so many videos of Rav Ovadia slapping people in the face – even Bibi – and the Baba Sali has many, many stories of slapping people harshly to ‘mitigate judgments’. There is probably way more to add to this, but I haven’t begun to research this properly, and this is what came to mind.”

(If you understand Hebrew, Rabbi Yaakov Selma dealt with this episode in detail a few months ago, and you can see his comments and video below:)

 

And here is the video of Rav Ovadia publically slapping Bibi – the Prime Minister of Israel! – in the face, from many years ago.

====

Now, let’s deal with the ‘shocking’ women-are-donkeys statement.

Here’s what I emailed my correspondent about that:

“The second clip is part of a Torah class the Rav is giving over on the Gemara or on a Midrash. It’s not clear from the context exactly which Tractate etc, but it could be Kiddushin (see 68a, where slaves are referred to as ‘donkey-like / ass-like people. Also in the Midrash, Bereishit Rabbah 56:2, Hagar, Sarah’s handmaid, is compared to a donkey.)

I finished up with this:

“What are we to do, that there are many things that sound ‘weird’ or not PC in our tradition? The non-Jews who are against circumcision are also doing this, and the Reform who keep going on about the status of women in ‘rabbinic’ Judaism are also doing this.

This is not a new thing – the Nazis were also adept at taking quotes out of the Talmud, to demonise the Jews as a people, and so did – (and are still doing…) the xtians.

But what’s awful is that it’s supposedly ‘frum’ Jews who are doing this stuff – and they are playing with awful fire. The video you sent me from YWN’s Instagram account showed up in the search engines next to other ‘suggestions’ for videos which was basically the worst anti-Semitic propaganda about what Rabbis do to small, defence-less babies at a brit milah – ‘slashing’ without anaesthetic, and all the stuff about the two stages of performing a proper brit.

Yeshiva World News is keeping company with very evil people in this matter, and I greatly fear how it’s going to rebound on the Jewish people, particularly abroad.”

====

How the Nazis (ab)used the Talmud

Did you know that the Nazis’ main ‘thinker’, Alfred Rosenberg, wrote and published a whole booklet in 1920, called “Lack of Morality in the Talmud”?

He quoted tens of things from the Shulchan Aruch and the Talmud to ‘prove’ how morally degenerate the Jewish people actually are – and it was so popular, he had it reprinted in the 1930s, as part of the Nazi attempt to dehumanize the Jews.

And of course, the xtians and the Church were pulling the same stunt for centuries, pulling different snippets of ‘offensive’ statements out of Jewish holy works to ‘prove’ how degenerate the Rabbis were (God forbid), and by extension, how disgusting the Jews – and all their ‘weird’ practices – are.

We like to think that all that old-fashioned, Jew-killing anti-Semitism couldn’t happen today.

But make no mistake, it’s back – and back with a vengeance, even in places like ‘safe’ America. Here’s what my correspondent emailed me back with:

“Abroad: I would say unfortunately crazy enough. Not a day goes by you don’t hear a new story of anti-Semitism. The comments on FaceBook Group pages and the daily local papers and radio stations in New Jersey are through the roof.

Pure illogical, irrational hate like I have not experienced before. Just simply double standard judgment against Jews in droves totally one-sided and not fair.”

====

Ask any Jew abroad right now, even the totally secular, ‘irreligious’ ones who apparently left the fold a long, long time ago, and they will all tell you that they can feel the anti-Semitism in the air.

I’m hearing that all the time from the UK, I’m hearing it from France, I’m hearing it from the USA.

Anti-semitism is going through the roof. Anti-semites are pouring out of the cracks all over the world.

And do you know who is to blame for all this?

The Jews.

And especially, the Jewish media.

Do the evil retards who run YWN not realize that non-Jews make no distinction between a Breslov chassid, a Breslov Rebbe, and any other Jew in black-and-white, who wears a kippa, beard or no beard?

They’re there, making every effort they can to try to make Rabbi Berland and Breslov out to be a bunch of crazy, psychotic lunatics and ‘cult members’ – and who is lapping that message up, along with the 4 orthodox Jews who still actually take that site seriously?

Yup. You got it.

The non-Jews. The anti-Semites. The non-Jewish people living in Lakewood, and Ocean County who are very upset with their orthodox Jewish neighbors.

How do I know this? The Yeshiva World News itself is telling me that!  Here‘s a screenshot from a  recent story it ran about hate comments from anti-Semites in Ocean County:

Screenshot of Yeshiva World News coverage of anti semitic comments on Facebook

That last comments reads: “Slap on the hand and released back to the cult!”

And here’s a screenshot of the YWN comment next to their post on Rabbi Berland:

Screenshot of YWN Instagram account calling Rav Berland's Shuvu Banim a cult

The YWN comment reads: “Cult members will naturally find an excuse for this by saying “he was punching the Yetzer Hara put of this man”, or he has a dibuk that needed removal and some other beauty response. Any insane behavior is justified in a cult.” (All spelling errors are in the original – it’s bad journalism all the way around….)

Surely, it’s obvious where this problem is coming from?

To anti-Semites,  a Jew, is a Jew, is a Jew. Try telling them that the only ‘crazy, bad’ orthodox Jewish people are Breslov, or that only Breslov is a ‘cult’.

So great own goal, Yeshiva World News! Goebbels would be so proud.

And of course, that’s also happening here in Israel in droves, too.

The secular, rabidly ‘anti’ religious press and politicians and ‘enlightened’ big thinkers positively delight in painting the worst possible picture they can of authentic Judaism and orthodox Jews.

They go on and on about how haredi Jews are ‘parasites’, and how orthodox Jewish rabbis in Israel are completely crooked and corrupt, and how the orthodox Jewish community – with their archaic, barbaric, primitive Torah practices – is just one, big massive ‘burden’ that the secular Jews in Israel are sick and tired of schlepping around and dealing with.

Could a non-Jewish anti-Semite phrase it any better?

When places like Ynetnews and Channel 2, and Channel 10, air story after story – often with totally falsified information, designed to manipulate their viewers to hating haredi Jews even more than before!!! – they think they are scoring some sort of massive ‘victory’ against religious Jews.

Really?

They are handing the anti-Semites more propaganda, more fodder, on a plate.

Or to use a more appropriate analogy, they are filling up a rhetorical machine gun with ‘anti-Semitic’ bullets that the non-Jews are going to hold against the head of every single Jew in the world.

Do you think the non-Jews care, that ‘Mr Secular Tel Aviv’ doesn’t have a beard, and doesn’t fast on Yom Kippur, and hates the settlements, and wants to marry his dog? Do you think his extreme hatred of religious Jews and the Torah makes that guy any less Jewish, to Hamas, or Hezbollah, or a neo-Nazi?

Again, we don’t have to go far back in history to see an awful parallel with all the assimilated Jews in Europe, who were convinced that Berlin was the New Jerusalem. But marrying out didn’t save them Hitler, converting to xtianity didn’t save them from Hitler, having lots of money, and status, and five university degrees didn’t save them from Hitler.

Throwing other Jews under a bus – especially their orthodox brethren – didn’t save them from Hitler. If anything, it only encouraged him.

==

So let’s return to 2019, and let’s see what’s really unfolding before our eyes.

The hate against Jews is rippling out in concentric circles.

At its heart, Rabbi Berland, the Gadol HaDor, who was stitched-up by an unholy alliance of ‘Shuvu Banim-hating’ Breslovers in Meah Shearim, and ‘Breslov-hating’ haredi journalists on sites like Yeshiva World News and Kikar HaShabbat (which btw is half-owned by Ynet….); and ‘Haredi-hating’ secular journalists, politicians, judges and policemen in Israel.

And all those people think they are scoring massive points, by continuing to fabricate and publicize new scandals against him, and new ‘shocking’ videos.

Then what happens?

All that stuff gets sent to the end of the world and back by the internet, and the anti-Semites wake up, and now, they are giving all these ‘haters’ a dose of their own medicine.

It’s the midda keneged midda principle in action.

God is behind all this, because He’s so sick of what’s going on. He’s sick of all these ‘Jewish anti-semites’ of every stripe, who are encouraging their readers and viewers to hate other groups of Jews.

All those ‘anti’ haredi Israeli Jews who just lurrrrve all the negative, fake news stories being splashed around the press here – don’t you realise the anti-semites and the BDS brigade are doing exactly the same thing to you (to us!) in their biased and distorted coverage of Israel?

All those ‘anti’ orthodox reform Jews in the US, who just lurrrrve trying to poke holes in the Torah and in the Talmud and in ‘Rabbinic’ Judaism – and who are riding high on their ‘political correctness’ and ‘enlightened egalitarianism’ – do you really think the anti-semites think you are whiter than white?

Was Bernie Madoff an ‘orthodox’ Jew? Was Harvey Weinstein? Or all the countless other secular Jews whose bad behavior has hit the headlines again and again and again in the secular press?

All those anti-Breslov, and / or anti-Israel haredi Jews in Lakewood, and Monsey and Williamsburg – don’t you realise that every time you speak badly of Israel and your fellow Jews, you are giving the anti-Semites more spiritual ammunition to turn against yourselves and your communities?

====

Let’s end with this.

All the scandal and slander and ‘opinion pieces’ tearing down our fellow Jews that’s being churned out en masse by the Jewish media, it’s all being read by the anti-Semites, too.

Those anti-Semites don’t slice the divisions between the different sectors of the Jewish people anywhere near as finely as we ourselves do. They don’t differentiate between this Jew who wears a kippah, and that Jew who doesn’t. Or this Jew who is ‘egalitarian’, and that Jew who isn’t. Or this Jew who works in hi-tech, and that Jew who studies Torah.

To them, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.

And every negative word that comes out of our mouths accusing different groups of Jews of being ‘evil’, and ‘corrupt’, and ‘cultish’, and ‘perverted’ – and all the rest of it – it’s just giving more ammunition and more motivation to the anti-Semites.

So, Ynet, and Yeshiva World News and Kikar HaShabbat please think twice before continuing to slander and demonise a holy Jew, or a holy group of Jews. The anti-Semites are watching, and waiting in the wings. And whatever fake news you churn out about Rabbi Berland, that’s exactly what they are going to use to justify their attacks on the rest of the Jewish world.

And you will have caused the destruction that’s looming in the distance with your own two hands.

====

You might also be interested in these articles:

An uncomfortable history lesson

American Anti-Semitism and The Turner Diaries

/2 Comments/by
, , , ,

On the barricades with Rebbe Nachman

Refreshing the soul, with Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.

The last few days, I was really feeling the heat allegorically and physically.

My landlady has been telling me since last Summer’s 43o  heatwave that you ‘don’t feel the heat’ in Jerusalem – but of course, she’s wrong. And since L’ag B’omer, I was sitting in my house slow roasting along to constant 40o  plus heat for weeks already – and I was starting to crack.

Then there was all the ‘regular’ madness if you can call it that. So much to do every day, so many chores to take care of, so much stuff on the boil, personally and nationally.

So I told my husband: we need to go to Uman for Shavuot.

Despite our lack of cash, he borrowed some money and made it happen, God bless him. Then there was another wrinkle in the plans: women weren’t allowed in the Kever for the whole of Shavuot. Did I mind? Of course, yes I did. But I had to get there one way or another, so I made up my mind to have a different sort of Uman trip, minus Rebbe Nachman’s actual grave.

The hotel was understated but quite nice, quite quiet (relatively…) food was simple buy yummy. I had three whole days to try to get my head in order. There was yet another ‘wrinkle’ in the plans, inasmuch as we made plans to head out to Uman the same night that Rabbi Berland then called his atzeret in Hevron last week.

So, we figured we’ll go early to Hevron stay for half an hour, then bomb it back home, try to catch some sleep for an hour a half, then roar off to ben Gurion. In the meantime, there was another wrinkle in that plan, too: when I got home at 11pm Thursday night, it turns out one of my kids needed some urgent help to get her bagrut art project done and turned in on time.

So (long story…) I spent two hours sewing body parts together for 18 felt dollies, before spending 10 minutes packing my case like a madwoman, before departing for Uman.

Obviously, our taxi man didn’t show up in Kiev. Or rather, he did, but just not where we were expecting him, so we had to spend an hour combing the carparks to find him.

But when we actually got to Uman it was nice. Like, pretty much almost ‘normal’ – which was so weird to me, I spent the first day and a half trying to work out how to react to it. Usually, I hit Uman and I get the massive stomachache, the massive challenge, the massive insight, the massive something…. This time, nothing massive.

This time, just lots of walking around and around Uman itself, as I couldn’t get near the Kever and I couldn’t stay in a hotel room for 3 whole days without going totally bonkers. So I discovered all sorts of back alleys and new places in Uman that I’d never been to before, and certainly never by myself.

On Isru Chag, I decided to spend the day walking around Gan Sofia.

In the past, I’ve seen extending walks around Gan Sofia as something only ‘lightweights’ do, instead of pulling all-night prayer sessions by the kever, but as the Tzion was still barred to womenkind, it struck me as just the thing to pass the time. I spent the best part of a day just walking under trees that were three storeys high, bathing my eyeballs in luxuriant green and Victorian water features, and felt so very lucky.

Hey, there’s something to this, after all….

Walking back from Gan Sofia, I got some insight that Rabbenu’s grave is very chazak spirituality – so chazak, it can and does fry people’s brains out of their heads, sometimes. In our spiritually-dead days, most of us need a jolt like that, an electric shock of kedusha like that, to try to get the soul back from its flat-lining position.

But this time around, I also got why Rebbe Nachman used to request that his followers also visit Gan Sofia when they come to Uman, too.

Gan Sofia is total gashmius – the polar opposite of the intense kedusha that is the Tzion.

But we need both, in order to serve God properly.

But in the correct order and dosage, i.e. first the spirituality, and only as an after-thought or a dessert, the gashmius and materiality.

Second day in, I had this amazing dream that Moshiach is coming into the world next week.

I woke up in a really good mood, and it seemed like a ‘real’ dream to me. I needed that good vibe, as I came home to a tip.

We let a teenager have the house with her friends, and one of them managed to shatter the shower door all over the bathroom floor. There’s no milk in the house, they’ve moved all my stuff around…

But I got another ‘message’ from Uman this time around, which was to shower my teenagers with as much love and compassion and understanding as I can, whenever I can, because in this dark generation, unkind words can just propel our children straight into the clutches of  the tumah, God forbid. So I kept my temper and didn’t go off into rant mode.

The world is very hard to ‘be’ in at the moment, especially if you’re trying to put at least some focus on kedusha and God.

The filth is literally seeping in under the doors and through the walls. It’s permeating the atmosphere and degrading everything it comes in contact with. It’s hard to continue, some days. It’s hard to think straight. It’s hard to pray.

Before I went to Rebbe Nachman in Uman, current events had made me feel more than a little despairing about being able to raise my children in anything like a ‘healthy’ spiritual environment. We’re in a little bubble here in Jerusalem, but even here, the cracks are starting to deepen and the tumah is seeping through.

There is a relentless and effective ‘war’ being waged against the soul, and against kedusha, and against God, especially by the media. It’s claiming so many casualties, it’s truly frightening to witness how fast the moral fabric of the world is unravelling.

Which is where Rebbe Nachman really came in to his own.

Torah is eternal. Tzaddikim are eternal. Mitzvot are eternal. The Jewish people are eternal.

Even though the battle for the Jewish soul is currently very intense, if we stick close to our true tzaddikim like Rebbe Nachman and Rabbi Berland, they will act like spiritual bulwarks, absorbing and deflecting most of the ‘cack’. So somehow, us and families can come through the fighting unscathed.

But without that bulwark?

I dread to think.

You might also like these articles about Uman:

The Uman Experience – Part 9

Uman Redux

Uman explodes

/0 Comments/by