Something very ‘big’ is stirring up again, and I think we can all feel it, in large and small ways.
Today, the Rav said in the morning prayers that there is a very big gezeira (decree) against ‘the enemies of Am Yisrael’ – he was speaking euphemistically.
He said people need to be saying a lot of tehillim, for the Jewish people right now.
I’ve switched my praying routine around a little, to make sure I do the three tikkun haklalis straight after my morning brachot, to ensure they get done.
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In the meantime, at my art class this week, the conversation started up about someone who’d just come back from a doctor’s appointment where they were told they had crishat dam – an embolism.
An embolism is the lodging of an embolus, a blockage-causing piece of material, inside a blood vessel.
The embolus may be a blood clot (thrombus), a fat globule (fat embolism), a bubble of air or other gas (gas embolism), amniotic fluid (amniotic fluid embolism), or foreign material. An embolism can cause partial or total blockage of blood flow in the affected vessel. Such a blockage (vascular occlusion) may affect a part of the body distant from the origin of the embolus.
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The woman with the embolism said she thought she got it from ‘the vaccine’.
Then my teacher (fully vaccinated; lost her husband last year and also had cancer herself for the first time….) quickly shot that down:
It seems like everyone is blaming everything on the vaccine these days….
Then, a nurse on maternity leave from A+E spoke up and told us all:
The difference is, we never used to see young people with embolisms. And now, I’m seeing tons of young people with ‘crishat dam’ in the A+E all the time, since these vaccines.
The teacher abruptly changed the subject.
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In case you missed that video from Dr Andrew Moulden (suicided in 2013, for obvious reasons), here it is again:
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The key points to note is the Dr Moulden identified, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that ALL the vaccines being given were causing ‘mini strokes’ at the capillary level, in everyone who was receiving them.
Very long story short, the strange ‘eye popping out’ and drooping lips that have become way more common post Covid-19, are clear signs of brain damage.
That brain damage shows up in ALL vaccine injured people, in different ways, and it’s directly connected to ‘ischemia’.
Here’s the definition of that, from Wiki:
Ischemia or ischaemia is a restriction in blood supply to any tissue, muscle group, or organ of the body, causing a shortage of oxygen that is needed for cellular metabolism (to keep tissue alive).
Ischemia is generally caused by problems with blood vessels, with resultant damage to or dysfunction of tissue i.e. hypoxia and microvascular dysfunction.
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Moulden explained that ischemia – restricted blood supply – is what is causing the autism, the strokes, the heart attacks, the ‘Sudden Infant Death Syndrome’, the cancer, the dementia….all of it.
And he said this well over a decade ago, before they ‘suicided him’ to shut him up.
So now you know, why strokes, heart attacks, turbo cancer and ‘died suddenly’ has now shot through the roof.
In a word, ischemia.
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This is very useful information, for anyone trying to figure out what they can try to do, to stay healthy.
‘Ischemia’ is also what was causing my husband’s out-of-control foot sores.
Whenever the blood flow isn’t getting to a part of the body, you have a real problem.
What’s the solution to this?
Clay?
Miracle Mineral Solution?
Borox and apple cidar vinegar?
Colloidal gold?
I have no idea…
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All I can tell you, from my own experience, is that the Miracle Mineral Solution cleared up my overwhelming fatigue last year, after a couple of weeks, and also got rid of the ‘head fog’.
And I’m also finding calcium bentonite clay very useful, and it did wonders with my husband’s foot infection (together with the raw garlic).
I would LOVE for someone with the equipment and expertise to start doing some experiments, in real time, to demonstrate how things like clay and MMS may be impacting ‘ischemia’.
I am thinking out loud here, but could it be the trace metals in this clay may be able to ‘reverse the charge’ that’s causing the blood cells to stick together, when the body has been pumped full of the GO in these shots?
[R]ather than the physical particles of the clays (such as their absorptive ability), it is the metal ions attached to the clay and ‘freed’ by coming into contact with skin, that are likely responsible for its potent antibacterial properties.
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In the meantime.
If you are wondering how they are getting all this GO in our food – even the vegetables, apparently – take a look at THIS explanation of GO-based ‘nanoadditives’, that can be sprayed all over our food:
[T]he range offers an innovative range of nano-carbon nanoadditives that can be a true industrial revolution by incorporating the innovative NCRM nano-compound that incorporates Graphene, Nanotubes and Carbon Nanofibers into a wide range of polymers. This range is completed with nano-graphite based additives…
A good example is our anti-bacterial solutions that, by means of the release of active ionic Silver, allow any surface to be biologically decontaminated and that the biocidal element itself is incorporated into the matrix of these polymers, which is suitable for contact with food.
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A reader flagged that ‘colloidal gold’ might be a dangerous red herring… we’ll have to wait and see what the researchers come back with.
But in the meantime – these nanoadditives are being added to everything, including the fruit and veg, to keep them ‘sterile’ and prolong their shelf-life.
(Oh, and also to get enough GO in your system so you can be transmuted into a borg and remote controlled via the internet. Of course.)
Sigh.
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There is no despair in the world!
But in the meantime, the more people start saying their Tikkun Haklalis, and getting behind the Rav, the better and easier this next stage goes.
There is a wind of change blowing.
Big things are going to start happening again.
BH, God should change everything around for the good.
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BTW, here’s two things that took my eye on Twitter:
This is what happens when mercury and aluminium combine.
Is this another possible explanation for all the blood clots and strange, fibrous material growing in people’s arteries?
Again, just thinking out loud, but it really looks similar to the white fibrous material being pulled out of cadavers by embalmers.
And as most people were pro ‘vaccination’ before Covid 19, that might also explain why some of these things are turning up in people who may not have had the Covid 19 shots. Interesting…
A reader sent me this, about what they are finding effective to help combat poor circulation and improve blood flow (posting up with permission):
Regarding your recent post and restricted blood flow, I use herbal tinctures.
My husband has always had problems with circulation to his lower extremities and he even developed discoloring around his ankle on one side. I order from Herb Pharm but there are several other companies that I trust for their tinctures….but anyway I ordered for him one called Warming Circulation. It’s for Cardio& Circulation. It has an extract blend of Ginkgo Biloba, Eleuthero Root, Rosemary leafy tip, Ginger rhyzome, and Prickly Ask Bark. He just started on his 2nd bottle and he asked me to order more….the discoloration has reduced.
I used herbal tinctures for my medicine…..I developed a heart issue and did not follow thru with the medical tests or go back to the cardio, but started researching and ordered hawthorne and hibiscus tinctures and Motherwort tincture ….I don’t have palpatations any longer and and dont feel stress in that area any more, baruch Hashem.
Of course, all healing comes from Him, but I believe his plants and herbs are good medicine.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/designecologist-ACt2UZwHsIk-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=117072560Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-02-01 10:20:452023-02-02 10:47:39Something in the air
I just got sent this message, from someone close to Rav Eliezer Berland:
The Rav says that they want to destroy Am Yisrael.
So we must finish together 100,000 Tikkun Haklalis before the 13th of Adar.
This is coming from one of the Rav’s gabbaim, it’s for sure a ‘legit’ statement.
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At this point, I have seen the Rav call things correctly so many times – and sweeten them, with prayer rallies, Tikkun HaKlalis and other things – that there is no doubt in my mind that:
They DO want to destroy Am Yisrael, and are working hard on the ‘next plan’ to do that, God forbid.
All this CAN be sweetened, if we pick up our Jewish ‘tools’ of prayer, hitbodedut, emunat tzaddikim, etc.
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The other thing to say is that I have seen from my own life, how each time I follow these instructions to ‘pray for the klal’ etc, things get sweetened in my own dalet amot.
When you commit to saying Tikkun Haklalis every day, with emunat tzaddikim, it has a huge impact, spiritually.
Starting with us.
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So, you want to know what you can REALLY do to help Am Yisrael, and stop the terror, and the next plandemic, yadda yadda yadda?
Roll up your sleeves, and start praying.
Commit to saying 1, or 3, or maybe, even 7, Tikkun HaKlalis a day.
BH, with God’s help, I am going back to saying three a day now, until Purim time.
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The alternative is that you can carry on voting for waste-of-space puppet politicians….
Or waste your time ‘demonstrating’ (and hopefully, you won’t get arrested or have your brains beaten out by our corrupt police…)
Or waste your time online in a million different ways, doing a million different things that won’t really help.
Or, you can have some emunat tzaddikim, get a Tikkun Haklali, and join the effort to try to reach 100,000, by Adar 13.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Rav-Berland.jpg?fit=1572%2C745&ssl=17451572Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-30 08:49:592023-01-30 08:50:45“They want to destroy Am Yisrael”
This morning, around 10am, I heard a bunch of sirens near my house, near the Old City.
Then the helicopters started up, and both my kids woke up and started asking me what had happened.
It was shabbos – so I didn’t know.
On the way to our lunch invite, one of the kids walked over to a police car and asked them what was going on.
Pigua in the Old City. Two people got wounded.
Ah.
Baruch Hashem, no-one was killed….
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Then motzash, the kids are checking for more details, and that’s when we found out about the shooting attack in Neve Yaakov, the other end of Jerusalem, Friday night.
At least seven people were killed, and many more injured.
Baruch Dayan HaEmet – and may Hashem avenge their blood.
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All these terror attacks…. nearly always, exclusively, against chareidi Jews….
Nearly always, exclusively, in ‘frum’ neighborhoods….
All I’m saying, is that the evil people who really run the world from behind the scenes use all this violence, all this hatred, to their own ends, just to scare people into giving up more of their freedoms, and to divide and conquer us ‘small guys’.
The answer is not more violence and more hatred.
The answer is to look at who really benefits from all these ‘terror attacks’, always so conveniently timed.
It’s not the Jews in Israel.
And it’s also not the Palestinians.
Think about that carefully.
And pray that more of us understand what is actually happening here, so the people who really benefit from turning ‘the small people’ against each other can no longer get away with this.
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BTW – I just saw this posted up on the Habayitah website HERE.
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Snippet of the interview with Itamar ben Gvir, from 10 days ago:
“Are (Our) plan has two parts:
“The first part is strengthening the blue police. We will raise salaries for all police officers, from new recruits to the rank of inspector. We’re talking about an increase of between 20% and 40% in the salaries of police officers, in a way that will allow police officers to live with dignity, and allow us to bring back the police officers.
“I call on all the police officers who have left the force in recent years: return home!!!
“In addition, we will recruit 4,000 police officers in the next two years, and fill in the gaps in the equipment and procurement of the Israel Police.
“The second part is the establishment of the National Guard force. We will double the Border Guard, and turn it from a local into a national task force; expand the activity of the special forces against organized crime; turn the intelligence center into an expanded complex of technology and cyber; and establish a nationwide volunteer arm of ten thousand veterans of combat units.
“At the head of these two parts will be Commissioner Kobi Shabtai.
“Citizens of Israel, the National Guard is calling you!! Come and volunteer for the National Guard!!!
“This day is a day of good news for the citizens of Israel. Good news about police reform. Good news for the police. Good news for all of us.
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Question 1:
How do you rehabilitate the police in the eyes of citizens who now distrust and dislike the police tremendously, after Covid 19 and what happened at Meron (under that same Kobi Shabtai….)
Question 2:
How do you ensure that there are enough police and security forces to ensure compliance with your next ‘lock downs’ and ‘compulsory vaccinations’ – but without drawing too much attention to that part of the plan?
Question 3:
How stupid do you have to be, to think that this is a) ‘good news’, and b) has anything to do with reforming the police to benefit us, the public?
Question 4:
Why the sudden, massive uptick in ‘terrorist attacks’ again?
“There are two police stations nearby,” relates another resident. “One of them is just a minute away, literally, from where the shooting started. We heard the sounds of shooting in the middle of our Shabbat meal and we called the police right away. But it took the police almost ten minutes to arrive. Here, right behind me, a father was killed, right in front of two of his children,” he cries.
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Orthodox Jews are apparently very expendable, for the police and politicians in Israel….
Remember what happened in Elad, where another terrorist killed a bunch of people literally a minute away from the police station there, too, before any police showed up.
Real police reform would mean cleaning the whole rotten thing out, from top to bottom, including the politicians, not just adding more police to an existing rotten structure.
When we hear that the GSS has been disbanded, Amiram ben Uliel has been freed, the people responsible for the murders in Meron have been brought to justice, the police who killed Ahuvya Sandek have been finally charged for their crimes….
That’s when we can start talking about ‘police reform’.
Until then, it’s just more ‘divide and conquer’ tactics, from the political puppets pretending to work for us.
I will pick up heliocentrism and Jewish heretics next week, BH.
I am exploring some new avenues of information linking both together, which is already proving extremely interesting – but needs quite a bit of spade work before I can ‘lay it out nicely’ to share with you, so you can come to your own conclusions.
In the the meantime, let’s just get back to the meat for a mo.
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Someone asked one of Rav Berland’s gabbays about the frankenchicken.
Long story short, he was told that the Rav looked into it, and is still eating chicken.
I don’t have more details than that.
But, they also asked what hechsherim the Rav is eating himself, and this is the answer:
Eida Chareidit, Rubin, Landau, are top
Kehillot and Machfud are probably also ok
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We know the rabbis make the reality.
The problem is, so many of our rabbis are currently Erev Rav fakers, it’s very hard to know if the ‘reality’ they are making is a good, holy one, or not.
Each person has to continue to do their hitbodedut, and to ask God to show them the truth.
What I can tell you, is that I recognised a lot of the names in the ‘frankenchicken’ pamphlet as belonging to people who ‘excommunicated’ the Rav.
And that gave me pause for thought right from the start, that these people may not be coming from a good place, spiritually.
Because ‘extra chumrot’ is also a Sabbatean thing, to make yiddishkeit so burdensome that people give up and drop out.
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In the meantime, my husband sent me this:
In a groundbreaking ruling, Israel’s Chief Rabbi David Lau stated that the cultured meat produced by Israeli food tech company Aleph Farms is pareve.
However, in order for it to be defined as such, the company, which produces its products from stem cells, will have to declare the meat to be vegetarian.
It’s up to you if you rely on this ‘psak’ from David Lau.
Let’s just say, I’m not.
At all.
(Go look at his family tree, btw, you’ll find it VERY INTERESTING!!!!)
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And while I was typing this, another reader, Alizah, sent me this from HERE:
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Snippet:
“In particular if its shape will be similar to meat in taste and smell, [then Jews should] treat this cultured meat as stricter and define it as kosher, but not pareve, for the purpose of mixing it, cooking it and eating it with dairy products.”
….In addition to cheeseburgers, cells taken from pigs may also be deemed kosher for Jewish consumption. Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, a recognized authoritative figure on Halacha (Torah law), suggested this may be the case.
“When the cell of a pig is used and its genetic material is utilized in the production of food, the cell, in fact, loses its original identity and therefore cannot be defined as forbidden for consumption,” Rabbi Cherlow said at a conference titled, “Science and Halacha” in 2018. “It wouldn’t even be meat, so you can consume it with dairy.”
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Yuval Cherlow came out with a number of shocking statements during Covid 19.
The sanctions proposed by Cherlow, who is a leading ethicist in Israel, would consist of keeping people from frequenting business establishments like retailers and public transportation. Businesses, he explained, should be allowed to ask customers for proof that they’ve been vaccinated, and public transport and flights have an ethical obligation to turn away those who haven’t been vaccinated.
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Maybe, we need to re-define the word ‘ethicist’.
Or at least, to understand that not all ‘ethicists’ with a rabbinic title are actually preaching ‘ethics’ that have any connection to what is good and true and moral.
HERE is his page on the ‘Elijah Interfath Institute’ website, who are hoping to build their massive interfaith centre in the heart of Meah Shearim, overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem.
Those who will understand, understood how all this is linked.
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So, it’s up to you if you want to believe ‘religious zionist’ rabbis who are telling you pigs are kosher.
Personally, I don’t.
At all.
And it’s up to you, if you want to believe fanatics from Meah Shearim who are telling you that nothing today is really kosher, including chickens.
The rabbis – the real rabbis – make the reality.
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But we can see how this dance of despair works, can’t we?
On the one hand, we have the ‘religious fanatics’ making the yoke of yiddishkeit so hard to bear, potentially, we all just feel like giving up on keeping kosher, because it’s too hard to do it properly, so what’s the point???
And on the other, we have the modernising ‘religious zionists’ who work for the Frankist-Freemason State of Israel telling us that pigs are now kosher.
There is nothing new under the sun.
And as different as they look, and pretend to be, they are actually just both working for the same boss, trying to pull Jews away from the Torah and God, and our true Tzaddikim.
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A lot of pieces of this puzzle are really starting to come together.
BH, when I put the stuff together about who has been pushing ‘heliocentrism’ in the Jewish community – for millenia! – I think the penny will start to fall big time, for a lot of us, that everything we’ve been covering here on the blog is connected, in some profound ways.
And that those hellenising Sadduccess never went away, never stopped attacking ‘the perushim’, and never stopped trying to force Am Yisrael to ‘modernise’ and assimilate, in a million different ways.
Both by joining forces with our enemies without, and by trying to subvert our ‘Holy of Holies’ from within.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/simon-berger-CnygD0-II6M-unsplash.jpg?fit=2400%2C1600&ssl=116002400Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-20 10:08:022023-01-20 10:08:02More on the meat
It’s amazing how much real Jewish history I’m learning from translating some of Rav Berland’s old classes.
Before we dive in, I just want to state up front that I am trying, very much, to adopt a more ‘neutral’ approach with this information.
That means that I will share all the information I’m coming across with you, but with the caveat that we should assume wherever feasible and not ridiculous, that people are making teshuva all the time.
Also, just to restate the obvious, that just being in the same family tree as a bunch of Sabbatean-Frankists, Roman Emperors and George Soros doesn’t automatically make someone ‘bad’. It all comes down to each person’s individual actions and free will. As always.
And with that, let’s begin.
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First, there’s the stuff I was in the middle of translating for the Rav, about shalom bayit, when all of a sudden he digressed to the topic of who came up with the idea of creating a ‘Jewish State’ in modern times.
Here’s what he said:
Chareidim built the State of Israel
Yavniel was built by the chareidim.
Afterwards, there was a centre of the Palmach there, and also in Rosh Pinna and Petah Tikva. All of these places were built by the charedim. The idea of having a Jewish State didn’t belong to Herzl at all, this was all happening a long time before.
Already between the years of 5580 and 5760 (1820-1840) they were talking about this.
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The voice in the desert
There was Rabbi Eliyahu Guttmacher, and Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Kalisher, and Rabbi Yehuda Alkali, who were great geniuses, and who said that we had to ascend to Eretz Yisrael.
It was like a kol koreh b’midbar, a proclamation from the midst of the desert, but we didn’t merit it for the chareidim to ascend to the land.
And then there was in 5630 (1870) Rabbi Akiva Yosef Shlesinger and Rabbi Hillel Kolomeyer, who ascended to the land already in 5630. Rabbi Akiva Yosef built Petah Tikva. Afterwards, it was destroyed by a flood that came up from the Yarkon.
There was malaria there, and people died from it, and only a few people remained. So they said that it looked like Hashem didn’t want it to happen. Afterwards, another person came along called Yehoshua Shtumpfer, who rebuilt Petah Tikva anew, and the main road there is called by his name.
Rothschild was also busy building up the land of Israel. Amongst other things, he built Metulla. They asked him: Why are you building in a place that that?! He replied that he knew they were going to create a Jewish State, and that the border was going to be there.
And so it was.
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Long before Herzl
It was only after the Dreyfus affair, that happened in 1894, and when Herzl saw all of the hatred towards the Jews, that he started promoting the idea of a Jewish State, in 1896, a year after the Dreyfus affair.
The whole story with Dreyfus happened after France lost the war. So they slandered Dreyfus that he had sent a letter to an enemy country. They forged a letter and then libelled him, that he was a spy.
But the whole idea had been widespread a long time before this. They were talking about a Jewish state, and they even said that Rabbi Nachman of Tulchin would be the Finance Minister. They were talking about a state, and they were already distributing the positions. But we didn’t have the merit that this would come about via the chareidim.
After the Balfour Declaration, the Ohr Sameach said that those who were scared of the ‘three oaths’ that Hashem swore about knesset Israel (abjuring the ingathering of the Jewish people, back to the land of Israel by force) – that now there was no problem.
Because now, it was being done with the agreement of the nations. The biggest countries in the world agreed with the Balfour Declaration.
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There is always so much to unpack, in even the Rav’s most ‘throwaway’ comments.
So, I’d never really heard of most of these people, excepting R’ Tzvi Hirsh Kalisher, so I started looking them up, to see what I could learn about these chareidi ‘Hungarian Halutzim’.
In the middle of doing all that, one of the commentators, Simon, posted something up about how billionaire Hungarian financier George Soros is also related to the Chatam Sofer, indirectly, on the bottom of THIS post about Roman Emperors and Welsh Royalty.
I took a quick look – and that’s when I saw the same names I’d literally just typed up when I was doing the translation for the Rav.
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Long story short, this is Akiva Eiger’s tree, that has been repeatedly tied to known Sabbatean-Frankists.
(Now, remember the caveat above, that just appearing in this tree doesn’t mean someone is a Sabbatean-Frankist, but it does tell us that these people were growing up in families that were deeply compromised, in terms of their religious beliefs and teachings. But of course, it was still open to each person to change course, and make teshuva – as so many baal teshuvas in our days have also done.)
So, George Soros’ g-grandma was one Jittel Raizel Schlesinger, who descends from R’ Akiva Eger the Elder, amongst many others.
Her brother, or half-brother is one Tzvi Dov Schlesinger – and he is the father of the ‘Divrei Yehiel’, who in turn was the father of Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, one of the main people the Rav spoke about as being ‘chareidi halutzim’ of Eretz Yisrael.
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So, I took a closer look.
These snippets come from YIVO, here.
(1837–1922), pioneer of ultra-Orthodoxy, early Jewish nationalist, and Yiddishist.
Akiva Yosef Schlesinger’s father, Yeḥi’el (1814–1891), a close disciple of Rabbi Mosheh Sofer, was a minor rabbinical functionary in his hometown of Pressburg.
After attending the yeshiva of Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin Sofer in Pressburg, Schlesinger studied briefly with Ḥayim Sofer and Mosheh Schick.
He then went to Leipnik in Moravia to the yeshiva of Shelomoh Quetsch (1798–1856).
This was an interesting choice, as yeshivas in Moravia had a reputation for openness to general culture that was rare in Hungary. Schlesinger would later write that at this stage in his life he seriously considered the path of modern Orthodoxy, and that the experience granted him insight into the mindset of those tempted to succumb to its temptations….
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[I]n 1860 he married Liba (1842–1917), the daughter of Hillel Lichtenstein, who was then serving as rabbi of the small community of Margareten in eastern Hungary.
When Lichtenstein became a widower, he then married Schlesinger’s younger sister Fradel, at his son-in-law’s urging. Until the Schlesinger family moved to the Land of Israel in 1870, the two couples lived together.
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This ‘Hillel Lichtenstein’ is the same as the ‘Hillel of Kolomiya,’ referenced by the Rav in the piece I translated.
Already by the third par of this YIVO piece, I was getting that niggling feeling that something is a bit off here….
Let’s continue quoting from the YIVO piece:
At a time when Hungarian Orthodoxy was entering a period of deep crisis, the two men, along with Ḥayim Sofer, were close ideological collaborators, laying the foundations of ultra-Orthodoxy.
YIVO tells us that he was not a relative of Moshe Sofer, the Chatam Sofer, despite being very close to him and learning in his yeshiva. You can see his family tree HERE, and there’s quite a few strange things that seem to me something is being covered up there. (‘Nathan Ashkenazi’ happens to also be the name of ‘Nathan of Gaza’, Shabtai Tzvi’s main prophet who was raised in Eretz Yisrael.)
Over on the Jewish Encyclopaedia, we learn a bit more about where else Hayim Sofer learned:
He studied at Presburg and at Ungvar, where he attended the celebrated yeshibot of Ḥatam Sofer and Meïr Ash (Meïr Eisenstädter).
For now, let’s can that side of things, and go back to Akiva Yosef Schlesinger and Hillel Lichtenstein of Kolomiya.
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More from YIVO:
Schlesinger argued passionately for the need to safeguard the most basic markers Jewish of identity and culture such as name, language, and dress. The acronym of the three words shem, lashon, and malbush—shalem—encapsulated for him the ideal of the complete Jew, the “Hebrew” possessed of staunch integrity.
In this way, he redefined the battlefront of the culture war. In its metaphorical trenches, no longer did the Orthodox face a Neolog (Reform) foe, but rather the lines of confrontation were drawn between the authentic Orthodox and the enemy within, the counterfeit Jews, the modern Orthodox.
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In 1870, Schlesinger moved to Jerusalem, and he started fighting against a lot of the corrupt organisations here in the Holy Land:
The ḥalukah system, distributing charity from abroad, controlled by corrupt overseers, the memunim, could not provide a satisfactory economic solution to the rising tide of immigration from Eastern Europe. Many of the kolels sought to discourage immigration by denying the ḥalukah during the initial years of stay in Palestine.
To Schlesinger’s mind this state of affairs was not only criminally unjust and economically disastrous, but it also ran counter to his messianic expectations.
He had by this time fully internalized Tsevi Hirsh Kalischer’s activist messianism, which called for the restoration of Jews to the Holy Land and the creation of agricultural settlements as a means of both fulfilling religious commandments and solving pressing economic problems.
In 1873, he wrote a pamphlet setting out his vision of:
[A]n Orthodox utopia with many elements of a modern Jewish nation-state—Hebrew language, Jewish attire, a flag, a militia, an elected assembly—that would best secure traditional Jewish culture. Yet nowhere in the pamphlet was there an outright call for a Jewish state.
That came a year later, in a letter to Moses Montefiore, in which Schlesinger made explicit his goal to establish a Jewish state, albeit under Ottoman suzerainty, in Palestine.
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Just stop for a moment, and understand what we’re dealing with here.
This is one of the main guys behind the whole ‘ultra orthodox’ insistence on Yiddish, no secular education, retaining the black and white clothing of 250 years ago, ‘no changes to anything’ – agitating to create a Jewish State in the land of Israel, that speaks Hebrew, has an elected parliament of some sort – and an army.
This is mind-boggling.
====
Ultimately, it didn’t happen.
Schlesinger was running an ongoing war against his arch-enemy, ‘modern orthodox Trojan horse’, Ezriel Hildesheimer, and a bunch of other secular Frankists, too, plus the existing corrupt overseers of the ‘haluka’ charity system then in place supporting the orthodox communites of Israel.
(Notice: there is nothing new under the sun. Also remember, most of those ‘established’ orthodox communities in Israel had actually been built and maintained by Sabbateans who flocked here to await ‘the second coming’ of Shabtai Tzvi, in 1700.)
Schlesinger was over-stretching. Here’s what happened next:
In 1875, disaster struck. Schlesinger published a work, Bet Yosef ḥadash, that went beyond all previous vilifications of acculturation and reform, but also contained a sensational proposal to suspend, in Palestine, Rabenu Gershom’s ban on marriage to two wives…
His book was banned and publicly consigned to the flames, his reputation destroyed overnight. Though his life was threatened, he refused to heed calls that he return to Hungary.
====
Well!
The weirdness continues.
So after that, Schlesinger put all of his energies into trying to buy land for agricultural colonies in Eretz Yisrael.
He convinced his father-in-law [Hillel Lichtenstein] to help raise money, and the first Jewish agricultural settlement, Petaḥ Tikvah, was purchased in 1878 in no small part with these funds.
====
Now, let’s take a closer look at Hillel Lichtenstein of Kolomiya.
Remember, he put up a lot of the money to buy the agricultural colony of Petah Tikva, in the land of Israel, in tandem with his son-in-law and brother-in-law, Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, above, who had published a widely known work calling for a Jewish state in Israel.
So, read this snippet from an Arutz 7 news story from 2015, when Hillel of Kolomiya’s grave in the Ukraine was repeatedly vandalised, and spot the inconsistencies yourself:
Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein was the outspoken leader of the ultra-Orthodox in Hungary. He was an ardent admirer of the Hasidim and made pilgrimages to the Rebbe of Sanz, the Divrei Chaim.
Rabbi Lichtenstein was a preacher and a popular writer who denounced not only secular education, but even the playing of musical instruments and social games like chess and checkers.
He was an opponent also of all agitation for the political emancipation of the Jews, saying that it is the duty of the Jews to suffer the tribulations of the Exile until God finds them ready for Messianic redemption.
====
Except…. that’s not true.
At least, his actions in real life were not at all matching these words ascribed to him, above.
So, what is really going on here?
Let’s see if we can shed some more light on this.
(In another strange thing, take a look at THIS article, describing how Hillel of Kolomiya and Akiva Yosef Schlesinger came into possession of the ‘Holy Sword of Hungarian Jewry’, dated to the 15th century. This tale is getting stranger and stranger.)
Lichtenstein gloried in his distinguished rabbinic lineage: he was a descendant of both Mordekhai Yafeh and Yesha‘yahu Horowitz (known as Shlah)….
He married Rezi Kolman, the daughter of a wealthy man in nearby Galanta. Supported by his in-laws for five years, he opened a yeshiva in Galanta that became famous for the piety of its students. He also taught householders and poor workers, anticipating his future publications geared toward the lay public….
He would travel about the countryside, his fire-and-brimstone jeremiads arousing great religious passion among the common people, especially attracting female audiences. In Margareten, he also encountered Hasidism at close quarters and came to view it with great sympathy.
As his own reputation as a holy man grew, Lichtenstein adopted some of the trappings of a Hasidic rebbe. In time, his amulets were sought from as far away as Baghdad.
====
Well, the weird bell is starting to ding off pretty loudly again.
But in the meantime, here’s the real kicker:
He insisted that Jews not be tempted by emancipation, but rather retain their status as tolerated aliens.
Their fatherland was not Hungary, he claimed, but Palestine.
Smart readers will already have spotted the problem: this is diametrically opposed to what was said above, i.e. “it is the duty of the Jews to suffer the tribulations of the Exile until God finds them ready for Messianic redemption.”
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More from YIVO:
Lichtenstein was the architect of the ultra-Orthodox manifesto, the famous nine-point pesak din of Michalowitz issued by 24 rabbis from northeastern Hungarian communities in the autumn of 1865…Not only neo-Orthodox rabbis, but almost all the leading mainstream Orthodox authorities in Hungary as well were scandalized by what they viewed as the pesak din’s distortion of halakhah, and refused to join the signatories….
==
…He is probably the only Hungarian rabbi to have had several passages of his work (in Jüdisch-Deutsch!) read into the [Hungarian] parliamentary minutes.
One member of parliament interpolated with sarcasm that Lichtenstein’s views denying that Hungary could be a Jew’s fatherland and his denunciation of assimilation seemed to be in full accord with the antisemite Gyözö Istóczy’s plan to have Hungary’s Jews immigrate to Palestine….
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Remember, this is a good 70 years before Hitler rose to power, and basically started saying the same thing as Gyozo Istoczy.
And clearly, Lichtenstein must have said Hungary could never be a Jew’s real homeland, because it was actually recorded in the Hungarian Parliament’s minutes.
But it seems that the plan to create a Jewish state in Israel only started to solidify a little later:
As late as 1863, Lichtenstein wrote that he preferred militant activism in the Diaspora to a life of learning in the Holy Land, but he later came to espouse the active messianism preached by Tsevi Hirsh Kalischer.
We’ll get to Tzvi Hirsh Kalischer in a minute.
Before we do, let’s just find out who helped Lichtenstein buy Petah Tikva, and then what actually happened to that Hungarian-ultra-orthodox-owned agricultural settlement:
[I]n 1876, [Lichtenstein] wrote a letter endorsing the Society for the Settlement of the Holy Land (behind which stood his son-in-law), wherein he expressed the view that such activities marked the first stage of the messianic era.
He was induced by Schlesinger to raise money (mainly from the Frankfurt Rothschilds) to buy land in Palestine.
The purchase of Petaḥ Tikvah, the first Jewish agricultural settlement in modern times, was funded substantially by Lichtenstein in 1878.
However, he soon came under enormous pressure and was threatened with blackmail by the Hungarian kolel in Jerusalem, which viewed the entire project askance as siphoning off funds that by rights belonged to them.
He was compelled to yield his shares to the kolel, which promptly sold them off.
====
So.
One of the main ‘planks’ used to support the view that Jews should just stay in the diaspora and wait for God to bring them to the Holy Land…. didn’t actually hold by that.
(Take a look at THIS piece on the ‘TrueTorahJews’ anti-aliya website, to see how Hillel Lichtenstein’s words are being routinely twisted.)
But in fact, he himself bought land in Eretz Yisrael for agricultural settlement, way before ‘the secular Zionists’ even existed as a movement, and he wrote a letter in 1876 where he publically said about buying and settling land in Israel:
“[M]arked the first stage of the messianic era.”
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This is astounding!
So, how did we get from there, to where we are today?
First, let’s just do some housekeeping.
The Frankfurt Rothschild who probably put the money up for Lichtenstein to buy ‘Petah Tikva’ was almost certainly Wilhelm Carl Von Rothschild.
Snippet from Wiki:
In 1855 von Rothschild became joint head with his brother Mayer Karl of the Frankfurt house. When his brother died in 1886, he became sole head. As he and his brother left no male heirs, the Frankfurt house was discontinued at his death.
Von Rothschild, who was religious his entire life, was eulogized by Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim at the Yeshivas Knesses Beis Yitzchak-Kaminetz in Kaunas as הצדיק השר הטפסר (the righteous, the nobleman, the aristocracy)
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Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim, aka the ADERET was the father-in-law of R’ Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the first ‘chief rabbi’ appointed by the secular zionists.
Rav Kook famously had an ongoing dispute with R’ Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, co-founder of the Edah HaCharedit in Jerusalem.
R’ Sonnenfeld was apparently one of the people who put the pressure on Hillel Liechtenstein to ‘donate’ his shares in the Petah Tikva agricultural colony to his kollel – which were then sold.
It bears all the hallmarks of having being deliberately truncated. If you look closely, you’ll see that his mother was one ‘Zelda Rosalia Deutch’, whose father was a ‘Rabbi Aharon Deutch’ who appears to be floating in space. But when you look for possible fits for this ‘Rabbi Aharon Deutch’, you get to THIS tree, and this person:
Chief Rabbi Aaron David Deutsch or Aharon David Deutsch (also known as Rabbi David Prag) z’tl was born in 1812, in Raudnitz, Bohemia (today Roudnice nad Labem, Czech Republic) – died at Balassagyarmat, on 26, April 1878….
He received his early education under his grandfather, Joseph Emanuel ben Menachem Deutsch, who was district rabbi (Bezirksrabbiner) in Raudnitz, and then frequented the yeshivot of Prague and Pozsony (Pressburg, today Bratislava, Slovakia) being one of the favored disciples of the famous Moses Schreiber (the “Chatam Sofer”).
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He fits the time, he fits the place, he fits the circumstances, to be R’ Sonnenfeld’s actual maternal grandfather.
It’s highly unlikely that anyone could have risen to be the head of the Ashkenazi Jewish community in Jerusalem, without being a full-blooded member of ‘the cabal’.
Again, remember the caveat that it’s not the yichus that makes the difference, it’s the person’s own actions, for good and bad.
But also understand, so much of the story we’ve been told about what happened before the founding of the secular State of Israel is a lie.
====
Meanwhile, Carl Wilhelm von Rothschild’s daughter Adelheid married her cousin, one Edmund James de Rothschild.
And he is the guy who went around buying up loads of bits of Eretz Yisrael, and whose money and land holdings basically launched ‘secular’ Zionism and the secular State of Israel:
He became a leading proponent of the Zionist movement, financing the first site at Rishon LeZion.
In his goal for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, he promoted industrialization and economic development. In 1924, he established the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), which acquired more than 125,000 acres (50,586 ha) of land and set up business ventures.
====
Are you starting to see that the ‘problem’ with the idea of settling Eretz Yisrael was not so much a religious one, as has been portrayed by so many ‘ultra-orthodox’ leaders in the diaspora, but more a political issue over who got to control the country and the money and the land?
This has massive implications for the whole subject of making aliya today.
I’m not going to go into that here, but let’s see if we can just pin down a little bit more of this.
====
HERE is what YIVO has to say about Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, the person whose ‘messianic’ vision for a Jewish State in Israel apparently inspired all these ultra-orthodox Hungarian halutzim:
(1795–1874), rabbi and the most prominent “harbinger of Zionism.” Tsevi Hirsh Kalischer was born in Leszno (Lissa) in western Poland. He was a disciple of Ya‘akov Lorbeerbaum of Lissa and of Akiva Eger.
==
There is a TON of weirdness around the family tree of Ya’akov Lorbeerbaum, a great-grandchild of the Chacham Tzvi.
And Akiva Eger’s tree we’ve already ascertained contains hordes of known Sabbatean-Frankists.
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Kalischer was a leader of the Jewish Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land, founded by Ḥayim Lorje of Frankfurt am Oder (1860), which was the first group to propagate the idea of renewing settlement in the Land of Israel….
Kalischer remained in close contact with contemporary Jewish leaders, both rabbinic and lay.
He corresponded with Moses Montefiore, Anschel Rothschild, and Albert Cohen; with rabbis in Germany (Esriel Hildesheimer, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Seligmann Baer Bamberger); with rabbis and public figures in Russia (Yitsḥak Elḥanan Spektor, David Friedmann, Yehoshu‘a Heshel Levin, and Eliyahu Krotinger), and with Rabbi Me’ir Auerbach in Jerusalem.
He had a hand in every initiative connected to the Land of Israel, whether sponsored by the Alliance Israélite Universelle (in Paris), the Jewish Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land (in Germany), or the Dorshe Tsiyon vi-Yerushalayim society (in Grodno).
In particular, he gave his support to the mission to various Jewish communities of Hungarian Rabbi Yosef Natonek on behalf of the Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land.
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When I was looking at the YIVO entry for Yosef Natonek, the man entrusted by Tzvi Hirsh Kalischer to raise and distribute most of the funds via the ‘Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land’, a very strange paragraph caught my eye:
Natonek’s most important work…’Messiah, or Discourse on Jewish Emancipation: A Study Equally Pleasing to Jew and Christian; 1861′, was published in Hungarian under the pseudonym Ábir Amiéli, “an Orthodox Jew” (igazhitü izraelita). The pseudonym, as he explains (p. 30), hints at the restoration of national independence (‘ami) that the spirit of Talmudic Judaism (el) is meant to direct to…
In Mesiás, he presents himself as a liberal Orthodox Jew who nevertheless would not permit his religious zeal to overshadow his humanity, nor his liberalism “to swallow up my Israelite nationality.”
His wide-ranging critique of Jewish society and religious indifference includes a harsh condemnation of both the Orthodox and their opponents, focusing upon their purposeful abandonment of hope for “the restoration of Israel’s national independence in Palestine.”
He concludes his essay with puzzling Christological references to a separate work wherein he claims to have demonstrated that the Talmud considered Jesus the genuine Messiah and that according to Talmudic reckoning the Messianic era was imminent in the second half of the nineteenth century.
====
In other words…. Natonek was a Jew-for-Jesus.
As always, each post on this subject takes our knowledge a huge jump forward…. but also leaves us with a lot more questions to ask, and a lot more research to do.
But I have the feeling this was a very important post, especially in light of what we’ve discovered about what was actually going on in the land of Israel, and with the idea of ‘aliya’, even before the modern secular Zionist movement began.
Lots and lots to think about…
And lots and lots still more to research and uncover.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/cole-keister-pOCQuo4b-3E-unsplash-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=117072560Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-10 12:08:342023-01-10 12:11:39Hungarian Halutzim and the question of aliyah
Rebbe Nachman teaches that true wisdom is when a person understands that really, they don’t know anything at all.
Baruch Hashem, I think more and more of us are finally starting to approach this lofty level.
I know I certainly am!
I have this feeling at the moment that the more I’m trying to clarify what is actually going on, the murkier it’s all getting.
When this happens, it’s usually a sign that at least for now, I need to stop, take a breather, and wait for Hashem to give me a nudge to start moving again – if that’s what He really wants.
I am still trying to track down the specific source for Breslovers not eating Turkey, it could well be an oral tradition, and not something that was ever written down.
If and when I get the information, I will be sure to share it here.
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In the meantime, here’s the comment I wrote to Ruth on the franken-chickens issue, which I think is useful to actually post up here, prominently:
Just to be clear, there ARE lenient opinions on what’s required to make a fowl kosher.
And the more I look into this, the more I’m seeing it’s a huge, ginormous mess, and there are no quick fixes here.
Maybe the lesson to learn at the end of all this will simply be to accept our level of kashrut is not ‘super-duper’, even if we’re exclusively eating badatz etc.
Maybe, the humility of knowing we simply can’t do this so ‘properly’ these days is part of what’s going on here… I really don’t know.
The last thing that needs to happen is for there to be another reason to look down our noses at other Jews just because ‘they still eat chicken’….
I’m just trying to feel out the information here. But in terms of what I myself do about it, let alone what anyone else does about it – I have no idea.
And when I get to that point in the process, I will probably have to ask a shaila of a Rav I trust to give me the answer God wants me to have. And that’s true of all us, probably.
So, there are no plans to ‘outlaw’ eggs, or even, chickens, on the blog. I’m just sharing info here, and then each person will have to take it back to their hitbodedut, and their own personal Rav, if they want more guidance on tachlis what to do.
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On Shabbat, I was eyeing my chicken suspiciously, wondering if I’m doing some massive aveira now by eating it and serving it…
And then I remembered Rabbenu’s story of the tainted grain, and how the moral of that story is that there is no escaping the madness, but the trick is to at least just know that I’m mad…. and so is everyone else.
And then, I remembered that being super-duper-machmirusually comes from a very bad place, spiritually.
That place of gaavah, and of thinking that I’m better than everyone else, and so much more super-duper-frum than everyone else.
As always, there is such a narrow bridge to tread here, between being lazy and apathetic about things that really ARE vitally important, including keeping kosher, and going to the other extreme of making yiddishkeit into such an onerous burden that no-one can stand up in it.
Both approaches are wrong.
And at the end of the day, the rabbis make our reality.
And if the rabbis, at least for now, are saying ‘all the chicken you eat is kosher’ – that actually IS the reality.
That’s how Hashem created the world, that the Rabbis get to decide what is kosher, and what isn’t, tachlis.
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Sure, I’m yearning for a cleaner, purer, more ‘straight’ world.
I think so many of us are.
But right now, the only chicken available is tainted chicken, and that’s also how Hashem wants it.
I can’t dodge the tainted chicken, I can only know that the world – and yours truly – is totally bonkers.
But there is something else I can do in the meantime, and that’s work on my humility and judgment of others.
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What do I really know?
Nothing.
And once I really understand that, it takes my arrogance down a huge peg or two, and it also stops me from judging others so harshly, because they still eat Turkey….
Or whatever it is.
Sigh.
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As is my way, I just cracked open ‘A bit more advice’, and this is what I got to:
(Page 249):
In the throes of the greatest success and fortune, material or spiritual – or in the maelstrom of the worst material misfortune or spiritual decline – a person has to stay focused on not becoming distant from God.
He must maintain his awareness that God is with him all the time.
We have seen many people lose interest and grow distant from God as a result of becoming prosperous.
And many become far from God as a result of becoming too smart in Torah or overly dedicated to serving God.
This is a result of their lacking balance or sincerity in the Torah study and mitzvah performance.
==
Whether a Jew is enjoying fame, fortune or good health, he must be very careful not to feel full of himself.
This is even more true if his success is spiritual. He must be vigilant, and not try to live on a spiritual plane for which he is unprepared.
The same is true if a person suffers hardship or tragedy, God forbid, or backslides by losing interest in serving God.
He becomes indifferent to his spiritual health, or lackadaisical in doing mitzvot. He falls and becomes flawed, God forbid.
In all these situations – whether he is going up or doing down – a Jew must remember that God is with him.
==
If life is going downhill in any way, God forbid, be very alert to not despair or become depressed.
Rally yourself to be in good spirits.
If your predicament is material, follow the Rebbe’s suggestion of finding the silver lining in every cloud (Likutey Moharan 1:95).
If the challenge is due to your shortcomings in living by the Torah, live the Rebbe’s advice of finding and collecting your good points, even your smallest successes (LM I:282).
These suggestions will provide you with enough encouragement to genuinely trust and hope in God.
In turn, you will maintain your faith and awareness of God in a way that befits a Jew, and avoid the road to apathy.
====
Not for the first time, Rabbenu’s advice is lighting the path through all this confusion.
At least for me.
I will continue to research the whole chicken thing, gently, but also with the humility that there are Rabbis – big rabbis! – that know far more than me about what is really going on here, who are still eating chicken and not telling people to stop.
And the main thing is to continue to work on my humility and emuna, to stay close to God, and to know:
I spent most of Shabbat trying to track down the specific source for Breslovers not eating Turkey.
So far I didn’t find it. We will come back to the topic of franken-chickens and turkeys in a separate post, as there is yet more to share on the subject.
But in the meantime, speed-reading through ‘His Wisdom’ and ‘Tzaddik’ in English threw up a lot of other things to think about.
This post is going to pull out some of those things, and try to fit them into a wider context.
I am at the point where I basically distrust pretty much anything ‘official history’ has to say.
But Rabbenu’s books were never about ‘official history’, and while there is for sure still some censorship going on – not least because of the huge persecution endured by Rav Natan and Breslov, and Rabbenu himself – I at least trust that most of what I’m reading actually happened as described.
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So, let’s see what more we can learn about ‘real Jewish history’, from a trustworthy contemporary source, Rebbe Nachman and his student, Rav Natan Sternhertz.
Let’s start with some of the stuff I gleaned from ‘Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom’ (Shivchey HaRan and Sichot HaRan).
First, here’s some basic background. At the age of 26, Rebbe Nachman went to Eretz Yisrael together with an unidentified attendant. On the way to the Holy Land, Rabbenu spent a lot of time in Istanbul, where he dressed in rags, and played ‘war games’ in the streets with young children.
He did this to draw ‘abuse’ down on himself (amongst many other reasons…) because he knew he needed all those insults in order to sweeten the obstacles that would otherwise prevent him from making it to Israel, and the mekatragim that could otherwise even result in his death.
While in Istanbul, he met two followers of R Avraham Katz of Kalisk, who was the head of the chassidic community in Tiberius / Israel, following the death of R’ Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk. They didn’t know he was ‘Rebbe Nachman’, and Rabbenu, for his part, was careful not to tell them his true identity.
Now, I’m just going to start quoting some stuff from ‘His Wisdom’:
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Footnote 16 on page 53:
R’ Abraham ben Alexander Katz of Kalisk (d.1810) settled in Israel together with Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk in 1777,
When the latter passed away, R Abraham succeeded him as leader of the Chassidic community in Israel. He was a close friend of R Shneur Zalman of Liadi, but after the latter published his major work, Tanya, in 1796, R Abraham joined the Chassidic leaders opposing this work.
R Shneur Zalman, in turn, accused him of misusing charity funds sent to the Holy Land. The two emissaries who met Rebbe Nachman were followers of Rabbi Abraham.
====
So, by this point Shneur Zalman and R Abraham of Kalisk were kind of ‘enemies’.
And the two followers of R Abraham suspected Rabbenu of working for their ‘enemies’…
Page 55:
[The two followers of R Abraham] went to the agent [in Istanbul] and told him, “For God’s sake, don’t let this stranger [i.e. Rebbe Nachman] leave for Israel. He is one of our enemies, trying to have Jews expelled, Heaven forbid….”
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We’ll sum up as we go along.
The ‘enemies’ of R’ Abraham of Kalisk and the Jewish community in Tiberius were apparently trying to have him and his followers expelled from Israel at this time, by the Turkish authorities.
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The two followers are trying to guess Rabbenu’s identity, and keep trying out different people to get a reaction.
Page 56:
They were sure they had identified him [Rebbe Nachman] as the Kamarner’s son, but then [Rebbe Nachman] began to curse the Kamarner again.
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It’s totally unthinkable to me that someone of Rabbenu’s stature would ever curse anyone else stam, let alone a ‘rebbe’.
So I tried to look up who this ‘Kamarner” actually was. On page 55 of ‘His Wisdom’, it says this:
“[T]hey thought he was the son of the Maggid of Kamarna, who had great opposition.”
Why was he having ‘great opposition’? As usual, the pertinent details are missing. Over on geni, I got to this ‘Komarner Rebbe’, who was living at the time of Rebbe Nachman, HERE. His name is R’ Yitzhak Isaac Eichenstein of Safrin (1740-1800).
His son, R’ Sender Safrin of Komarno marries Chava – who descends many times over from that same ‘Yaakov Kopel Kamiel’ we wrote about HERE, as being a strongly suspected Sabbatean, and possibly also the BESHT’s baal koreh, and maybe also an alter-ego for Yaakov Yosef Kahana of Polnoyye, the ‘Toldot Yaakov’.
Oh, and Chava also descends from the Sabbatean family of the TAZ and is close mishpocha with the Vizhnitzer rebbes….
In any case, Rabbenu apparently has no qualms about cursing this ‘Maggid of Kamarna’, on multiple occasions.
Moving on.
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On page 59, footnote 59, we discover that the authors have inexplicably censored the fact that the author of Arvey HaNachal is someone called ‘David Shlomo EIBSHITZ’.
Who is buried in the same cave in the old cemetery of Tsfat as Rabbenu’s daughter, Miriam.
Here’s what it says there:
Rabbi Zev Wolf (d. 1823) was a disciple of R Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch, and the mentor of R’ Shlomo of Soroka, author of Arvey HaNachal.
I’d love to tell you how the Arvey HaNachal is related to the infamous Jonathan Eibshutz…. but that information has been very carefully controlled and covered up.
Moving on.
====
While he’s in Istanbul, Rebbe Nachman goes to the grave of Rabbi Naftali ben Isaac Katz of Posen – another well-known Sabbatean who we wrote about HERE.
Page 60:
“When the Rebbe returned from Rabbi Naftali’s grave, he suddenly fainted and lay still for several hours. They placed him in bed, where he lay all night until noon the next day. He was on the verge of death, until God helped him and restored his health.”
That’s very interesting all by itself, and the extra context starts to suggest a possible reason why Rabbenu fainted and almost died after visiting his grave…
But here’s some more to chew over, from footnote 28:
R’ Naftali ben Isaac Katz of Posen…embarked on a journey to the Holy Land but passed away en route to Istanbul on 26 Tevet 5479 / 1719.
R’ Naftali was an ancestor of Rebbe Nachman; he lived in Breslov for a while, and his journey paralleled that of Rebbe Nachman in many ways. His grave was considered a shrine for pilgrims to the Holy Land; there is a record that it was also visited by R’ Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk on his journey there.”
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There were clearly some massive ‘family tikkunim’ being attempted by Rabbenu here – and the process almost killed him, God forbid.
Read more about Naftali Katz, the Semichat Hachamim who is suspected of burning down Frankfurt’s Jewish quarter when engaging in black magic HERE.
I’d love to give you details of how he’s related to Rebbe Nachman – but all that info has apparently been deliberately hidden.
Maybe, you’re starting to understand why that might be.
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Back to the ‘enemies’ of R Avraham Kalisker and his community in Tiberius. This from page 70:
“[Rebbe Nachman’s] illness caused him to be directly involved in an episode with an informer.
This individual had recently arrived in the Holy Land and had become an informer for the Pasha, causing much hardship for the Tiberias community.”
Before we continue, you should know that this ‘Pasha’ being referred to is the notorious Al Jazzar of Acre.
He’s the guy who stopped Napoleon’s advance into the Holy Land at Acre. He was renowned for tremendous cruelty, and had a Jewish advisor (and ‘minister of finance’ and taxes – of course!) – called Chaim Farhi. Farhi had his nose slit and one eye put out by his temperamental boss, and also played an instrumental part in stopping Napoleon in his tracks.
His house is still standing in Acre, to this day:
I can’t help but wonder if this ‘informer’ was closely connected to Chaim Farhi, in someway. It would certainly explain a lot about this story.
Let’s continue.
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“[The informer] had had the community leaders arrested and held in prison for nine weeks.
Some Sephardic Jews went to the Pasha and paid a large ransom to free these prisoners. They captured the informer and attempted to strangle him. He was able to escape only by feigning death.
He complained to the Pasha (Al Jazzer) and was appointed as overseer of the city, to do as he pleased. Accompanied by a regiment of Turkish troops, he returned to Tiberias with great fanfare….
This informer had told the Pasha that the Jews were bringing a large sum of money from Europe.
The Turks had posted special watchmen at all the city gates, waiting for these emissaries….The Rebbe’s attendant was later sent to Haifa, where he collected the funds from the emissaries and brought the money to Tiberias. The money was then delivered to the Rebbe, who gave it to the community leaders [i.e. R’ Avraham Kalisker] for distribution.”
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This informer had to have inside information about who was bringing those funds into Israel.
And we see he had very close links with the Pasha, Al Jazzer, and his finance and tax minister Chaim Farhi.
And, apparently, he also had some sort of ‘grudge’ against the Tiberius Jewish community headed by R’ Avraham Kalisker, who was in the middle of a dispute with Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who had publically accused him of ‘mishandling’ the charity funds, after R’ Avraham came out against the publication of the Tanya.
Makes you think what was really going on, and who that ‘informer’ guy really was.
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A few pages later, we find out who had been dispatched to bring that money into Eretz Yisrael:
Rabbi Yaakov Shimshon of Shepetovka.
From page 75:
[T]he Rebbe made peace between the Rabbi of Shepetovka and Rabbi Abraham Kalisker.
Footnote 44 and 45 fill in a few more details:
R’ Yaakov Shimshon of Shepetovka was a leading disciple of…the Maggid of Mezeritch and a follower of R Pinchas of Koretz and R’ Baruch of Medzhibozh… The Rabbi of Shepetovka had been sent by R’ Baruch to look after the charity monies dispatched to the Holy Land. Some aspersions had been case on Rabbi Abraham’s handling of these funds, so he understandably resented the newcomer.
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Again, so much seems to be ‘missing’ here.
For example, R’ Yaakov Shimshon of Shepetovka seems to have actually been the in-law of R’ Pinchas of Koretz.
His daughter Sarah Miriam Shapiro marries R’Pinchas son, R’ Yehuda Meir Shapira like this:
SARAH ROCHEL SHEINDEL WEISBLUM m AVRAHAM ABA SHAPIRA (1709-1763)>R PINCHAS OF KORETZ (1726-1790)>R YEHUDA MEIR SHAPIRA OF SHEPETIVKA (1760-1829)
(This is the same family tree for the Noam Elimelech, Rav Zusya, and…. Jacob Frank. Amongst many others. It’s totally messed up.)
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For the record, R’ Nachman praised R’ Avraham Kalisker very highly.
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Now, let’s take a look at more of the background about what was really going on in the chassidic world from ‘Tzaddik’ (Chayey Moharan).
Rebbe Nachman was greeted with great affection by nearly all the chassidic masters when he returned from Israel – but he was still arguing with a lot of them, openly, that their ‘visions’ and kabbalistic understanding was totally wrong.
The people he argued with included Shneur Zalman of Chabad – the first person Rabbenu went to visit, when he got back from the Holy Land. And also people like R’ Mordechai of Neskhiz, R’ Tzvi Aryeh of Alik, and also the person who ended up being the Rebbe’s biggest opponent in his lifetime, the Shpola Zeida.
Here’s a little of what Rabbenu is recorded as saying (page 24):
[The Rav of Alik] came in. He said [to Rabbenu] ‘You still don’t believe me when I say I have had visions. I will give you decisive proof that I do.’ The Rav once again embarked on a Torah discourse in an attempt to prove to the Rebbe that he had visions.
Only then did the Rebbe reply to him, “Many have tried to explain the merkaveh (Chariot), yet they never saw it in their life.”
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You’ll recall that the mystical kabbalah associated with the ‘merkavah’ was the hallmark of R Abulafia, who was another in the a very long line of ‘failed’ or false messiahs, many of whose ideas got recycled a couple of centuries later by the Sabbateans….
Even today, the ‘Abulafia’ synagogue of the Tiberius of Rebbe Nachman’s time stands right next to the ruin of the house of R’ Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, the leader of the chassidic community in Tiberius before R’ Avraham Kalisker.
There are so many things that have been covered up in plain sight, here.
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Ok, one more specific thing, then a question, then we’ll end for now.
On page 47, we find this:
“There were a number of followers of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi in the town. They brought some of his teachings for the Rebbe to see.
The Rebbe took issue with R. Zalman’s teachings and showed his followers that what he said was not correct.”
Learn from this what you will.
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One thing that continually has struck me about the Breslov writings is that THE VILNA GAON IS NOT MENTIONED.
Not referred to.
Not even once.
Which I kind of find remarkable, given the huge number of other people that are mentioned, chassidic and otherwise.
It’s like he, and his followers, just doesn’t exist in the world inhabited by Rabbenu and Rav Natan.
Despite all the ‘official history’ that explains that Shneur Zalman and R’ Avraham of Kalisk were meant to be part of his group of students, before they found chassidut….
So, this week I also want to take a deep dive into the life of Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz, because the more I learn about this ‘hidden Tzaddik’, the more he reminds me of the Vilna Gaon.
I know, that sounds crazy.
Could ‘Eliyahu’ really be ‘Pinchas’?
But while you’re thinking about that, take a look at THIS article by Sid Leiman about the mystery of who is really buried in the ‘Vilna Gaon’s’ tomb….
Things are not so cut-and-dried as we like to think, not in about a million different ways.
But we’ll put more of the cards on the table in a separate post, and see if we can tease out a bit more real Jewish history.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Chaim-Farhi-house-in-acre.jpg?fit=1021%2C876&ssl=18761021Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-08 23:40:132023-01-08 23:40:13Following in Rabbenu’s footsteps: Acre and Tiberius
There’s a ‘timeline’ that occurs with unmasking all narcissist enterprises.
By ‘narcissist’, I mean people and organisations who are two-faced hypocrites who prioritise appearances above all else, pretending to be ‘whiter-than-white’ while actually acting in some very evil ways.
A few years ago, I did a massive ‘deep dive’ on things like Narcissist Personality Disorder (NPD), and that led to a lot of personal teshuva, particularly in how I was treating my kids – and also some enormous upheavals in my social group, as I started weeding the ‘unfixable’ narcs out.
At the end of that process, we were pretty lonely.
But it taught me a huge amount about how the narcissistic playbook operates, that has helped me no-end.
And in this post, I want to share some of that stuff with you.
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It feels we are currently in a stage of the geula process which I’d characterise as kind of ‘limbo’.
While this can feel very disconcerting and depressing, it’s actually a crucial part of this whole teshuva process.
Why?
Because Rabbenu explains that if all the evil was to be removed from us in one go – no-one would survive it.
We have been born and bred into such a densely-woven world of lies, that we’d literally lose our minds, if the curtain was pulled back on everything and everyone, all at once.
So, God is proceeding slowly, slowly, with ample breaks for everyone to catch their breath and to internalise the new ‘truth’ they are being exposed to.
Let’s see if we can try to unpick where we are currently holding, in the whole ‘exploding narcissism’ paradigm.
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Here’s how this generally works:
Narcissism is all about manipulating and controlling others to do what you want, using any means necessary, but particularly, deception and ‘PR’.
Deception is actually the narc’s biggest weapon, because for as long as they can convince you that really they are nice and cuddly, and truly just have your best interests at heart – you keep switching off the big, red, flashing warning light that ‘something is not right here’.
If you want a real-world example of this, look no further than what happened with Covid 19.
Crippling lockdowns for our own good.
Mental-illness and developmental-delay-inducing mandatory face masks, even outside, even in 40+ weather – for our own good.
Closing millions of small businesses down all over the world for our own good.
Social distancing and ‘elbow handshakes’ for our own good.
And of course, the shots.
Ah, the shots. All for our own good.
(Just ask that Buffalo Bills guy, who recently had a cardiac arrest on the pitch aged 24. The Buffalo Bills have a policy of mandatory Covid 19 ‘vaccinations’.)
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The ONLY reason they got away with all this, is because they had us all confused that they are working for us, and doing all this for our own good.
This is the classic ‘narcissist playbook’.
The actions speak for themselves – they are all yucky, destructive and bad.
But the words, the spin, the PR explanation of why all this is really great, wonderful, and for our own good – that’s what has got so many people confused and obedient.
As soon as you can show that these narcs AREN’T working for us, and AREN’T ‘nice and cuddly’ – the whole thing falls apart by itself.
Because the actions speak for themselves.
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Here’s the thing:
For as long as we ourselves haven’t done the work, the teshuva, to identify OUR OWN NARCISSISTIC TENDENCIES, and to start to uproot them – we will continue to be swept along by the narcissist paradigm.
For as long as a person is continuing to justify their own controlling behaviour, manipulation of others, anger, lies and selfishness, hiding it all under headings like ‘the ends justify the means’, and ‘I am still a good person’ – they will continue to buy into the narcissist lies and manipulations at the national and global levels, too.
It’s like smokers.
It’s only once someone becomes an ‘ex-smoker’ that they start to understand just how bad all that stuff smells, and how hard it is to breathe around it.
But until they get to that stage, the smoking room is their favorite place.
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So, now we’ve set all this out, here’s what usually happens during the ‘splitting away from narcissists’ timeline.
Step 1: NIGGLING FEELINGS THAT ‘SOMETHING ISN’T RIGHT’.
This stage can and does last for years.
Also, there are very many people who never actually get past this stage, because deep down, they don’t really want to know the truth about what’s going on, and how much they are really being manipulated and controlled by people with very bad middot.
It takes a lot of courage to finally face that beast down.
Not everyone can do it.
(Especially if they have a narcissist mum….)
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Step 2: LIMITED OUTRAGE AND PUSH-BACK
This occurs when the narcissist, the narcissism, has overstepped the bounds, even for them.
Even though most people have been trained to not question and obediently obey authority, when the narcs ‘over do it’ too much, most people will eventually call out the bad behavior and evil actions that are occurring for our own good.
This happened with the mask mandates.
And it happened, at least in Israel, after booster shot 3 and the ‘green passports’, when even a lot of the brainwashed masses started pushing back and saying ‘enough’.
Because the ‘reality’ we could all see became too glaringly mismatched with the ‘story’ being told by the government and the media.
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Step 3: EVERYTHING IS FINE, GO BACK TO SLEEP
Narcs need us to buy into their version of things, to keep us docile and blindly obedient.
That’s a big part of why they pursue a stop-start policy of piling on the pressure – and then easing it up.
Because they know, way more than we do, that if the over do it, the spell will break, and we will stop buying their story that they are ‘good people’ doing everything for our own good.
And as soon as that fairytale ends, the whole balance tips and they have a massive problem on their hands.
So, to keep the fairytale going, they have to switch back into ‘kind and caring’ mode, at least for a little bit, so that people will keep believing them, and doing what they want.
That is currently where we are holding in this process, globally.
Mask mandates disappeared….green passports disappeared….mandatory shots disappeared….people can travel again, blahdy blah – go back to sleep!
Maybe, we all just imagined that our governments, media and medical establishment are totally corrupted and out to get us.
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How long ‘Step 3’ continues depends on a few things:
How badly the narcs damaged trust, and overstepped the line.
How many people no longer believe them.
How much time is required to lull enough of the people ‘back to sleep’, so they can start up with all their manipulation and control tactics again, without experiencing massive backlash.
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I don’t know the answer to all these questions.
But, I can tell you that every single person that wakes up is making it way, way harder for the narcs to continue operating the way they have up until now, under the radar, just telling us all lies and fabrications 24/7.
Because remember: the actions always speak for themselves.
Which is why once the ‘brainwashing’ finally dissolves, the whole equation tips drastically, and immediately.
So now, there is kind of a ‘see-saw’ thing going on.
The narcs have a plan, an agenda, for total control.
But they also have a problem, inasmuch that if they move too obviously now, or too ‘evilly’ – the blinders will suddenly drop off the eyes of a bunch more people in the world, and then they have even more people who are going to be very hard for them to control, without resorting to full-on totalitarianism.
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No-one believes ‘totalitarian dictators are nice people’.
It’s very hard to spin that one, even when you’re screaming about pandemics and ‘lockdowns save lives’.
People have a limit.
Just look at China.
Which brings us to step 4.
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Step 4: THE PARADIGM BREAKS
It breaks, because the narcs can’t help acting like narcs, and sooner or later, they will return to their controlling, manipulating, lying stunts, that are ‘spun’ as being for our owngood, but feel very, very bad.
For people who have had their eyes open to the narcissistic playbook for a while, especially in their private lives, the paradigm ALREADY BROKE.
But for others, it is usually going to take something so shockingly bad, so obviously evil, so undeniable, that even they have to admit that there really is something very bad going on here.
(But note: even then, there will be those that refuse to see it. Mostly, these people are narcs themselves, and so can’t accept that ‘good people can do bad things’…. right to the bitter end.)
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We are currently approaching Step 4.
For as long as the narcs continue to play softball, no-one is going to rise up and rebel.
Remember, deception is their greatest weapon.
But because more and more people ARE waking up – they aren’t trusting the media, the politicians, the doctors, the schools anymore – the deception is coming to the end of its ability to control.
Which means the narcs will be forced to go ‘full totalitarian’, if they want to continue to control.
And as soon as they do that – it’s obvious who they really are, and that none of this is being done for our own good.
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All this is so finally balanced.
Each person who makes teshuva in their own dalet amot for their own narcissist tendencies is reducing the power of the narcs in the world, on every level.
Once enough of us make that teshuva – it’s game over for the narcs.
The only question is whether we do that ‘the sweet way’, before everything goes attempted full-totalitarian, or not.
I don’t know the answer to that question.
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In the meantime, that explains why we’re in this strange kind of limbo right now.
Many people are feeling anxious, like the hammer is about to fall, in some way.
It IS.
Anyway that happens, the ultimate outcome is going to be good.
But getting there is going to be tricky.
Personally, that’s why I’m staying out of pointless arguments right now, and pointless discussions, because the truth is going to become obvious very soon, anyway.
And I’d rather spend my time trying to prepare myself mentally and spiritually, for what happens when the narcissistic paradigm finally comes crashing down, on all fronts.
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The more of this work to uproot narcissism in your own life you do now, the easier ‘Step 4’ will be.
I know when I was going through this on the personal level, that by itself took me out for about three years.
It’s very, very challenging.
I can’t imagine combining that experience with also coming to the realisation that our governments are out to get us, and that the medical profession is totally corrupt and built on a mountain of lies.
This by itself is enough to give people a heart-attack.
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So, that’s why God is drawing out this process, even though it sometimes feels unbearable.
Just keep talking to God, keeping making teshuva, keeping asking Him to show you the truth, and to draw close to the real tzaddikim – that’s the best preparation you can possibly do, to weather Step 4 in once piece.
And when the hammer does fall, remember that what it’s falling ON is the world of lies.
And the world of lies needs to be smashed to pieces, before Moshiach can really be revealed.
Just, we need to stay out of the way, as much as possible, until that process has been completed.
We went the day after the mini-hurricane up North, so I was hoping it would be pretty empty.
It wasn’t.
It was packed full of old people with health issues, a bunch of Arab ladies wading in in full jelabiya swimmies and headscarfs (honestly, good for them!) – and a smattering of IDF soldiers, many of whom were toting their machine guns around the place.
I was trying to figure out how you could visit the hot springs AND keep your weapon under your control the whole time…
I still don’t know.
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Long story short, it was the least enjoyable part of our break – as well as being the most expensive.
We stayed for an hour (it would have been way less, but it was hard to get a turn under the hot spring ‘shower-thingy’, pretty much the only bit we liked about the place.)
And then we went to look at the crocodiles in the crocodile park, which was kinda cool, but also kinda of lame.
So, we blew the whole ‘shmirat eynayim’ thing for that?!
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Back in the car, I realised how so much of what I think is going to be ‘fun’, and going to be ‘good’ is still affected by all the PR, manipulation and brainwashing I’ve experienced about what ‘a holiday’ is actually meant to be.
Not for the first time, I realised that the walk around Tsfat and watching the sun set over the ancient cemetery there; the evening spent playing my guitar as my husband tried to sing along (bless him…); the shakshuka I cooked for us both on the simple gas range; the good books I read, the visits to the kivrei tzaddikim, to the Rashbi- this is what really made me happy.
This is what really made me feel as though I’d had a holiday.
That I’d done something useful with myself and my time.
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Then I thought about all those poor people in Hamat HaGader, for whom that place was meant to be ‘the pinnacle’ of their holiday experience.
Or the people who spend their time in Disney Lands, or ‘holiday resorts’, or jetting all over the place trying to grab on to ‘the next big thing’, the next ‘once in a lifetime experience’ – and how empty it actually all is.
It looks like heaven, but it feels like hell.
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Back home, I opened up ‘A Bit More Advice’, and I got to this, No: 52:
You – and every one of us human beings – must know that all the pleasures of the world, all the honor and glory, and all the cravings in existence that were satisfied are, in reality, nothing.
None of them has any substance whatsoever. Because at the end, nothing of your pleasures remain….
Even if the bulk of your life is devoted to serving God, but you don’t quite succeed at it, know and never forget that the only true benefit in life is to constantly yearn and long to live for the eternal purpose.
Even the yearning and longing for the ultimate truth is greatly precious and dear to God.
Truth is, the desire is the most important thing, especially if it leads to actually doing, whether Torah study, prayer or other good works….
The most important thing is that whatever good things you do, your intention should be for the sake of Heaven, without any bluffs.
Because that good is all that will remain of you for eternity.
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I was talking to one of my family members in the US a couple of days ago.
She has a good job in hitech, her husband is a doctor.
They have two gorgeous kids, everyone is healthy, BH.
But, she told me that they are trying to stuff as much money as they can into their retirement plans, so they can retire as early as possible.
They both hate their jobs, even though their jobs pay pretty well.
And even though they both have good jobs, they are still struggling with the cost of living in the US, and can’t see any way of being able to buy their own home, without totally moving out of ‘the big city’ – something they can’t really do, and find the sorts of Jewish schools they currently want for their kids.
I thought of Rabbenu’s words above, and how so many of us are trapped running after things and jobs that don’t even fill us up, and make us feel ‘happy’.
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[A]ll the pleasures of the world, all the honor and glory, and all the cravings in existence that were satisfied are, in reality, nothing.
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We live in this world where appearances are totally deceptive.
If you ever go to the prayers down by the Rav on Ido HaNavi Street, you’ll be struck by just how shabby and kind of filthy the area looks.
There’s very little money in the community, as every penny is still being squeezed out of the kehilla to pay the astronomical fine landed on the Rav, for the crime of daring to give blessings to sick people.
A lot of people stand the whole hour, because there are not enough plastic chairs for everyone.
Externally, the whole scene kind of looks bonkers.
And yet, I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been down there, and I’ve arrived feeling ‘constricted’, anxious, angry, upset – and left feeling so, so much better.
The appearance is the exact opposite of the real, felt experience.
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So, unless you really like the smell of sulphur and hanging out with a bunch of elderly Arab men with massive stomachs, Hamat HaGader may not be your ideal holiday destination.
In this upside-down world, you find the real ‘diamonds’ precisely in the trash.
There seems to be a pretty ‘down’ vibe beat floating around at the moment.
2023 is beginning with the same stupid crud about ‘covid variants’ that 2020 began with – three frigging years ago!!!
Can you believe that?
We’ve been sitting here, being lied to about covid plandemics for three whole years already….
So enough, already!
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Last year around this time, I had a very strong lesson in why there really is no yeoush (despair) in the world.
It was when the State of Israel was trying to pin a murder on the Rav that had nothing to do with him – and everything to do with the people who are actually working for the State of Israel, to keep pulling the Rav down.
But for a few weeks, it really looked as though his opponents were going to pull it off, and that the Rav would end up in prison for the rest of his life, God forbid.
God forbid for a lot of reasons, but not least, because whatever happens to the Rav kind of ‘happens’ to the rest of us, too.
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Rav Berland got arrested, violently, precisely a week before the State of Israel ramped up into full ‘plandemic’ mode, and locked us all down in involuntary house arrest for months.
So, December of 2021, things were looking really, really bleak.
I had that feeling that things were never going to turn around, that the Rav was going to be kept in prison forever – and that bad would just win, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
And then.
A miracle happened.
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I had been working on trying to get ‘One in a Generation Volume 2’ translated into Hebrew for about two years.
You would not believe the miniot (obstacles) that was going on with that book.
I had two different translators, because the first one was so bad. The second one was very good – but caught ‘Covid’ and was taken out for months.
Then, there were all these technical changes required, which were almost impossible to make, so I kind of edited the Hebrew version of the book by ‘guessing’, based on the English version, where the stuff was that needed to come out.
Then I couldn’t get the punctuation to work in the Hebrew fonts.
Then, the book designer for the Hebrew text ended up costing a huge fortune.
On and on and on it went, and I gave up about fifty times, at least.
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But, the person who had paid for the translations kept on nagging me to finish the job….(even though at that point, the Rav was now facing trumped-up murder charges, so I was sitting here thinking no-one is ever going to read this book anyway….)
And then, I had the totally crazy idea that somehow, getting that book out in Hebrew was connected to the Rav getting out of prison.
Lots of weird things have happened around the publication dates of all the ‘One in a Generation’ books, so it wasn’t totally without precedent.
But still, while I was actually working on finishing the book, I was in the very depth of despair, and the idea that the Rav was getting out of prison ever seemed totally ridiculous.
And then – a miracle happened.
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The same day that I picked up 1,000 copies of the Hebrew One in a Generation in Bnei Brak, which I took straight to the hiloula celebration for Rav Natan that was happening next to the Rav’s prison in Ramla, we got the news that the Rav was being released from prison.
It was a totally stunning, totally unexpected turnaround.
And it happened in the blink of an eye.
And it taught me a very powerful lesson that there is no despair in the world, and that open miracles can and do happen!
Even in our days.
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That was a year ago, tonight.
And tonight, Shuvu Banim is celebrating Rav Natan of Breslov’s hiloula, and the miraculous release of the Rav from prison.
You can read more of the details of tonight’s event HERE on the Rav Berland site, below I’m cutting and pasting:
Schedule of events:
7:00 pm — Maariv prayer on the night of the Hilulah in the courtyard of our Prayer Hall on Rechov Ido HaNavi together with our Rebbe Rav Eliezer Berland shlit”a
8:30 pm — Netilat Yadaim for the Yahrzeit meal combined with the Seudat Hodaya
9:30 pm — The main event with Rav Berland shlit”a
Women’s section on site
Entrance is free
By instructions of the Rabbis of the community, the public is requested to donate for the considerable expenses of United Hasidei Breslov Shuvu Banim a minimum of 50 NIS per person. But certainly the more one donates to offset expenses of tens of thousands shekels the more merit they receive. It’s possible to donate by direct donation, or at the stands at the Hilulah, or by way of the Breslov information line — *9148
Exact details about the location of the events hall will be announced tomorrow (Monday) on the Breslov Information line *9148, and on the English hotline 02-301-1995.e
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The hiloula is happening in Talpiyot Jerusalem, and if you are local – come and join it!