I’ve been struggling with the whingy blahs a bit this week.
It’s ok, it’s normal, it’s human.
But, it’s also not so helpful to keep that state of mind for long, because it very quickly spirals down into apathy and despair, and when that happens, I stop doing anything useful and just want to stay in bed all day.
As well as making an effort to get out of the house and to visit kivrei tzaddikim and other places, I’ve discovered that regular doses of Rabbi Berland’s torah and prayers can snap me out of my negative mood almost instantly.
Like today, for example, I woke up with more of the whingy blahs, inspired by the corrupt Israeli police flagging down cars all over Jerusalem yesterday just because they can, and intimidating the public into wearing face masks by handing out loads of fines.
Never mind there is zero science showing face masks prevent transmission of COVID-19, and lots of science showing they harm healthy people who are being forced to wear them for long periods of time.
Never mind that the number of people dying from ‘corona’ is practically zero in Israel, as you can see for yourselves, on the Worldometer website:
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To claim we are in the middle of a second spike, to claim this is a ‘pandemic’ at all, is so farcical, so untruthful…. and at least for me, profoundly depressing, because so many people are still buying the lies.
Sigh.
So anyway, the whingy blahs sometimes take over.
That happened this morning, and that’s why I’m sitting here typing this in pyjamas, before I cracked open my morning brachas.
When I’m upset with how God is running the world, it can get hard to pray.
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But then, I headed over to Rav Berland’s site, and I read this:
https://ravberland.com/5058-prayer-to-be-happy-with-what-we-have/
And I said it.
And then, I started to feel better.
Here’s the translation, below:
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Master of the world, who can do anything, grant us the merit to always be happy with our lot, because only that really means to be truly wealthy.
And to not to fall into poverty, G-d forbid, because poverty is only in the mind, and any feeling of poverty is a denial of the kindness of Hashem, because then a person is not happy with his lot.
Therefore, it’s a mitzvah to always be happy in every single situation without stopping for a moment.
For even in a situation that appears bad it is always the best possible, because, “Hashem is good for all, and his mercy is over all of his creation,” and Hashem never does anything bad for us ever, because the good and merciful father only does good for his children, and even when he gives them a punishment, its only out of his great mercy to raise them on to the path of the king.
Master of the world, who can do anything, grant us the merit to always see that You are only doing good for us and we should never fall into denial, G-d forbid.
We should only thank you for every single breath and for every single movement at every single minute and at every single second that we are alive and breathing, us, our wives, our sons, our daughters, grandsons and granddaughters.
Please G-d, take us out of the trait of complaining, that we always cry a worthless cry over nothing, over things that are no big deal, that their root is absolute good.
And even when we don’t see this good, truthfully it is only good, because You are only good and give good to all.
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One of my correspondents asked me this, over email:
Have a question,was looking for your take on it…In Israel and some States in the US where they’ve been re-opening have been reporting new cases and possibly new hospitalizations…Other hand you have a country like New Zealand who it seems like lifted a lot to all of their lockdown orders(And is Covid Free theyre reporting)….How do you make sense of it vs with what we know that it ended Pesach night.
Here’s what I think, for what that’s worth:
- COVID-19 was a ‘plague’ sent by Hashem, specifically to get the Jews of the world to wake up and make teshuva, in whatever way you understand that. The places where there are more Jews are the places where there has been more of an issue, generally.
- The kabbalists told us that COVID-19 came because people were speaking badly of Rav Berland and slandering him. This so-called ‘second wave’ was caused directly by the Bnei Brak beit din ruling against the Rav, based on the same old lies that have been repeatedly disproven.
- There WAS a disease that we’ll call ‘COVID-19′ that WAS meant to kill millions and millions of people – 65 million people, at least, as per the pandemic planners’ own assessments. The Rav sweetened this, and the potentially fatal DISEASE itself went into retreat, starting Seder Night.
- What we are dealing with now is COVID-19 propaganda. There is nothing at all to suggest that COVID-19 is any more dangerous than annual flu, or any more infectious, and just because there are new cases – so what? The real stats to pay attention to are the number of people who are dying from it, or that could die from it. They have shrunk to essentially zero.
- People believe COVID-19 propaganda, because at the soul level they are disconnected from Hashem. Hashem’s seal is truth, but if you’re disconnected from Hashem, you have no idea what’s really ‘true’ and what isn’t.
- The more people make teshuva – especially about slandering the Rav – the more God will open their eyes to what is true and what is false, and the more they will see through the COVID-19 propaganda. There’s a REASON that face masks and gloves are all over the chareidi world right now, and it’s not just because the Government targeted them for punitive quarantine measures. Indulge in lashon hara = wear your facemask 24/7, and believe all the COVID-19 propaganda.
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There’s more I could say, but that will do for now, and I said a lot of this before anyway, here:
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BH, we’ll all continue to make some real teshuva, and to work on our bad middot, which for me at the moment continues to be working on Azamra, or seeing the good in my fellow Jews, and trying to uproot all the anger and yeoush that can still flood up.
It’s work, man.
But that’s the reason we are all down here.
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Photo by Jacqueline Munguía on Unsplash
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