The whole world will convert – more comments from the Rav

Excerpt of a shiur given by Rav Eliezer Berland on Wednesday, Parshat Vayikra, (March 20th, 2024) to the Kollel Ori Tzafon, Bat Yam.

(Translated from Shivivei Or 355.)

As usual, there are tons and tons of clues here – I put some links in the footnotes, but with Pesach, I don’t have the time to do a proper deep-dive.

But you’ll probably get the picture, even just from the small bit of extra info in the footnotes.

Long story short: there is nothing new under the sun.

And it’s always the same ‘pattern’, the same modus operandi with these people.

Until we finally get wise to it, and stop playing the game by their rules.

Enjoy!

==

The Zohar says that the Meraglim (spies) [who brought the giant fruit from Eretz Yisrael] – it was impossible to have lifted up the grapefruit.

We see the symbol of CARMEL MIZRAHI, two people going along with a grapefruit, every two people, two go along with a grapefruit. Every two!

So, each person was lifting half a ton – this was a grapefruit that weighed a ton.

But really, ten people carried one grapefruit. So, it weighed five ton. Every grapefruit weighed five ton.

==

“Of Zevulun he said; Rejoice, O Zevulun, in your excursions…The tribes will assemble at the mount, there they will slaughter offerings of righteousness, for by the riches of the sea they will be nourished.”[1]

When they used to bring the grapefruit, all the ships were filled up with just one grape.

Each ship was full with one grape, each boat had just one grape!

And in the future, it will also be like this.

And then, the whole world will convert [to become Jews], just from this, that they will see the grapes, and the fruit.

==

Yehoshua took a fig, and Calev took a pomegranate.

Every pomegranate was half a ton, every fig was half a ton.

And ten people dragged along a whole grapefruit, which was five ton.

A person can carry half a ton on their shoulders, so they were carrying a whole ton. Today, this is 300 kilos. The ‘World Champion’ can lift 300 kilos. So, the grapefruit weighed five ton, Nahal Eshkol.[2]

==

And this is still the symbol even today, since ‘42.

In [56]42, Carmel Mizrahi was founded. Today it’s [57]84 – this has been the symbol for 142 years. And all the money used to pass [into Israel] via Carmel Mizrahi.[3]

All the money from the First World War used to pass via Carmel Mizrahi, from the Anglo-Palestine Bank, via Carmel Mizrahi.

And they – the zionists – they took all the money.

==

There was Ruppin[4], all of those.

Ruppin Street in Haifa [was called after him]. Whoever comes from Haifa, there’s Ruppin Street, that goes until Ahuza.

So, this Ruppin, he was the representative of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, and all the money during the whole of the First World War went via him.

In one second, it was already impossible to send it any more. But first, they used to send all the money via Carmel Mizrahi, via Ruppin, to support them here.

To build the Alliance here, and all the schools of the chilonim (secular people). They didn’t give the Talmud Torahs a single penny.

And this is how they collapsed all the Talmud Torahs.

==

The Bukharim were the first ones who came to the aretz.

They built Bukharim [Street], they built Agrippas [Street], and Bezalel – all the Talmud Torahs were built by the Bukharim.

They built a palace for the Melech HaMoshiach. Even today, it’s still at the corner of Bukharim and Yehezkel. There is an internal courtyard there, there is a magnificent building there. A giant building with engravings and decorations.

This was the ‘Palace for the Melech HaMoshiach’.

They did this in 5642 (1882), 142 years ago.

==

[The Bukharim] trekked on foot for three years with sacks of golden dinarii.

They had sacks full of golden dinarii, and they carried them along for three years. And on the way, they drank petroleum – there wasn’t water. They went via the deserts, the Syrian desert, the Arabian desert, the Afghanistan desert.

They left from Bukharia, from [ – ].

They came on foot for three years, and they built all the schools here, all the Talmud Torahs.

In the end, the zionists came and took everything, because there wasn’t a budget.

They took all the income, they gave [ – ] half in coins, half in lirot.[5]

==

They took all the donations [for Eretz Yisrael] – and they didn’t give the chederim anything.

And like this, they collapsed all the Talmud Torahs.

Already, when we were growing up in the Haifa, already there wasn’t a single dati school. There were chugim (after-school classes), and there were all sorts of Reali[6] schools – everything was chiloni.

==

There was only Netzach Yisrael, and there was the Yavneh school [that were ‘religious’].

But Yavneh was only for families with good yichus, and everything was expensive there, private.

And Netzach Yisrael was more folksy – but everyone came out chilonim. Even though Netzach Yisrael was a dati school, everyone came out chiloni.

From Yavneh, you had one or two from a class – from the whole class of 20 bochurim (boys), two came out ‘religious’.

This is what was left from the whole of Haifa. There wasn’t one ‘dati’ person left, until they built the Vizhnitz neighborhood.

==

So now, Yaakov Avinu, instead of being happy that they brought his daughter back to him alive – she was one of the hatufim (kidnapped hostages), [by Hamor the son of Shechem].

Now, they want to kill 1,500 Jews.

They are prepared to free 134 hatufim, if they are given permission to kill another 1,500 [Jews].

They killed 1,500 on Simchat Torah, and now it’s the ‘negotiations’, so they want to destroy [another] 1,500 Jews, and to burn down a few more kibbutzim.

They already burned 21 kibbutzim, burned them down to the ground. And it will take 20 years to rehabilitate them, because they only want to show them off as ‘artefacts’, to show this to the world.

But it won’t help.

The world is against us.

==

Canada said that it isn’t going to sell us weapons.

Biden is selling to them, but not that the weapons should be used. Now, he announced in the morning they they shouldn’t actually use the weapons.

I don’t permit you to use my guns! If they will kill you – so let them kill you!

So, the Hamas said, tov, we are ready. There’s some progress, now. 1,500 Jews will be destroyed, and we’ll give you 134 [hatufim].

==

Lapid says that the ikker (main thing) is to bring them home.

People are being tortured, without food, without anything. They are torturing them. Already, from 134, 33 have already died. There are only 101 left.

So the first thing is to [set up] 1,500 Jews to be destroyed.

Bibi compromised with up to 950, he comprised with them. This is big progress! So, the Hamas came down. They got more flexible, they came down to 800.

Now, the argument is about the [last] 50. Bibi said I am not coming down, I want 800…

[? said][7] if you let us destroy 800 Jews, we’ll release them today.

==

So, this is called ‘being optimistic’ [about the negotiations to free the hostages].

And everyone is already ‘optimistic’, everyone is already talking about ‘great progress’. We’ve already in the next stage of progress, let’s hope that tomorrow, they will already free all of the hostages….

==

So, Dina was also one of the hatufim.

They kidnapped her. I don’t want to tell you this, because I don’t want to inflame you here. But I have to tell you the truth, that Dina was one of the hatufim.

====

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Devarim 33:19.

[2] This is the name of the place given in the Torah where the meraglim took the fruit from, in Eretz Yisrael.

[3] Carmel Mizrahi is the name of the Carmel winery that was founded in Zichron Yaakov in 1882, by Baron Edmond James de Rothschild. It is still operating today.

[4] Dr, Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943 was a German Jew who subsequently became the land agent for the Zionist Organisation. He also headed the Jewish Agency between 1933-1935. This snippet comes from HERE:

“He helped to get a loan for  Ahuzat Bayit, later Tel Aviv, and acquired land on the Carmel, in Afula, in the Jezreel Valley,  and in Jerusalem. Ruppin was instrumental in shaping the nature of Jewish settlement in Palestine and in changing the paradigm of settlement from those of plantation owners and poor laborers to the Kibbutz collective and cooperative Moshavim that became the backbone of the state-in-the-making. He catalyzed the commune at Sejera and helped to turn it into the first Kibbutz settlement – Degania, as well as helping to support and organize Kinnereth, Merhavia and other settlements.

Rupin was among the founders of the Brit Shalom peace movement, which supported a binational state, but he left Brith Shalom after the Arab riots of 1929.”

[5] At the time the Rav is describing, the currency in Eretz Israel was the lira.

[6] Read more about the Reali School of Haifa here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Reali_School

[7] In the original Hebrew, the name is left blank.

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Life as ‘normal’

It’s interesting that the less ‘online’ I am, the less interesting ‘online’ is becoming.

According to the alternative reality that only exists ‘online’, something big was meant to have happened on Monday, to coincide with the solar eclipse going on across North America.

(For a really nice first-hand account of that, read THIS, by writer Annette Gendler.)

In my ‘real world’, I spent the day working on my art project.

I made the mistake of going back to my art chug on a Monday – because I forgot that’s the day Mrs Amalek shows up.

When she walked in through the door, that’s when I remembered why never, ever on a Monday.

But by that point, it was too late.

====

But interestingly, ‘Mrs Amalek’ had changed her tune.

At least a little.

The conversation was still full of isn’t it awful about the hostages, I can’t sleep at night, another holocaust and the world is doing nothing – and even encouraging Hamas!!!

(Er, it’s actually Bibi who just authorised a record number of so-called ‘humanitarian aid’ trucks into Gaza…. that are going straight to Hamas…. who then charge the Gazans to ‘buy’ the food from them…. and then that money is presumably used by Hamas to….buy mishloah manot, or something. Definitely not guns, rockets or anti-tank missiles. Or anything like that.)

====

But of course, no-one wants to really deal with ‘the reality’.

So, I kept my mouth shut and just kept sticking my tiles into place.

====

Next, the conversation turned to how so many ‘apparently normal’ people in Jerusalem are now buying generators to put on their balconies ‘for when the lights go off’.

It sounded like Mrs Amalek had just ordered hers….

And then the rest of the ladies – which included the sweet woman who literally ran away from me, when I made the mistake of mentioning that Sabbateans control our community – spent the next half an hour agonising over whether they should also get one.

I just kept my head down, and carried on sticking down my tiles.

It was a strange experience, being the least ‘prepping for armageddon’ person in a room full of ‘apparently normal’ people.

How the tide has turned.

====

The last thing I learnt is that, apparently, so many people are now planning to make aliya from the US….

Like, next year sometime.

And in the meantime, they are looking for good deals in the Israeli housing market, because even if they don’t really move here next year, their investment will still double in a very short amount of time.

And that, dear reader, is why normal people who live here can’t actually afford to buy much, and get stuck paying crazy rents on Israeli salaries.

====

I came out of my chug reminding myself over and over again never on a Monday!

And then, I started thanking the Good Lord that this isn’t the social milieu I have to deal with on an ongoing basis…

Just one big ‘drama queen’ episode, angrily blaming God for everything that’s going wrong, while also totally ignoring Him, and boiling mitzvoth down to how much return you can get on your investment dollar.

====

My brother lives in the US, around the New York area.

He is currently having some serious trouble with ‘the Jewish school system’ there.

He told me, everyone he knows is having some serious trouble with ‘the Jewish school system’ there.

One of his friends had his FIVE YEAR OLD SON kicked out of ‘yeshiva’ two months into the year because he couldn’t sit still, like a robot, for hours and hours a day.

The Rosh Yeshiva basically told the father it’s your problem, not ours, send him to public school if you can’t find anywhere else….

====

These ‘Jewish educators’ spend a fortune on fancy advertising and slogans about how much they care about your kid, and your kid’s future.

My brother told me he’s coming to the conclusion that most of the Jewish schools in the US are literally being run as businesses, to make money and profits.

And that’s about it.

====

So.

The world didn’t end on Monday.

The ‘big war’ didn’t begin. (Again….)

The Rav was hospitalised at home for two days coinciding with ‘crunch time’ – and as has happened so very many times before, the harsh decrees just kind of melted away again.

====

Part of the reason I am losing so much interest in the internet, is that even in the apparently ‘frum, Jewish world’ – it’s just the world of lies.

It’s a free world, so if you want to carry on wasting your precious time and ‘head space’, that’s entirely up to you.

Personally, I just want to know stuff that’s true, from real Tzaddikim, with real ruach hakodesh.

Which basically boils us down to comments from the Rav, and shiurim from people close to the Rav, especially but not only, Rav Elmaliach.

The chiddushim he is coming out with about the Torah, and the unfolding geula process, based on the Makor Chochma Torah he’s getting from the Rav are simply mind-blowing.

And again, we have the ‘schedule’ for geula that was clearly set out three weeks ago, just after Purim.

====

REVELATION OF ‘MOSHIACH’ IN FOUR PARTS

  1. The night of regular Purim 5784, the first ‘hidden’ revelation occurred.
  2. The next revelation will be the Shvi’i shel Pesach – the 7th day of Pesach. (No-one knows if that will be another ‘hidden one’, or more obvious and open.)
  3. The third revelation, and the biggest one, on Tisha B’Av 5784.
  4. And then full revelation, apparently ‘with lots of blood’, whatever that actually means, on the 25th of Elul, 5784.

====

It was pushed off from Purim to give more of Am Yisrael the chance to make more real teshuva.

And BH, outside of ‘apparently normal Anglo-psycho’ circles, that IS starting to happen here in the Holy Land.

More and more people are losing confidence in the government, the media and the IDF, and are so, so ready for something big to change.

And not least, for something big to change inside of themselves.

====

I see this process occurring in my daughter’s circle.

What’s interesting, tho, is that while some people are turning towards God and Torah and mitvoth, others seem to be running even further away.

Not least, on the dati leumi side of the equation, where every false idol these poor people were taught to revere unquestioningly as kadosh are now crashing down around their ears.

And because these idols were equated with ‘Torah’ and ‘mitzvot’ by the dati leumi ‘rabbis’, beginning with Avraham Kook, the dati leumi community is going through a very dark time of the soul.

====

(Someone told me recently that their father came to Israel before WWI, wearing two pairs of tefillin and a gartel on Shabbat. R Kook told him he didn’t need to keep shabbat or eat kosher while he was in the British Army that was operating to ‘liberate’ Israel from the Turks. That guy subsequently dumped religion and became totally secular…. There are so many stories like this.)

====

The trouble is, the brainwashing is so strong – whatever brand we all grew up with – that finally making the decision to go after the truth, and nothing but the truth, requires tremendous internal courage.

And a lot of people just don’t have it.

At least, not yet.

====

Let’s end with Chabad.

This comment from a reader here on the blog got me thinking:

Got the following from someone who heard me playing the bermuda triangle video: “You abandoned Chabad for this nonsense?”

I wasn’t totally silent in response…explained what I like about breslev, and that I didn’t abandon anything, chabad’s just not my derech right now.

(yeah, I basically try not to read your posts about “real jewish history” and occasionally write to the Chabad Ohel).

====

It’s so hard to break the brainwashing – especially, when people just don’t want to engage with the truth, the real information, the changes the whole picture.

I get it 100%, I totally understand it.

It’s a ‘narc set up’, where if you go against the recieved narrative, the ‘socially acceptable’ ideas, you will be mocked and ostracised by most of the people you know.

Welcome to my world.

(Welcome to my chug….)

But if you don’t…. then you go down with the world of lies, when it finally totally cracks apart and sinks under the weight of its own evil and internal contradictions.

====

Like this:

(From the Habayitah blog HERE.)

====

So, yes.

Believing the chiddushim about the Bermuda Triangle etc, and the schedule for Moshiach to finally be fully revealed as set out by Rav Elmaliach and other students of Rav Berland is ridiculous conspiracy theory, and only for ‘crazy’ people with no grasp of reality.

Meantime, believing that you can ‘close your eyes’ and get to EY in 18 minutes once Moshiach comes – with no teshuva, prayer or other effort required!!! – is what ‘normal’ people believe.

====

And also, don’t worry about stuff like more wars, more Jews getting killed, more terrible suffering before Moshiach comes (because we aren’t making the teshuva required, especially in terms of shmirat eynayim) – because the Lubavitcher Rebbe said more than 30 years ago that every Jew is going to make it!!!

(He himself then died. And then, we had the Second Intifada, a massive uptick in antisemitism all over the world, non-stop terrorist attacks, non-stop rockets from ‘disengaged’ Gaza, Lebanon II, Operation Tzuk Eitan, a bunch more ‘Operations’, October 7th, and now ‘Swords of Iron’…. and it isn’t over yet.)

Hey, and tell me again about the Rebbe’s secular, marxist brother who died studying nuclear physics at Liverpool University, apparently where he got sent by no less than ‘David Ben Gurion’…

You know, this guy:

(Screenshot from the MentalBlog substack, HERE.)

====

(The ‘friendly’ guy on the left is the Rebbe himself…)

I have a whole book written by Chabad mesichists scientists – many of whom held top positions in the US army, working on research projects that are not being used for the greater good of humanity – that refer to secular, marxist ‘Marc Gurary’ as ‘Rabbi Yisroel Aryeh Leib Schneerson’.

These mesichist Chabad scientists even set up a series of conferences, beginning 1992, called ‘the annual Moshiach and Science conferences of the Rabbi Yisroel Aryeh Leib Research Institute on Moshiach and the Sciences.”

That book is called: Scientific Thought in Messianic Times.

It’s very interesting for a whole bunch of reasons.

Not least…. that ‘Rabbi Yisroel Aryeh Leib Schneerson’ was actually a secular marxist called ‘Mark Gurary’.

====

So much for ‘normal life’.

There is a road branching ahead in front of every single one of us.

One path leads to redemption, the sweetest way possible, and other path really doesn’t.

The choice is yours.

And the sad thing, for me, is that so many people are just going to ‘close their eyes, count to 18’ and wait for the Lubavitcher Rebbe to whisk them into the world to come.

(That may even happen….  just not exactly how they think.)

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Kimche de Pische

With all the Pesach cleaning, I didn’t get any where near the other translations.

BH, I’ll see what I can do when I’m offline again now, until Thursday.

There is a lot of stuff ‘in the air’ at the moment.

There is a rumour the Rav is back in hospital – I’m trying to verify that, but he certainly wasn’t at the prayers this evening.

Every time there are ‘massive dinim‘ that just can’t be sweetened any other way, the Rav ends up in hospital.

Please pray for Eliezer ben Ettia, to have a full recovery and stay healthy.

====

In the meantime, ‘charity saves from death’.

I know that’s not very happy-clappy, but that’s what came to mind when I wanted to write about Kimche de Pischa for Shuvu Banim families this year.

The link on the English site is HERE.

And it’s a very good place to give your tzedeka for helping other people to make Pesach this year, for so many reasons.

There are more sincere Torah learners, who also do stuff like work on their bad middot, get up for chatzot, say 7 tikkun haklalis a day, and generally, ‘kill themselves’ in the tent of Torah than you’ll find anywhere else, at this point.

And most of them live on a shoestring, and need help to make the holiday.

====

Here in Israel, the price of so much basic food stuff has shot through the roof, the last few months.

Pesach is never ‘easy’ or cheap to make, but this year, at least in Israel, it seems to be way, way, way more expensive than previous years.

So.

‘Charity saves from death’.

And HERE is that link again.

And may we just hear good news.

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The ‘magnetic’ star – Rav Elmaliach

Rav Elmaliach is putting up a number of simply mind-blowing videos.

They take a very long time for me to translate into English, as they are verbal, not written.

There is one new ‘message’ from the Rav that I am hoping to get done and up before I’m offline again on Monday for three days, from last week – it’s got a lot of hope in it, and is saying people will return to their homes soon.

In the meantime, Rav Elmaliach also put out a stunning shiur where he explained the connection between opening the ‘third eye’ and the ability to prophesize, receive navuot, and ‘see the Sages when they come out of their tombs’ like the Baba Sali, etc

It was such a mind-blowing shiur – and the first time I’ve ever heard what I would call a ‘real Rabbi’ discussing these kinds of things – that I was kind of overwhelmed by the information.

Long story short, Rav Elmaliach explained that the hidden tzaddik who is acting as the go-between for him has a VERY ‘open’ third eye, and he also explains this hidden tzaddik’s efforts to help him open his own ‘third eye’ more, with kedusha, in order to be able to see more of what he’s describing to him in the spiritual realms first-hand.

====

We are kind of at a cross-roads in this process, it feels to me.

Rav Elmaliach is putting out so much stunning information now, with new segments of the Rav’s Torah from ‘Makor Chochma’, the third part in the set of kabbalistic teachings that began with the ARI, then went via Likutey Moharan, and is being rounded-out and detailed more in Rav Berland’s ‘Makor Chochma’ lessons.

It’s mind-blowing chiddushim that literally change how you see the world, and deepens your understanding of the spiritual processes occurring (that have always been occurring…) and Hashem’s total control of creation.

But only for people who are willing to step out of their little ‘dati’ boxes, and who are willing to engage with the idea that they actually don’t ‘know’ anything, about what is really going on here.

====

And for everyone else….

They are still stuck rehashing the same old stuff from a million years ago….

‘Iran is going to nuke us imminently’….. (rinse and repeat for the next 500 years.)

‘We are all doomed today, and if not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then Shabbos for sure’…. (rinse and repeat for the next 500 years.)

‘Nibiru, nibiru, nibiru’…. (As brought to us by ‘Dave Dobbs’, Elon Musk, and a few other actors working for the deep state….)

‘Breslov is just for crazy people…..’ (Whatever).

‘Kabbalah is just for crazy people….’ (Whatever).

‘Rav Berland’s awesome, sublime Torah lessons and emphasis on working on improving our own bad middot is just for crazy people….’ (Whatever).

‘Netanyahu is MBJ’…. (and the Rebbe is STILL MBD)….. (rinse and repeat for the next 500 years).

[Fill in your own example here. Then go start up a blog or Whats App group or Substack, to share it with as many other people as possible.]

====

Point is: we are at a cross-roads in this process.

To either ‘get with the True Tzaddik HaDor’, and to really start to engage with his Torah lessons, and his emphasis on working on bad middot, tznius, getting rid of smartphones, guarding the eyes – and cultivating the humility that we really know nothing. Nothing at all.

Or – to continue trying to ‘muddle through’ all this on our own, which basically means panicking we haven’t got a generator in our backyard every time the deep state presses the ‘Iran is going to nuke us’ button; or falling into despair about the political situation – whilst still resolutely refusing to let go of it, and all the institutions connected to it, including the army.

And continuing with the same ‘stuck’ ideas, the same, repetitive arguments and discussions, the same ‘little box’ thinking, where we are sure we know everything there is to know about everything, because the dimensions of our worldview boil down to ‘flatland’.

====

The ride just gets crazier from here.

And Rav Elmaliach’s Torah and messages from the Rav are a very important part, going forward, of understanding what is really occurring, and what response God is expecting from us.

Again, the short rule of thumb:

If someone is ‘anti’ the Rav – they have very little authentic spiritual connection, even if they have a ton of Torah learning.

The real rabbis, the real tzaddikim – they are all with the Rav.

Why?

Because they are showing up in the same places, spiritually, as the Rav is, so they really get who he actually is, and what he’s actually doing.

And the people who are ‘anti’?

They are basing their ‘anti-ness’ on what they read on the internet, and their own gut feeling as generated by their own bad middot – as the Rav is really just a mirror.

====

So.

Two paths diverge.

One is the ‘same old same old’ myopic heresy-that-sounds-like-Torah that is really just going to land you in gehinnom (if you are not already there….)

And the other one – leads to geula, the sweetest way possible.

But first, you have to do as Rabbenu tells us to do, and ‘throw away your intellect’ – your ego, your arrogance that you are something and you are someone, and you really know stuff.

None of us know anything.

Including me.

====

Here’s the short excerpt of the shiur about the ‘magnetic star’ that is going to bring flooding to the world.

(As happened with the first mabul – R Elmaliach explains that before the mabul, the land mass of the world was one ‘body’. Then, there was a tremendous earthquake just prior to the mabul that split that one continental land mass apart.)

(I don’t know what time period this ‘future flooding of the world’ is talking about, now or in the 7th millenia. Once I sit down and try to translate it properly, I’ll have a better clue – or perhaps a reader with good Hebrew can do that for me in the comments….)

==

This is another short, new one, talking about what is really going on with the ‘Bermuda Triangle’:

==

UPDATE: This is another link to the Bermuda Triangle vid, hope this one works:

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The War Against Amalek – Part 4 – Everyone will be Breslov

The last and final part of the Rav’s shiur.

For what it’s worth, I am totally not stressing about ‘Iran’, nukes, war in the North, or electricity black outs.

If it happens, I’ll worry about it then.

In the meantime, don’t give the lying news your koach, pull your soul out of all the pointless, never-ending speculation, and just concentrate on doing your spiritual job, day to day.

I.e. praying, making teshuva, being nice to the people in your family, doing whatever mitzvot come your way, giving some tzedaka.

That’s it.

God has this covered, and He doesn’t need your ‘worrying’.

And neither do you.

Enjoy the rest of the shiur.

====

So, we are talking about this, that everyone wants to keep Shabbat, everyone.

There are ‘Shabbatnikim’, and there are lots of non-Jews who keep Shabbat.

And everyone wants to do what is written in the Torah, just they don’t know. The Torah didn’t write anything.

The Torah concealed everything – everything is the Oral Torah. In order that the non-Jews couldn’t mimic the Jews.

And each person wants to keep Shabbat. Each person wants to travel to Uman.

==

Once, there was still Chabad.

Today, there is already no Chabad, Chabad is finished.

There is only Breslov!

Everyone wants Breslov, everyone wants to fly to Uman!

==

Rabbenu is just singing and reciting zemirot – it’s just to always be singing.

Sing before the prayers, and after the prayers. Don’t just jump into the prayers stam, this is not possible.

Do an hour of hitbodedut beforehand, sing a few niggunim, ‘Odeh le E…l’. The Chatam Sofer used to always sing Odeh le E….l before the prayers.

He also used to sing ‘Ya….h Ribon’, it seems. He composed songs – for the month of Elul, he used to compose prayers, and also songs. The Chatam Sofer.

==

So, we have Breslov – and this is the most authentic thing that there is.

This is the root of the neshamot!

And everyone wants [to come closer]. And today, it’s Agudah, it’s the war.

We are in the army – we already enlisted!

We are in the real army, that’s fighting to destroy all the ‘secular’. And we hope that these elections will already be the very last elections, Bezrat Hashem.

==

So, each person should see to it that he brings closer 50 people.

Whoever he meets, in the supermarket, on the way. He takes a taxi, or travels on a bus, or on the tram. You can always talk to someone else!

Who are you voting for? Like that….

If he votes, then all his family will also vote – everyone. His wife, his dad, and his mum, everyone will vote.

Each person you bring, he can also bring with him – him, and another 50, this is two thousand five hundred. Like this, it’s possible to bring the whole of Jerusalem, in one second.

==

All the chilonim are leaving Jerusalem.

There is nothing to do here. They say, there is no theatre here.

There used to be the Khan, but this also got closed for them. Everything is being closed down for them, here. There is no ‘entertainment’ for them here. There is nothing for them.

They are running away from Jerusalem. They are fleeing from Gilo. Gilo is already becoming chareidi today.

It used to be the most chiloni place – the most it could possibly be, at the beginning. It’s becoming chareidi.

And Shuafat[1] – this is charedi. And Har Homa, this will also be chareidi. Everything is going to become chareidi here.

People want the Torah – this is our neshama!

==

The Torah is not like Christianity, where they just stuck it in there, stam.

They took it….

[Instead of donning tefillin] a person can [just stick a note on their forehead with’ le totafot bein einecha’ (as a sign between your eyes).[2]

It’s not written [in the Torah] to put tefillin. [Otherwise,] all the non-Jews would have walked around wearing tefillin. But it’s not written

Try it, write, ‘I am a Jew, not a zionist’, that’s enough. Put a note here [instead of tefillin].

Apart from this, it says put it ‘between your eyes’. The Torah is being especially deceptive. Put it between your eyes! So that there would be a difference between us and them.

Each thing, the Torah does like this, so that people will stumble in it.

==

Ve le totafot bein einacha.

Four times Ve le totafot bein einacha.

What is this, totafot? ‘Tat’ be katpi shteim. ‘Pat’ be Afriki shteim.[3]

What does katpi and Afriki have do with understanding what ‘totafot’ means?! It’s not written  – it’s not written ‘four parshiot’ anywhere. It’s not written how to do it [the tefillin], how to wind them – each side three times, and about the gidim – it’s not written.

It’s not written in the Torah at all, how to do tefillin.

==

There was one sofer, Shakovsky, in Russia.

He made fun of the tefillin.

He described in a mocking way how to make tefillin. But there was one person who learnt from him how to actually make tefillin.

People hadn’t seen tefillin in Russia, they didn’t see them for 70 years. So one person, Shakovksy, who was ‘anti-Judaism’, and the biggest heretic, so he put together a whole essay about tefillin.

And he described how to make them. And from this, [a Jew who didn’t know anything about tefillin] learned how to make tefillin, by himself.

You take the skin of a lamb, and you make tefillin!

So, in the merit of this Shakovsky, people wanted to don tefillin, they wanted to do this.

==

There was Yigal Alon.

He saw an Chabadnik, and he came close to him, so that he would put on tefillin.

So this Chabadnik asked him [if he wanted to put on tefillin]. This was on the train. We still used to travel by train then. Today, we already don’t travel by train.

Then, we travelled by train, and there was Yigal Alon there, who was responsible for all the antiquities, all the archaeology.

So, this Chabadnik walked up to him, and this was on the train, to put on tefillin.

So, he said some words to him. He [Yigal Alon] was an apikorus, but suddenly he said to him, yes.

==

The [Chabad shaliach] said to him that he’d never laid tefillin before in his life [before he made teshuva].

My grandpa used to don tefillin. He was in Russia.

He said that only now, I’ve started to lay tefillin. I’m from Russia.

[Yigal Alon] said you’re from Russia?! So now, I will also lay tefillin!

This is a true story.

==

So, each person wants to don tefillin.

Everyone wants to keep Shabbat. Everyone wants to come to Breslov. And in one second, it’s possible to bring close thousands of pepole.

Each person that you bring closer, he will also bring another 2,000 people closer!…

It’s possible to bring the whole of Jerusalem closer, and to bring them back [to God].

There will be a chareidi city here, mamash.

And everyone will be Breslov.

====

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is currently a ‘refugee camp’ city for Palestinians on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

[2] Devarim 6:8.

[3] This is quote from the Gemara. It means ‘tat’ in the katpi language means ‘two’. ‘Pat’ in the African language means ‘two’.

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Zorem-ing with God

‘Zorem’ in Hebrew means ‘to flow’.

And right now, I am doing my very best to stp thinking things need to be a certain way, that I need to have things how I want them, and how I think ‘they should be’, and to just zorem with God’s decisions.

It’s really hard.

My neighbor downstairs told me yesterday she’s persuaded my landlords to cut down the massive tree at the back of the house…. Which gives us a lot of shade in the Summer.

But my neighbor likes sun…. Lots and lots of sun…. And she’s ‘friends’ with the landlord, so the landlord – who doesn’t listen to us, when we tell them repeatedly that our aircon is busted and needs fixing, or our heating is broken – is apparently listening to her, to cut down the massive tree.

==

She told me all this just as I was coming back to the house from a frustrating couple of hours driving around Jerusalem.

I volunteered to get a kid from Netivot from his school in Jerusalem one day a week. His parents fled here from Netivot post-October 7th. Then lived in a hotel for a month. Then moved to a ‘donated’ apartment. Then moved again a month later to a different ‘donated’ apartment.

They are all over the place.

==

So, I’m on the way to pick up the kid from his school, when the mother calls me all apologetically, and explains that she forgot to tell me they just moved house again the day before, and now they live in Sha’arei Chesed.

Ok, fine, no problem. I’ll come to the street, call you, and you can guide me from there.

I hung up, spent another half an hour in the traffic jams that just seem to be getting worse and worse all over the country and got to the school.

After standing by the gate for five minutes, and not seeing the kid, I asked one of his classmates to go and call him.

Uh, he didn’t come to school today!

What?!?

==

I called the mother.

Oh Rivka!! I’m so embarassed!! I totally forgot he didn’t go to school today!! What a busha!!!

==

I got back in the car, spent another 45 minutes in annoying Jerusalem traffic jams – and tried very hard to defuse my feeling of resentment.

She’s cracking up… It’s a very hard situation…. At the end of the day, you spent the same time you were going to spend anyway, so no harm done. Forgive her, and move on.

And on the other side of the equation:

That is the last time I am picking up her kid!!! This is ridiculous!!! My time is precious!!!

==

So, I get home from that to meet my neighbor on the steps of my house, all smiles, as she managed to get her way, apparently, to ‘convince’ the landlord to chop down the massive tree in the back.

And the garden is looking gorgeous!!! She purred at me. You don’t mind if I move the rosemary around, do you? It’s getting swamped in the geranium….

She likes the rosemary.

And she likes hinting to me that I should spend a few more hours of my precious time weeding what has now become ‘her garden’.

==

I stomped into the house, sat down on the couch, and felt like crying.

Then, I felt like moving.

I spent an hour seeing that’s also not really going to work out…. And then I felt like crying again.

==

God, I have no place in the world that’s really ‘mine’.

It’s a familiar, and very painful, refrain.

==

So then, the kid who is not working this week decided I need the internet!!!, so she shlepped off to my husband’s office to get the cable, and voila, another decision I’d made for my own peace of mind, health and happiness got overturned.

Truthfully, she really did need it. She doesn’t have a smartphone and suddenly had a hirhur to get her jewellery business up and running, after months of procrastinating.

So, I got sucked into ‘just checking my emails’ – and voila, two hours disappeared down the tubes as I gorged on a ‘Schneersons are secular commies in disguise’ site my friend sent me to check out.

==

Uh, is it ok we are just having fishfingers and broccoli for supper? I asked my husband as he stepped through the door.

Wonderful! He said. He’s so good to me. (And he doesn’t like fishfingers so much, I’m starting to realise.)

==

But in the meantime…. That feeling of angry frustration was still wrankling around.

I put up the posts from the Rav, then went to bed not feeling so happy.

This morning, I woke up with a headache.

I came down – and I see that the kid left the wifi plugged in all night, even though I have asked and begged a million times, that she remembers to take it out when she’s done.

The anger flared up for a moment.

I can’t believe these selfish, thoughtless, self-centred people!!!! One tiny little request and even that is too much for them!!!

==

I pressed pause on the self-righteous anger fit, and realised I needed to sit and recite the Rav’s prayers on overcoming anger, pronto.

You can download them HERE, with the English translation and the Hebrew together, and they work like magic.

==

When God wants to send a person a lot of wealth and bounty, He first tests them with the test of anger.

If a person fails that test…. All the parnassa they were meant to have goes elsewhere.

But in this mad, crazy, infuriating world of ours, passing that test is becoming increasingly hard.

==

Another thing that happens when we get angry is that ‘demons control us’ – and then we become susceptible to all sorts of terrible illnesses and afflictions.

Again, not something that anyone wants.

==

Tov.

So I sat for half an hour on my couch, said the prayers, and now I’m feeling much calmer again.

I will ask the kid nicely to please remember about the wifi, and I’m sure she’ll be suitably sorry that she happened to forget yesterday night.

I will text the woman with the son from Netivot today, and tell her no problem, these things happen. I am happy to continue picking him up – after Pesach is out the way.

(There’s a limit, after all.)

And, I will work very, very hard on accepting God’s plan for the garden, and to try and uproot the festering grudge against my neighbor that is trying to bed down in my heart.

This is all bizayon. It’s all scrubbing my sins off, in the most gentle way possible – as long as I can accept what’s happening with love.

That’s a big if.

==

Let’s end with a quote from the Rav’s booklet on prayers to overcome anger:

A person comes to the Tzaddik to acquire patience.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov explains in Likutey Moharan Lesson 155 how a person merits to acquire patience:

BY ACCEPTING BIZAYON….

Rabbenu warns that one angry outburst destroys 100 opportunities to make a living.

There is nothing to get angry about!

Know, that everything is from Hashem.

==

That says it all.

Whether it’s my two-faced neighbor, my thoughtless kid, ‘Kaplan Force’ closing down all the roads in Jerusalem with their mini-riots by the PM’s house, WAZE turning off ten minutes from your destination and refusing to work again, aircons not working, Pesach cleaning that just isn’t getting done, wives who keep making you fishfingers for supper….

It’s all just from God.

And the more I can accept that ‘this is how God wants things, right now’ – the happier, healthier and calmer I’ll be.

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The War Against Amalek – Part 3 – The awesome Midrash about the Jewish ‘pope’

So, no mitzvah is written in the Torah.

(Continuing the Rav’s shiur…. Read Part I and Part 2).

It’s just written “You shall not kindle fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.”[1] And, “Let no man leave his place on the seventh day.”[2]

This is what is written, because the Pesikta [Rebbe] says that the non-Jews shouldn’t copy the Torah.

==

When they founded America – in 1620 they founded America.

This is after the Spanish Armada, the Indians destroyed Virginia – all the settlements [of the Europeans] – they destroyed them.

It was in America.

So, they destroyed Virginia, and they already didn’t find anything.[3] They got to Cape Cod – they arrived in 1620, the governor was Bedford.

This is the street ‘Bedford’ in Williamsburg, and in every place: ‘Bedford Avenue’. He was the governor.

==

He said here, we are going according to the Torah. There is no christianity, everything is a lie!

He said there is no ‘Xmas day’, he wasn’t born, and didn’t exist, and was never created. It’s all lies! He said there is no xmas day! On xmas day, we are working!

He said that Shabbat [i.e. Saturday] was a day of prayer, on Sunday we play football – not on Shabbat!

For five days we work, and that’s enough! On Shabbat, it’s just prayers, and sitting with the family, we sit in the churches and we sing. They put together special prayers.

This is how it was, between 1620 – 1670.

==

Everyone want to go according to the Torah, there is nothing else.

All the non-Jews, everyone, they want to go according to the Torah. So, in the Torah no mitzvah is written down from the 613 mitzvoth, just a few mitzvoth are written down.

The rest is just hints… Because they were… The non-Jews wanted to copy the whole of the Torah from the Jews.

==

There was Shimon HaPakoli, he changed this [the Sabbath day of the Christians], from Shabbat to Sunday.

Because, they were keeping Shabbat?! So the non-Jews said that they were also keeping Shabbat, what’s the difference?!

So, there was Shimon HaPekoli. He was a Tanna, and he become a Pope.

When he was the Pope, he moved it from Shabbat to Sunday. They called him Shimon HaPakoli. We need to read all the history about him.

==

The following is a footnoted section, where the editors of the Shivivei Or went to ‘read all the history’ they could find about this character mentioned by the Rav, above.

IN THE TREASURY OF MIDRASHIM, IT’S FOUND THE LEGEND OF SHIMON KAIFA, ON PAGE 557 (TRANSLATION)

And it was after these things, an argument developed between the notzrim and the Jews, because when a notzri saw a Jew, he would kill him. And the suffering continued strongly for 30 years.

And the notzrim gathered in their thousands, and their tens of thousands, and they prevent Israel from aliyah le’regel (ascending to the Temple on the Festival Days). And it was a great suffering for Israel, like the day when the Golden Calf was made. And they didn’t know what to do.

==

But, their [notzri] belief was strengthened, and 12 men went out with 12 malkiot and they prophesized in the camp their prophecy. And Israel erred after them.

And these were anshei shem (men of reknown), and they strengthened the belief in Yeshu, because they said that they were his messengers. And many of the Children of Israel failed, and went after them.

And the Sages saw this evil thing, and it was very evil in their eyes, and they said to one another oy lanu, woe to us, that we have sinned! That in in our days there is such an evil as this, in Israel! Which we and our forefathers have never heard of! And it caused them to suffer very much.

And they sat and they cried, and they lifted their eyes to the heavens, and they said, please Hashem, God of the heavens, give us advice, what to do! Because we don’t know what to do! And our eyes are turned to You, because innocent blood is being spilled within the nation of Israel on account of ‘oto ha-ish’ (that man).

For how long will this be a snare, that strengthens the hand of the notzrim over us?! And which kills so many of us while we remain few?! And because of our sin, this snare is made for the House of Israel, Your people. And You, for the sake of Your Name, give us some advice what to do, in order for us to be able to separate from this community of notzrim!

==

And it was that when they finished speaking, one old man got up from amongst the Elders, and his name was Shimon Kaifa.

And he made use of a bat kol, and he said listen up, my brothers and my people! If my words are good in your eyes, I will separate these people out from amongst the community of the Children of Israel, and they will not have a portion nor an inheritance amongst Israel!

Only if you accept upon yourselves the sin.[1]

And they all answered him and said, we accept upon ourselves the sin, but what you said, you should do!

==

So Shimon Kaifa went into the Sanctuary and he wrote the Great Name [of Hashem], and he tore his flesh.[2]

And he put the writing inside it [i.e. his torn flesh], and he went out of the Mikdash, and then he took out the parchment, and he learned the Name.

And he went to the main city of the notzrim, he cried out with a great cry, and he said, all those who believe in Yeshu, come to me, because I am his messenger!

And they said to him, give us a sign or a miracle! And he said to them, what sign do you want from me? And they said, the signs that Yeshu did in his lifetime, you also perform them for us!

And he said to them, bring me a leper! And they brought him one, and he put his hands on him and he was healed. And he said to them, bring a dead person to me! And they brought him before him, and he put his hands on him, and he lived and stood upon his feet.

And the people saw this, and they fell on the face, to the ground, and they said to him, you are truly a messenger of Yeshu, because he did these things in his lifetime!

==

And Shimon Kaifa said to them, I am the messenger of Yeshu, and he commanded me to come to you, and he made me swear to him that you will do all the things that I will command you!

And they all answered and said, everything that you command, we will do!

And Shimon Kaifa said to them, no! Know that Yeshu hated Israel and their Torah, like Isaiah prophesized, ‘Your months and your festivals My soul despises’. And also know, that he doesn’t desire Israel, as Hoshea prophesized, that ‘you are not My nation’.

And even though he has the ability to uproot them from the world in one moment, in any event he doesn’t want their destruction. Rather, he wants to leave them in order that his hanging and stoning will be remembered from generation to generation.

And most of the great torment that he suffered, all the suffering, is in order to redeem you from gehinnom. And now, he is warning you and commanding you not to do any more evil to any Jew! And if a Jew says to a notzri ‘go with me for a parsa’ – then he should go two parsot with him!

And if a Jew hits him on the cheek, he should also turn his right cheek to him! So that they [i.e. the Jews] will get their reward in this world, and in the world to come they will be judged in gehinnom.

And if you will do this, you will merit to sit with him in his courtyard.

==

And behold, he commands you to not celebrate the festival of Pesach!

Rather, to celebrate the day of his death! And instead of the festival of Shavuot, to celebrate 40 days from his stoning and his going up to the heavens afterwards!

And instead of the festival of Succot, celebrate the day of his birth! And the eighth day of his birth, celebrate the day on which he was circumcised!

And they all answered and said, everything you said, we will do! But only if you stay with us!

And he said, I will dwell amongst you, if you do for me as I was commanded to act, not to eat any food except for the bread of affliction and the water of oppression. And you need to build me a tower in the city, and I will stay there until the day of my death.

And they said, we will do as you say!

==

And they built him a tower, and the tower was a residence for him.

And they gave him bread and water every day, as a rule, until the day of his death, and he remained amongst them.

And he served the God of our forefathers, Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov, and he wrote piyutim (religious poetry), lots of them. And he sent them to all the orders of Israel, in order that it would be a remembrance for him in each generation.

And every piyut that he made, he would send to his rabbis.

And Shimon dwelled in the tower for six years, and he died. And he commanded them to bury him in the tower, and they did this. Afterwards, they built for him a beautiful building, and this tower is still in Rome. And they call it ‘Peter’.

And this is the name of a stone that he sat on, until the day of his death.

====

FOOTNOTES FROM THE MIDRASH:

[1] As we read on, we understand that he’s referring to the ‘sin’ that he himself is forced to undertake in order to do this.

[2] He did this in order to ‘remember’ the Name, which ordinarily a person would forget as soon as they left the Temple. But by writing the Name on a piece of parchment and hiding the parchment in the cut he made on his body, he could then use Hashem’s Great Name to perform miracles outside of the Temple. This is similar to how Chazal explain Yeshu himself was able to do his ‘miracles’ – but there is a machloket over whether Yeshu used Hashem’s Name to perform his black magic, or impure names that he learned during his sojourn in Egypt.

====

FOOTNOTES FROM THE RAV’S COMMENTS, ABOVE THE MIDRASH:

[1] Shemot 35:3.

[2] Shemot 16:29.

[3] It’s not clear what the Rav is referring to here. The history of the founding of ‘America’ is perhaps not as straightforward as we are typically taught.

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The War Against Amalek – Part 2 – The Chilonim will wake up in a second

People make teshuva in a moment.

Army commanders, and everyone. Everyone wants to go to synagogue, just they are embarassed by each other. They are simply ashamed!

And now, it’s possible to bring everyone back in teshuva.

Everyone should take it upon themselves to bring fifty [people]. There are 70 men here – 50 [each]. Each person should speak, they should travel on the buses, and then it’s possible to bring people back in teshuva.

==

R’ Ber Hager[1] – this was on a bus.

We travelled on a bus. We should go back to that now. This was in the month of Cheshvan, perhaps it was the [week of the] Parshat Lech-Lecha.

I used to like to sit behind the driver. Today, they don’t let you do this anymore. Today, they already don’t allow you to travel on buses[2]. This is a scandal.

We need to do something here, some sort of revolution.

==

So, we travelled on the bus, and we got off at the Kotel [after coming back from Meron]. For L’ag B’omer.

This was Parshat Lech Lecha. And he [R Ber Hager] was sitting after the driver, and I sat down next to him, and we started to talk.

I started to tell him such chiddushim! He said, I never heard such chiddushim like these!

==

He said, Come to my home, come and eat breakfast. Where do you eat, where do you live?

He said, I live in Bnei Brak.

So, come to me, to my home! It was Friday, we sat together until noon, and from then, he didn’t leave me, already.

For 20 years, we sat together by him.

I ate by him. His wife would prepare food, and also his daughters. The mother of Yehuda Schwartz used to prepare food for me.

I used to eat three meals by him, sleep by him. The Rabbanit wasn’t by him, but Nachman [Berland, the Rav’s son] was by him. Nachman Berland.

And perhaps Tzvia [the Rav’s daughter] was also by him. For 20 years, we used to live by him. Until we moved to Jerusalem, in 5742.

This was a journey on an autobus.

==

The Rebbe said:

Ich vill ir zalt zine oyus gamisht mit der velt.[3]

==

Rabbi Natan got dressed in his coat – this was on Rosh Hashana.

He said, we need to pray with everyone.

So the next year, there was already no space. But Rabbi Natan put his coat on, and left the minyan. It was a reduced minyan – [just] 100 men. He said no! Gamisht mit der velt!

It’s possible to bring the whole world back [to God] in a second!

==

Rabbenu is the whole of the Gemara – this is Rabbenu.

It’s how to pray. Before, we sing, we sing something, some niggun. After this, we pray.

And everything, it’s written in the Megillat Amukot, in the Ba’al HaTurim. All of Likutey Moharan, it’s written in all of the commentaries, of the Ba’al HaTurim, of the Megillat Amukot.

There is no saying of the Rebbe that wasn’t mentioned already hundreds of years beforehand.

The Rebbe said:

I am saying something that is totally ‘old’, but [putting it] in a new vessel.[4]

People don’t pay attention – they don’t know this Ba’al HaTurim. If I wasn’t Breslov, I also wouldn’t have recognised it. Now, I learn, so I understand what this ‘song’ is, that we need to play niggunim before the prayers, and to also sing niggunim after the prayers.

==

And we used to sing!

In Uman, they used to sing for 45 [minutes]. And after the ma’ariv prayers of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, we used to wait for 45 minutes, until the time that he died in 5749 (1989).

He used to grasp my  hand, and all the time urge me on, that I shouldn’t stop dancing. And like this, Shuvu Banim is the only place that continues [the practices] of Rabbi Levy Yitzhak – the only place!

[In the early hours that] they used to shout, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak didn’t know what they were yelling about. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak was just [about] learning Gemara – and that’s all. He learned Gemara and Shulchan Aruch.

Whoever still remembers him, this is what he did every day. He was the only person in Uman who learned Gemara. The only one.

==

There was Rabbi Matis, and Rabbi Levi Yitzhak had 3-4 people next to him.

R’ Shimon Barski used to learn Tanach, he didn’t learn Gemara. R Shimon Barski, he had a group. And Rabbi Levi Yitzhak didn’t know who to go to – or after Yisrael Cohen.

He – Yisrael Cohen – he came, he came along with R Shimon Barski. There, they used to do this [i.e. Teach their shiurim] until chatzot (halachic midnight)

And Rabbi [Avraham ben R’] Nachman used to go to sleep [until chatzot, when he would wake up to do the tikkun chatzot prayers.] So, he didn’t know who to go to.

So then, he had a dream where he saw R Nachman Tultchiner eating. [In the dream, R Nachman Tultchiner said] If you have no idea about my son, do you think you can grasp me?!

So he decided that he was also going to go to sleep, and then to wake up for chatzot [with the habura of R Avraham ben R Nachman].

But people didn’t know about studying the Gemara at all! There was only R’ Matis and Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, this is who there was, of the people who learned [Gemara].

==

So, we need to know that now, it’s the sin of Amalek.

We will fight with the chilonim. [But the truth is that] we don’t need to fight with them – they will make teshuva, all of them, in a second!

Each person [here] should travel on a bus and sit next to someone, or ask them who are you voting for?… Come, let’s vote for the Torah! Vote for Hashem!

We are fighting on behalf of Agudah, [because] they are the only ones who will fight for Hashem, that there shouldn’t be the light rail on Shabbat. And that there shouldn’t be public transportation on Shabbat.

==

[Because if there is public transportation on Shabbat] so all the children will start to travel.

A boy hangs around the street, he doesn’t have anything to do. He’ll see the tram, and he’ll get on it. Anyway, they don’t teach him this in cheder, that Shabbat is a day of ‘holiday’. But he’ll get on the tram on Shabbat, if there will be public transportation on Shabbat. He’ll get on without a ticket, without anything.

Kids cheat the system. They get on buses on Shabbat. There is transportation, I don’t know, maybe it’s private. So, they get on the buses. There are a lot of children walking around the streets, and they don’t have what to do.

==

So, we need to know that we will fight on behalf of Agudah, and there is no question about this.

And not Yud Alef, and no other party!

And it doesn’t interest us if they are for Shuvu Banim, or against Shuvu Banim. This is not our concern!

First, we need to worry about Am Yisrael, that the city will be a chareidi city. Jerusalem, the majority are chareidi. In Jerusalem, most are chareidi.

There could easily be a chareidi mayor. And everything will be – in a second, the whole situation in Eretz Yisrael will be changed.

==

There is a story about the Imrei Emet – from the tales about all the Admorim.

The Imrei Emet wanted to bring 500 people here. Because whoever got to the aretz, he automatically became chiloni. So, [the rabbis in Europe] forbid people to come to the aretz.

==

When my mother came to the aretz, they argued with her father, why is your daughter going to the aretz?!

But in the merit of this, she stayed alive. I don’t know how…

She said here, I am not going to have any shidduchim. I want to get married, so I am going to go to the aretz.

I asked her, what was going on, that you immigrated to the aretz?

They were Satmar, everything was Satmar. In Sighet, everything was Satmar.

She said, my father didn’t have money for a dowry. We were ten girls, two boys, Chaim and Yehezkel. And I saw that here, I was never going to get married. So I said to myself, I am going to join ‘Bnei Akiva’, and I will go up to the aretz.

==

She was the only one who kept Shabbat in the whole of Haifa.

All of the kids here had already become chilonim. We were the only family who still remained religious. She fought for every single bit of religion.

They said to me if they see you in the street with a kippa, they are going to break your bones! Tov.

Up until today, they are still waiting to break my bones. But already, none of them are still alive.

==

So, [I asked mother]:

What was going on, that you made aliya?!

She made aliyah in 5696 (1935), and got married 5697 (1937). In 5698, I was already [born] – four years before the Shoah.

If she had stayed another year, they already wouldn’t have let her leave.

She’d already managed to arrange a visa – a certificate – for her father. But they told him now in a little while, the war is going to start. You can’t leave now.

==

Hitler announced all day long that he was going to kill the Jews. He proclaimed this all day long.

People used to poke fun at it.

So, when my mother [made aliya], we were the only dati family in the whole of Haifa. That’s to say, that were still a few parents who kept Shabbat, but when it come to dati children – we were the only ones.

All the children dropped everything. Whoever got to the aretz then threw everything away in a second. Because everyone has a yetzer hara.

He saw that everyone threw it away, so he also threw it away.

==

The Imrei Emet said I want to bring 500 families here.

I have the book from the Imrei Emet [which says] I will bring 500 families here.

He was here five times. The last time he already wasn’t keeping the second day of Yom Tov – Pesach. This was taf resh tzadi tet, because in tzadi het, the war started. And then he said now, I wim going to bring some families – but he got stuck there [in Europe].

==

He said I will bring 500 from Lodz.

In Lodz, everyone was a millionaire, wealthy, billionaires. I am going to transform the whole of the aretz! All that’s required is 500 families, with children, each person with ten [children]. And then there will be yeshivot here, there will be chareidim here. There will be everything here!

There were no chederim here [in Eretz Yisrael], there was nothing. There was nothing, here.

He wanted to transform the aretz.

But the war started already. This was 5699 (1939) [Shvi’i] shel Pesach.

==

In any case, we need to know that in a single second, it’s possible to transform the whole aretz.

Each person needs to, while travelling on a bus, in the super market, wherever he’s going, he will be standing next to someone….

==

There was one Breslover who was standing in a queue waiting to be seen, to do a teudat zehut, in the Misrad HaPanim (Interior Ministry) here.

He wanted to do a teudat zehut, one Breslover. And 3-4 people were standing behind him, chilonim. They said to him, why do you need to do a teudat zehut? He said, I want a passport.

Why do you need a passport?

I want to go to Uman.

Ah, to Uman?! Wow, you are going to Uman? We also want to go… You know what, we are going to pay for your ticket!

This is a true story.

But, who is your Rav?

My Rav is Eliezer Berland.

Come, show us where he lives. Come!

So, they came here to see the house, and paid for his ticket to Uman. Three chilonim who stood behind him, without him saying anything to them. Stam, they just saw someone with payot.

What do you need a teudat zehut for? What do you have to do with this medina (State)?… And with a teudat zehut?…

I want to go to Uman.

==

So, the chilonim will wake up in a second.

This is the spark [i.e. The pintele yid] that ignites in a second! Each person has a spark, each person has a ‘Jewish spark’, every person has a share in some mitzvah.

In one second….

==

There is no end of stories about how chilonim helped so many Breslovers to travel to Uman.

I’m not going, so at least I should partner with you to pay for your ticket.

In one second, it’s possible to bring thousands and thousands of people closer [to God] here.

==

Each person can bring more than fifty, he just needs to talk in the supermarket, or in the Misrad HaPanim.

He is standing next to someone, he just asks him, who are you? What are you? What do you do? Come and visit the yeshiva, just come! Come and visit some time on Shabbat, you’ll see singing, you’ll see something, you’ll have an experience!

==

They travelled to the party [the Nova party on October 7th].

And what came out from that whole party? The work of the Satan. It’s true, ‘ve semachta be’hagecha’.[5] I understand, a positive commandment. But dance with the Sifrei Torah!

We danced with the Sifrei Torah until 12.30am [at the Kotel, on the night of Simchat Torah]. We needed to have danced until the morning, and then we would have nullified the decree!

But the soldiers said they wanted to go to sleep. They were scared that we would go back by ourselves [through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem], that they wouldn’t smash all the shops for them on the way.

In the end, they didn’t allow us to go up the stairs. We had to do a detour.

==

So, at the last second, we got permission [to hold the Shuvu Banim Simchat Torah celebrations at the Kotel.]

Because Shuvu Banim is ‘the most dangerous place’, today. We got the permission to do it at the Kotel.

With a good will, we did it, [hakafot] with 40 Sifrei Torahs. We danced.

They say there are 300 [Sifrei Torah] there [at the Kotel]. I asked, and someone told me 300. The Rav Rabinowitz said that there are 300 Sifrei Torah there. He said, I will only give you 40, so that the Reform don’t come and also ask me for them. The Reform will come, and see [that he gave Shuvu Banim and also ask for them].

They also want Sifrei Torah. Everyone does.

====

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is Rebbi Yissachar Dov Ber Hager, the previous Admor of Savran, who was brought closer to Breslov by the Rav.

[2] The Rav could be alluding to the fact that on some bus lines in Israel, already the only way of paying for a ticket is via a smartphone application.

[3] SIACH SARFEI KODESH 1, 680:

One time, I heard from my father, zichrono le’vracha, a story about the building of the synagogue that was in Uman, that he heard from the mouth of Moharanat, zichrono le’vracha.

Because in the first year after Rabbenu’s departure, zichrono le’vracha, there weren’t more than 60 people who came to prostrate themselves on the holy kever on erev Rosh Hashana.

And also this number greatly increased the assurance in Moharanat’s heart, zichrono le’vracha, that the gathering would be ‘fixed’ for future generations, as it the minhag still today.

Because at the beginning, this didn’t enter his mind at all, that such a number would be aroused to travel to Rabbenu, zichrono le’vracha, on Rosh Hashana, after his departure, as happened during the days of his life.

==

And on Erev Rosh Hashana, Rabbi Yudel and Rabbi Shmuel, and others of the great talmidim of Rabbenu, agreed in their hearts to pray in that place, that Rabbenu used to pray in, zichrono le’vracha, himself, on his last Rosh Hashana, before his departure, which is called by the name ‘Ha Ambar’, as is brought down in the book ‘Chayei Moharan’, resh caf alef.

But Moharanat, zichrono le’vracha, insisted upon [Rabbenu’s kever in Uman], and stood against them, as he heard from the mouth of Rabbenu, zichrono le’vracha, who said one time to him, and to his friend R Naftali, zichrono le’vracha:

“I want you that you will be involved with the world.”

And in the regular language [yiddish], this was his words:

Ich vill ir zalt zine oyus gamisht mit der velt.

And he wanted this gathering, that the whole community would pray in a beit knesset that would be called ‘Shomrim LeBoker’, that would be built next to him, by one person, who wanted to, and had the determination [to do this], that Anshei Shelomenu would pray there.

And also all the people of the regular community in this beit knesset would agree to this.

[Because the machloket that was during the lifetime of Rabbenu, zichrono le’vracha, quietened down and was settled after Rabbenu’s passing, zichrono le’vracha, from the hearts of the masses, and all of the people of the city.

And this quiet continued until the beginning of the year big kaf tzaddi heh, when the person arose who arose, as was told …

And until this year, the people of the city were used to ask anshei shelomenu to be their guests, to dine with them, for the Rosh Hashana meal.]

 

[4] Chayei Moharan, 289.

[5] Devarim 16:14.

====

Read Part I HERE.

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The War Against Amalek – Part I, The Elections

The war against Amalek – Part I

This shiur from the Rav is totally awesome….

So I decided to translate almost all of it. As it’s so long, I have split it into 3-4 parts.

If you only read one of them, it should be the Midrash about ‘Shimon Kaifa’, who became the first ‘pope’ in order to split the notzrim away from the Jewish people. Mind-blowing stuff.

Enjoy!

====

Excerpts of a shiur given on Sunday, Adar Alef 9th, 5784 to the people working on behalf of ‘Shuvu Banim – Agudat Yisrael’.

(Ed. Note: This was given over before the Municipal Elections that were held in Jerusalem shorlty afterwards. The issue of stopping the light rail operating on Shabbat in Jerusalem, incuding in the haredi communities it passes through, appears to be one of the primary concerns of the Rav, when it came to encouraging others to vote ‘Gimmel’.)

==

Now, we need to know that [the elections] are pikuach nefesh.

It’s the war against Amalek, it’s a milchemet mitzvah.

We read in Beshalach who Amalek was. Every single day, we are in the war against Amalek, every single day there is a war here.

Yud-Alef is the gematria of ‘Satan’….[1]

[Skipping some]

==

…Agudah could be the Mayor [of Jerusalem]. Agudah could be the majority in the Knesset.

Because Am Yisrael is a traditional people, everyone wants Shabbat, everyone wants Succot. Even in Be’eri, one person recounted that he did Succot for his children, who were four years old – so he was saved.

He said that for 12 hours, the terrorists passed right next to him, and didn’t see him. In that same tree that he cut the branches from [to make his succah], there was a niche. He went into the niche with two children and his wife, everyone inside like that.

And the terrorists stood mamash 10 cm away from him, and they didn’t see that he was in the niche.

So, from this same tree that he cut the branches from [for his succah, he was saved,]

==

They told him, put up a ready-made succah!

He said, no! I want to show [my children] how to do a succah! Children need to know how to make a succah, what’s all this with ‘ready-made succahs’?! We need to make it.

So, he cut the branches from that same tree. He was from Kibbutz Be’eri.

==

It needs to be known that this is the war against Amalek.

The Midrash says that if Moshe had gone to war[2], if Moshe had gone out to war, so then he would have totally destroyed Amalek. And then, there wouldn’t have been any more ‘Amalek’ in the world.

Hamas is Amalek.

No matter how many [terrorists] are killed, it never ends.

Now, another [Israeli soldier] was seriously wounded, an hour ago. ‘Seriously wounded’ means he lost a hand, he lost a leg. Or in a coma for half a year.

We need to know, we are in the war against Amalek, the war against Amalek, mamash.

And today, the war is with the voting slips, instead of one person killing another.

==

Two hundred years ago, one person just used to kill the other.

They would shoot, and this one would fire on that one, and that one would fire on this onw. Now, they decided to use ballot papers. And these ballot papers are like a bomb, they are like missiles, when you vote.

And the whole of Am Yisrael wants Agudah – the whole of Am Yisrael wants Shabbat.

He doesn’t care if it’s Agudah or not Agudah. People don’t want public transportation on Shabbat, they don’t agree to this.

==

They closed Sokolov Street[3].

The person who didn’t want to let them close it, so he’s gone – [killed in] the Gulf War. He ‘moved’ from there. Because he didn’t let them close the road [on Shabbat].

He said, if they close the road, he’s going to move apartment to Sderot Chen.

I was there a few times, in Sderot Chen. There, he went to get his packet of cigarettes… So he went. He forget his cigarettes, so he left the bomb shelter to get the cigarettes.

The missile fell on his head, at the entrance to the bomb shelter.

Now, one young woman in Tsfat, she ran. So the rocket fell on here.

[If she] would have said the Tikkun HaKlali, nothing would have happened!

==

We need to know, it’s the war against Amalek.

And now, the whole of Am Yisrael wants Shabbat, and wants that there won’t be travelling on Shabbat.

Yvette Liberman made it that people would travel on Shabbat. He organised cars, coaches, from the North to the sea. The coaches were empty. Nobody came!

People want to relax on Shabbat.

==

They aren’t ‘parasites’, like us.

We get up at one, the next person wakes up at two. There, they get up at 5am, and they go to sleep at 10pm, and then wake up at five.

On Shabbat night, they play cards until 3am. I was in Ramat Elchanan, doing hitbodedut. There were gardens there, so we used to go there. And then we saw in the windows that everyone was playing cards, until 3am.

They would go to sleep at 3am, until 3pm.

At 3pm, they would wake up, eat something, some chocolate, and then sleep more until 5pm. And then, they’d go and visit a few relatives, and that’s it.

This is the ‘order of the day’ [on Shabbat] for a secular person.

==

Chilonim aren’t ‘parasites’, like we are.

We can get up whenever we want… At one, at two, at three – whenever the desire takes us. By them, there is no such thing.

I was in Beit Meir. We were there for four or five weeks, and they were opposite my window.

Already, 5am, they were with their sandwiches in one hand, and with their cup of coffee in the other hand. How he used to grasp the steering wheel, I have no idea…

And they already started to drive. They need to fill up the gas and the oil in the car; and to open the office half an hour beforehand, and to get it organised, a little.

He couldn’t [wake up at one].

I did an hour of hitbodedut, and he was already inside his car.

==

So, we need to know this the war against Amalek.

And we can enlist the whole of Am Yisrael very easily.

When we were in Musrara,[4] Yossi Cohen said I am going to stand here with a hose full of boiling water!

Yossi Cohen lived exactly opposite (i.e. Opposite the entrance to the present Beit HaRav, on Ido HaNavi Street), opposite the stairs you go up, where the mirpeset (balcony) is.

He said, I am going to stand here!

He told us his plan, that he was going to stand with the pipe of boiling water. This story occurred in 1996.

He was going to spray boiling water all over us.

==

So, I went up [to see him] with Suri Getter, and we went up with Raphael ben Harush.

And he said there is nothing to talk about! There is nothing to say! I am going to stand here with a pipe of boiling water, [spraying on] anyone who comes up here.

[We said] to him, come, let’s read tehillim together!

He started to recite the tehillim with such weeping, halavai, I should be able to do the same. A totally chiloni man – [he recited] half a book of tehillim. Gomarnu.

==

He said [Yossi Cohen] now, you can stay already. After I merited to read such tehillim, my whole heart turned around.

So, in a single second, his heart was transformed – and for every chiloni! Even for the most secular, the most ‘anti’.

Really, this is nothing! Everyone is neshamot Elokiot (Godly souls).

And every chiloni wants to vote for Agudah. And every chilonii wants to vote [for the chareidim].

==

Now, I read from R’ Aryeh Levine that Teddy [Kollek, former mayor of Jerusalem] already wanted to lay tefillin.

Yes! There’s a whole section on this[5]! The mayor said that he was already not going to travel on Shabbat. He told him, [when] he was going to the assembly.

Begin used to park his car far away.

==

[It was written in the book about R Aryeh Levine], I am speaking here with the mayor. He is not going to travel on Shabbat any more. And he is going to go to the assembly on foot.

And he said, ‘I want to put tefillin on, already. But, I’m embarassed. I don’t want people to say that I made teshuva, or say that I went crazy. People shouldn’t say that I made teshuva, that I went mad.’

He wanted to lay tefillin, and to go to the synagogue in the morning.

This Teddy, he was called the most ‘anti’.

But in a second, people wake up. People will recite tehillim with you together. They suddenly realize.

==

Ben Gurion said about the Klausenberger Rebbe, if there is another one like this, I will make teshuva!

This is what he said. He said that the Klausenberger built a settlement.[6]

The whole complaint that we don’t ‘settle the land’, and we stay closed up in our cheiders, and we don’t move, and we don’t go out into the wilderness.

So, [the Klausenberger Rebbe] was the first person who built Netanya.

I was at the laying of the foundation stone – I was there. The first year that I was at the Volozhin [yeshiva], in 5719, they laid the foundation stone. We travelled with the whole of Volozhin.

Everything was just sand dunes, there wasn’t even a single house there.

Ben Gurion said, if there is another like him, I will make teshuva! I will wear a shtreimel and make teshuva!

==

The chilonim will agree to make teshuva in a second. In a second!

It’s even faster than the dati’im (religiously observant).

The Rebbe said the Moshiach is going to have his work cut out for him with the chassidim, not with the apikorsim (heretics).

The apikorsim will make teshuva in a second, just like that.

[But] the chassidim will say, he’s my Rebbe?! He’s not my Rebbe!…

He believes in his Rebbe.

==

By the chilonim, there is no ‘Rebbe’.

If you want to make teshuva, there is Hashem. You want Shabbat, you want to be a human being, and to stop being a behema (animal). This is what they want.

So, it’s possible to bring your brothers and sisters closer in a second, and also, the cousins.

Half of Musrara will vote for Agudah.

==

Today, Gimmel will fight.

Even if they are ‘against’ Shuvu Banim, and want to destroy Shuvu Banim, and want to uproot Shuvu Banim – this doesn’t interest us!

We are voting in favor of the Torah.

====

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Just to point out that on other occasions, the Rav told some members of Shuvu Banim privately to vote for Moshe Leon’s party. The Rav is operating at a level far above petty politics.

[2] Against Amalek himself, instead of observing and leaving the battle to Joshua….

[3] A street in Bnei Brak that is on the border with the neighboring, predominantly secular, Ramat Gan.

[4] The Rav is now describing what happened when the Shuvu Banim community first moved into the Musrara neighborhood bordering Meah Shearim, 30-40 years ago.

[5] In the book about R Aryeh Levine

[6] This was the beginning of the city of Netanya.

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Yechiel Michel of Zlotchov, and the real history of Chassidut – Part II

Part II

(Read Part I HERE.)

I would say that about 97% of ‘the story’ that we’ve all been told about how Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch took over from the BESHT; and then how Shneur Zalman of Liadi basically rose to the top of chassidut as the ‘cream of the crop’ comes from….Chabad.

And no other independently-verifiable source.

The problem is, that each time I tried to take a ‘Chabad story’ at face value, and to track down real-life people, with real names, real dates, real information, a real footprint in the real world – I failed miserably.

Over time, I came to the conclusion that for some bizarre reason, Chabad appears to have been lying about just about everything.

==

Over in the hallowed halls of secular Jewish researchers, this fact has apparently been known for many decades.

But for me, naive as I still was 6-7 years ago, all this came as a massive shock.

At this stage, I believe all these ‘lies’ about Jewish history are directly connected to the Sabbatean-Frankist-Mason take over of our Jewish community, over the last 350+ years.

That began with the false messiah Shabtai Tzvi, aka the big Torah commentator from Vilna, the SHACH, who apparently went mad after the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-9, that hit places like Vilna particularly hard.

But the cover-up and takeover has continued, right down to our days, our time.

==

In the second part of this post about the BESHT’s real successor, R YECHIEL MICHEL of ZLOTCHOV, we are going to learn what was apparently the real basis of the ‘war’ between the chassidim and the mitnaggdim.

And no – you won’t find any mention of the Vilna Gaon facing off against Shneur Zalman.

That never happened.

==

The following information was gleaned from Mor Altshuler’s PhD thesis on the Maggid of Zlotchov, and if you have a few free hours, I highly, highly recommend you read the long version ,available for free as a PDF, HERE.

For everyone else, I will try to sum it up succintly – and of course, that means oversimplification. That’s how it works.

==

The BESHT dies in 1760 – apparently from a the hole in his heart caused by the whole disputation with Jacob Frank’s band of ‘Sabbatean believers’ that occurred in 1758, and ended with tens of thousands of Jews in Poland publically converting to Catholicism.

Many of these Jews had the best yichus money could buy…. To say it was a shonda on a massive scale to their (secret-Sabbatean) relatives who stayed in the Jewish fold is the genealogical understatement of the millenia.

And these Frankists didn’t just disappear and go low-profile – they literally became the most well-known bankers, financiers, jurists, philosophers, writers, artists….

Everyone knew who they were, and where they’d come from.

==

So the BESHT passes away as a result of this terrible blow to the Jewish people in 1760.

And then according to Chabad, the BESHT designates Dov Ber Friedman, the Maggid of Mezeritch, as his successor.

Back in the ‘real world’ – there is simply no firm trace of the Maggid of Mezeritch, at least in terms of who his ancestors were. He just materialises out of nothing and nowhere, and his descendents are also shrouded in a dense fog of mystery.

There was almost certainly a follower of the BESHT called ‘Dov Ber’. More than that, I can’t say.

==

In the meantime, the Chabad fairytale continues that Dov Ber basically favors the young Shneur Zalman to take chassidut forward when he passes away in 1772 – and the rest is (Chabad made-up) history.

But that’s not what really happened.

==

This is a direct quote from Mor Altshuler herself:

“Amongst other things, there is reason to doubt all the historical events that HABAD literature presents as central to the history of Hasidism.”

==

The BESHT was actually surrounded by many different senior disciples that you almost never hear anything about these days, as the ‘fairytale’ has mostly scrubbed everyone else out of the picture.

For example, one of the BESHT’s leading disciples was Yaakov Yosef of Polonnye.

Another was (apparently….) R Pinchas Shapira of Koretz (more on him in a moment).

And yet another was R YECHIEL MICHEL OF ZLOTCHOV.

And it’s this latter who was actually surrounded by a very wide circle of disciples – apparently that included Shneur Zalman of Liadi – and who was involved in some very deep mystical attempts to ‘bring the geula’.

==

The chassidic doctrine of the ‘Tzaddik of the generation’ also begins in earnest with R Yechiel Michel’s circle – the BESHT never referred to himself in these terms.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

==

First, let’s introduce you to some of R YECHIEL MICHEL’s leading disciples.

They are people you rarely hear anything about in any other chassidut chronicles, but who do crop up in the Breslov writings about Rebbe Nachman’s life, from this time period.

I.e. – we have Rabbenu’s guarantee that they are actually real people.

==

One of the reasons this information has remained hidden for 200+ years is because like many of the ‘mystical groups’ operating within the Jewish community at that point in time, including the Sabbateans, and what spun-off as the Frankist-masons, secrecy was a very big deal.

And it was enforced with oaths, and other mechanisms, to keep the group, and its activities and beliefs, away from unfriendly prying eyes, both in the Jewish and the non-Jewish world.

==

So from direct sources collated by Mor Altshuler in her PhD thesis, R YECHIEL MICHEL’s disciples include:

R MESHULLAM FEIBUSH HELLER

THE SON OF ZUSHIA OF ANNIPOLI

R AVRAHAM CHAIM OF ZLOTCHOV

(Apparently, he is the Rebbe of ELEAZAR ZEV of BUCHETCH, whose daughter seems to have married the great-grandson of Yechiel Michel. This appearts to be the ancestor of Rav Berland.)

R ZE’EV WOLF OF ZHITOMIR

R ZEVI HASID – who is actually the brother of R MENACHEM MENDEL of PREMISHLAN, who is buried in the old graveyard of Tiberius, next to Rabbenu’s grandpa, R NACHMAN HORODENKA.

==

Then, there are other sources from the mitnagdim world who identify others of this group from the outside.

The main anti-chassidic work is called ‘Breaking of Sinners’, by one DAVID MAKOV.

He lists the following, as being disciples of YECHIEL MICHEL:

R YAAKOV YITZHAK HOROWITZ, AKA THE SEER OF LUBLIN

(He provided one of the two haskamot Rabbenu chose to have printed in the Likutey Moharan. The other haskama is from Ephraim Zalman Margoliot of Brody.)

R ISAIAH / YESHAYA DUNAYEVTSKY

R MORDECHAI OF NESKHIV (mentioned in Rav Natan’s Chaya Moharan, etc)

R LEVI YITZHAK of BERDICHEV (mentioned in Chaya Moharan, buried in Berdichev’s Jewish cemetery).

MAGGID R ISRAEL OF KOZIENICE

R ZUSYA OF ANNIPOLI (brother of the NOAM ELIMELECH – both mentioned in Chaya Moharan)

R SHMUEL ben CHAIM HAIKA of AMDUR

(Chabad sources claim ‘AMDUR’ chassidut got absorbed into CHABAD.)

==

‘Breaking of Sinners’ then identifies other disciples that play are more tangential or uncertain role in YECHIEL MICHEL’s circle of disciples.

That includes:

SHNEUR ZALMAN of LIADI (mentioned in Chaya Moharan)

R ELIMELECH of LIZHENSK (mentioned in Chaya Moharan)

R MENACHEM NAHUM of CHERNOBYL and his son:

R MORDECHAI of CHERNOBYL.

==

As mentioned in the previous post, once the BESHT and R YECHIEL MICHEL had passed away, there were key people within chassidut who were trying to publicise that the BESHT had accepted much of the Sabbatean teachings of HESHEL TZOREF of VILNA.

Mor Altshuler explains these people included:

MENACHEM NAHUM of CHERNOBYL

YESHAYA DUNAYEVTSY

R SHABTAI, of VAD RASHKOV

==

At this point, that is a big red flag that suggests these people themselves may have had ‘Sabbatean’ leanings, but it’s not definitive.

For sure, the BESHT, and Rabbenu after him, was also busy trying to ‘raise the sparks’ out of the Sabbatean teachings, to sweeten this whole, horrible klippah.

For example, the BESHT’s second wife was a great-granddaughter of none other than Shabtai Tzvi / SHACH.

And perhaps in Part III, we’ll try to take a closer look as AVRAHAM GERSHON KITOVER of BRODY, the BESHT’s brother-in-law, who also descends directly from the SHACH / Shabtai Tzvi.

Meanwhile,  it seems that YECHIEL MICHEL and his group were also busy trying to do the birur with the Sabbatean teachings, particularly the emphasis on making aliya to Eretz Israel.

Read on.

==

OK, the date is leil Shavuot, 1777 – the same time that MENACHEM MENDEL of VITEBSK and a small group of messianic-minded Chassidim make aliya to Eretz Yisrael.

MENACHEM MENDEL of VITEBSK and his group are going through awful difficulties. He wrote a letter back to Brody, where YECHIEL MICHEL was then located, explaining that his group of chassidim had to move to Tiberius, because:

[The Sephardim in Tsfat were] “completely wicked, believers in Shabtai Tzvi, may his name be erased.

==

As a result of the Sabbatean takeover of Tsfat, MENACHEM MENDEL of VITEBSK decides in 1778/ 9 that he needs to organise a seperate, independent fundraising channel for his group of non-Sabbatean chassidim.

This effort involves:

R ISRAEL OF POLOTSK

R ELAZAR (ELIEZER) ZUSSMAN (who is sent to raise funds in Istanbul and Holland) and

R SOLOMON ZALMAN VILNER, who is sent to raise funds for the Chassidim in Vilna and Brody.

(I am now wondering if this could actually by ‘SHNEUR ZALMAN’ of Chabad… but we’ll park that for now.)

==

Yes – it’s that same ‘Vilna and Brody’ that shortly afterwards wrote letters trying to excommunicate the Chassidim.

As you can see, none of this makes sense if you believe the Chabad fairytale version of Chassidic history.

==

At that point in time, the main charity fundraiser for Eretz Israel in the BRODY KLOIZ is called R CHAIM SEGAL LANDAU.

He is the paternal first cousin of the virulently mitnagged NODA be YEHUDAH.

Yet, CHAIM SEGAL LANDAU tells SOLOMON VILNER that not only is he willing to forgive all of the chassidic group’s debts, to date, he is also going to pay MENACHEM MENDEL of VITEBSK  a regular stipend.

Meanwhile, the charity fundraisers for Israel in VILNA at this time are one R ELIEZER ben CHAIM SHABTELS, and his brother SHMUEL.

SHMUEL is married to CHAIM SEGAL LANDAU’s daughter.

==

SHMUEL and ELIEZER are apparently close relatives of the VILNA GAON.

I spent a good few hours trying to unpick that bit of the family tree, and that lead me straight back to the LURIE family again, who the Rav said arrived in Eretz Yisrael with crates full of golden dinarii.

It also turned up a whole bunch more fake names and false Jewish history, that needs straightening out.

We’ll keep that bit of the story for another day.

==

For now, it’s enough to know that the direct, close family members of the ‘VILNA GAON’ and the ‘NODA BE YEHUDA’ were very happily funding the Chassidic aliyah to Eretz Yisrael, in 1778-1779.

This is 18-19 years AFTER the BESHT died, and at least 6-7 years AFTER the Maggid of Mezeritch is meant to have died, too.

==

Then, starting July-Sept 1781, the mitnaged decrees against ‘the chassidim’ begin.

Mor Altshuler makes a very convincing case that these ‘chassidim’ are actually R YECHIEL MICHEL (1726-1781) and his disciples.

And no, there is no ‘Vilna Gaon’ in sight.

Or at least, not with the name ‘Eliyahu ben Shlomo’.

Read on.

==

While MENACHEM MENDEL of VITEBSK is trying to settle the Holy Land, back in YEHIEL MICHEL’s hometown BRODY, his disciples are gathered around for a super-secret ‘Tikkun Leil Shavuot’.

The disciples of YECHIEL MICHEL who attend this mystical ‘Tikkun Leil Shavuot’ are sworn to strict secrecy about what was really going on, and who was involved. Altshuler spends many pages bringing various sources from the disciples’ later works, to piece the story together.

Long story short, it appears that YECHIEL MICHEL and his followers, including MENACHEM MENDEL of VITEBSK, were trying to ‘force’ God’s hand to bring the geula.

But it backfired stupendously.

==

This small, secret group of tzaddikim were waiting for word from MENACHEM MENDEL of VITEBSK, who apparently had his own ‘mystical job’ to do, that heavenly permission had been given for the geula to begin in earnest.

It never came.

Instead, the mitnaged storm against YECHIEL MICHEL and his secret group of disciples fanned up into a raging inferno, beginning 1781.

YECHIEL MICHEL’s books were publically burnt, he was hounded out of his home in Brody and ended up in the small backwater town of Yampol – where he died soon after, on the 25th of Elul 5541, September 15th, 1781, at the age of 55.

Apparently, from a broken heart.

==

In Israel, MENACHEM MENDEL of VITEBSK also died shortly after his Rebbe, at the relatively young age of 50, similarly broken by his experiences, vicissitudes and disappointment.

==

So, what actually happened here?

And why was YECHIEL MICHEL of ZLOTCHOV and most of his disciples almost totally scrubbed out of real Jewish history?

Let’s see if we can unpick a bit more.

==

As well as the ‘failed’ attempt to re-settle Eretz Yisrael, and to try and pry it away from the established Sabbatean communities infesting it since the ‘aliyah’ of Yehuda Chassid in 1700, if not before, some other things happened in 1781, that began the persecution of YECHIEL MICHEL of ZLOTCHOV.

Firstly, YECHIEL MICHEL had created a set of what is known as ‘Hasidic Practices’, that he and his disciples had been keeping secret.

But in anticipation of the Moshiach coming, and geula beginning, the decision was made to print these practises publically.

This was part of the effort to fulfill the Baal Shem Tov’s words in his famous epistle to his brother-in-law, Avraham Gershon Kitover of Brody, that the Moshiach would only come when the BESHT’s teachings of chassidut had been spread throughout the world.

(I know Chabad ‘stole’ this story and cast Shneur Zalman as the main character in it. As I keep telling you, most of what we were told by Chabad is half-truths, at best.)

==

So, YECHIEL MICHEL and his disciples have a ‘rule book’ of Chassidic practices, that include:

HISHTANUT – translated as the rule of ‘equanimity’.

HITBODEDUT

PERISHUT (‘austerity’)

DVEKUT

==

HISHTANUT was the basic idea that whatever God does to a person, for the seemingly good, or the seemingly bad, a person should accept what is happening with equanimity – because everything is God’s doing.

PERISHUT seems to mean living simply, without ostentation and seeking kavod, especially not for a person’s Torah learning.

And HITBODEDUT and DVEKUT we know from Rabbenu’s teachings.

==

It’s a side note, but it seems that YECHIEL MICHEL of ZLOTCHOV was the first cousin of Rabbenu’s father, SIMCHA HORODENKER.

NACHMAN HORODENKER’s wife, SIMCHA’s mother, seems to have been the sister of R YITZHAK DROHOVITCHER MAGGID, the father of YECHIEL MICHEL of ZLOTCHOV.

Again, all these people all got ‘scrubbed’ out of standard Jewish history.

==

OK, so this ‘Chassidic Rule Book’ was published in 1781 (5541) in Koretz, and was called Maggid Devarav Le’Yaakov (‘He Imparts His Words to Jacob’).

While it was later attributed to ‘Dov Ber the Maggid of Mezeritch’, he actually died nine years earlier (if he even existed as described.)

But YECHIEL MICHEL was still alive at this point.

According to Altshuler (page 332), the words ’Dov Ber’ was often added in afterwards, to ‘hide’ the real ‘Maggid’, whose works were being shared.

(When you see what happened next, and also, when you learn about the depth of the murderous opposition Breslov’s ‘true tzaddikim’ also suffered at the hands of the fake Sabbatean ‘rebbes’ trying to keep their grip on the power structure in the Jewish community, all this becomes far easier to understand.)

==

Altshuler says:

“There is no simple explanation for the opposition to Hasidism.”

Especially, because the story they told us all is mostly pure fabrication.

Meanwhile, the manifest that was sent in 5532 (1772) – 12 years after the death of the BESHT – by the Vilna community to Brody and Brisk describes the hasidim as ‘bands of the wicked’.

(At the end of this post, we’ll return to what was really going on in 1772 to spark this off….)

While the 1781 ‘ban’ against the chassidim also talks about them as a ‘The sect of subversives and agitators’, it’s actually in the informal mitnaged writings like Breaking of Sinners that you get a hint of some of the real concerns, which include:

  • The strong messianic beliefs and character of the movement (a big ‘no-no’ after the Shabtai Tzvi / SHACH catastrophe); and
  • A widespread belief in reincarnation.

==

Honestly?

When I was reading through Altshuler’s work, I was trying to figure out myself where ‘the Sabbateans’ were really hiding out in this story.

I’m still not totally sure.

Much as the Rav appears to be doing in our days, YECHIEL MICHEL himself seemed to have been sailing very close to the Sabbatean wind, with some of his ‘sweetening’ efforts.

==

For example, the Sabbateans had a whole set of ‘codes’ and ‘symbols’ that they were using to describe Shabtai Tzvi, and Sabbatean philosophy.

This is how Altshuler describes some of this, on page 344:

“Personifying the quality of the Red Heifer is characteristic of the Sabbatean Tradition, in which the Red Heifer is interpreted with reference to a particular individual, Shabtai Tzvi, and seen as the secret key to his messianism.”

==

If you’ve been following the current ‘obsession’ with the Red Heifer in recent days, this whole passage maybe is giving you more of a pause for thought.

==

Here’s another quote from Altshuler (p 360) that might ring some more bells for you:

“R YECHIEL MICHEL deliberately incurred public degradation, and bore it with indifference.”

And the following is a footnote on p 364, which is taken from the Shivchei HaBesht, 8b, and also appears in ‘Ways of the Just’ 5b, and also in the book ‘Precious Gleanings’, but Meshullam Feivush Heller, one of Yechiel Michel’s main students:

“Even though they demean him, he should be silent and not respond at all to the one who demeans him, lest these disparagers distract him from the service of the Creator.

And he should not be concerned that he will thereby not be appreciated among people and will be unable to attain his goal.

[Rather,] he should direct his thought on high, to the supernal world and in His service, may He be blessed, and should commune with and trust in Him that he will attain his goal.”

==

This is the root of Rabbenu’s own teachings on bizayon.

As practised by the Rav’s probable ancestor, and the real tzaddik who was trying to carry on the BESHT’s teachings, YECHIEL MICHEL of ZLOTCHOV.

Awesome.

==

OK, so much more to say as always – including how the Mir Yeshiva and Chabad chassidut appear to have been set up by exactly the same family, who all descend from the known Sabbatean, the Meir Panim.

For example.

But for now, let’s end with the story that seems to have really ignited the firestorm of opposition against YECHIEL MICHEL and his disciples.

It occurred in Koretz in 1772 – that year when the very first edicts against the ‘chassidim’ were written in Vilna, and sent around to Brody and Brisk.

==

Back in Koretz, R PINCHAS SHAPIRA of KORETZ’s son, MOSHE, held the communal position of being able to levy the meat tax on the kosher meat being slaughtered.

This ‘tax’ on the kosher meat provided a third of the Jewish kahal’s annual funding, and it was a very rich vein to mine, for the people who held the right to tax.

==

You can read the whole story in Altshuler’s PDF beginning on page 64, but the basic story is this:

Moshe Shapira operated a kosher abbatoir, and had a monopoly on the community’s kosher meat, which YECHIEL MICHEL believed he was abusing, to charge exaggerated prices for kosher meat – which hit the poorest families the hardest.

(There is literally nothing new under the sun….)

==

R Pinchas Shapira of Koretz took the side of his son, and before long, to quote Altshuler:

“The dispute, originating in matters related to kosher slaughter, developed into a wide and open conflict that implicated additional issues related to divine worship.

Pinchas of Korets took umbrage at “the Maggid’s” manner of prayer and could not tolerate “people gesturing in the manner of the Maggid” and extolling his prayer.

Pinchas’s criticisms imply opposition to the demonstrative nature of the Maggid’s prayer, hint at vulgar bodily movements, and disparage the Maggid’s pretensions to penetrate to the upper realms with his prayer.

==

Allusions to the dispute can be found as well in a tradition attributed to R. Pinchas of Korets, which tells of “a certain resentment between R. Mikhel and R. Pinchas” related to matters of prayer. Their rivalry was expressed in R. Yechiel Mikhel’s “grudge” against R. Pinchas and R. Pinchas’s reaction:

“The grudge that he bears in his heart against me because he cannot discern my prayers in the heavens is a vain grudge; for he is not alone in being unable to discern my prayers. Even the angels cannot discern them, for I have made my way directly to the Holy One, Blessed be He.”

==

Again, very long story short, Pinchas Shapira of Koretz ended up leaving town, and then shortly afterwards, the first epistles against ‘the chassidim’ appeared, in 1772 (as mentioned above).

But the ‘ban’ didn’t take at this point – because it seems obvious that most people understood that the complaint against the monopoly on kosher meat was justified.

==

A long time ago, when I was trying to figure out who the ‘real Vilna Gaon’ actually might be, I had a dream that just repeated over and over again:

Pinchas is Eliyahu.

And now, here we have a story that seems to be the real beginning of the ‘rift’ between the chassidim and the mitnagdim, except instead of ‘Eliyahu the GRA’, we have ‘Pinchas Shapira of Koretz’.

====

There is still so, so much to unpick here.

But that will do for today.

BH, there are about 200 different ‘spin offs’ from Altshuler’s information, so we’ll see where God guides this research next.

In the meantime, the Rav also came out with a stunning shiur recently, so my next project is to translate that ready for Wednesday, when I am back online again, BH.

Until then.

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