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Read This If Even the Regular Baby Steps are Still Too Much For You

29/1/2021

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UPDATE: With permission, here is the link to the spreadsheet mentioned in the main body of the post:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YJqo5mh1fqWCCeoWPdSUXZ-yEDSbdz4xAJiJ0VWcV3A/edit?usp=sharing

It's all anonymous and very inspiring to see what people took upon themselves.

​Even the tiniest step in the right directions counts!

I received the following from a really wonderful lady named Hadassa R., and I thought people would find it empathetic, sensible, and motivating.

It originated as part of a forum of frum women discussing the current global situation:
​You know something? I was thinking about the discussion yesterday about the tight situations that many are finding themselves in.
​
On the thread - a point was brought up in regard to taking on Shabbos 10 minutes earlier as a zechus for Klal Yisroel - all the Cholim & the hardship in many areas.

Hashem does want something of us! 

That much is quite clear!

As Nashim Tzidkanios - we know that it was in our zechus that Klal Yisroel was redeemed in Mitzrayim and now again - it will be us - the Nashim Tzidkanios that "get it" who will enable the Geula Shelaima to take place.

Personally, when it comes to doing something - there isn't one size fits all. 

Not everyone and their circumstances has the ability to take on Shabbos earlier. 

Not everyone and their circumstances has the ability to cut their Shaitels..

Not everyone and their circumstances has the ability to dispose of technology...

Not everyone and their circumstances has the ability to ....

But everyone does have the ability to do SOMETHING!

AND THAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL!

Iyov was punished harshly because he kept silent. 

Silence is the worst.

Hashem is shouting for our attention. We have to give it to Him. Each individual in whichever capacity they are capable, in whichever level they up to, in whichever area they are comfortable. 

Look through the 613 Mitzvohs or the Al Cheit which we say on Yom Kippur for ideas of where even the tiniest improvement can be done.

Another thing that I always find effective - when something is written - it is more concrete.

Therefore, I attached this shared excel spreadsheet where we can write down the ideas which we have and really stick to what we say. 

Of course - no names should be posted - unless you'd like to....

I'm no holier than thou girl or anything of the like. 

I just can't watch things and know that we have the power to effect change - and not do something about it. 

So I am.

And hoping that so are you.

And also the acknowledgement that some of the "easy" or "simple" suggestions popular recommended are always so easy or simple for every person.

But we can definitely all do something no matter how small.

And that "something" MATTERS...to Hashem.

(Thanks again, Hadassa!)
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How to Learn the Real Lessons in Life: Rav Avigdor Miller on Parshat Beshalach

28/1/2021

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In his dvar Torah for Parshas Beshalach 4 – Learning from Others, Rav Avigdor Miller notes that the Plagues, the Makkot, were really a lesson for us even more than for the Egyptians.

​In fact, Rav Miller explains that even as Bnei Yisrael felt profound gratification at seeing their persecutors receiving their just desserts, Bnei Yisrael also felt tremendous apprehension at the same time.

If we picture ourselves witnessing what Bnei Yisrael witnessed at that time, we can imagine how unnerving the Plague of Blood must have seemed. 

The Plagues of Frogs & Lice must have been incredibly disturbing & distressing to behold.

And the Plague of Wild Animals? Terrifying.

And so on.

They knew that Hashem, Who can do anything, could easily turn these punishments on Bnei Yisrael if Hashem decided it necessary.

As Rav Miller sums it up (page 5):
Hakodosh Boruch Hu reminds us by showing what comes on other people and we are expected to look and become afraid; it’s one of the fundamental ways of learning yiras Hashem.

Pompous Pompeii

On page 6, Rav Miller recalls the volcanic eruption that destroyed Roman Pompeii.

Today, archeologists & tourists marvel over the well-preserved city, which displays advanced living relative to its time.

However, the real lesson of Pompeii is its decadence & debauchery.

Signs in the pubs and many other facets of Pompeii point to Pompeii as having been a center of immorality.

​Yet due to the low moral standards of our own times, researchers & journalists present this role of Pompeii with humor & admiration.

History shows us that this same volcano erupted several times with disastrous effects.

The area attracted human settlement due to its natural assets. But those same assets facilitated an ease of life that ultimately proved detrimental to the moral character of those who exploited its goodness.

Learning Spiritual Lessons from Events

Throughout the dvar Torah, Rav Miller recalls catastrophes occurring around the time he gave that shiur: earthquakes in San Francisco, a loaded passenger plane that crashed into the ocean, the war in the Balkans, etc.

He also recalls the era leading up to the Holocaust, when Hitler yemach shemo invaded Czechoslovakia and slaughtered many non-Jews there.

​In the yeshivah of Slabodka, Rav Miller remembers how they took that lesson to heart and recited copious heartfelt Tehillim.

But the rest of Slabodka either ignored it or felt only a fear of the Nazis and not Hashem.

​As Rav Miller laments (page 9):
In Slabodka, there were not even one hundred young men under the age of twenty that put on tefillin.

When they saw what’s happening, did they say, “Maybe we have to stop our headlong dive into Marxism, into atheism. Maybe the rabbonim are right and it’s time to come back to Hashem, to begin putting on tefillin again.”

Did they think such thoughts?

Rav Miller always expressed his feelings of loyalty & gratitude for the unique security & opportunity America always provided the Jewish people.

It's impossible to ignore his heartfelt desire for the Jewish people to live up to our potential, an accomplishment that only brings tremendous benefit to the entire world. 

And his words back then (the early 1980s?) ring chillingly true to what's happening right now, decades later (page 10; boldface mine):
Don’t think it can’t happen again.

Who said America is forever?! You have to be afraid!

We’re here, enjoying all luxuries, with plenty to eat.

We have liberty, we have safety, we have equality, everything we have.

​But someday I’m afraid we’ll look back on America and say the same thing because we’re not afraid of Hashem; we’re not learning the lesson from Mitzrayim, from Kush and Seva.

​Oh no! Instead of learning the lesson, the Jews are trying their best to break down America.

Jewish congressmen like Solarz are helping Communist regimes all over; Cuba, Nicaragua. And Jews are voting for Solarz and Koch. Jews are keeping them in power. Of course Koch gives them in return some benefits.

And for that benefit, the askanim, the shtadlanim, sell away our votes – whole kehillos of frum Jews, whole congregations vote for these people who are breaking down everything we have!

Look what’s happening to America! The whole youth is being demoralized!

The public schools are hammering away in the minds of the children, telling them how bad America is, how wicked the establishment is!

Finally the gentiles in the Midwest will get so disgusted and they’ll make a revolution!

They’ll try to fight to save America but I’m worried it’ll be a little late. 


America will already be shorn of its greatness – it’ll be surrounded by Communist
enemies.

Chas v’shalom it’ll turn into a fascist country and who knows what kind of gas chambers can be here?

​They can make better ones in America than the Germans did.

You Don't Need to be an Exalted Tzaddik (though that never hurts if you can manage it!)

Now, if you've been reading or listening to Rav Miller's shiurim for a while, you'll know that he encourages self-transformation one very small step at a time.

​Page 12:
...the best teshuva is the teshuva you do over a piece of watermelon; when you recognize that all happiness and enjoyment is from Hakodosh Boruch Hu.

Fear of God is an eminently positive quality.

Even in the extreme example of Slabodka, what did Rav Miller say to do, all in all?

Consider NOT being an atheist. 

Consider NOT being a Marxist.

Consider the opinions of the real rabbis.

Put on tefillin!


None of these require a person to achieve the holiness of the Baba Sali.

Other examples Rav Miller gives:

  • When seeing a blind person, think of how you use your own eyes & how it would be if Hashem would take away one's sight.
 
  • When seeing a person who lost his arm in a machine accident after a life of thieving, think of how you use your own arms & hands.
 
  • When you see men who get the police called on them, then served with a restraining order so they can't enter their own home, think of how you speak to your own wife; whether you use your tongue kindly in your own home.

Here's Rav Miller again on page 14:
A man says something to his poor wife and hurts her heart by saying a mean word, it’s a terrible sin.

The poor woman is working all day long with children, she’s worn out to the bone, and he comes home and says something mean; it’s like a knife in the heart! 

​That’s what you have to think about when you hear about this man who was taken out of his house by the police.

​I once heard about a verbally abusive husband who ended up suffering cancer of the jaw. 

Gradually, he lost the power of his lips and tongue.

The decaying flesh also made him smell pretty bad.

You'd think he'd take the Heavenly hint, but you know how Gemara Eruvin 19a states that a wicked person standing at the gate of Gehinnom still won't do teshuvah?

Yeah...that.

So instead of his former tongue-lashings, he started growling & snarling his displeasure. (His throat still worked.) In this way, he continued to abuse & berate his family.

What's sad is that the connection was so obvious (I mean, come on, how often do you hear of cancer of the jaw?), it's entirely possible that had he done teshuvah and started speaking nicely (plus expressing gratitude to Hashem), that he would've experienced a complete cure.

But as the Gemara says about wicked people...

Learning Practical Lessons from Unpleasant Events

Rav Miller advises us to also learn from the practicalities of a disastrous event.

For example, he relates the story of a friendly man conversing in the kitchen who stood with his back against the gas stove and his clothing caught on fire, causing him terrible burns. Since then, Rav Miller said he himself never leaned against a gas stove, even when it wasn't in use.​

I've heard directly from young men who started out with petty law-breaking, then saw the consequences of friends who committed more serious crimes: jail time, difficulty in finding a job, police raids on the home, ill health, no true friends, societal rejection, bad reputation, etc.

They turned themselves around, broke off with criminal friends, or even the law-abiding siblings & friends of criminal friends—all because they wanted to avoid such an unsavory outcome.

I noticed that many youngest children in families tend to show a lot of common sense, savvy, and decisiveness about what they want in life & how to achieve that (whether it's a comfortable slow-moving life or a high-intensity ambitious life). It seems to me they learn from the mistakes of their older siblings!

Fulfilling Your Fabulous Fear of God in a Few Minutes

Fear of God should lead us to a happy place.

The Practical Tip on page 15 helps us start that journey.

And also the advice from truly great people as summarized in the following posts:
  • A 60-Second Exercise to Fulfill Your Main Purpose in Life
  • Why Does Hashem Want Us to Talk to Him So Much? Rav Avigdor Miller Provides the Answer in Parshat Lech-Lecha
  • More Guidance to Connect with Hashem (including baby-steps that start with 30 seconds a day!)
  • ​How to Save the World One Step at a Time
  • How the Baby Steps in This World Create Your Future World of Beautiful Pulsating Light
  • Judaism's Secret: Achieve the Glorious Maximum by Doing the Bare Minimum
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All credit for all material & quotes goes to Toras Avigdor.
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UPDATED: Have a Wonderful Tu B'Shvat!

27/1/2021

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UPDATE 28/1/2121: Please also see the PDF of divrei Torah for Tu B'Shvat by Rav Avigdor Miller:
https://torasavigdor.org/15th-of-shevat-fruit-of-the-tree/

This is a bit late in coming, but please check out Rav Itamar Schwartz's PDF for Tu B'Shvat.

Even if you missed reading it prior to a Tu B'Shvat Seder, it still contains many good lessons & insights for the day and for all areas of life:

https://www.bilvavi.net/files/TuBShvat.In-Depth.Analysis.of.the.7.Species.pdf
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Image by itay verchik from Pixabay
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How a Glock 19 Brought Me to an Unexpected Moment of Truth

27/1/2021

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I experienced a moment of truth last night.

My 23-year-old son came strolling in to where I was lying down and dangled a handgun over my face.

"What kind is it?" I asked.

"A Glock 19," he said.

I immediately sat up.

Although I shot an M-16 rifle during a summer trip with a Birthright-type program to Israel in my teens, I never handled a handgun of any kind.

And probably like a lot of people, I always secretly wondered whether, in a terror attack (lo aleinu) if I could just pick up a gun and shoot it?

Did it involved some kind of technical know-how? What about the safety mechanism that needs to be unlocked?

Here was my chance to gain a skill I'd always wanted: handling a common handgun.

My first mini-moment of truth hit when my son showed me how to ready the gun for shooting—basically, to release its safety feature.

Since I do not know the proper terms (and couldn't immediately access the websites that might tell me), I need to rely on descriptions here.

First of all, the top part of the gun slides back.

So you grip the handle with one hand and grab the sliding-back thingy with the other, and slide back the thingy, then instantly release it so it "cha-chings!" back into place.

(Imagine not a tinkly "cha-ching!", but a growly baritone "cha-ching!"—like how a sasquatch might say "cha-ching!") 

​Now it's ready to shoot.

That action ("cha-ching!") is called lidroch in Hebrew, but for the life of me, I cannot remember the proper term in English. I suppose you rarely hear the term in English, but it sure comes up a lot in modern Hebrew.

(Google Translate only showed me translations for trampling & stomping, which is the correct word, but wrong usage for this context.)

On my first try, I could not even budge the thing though I wrestled with all my might to move the sliding thingy with my dominant hand (the right hand).

My son restrained himself from laughing too hard, and very nicely kept encouraging me: "Harder! Harder—yeah, like that! More! More!"

His face bright with amusement, he alternated between repeatedly showing me how to do it and calling out instructions in an encouraging tone of voice as I wrangled with the sliding thingy.

You could tell he was thinking something like, I know that with enough determination, my Ima can surely cha-ching that gun!

With his unfaltering belief in my abilities, I managed to cha-ching it on the fourth or fifth try.

(To succeed in life, you just need one person who really believes in you.)

Anyway, I practiced cha-chinging it several times until he was satisfied, but continued to find the procedure cumbersome & strenuous.

Even worse, to accomplish the process most swiftly, a right-handed shooter needs to cha-ching the sliding thingy with the weaker & clumsier left hand.

My heart plummeted as the moment-of-truth dawned in its full glory:

Any situation that ever depends on me cha-chinging a gun means all is lost.

My son reassured me that in an actual crisis situation, I could just pick up a gun that had already been cha-chinged and start shooting straight away—which isn't such good news for the owner of the gun, if you think about it.

But my newly discovered lack of skill for a basic action I hadn't realized took real skill & strength now dissipated any hero fantasies like a puff of dandelion fuzzies. 

This disappointing moment-of-truth drilled in even deeper when my son took me through the second part of handling a gun: the actual shooting.

(I forgot to say the gun remained empty of bullets throughout this entire episode.)

While immediately catching on to the proper aiming of the Glock, I realized just how difficult that is to achieve with a moving target—or especially when someone is bearing down on you.

Then my son insisted that I hold my arms straight out when I shoot.

He said holding the gun too close with cozily bent arms messes up the aim and also allows too much kickback.

But the gun was so HEAVY.

How do people manage those things with one hand?

While it chirked me up to both learn a new skill & enjoy quality time with my firstborn, the reality of yet another aspect of life being MUCH harder than it looks in the movies evaporated any hero fantasies.

I guess that also living in modern-day Israel, and hearing about these situations in which a passer-by needed to use the gun of a frightened cop or a temporarily incapacitated security guard to neutralize a terrorist...it makes you wonder if you could rise to the occasion too.

Even though the actual chance of finding oneself in such a situation is so low, one really doesn't need to worry about it, but I think hearing about these situations makes people secretly wonder if they could rise to the occasion.

And now I know I can't.

Yet Again, We See that Hollywood Does Not Reflect Real Life

Okay, so this was mildly disappointing after a lifetime of seeing movies, TV shows, and hearing about real-life heroes who just pick up a gun and save the day.

But it also reinforces the happy principle reiterated in Tehillim (Psalm) 20:8:

Eleh varechev v'eleh vasusim—v'anachnu b'Shem HASHEM ELOKEINU nazkir!

These trust in chariots and these trust in horses, but we—we mention the Name of the Lord our God!


And that's the best.
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The Vital Importance of being Tamim with Hashem (or, Why You Really Should Never Mess with Demons, No Matter What)

25/1/2021

 
This post has been a long time in the making because ever since my husband first told me the story, he graciously went back & forth between my questions and his friend's answers.

Also, while the friend (who is the grandson of the rav in the story) allows his family's real names to be used (and even published a book in Hebrew, which included the story below), I hesitate to use the real names only because certain aspects end up in a negative light (like how most of the rav's descendants ended up divorced, irreligious, dead, etc.).

It's a bizarre story, but the lesson rings clear in the end.

​So let's get started...

The Moroccan Beginnings

In Morocco, there's an area pronounced gutturally as "Dahra" (spelled in English today as "Draa").

It hosted a thriving Jewish community, producing quite a few rabbanim proficient in what some call "practical kabbalah."

For Moroccan Jews, Draa became the go-to place if you needed protective amulets. 

Family names like Edry, Edri, and Deri indicate Jewish families who come from Draa.

Anyway...a certain family headed by a talmid chacham came from Draa to Eretz Yisrael in the 1950s or 60s and settled in the North, not far from the Golan Heights (prior to 1967, when the Golan was still under Syrian occupation).

Basic Jewish Law: The Best Protection

Before we continue with the family's personal story, we need to discuss the concept of spiritual protection within Judaism.

​Within Judaism, different levels of spiritual protection exist.

Many of our prayers contain protective elements: the morning blessings, Pitom HaKetoret (the Incense Offering), Shemoneh Esrei, the Bedtime Shema, and so on.

These are beautiful prayers & very holy, very humble, and beloved to Hashem.

​Prayer in general provides wonderful protection & blessing.

Objects of protection include a mezuzah on every doorpost of a home, holy books in the home, and so on.

Tsniyut (dignified & modest behavior & dress) provides both practical & spiritual protection for both men & women.

(Although men's tsniyus receives less emphasis, we tachlis see that every single major talmid chacham dresses with full modesty regardless of heat & humidity, and entire religious communities of men dress with full modesty and would never even entertain the idea of appearing on the street wearing, say, shorts no matter how blistering the sun.)

Learning Torah (and assisting others in learning Torah) remains one of the most powerful forms of protection.

Other Jewish concepts clearly provide all sorts of protection: shemirat halashon (guarding the tongue), shemirat anayim (guarding the eyes), and so on.

The Hebrew word shemirah can be translated as keeping, guarding, securing, or protecting.

All the above consist of following basic halacha, so people aren't doing anything unusual (although they're still doing something heroic & special) by performing the above.

So those are the standard types of protection and if you invest only in these for the rest of your life, you have made a wonderfully effective & holy investment.  

Active Appeasement of Entities? Controversial–Not Recommended

The next category is one that the vast most majority of Jews—including very holy Sages—tend to avoid.

And this category consists of appeasing impure entities (demons). 

Not everyone agrees it's even okay to perform acts of appeasement, but those who do rely on what Rav Chaim Palagi (1788-1868) wrote in Chapter 34 of Chaim BaYad. (Rav Chaim Palagi is best known for his halachic sefer Kaf HaChaim.)

At this point, I must thank my husband for reading through the difficult print & esoteric Hebrew in order to explain the ideas to me—couldn't have done it on my own. Thank you, Husband!

​In Chaim BaYad, Rav Palagi allows acts of appeasement, which he likens to appeasing human officials, like how we bow before a non-Jewish king—not because we worship him, but as part of cultural etiquette.

​This ranges from passive customs observed by all frum Jews—such as not sealing up a window in a room without making some kind of an opening in that same room—to other more proactive acts of appeasement not performed (or desired) by the majority of Jews.

It depends a lot on the holiness of the person performing the act.

Mostly, such acts aren't necessary (i.e., you're better off learning Torah or saying Tehillim), so it's best to stay away from the whole topic—which, as stated, exactly what the vast majority of Jews do: They stay away from it.

​Today, even if you hear of people seeking out these more proactive forms of appeasement (and most don't), it tends to be not-so-frum Jews seeking out rabbis to perform these acts for success in business.

The truth is, these traditional-yet-not-so-frum people would be MUCH better off guarding their eyes, davening in a minyan EVERY time EVERY day, and committing themselves to other fundamental halachot before turning to these types of appeasements.

Also, the minority of rabbis willing to carry out these acts (for a nice price, of course) aren't generally the best of the rabbinical lot...far from it, actually.

And it's questionable whether Rav Palagi himself would approve of their actions...especially regarding the price they demand in return for the "favor."

(Especially because, as stated, most of these people aren't so frum—barely or even not at all shomer Shabbat. Rav Palagi would certainly insist on their keeping the minimum of mitzvah observance and not only rely on mystical appeasements.)

​Another issue is where the more passive appeasement ends & a more proactive (and dangerous) role begins.

Judaism, being a truly pure & holy system derived straight from Hashem, definitely provides real protection.

That should be enough. We shouldn't feel the need for more.

Yet relying on that protection might make a person feel a bit too comfortable messing with these entities because he truly knows (unlike non-Jewish practitioners) how to best protect himself from harm.

The problem is that even the wisest of all men, Shlomo Hamelech, ran into trouble dealing with these entities.

​So ideally, Shlomo Hamelech's experience should be a lesson to everyone else.

Let's Go Back in Time to BEFORE We Knew that Every War Ended in a Miraculous Victory

Before we continue, we need to understand something about the very real fear Jews in Eretz Yisrael felt BEFORE we all saw how Hashem allowed us to emerge as victors (albeit with the agonizingly high price of many Jewish deaths).

Those of us who live with the modern history of Medinat Yisrael have become accustomed to miracles:

  • ​The 1948 War of Independence? Hashem clearly on our side! How else?
 
  • The 1967 Six Day War? An impossible & obviously miraculous victory!
 
  • The 1973 Yom Kippur War? THANK You, Hashem, for yet again outdoing the impossible!
 
  • All those scuds falling all over the place during the 1990-91 Gulf War? Of course hardly anyone got hurt—that's how it always goes!

(Yet what's missing in the hype over the early victories is the very real human toll. The Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael paid a very high price for these early miracles.)

But before these early miraculous victories occurred, things looked really bad.

REALLY, REALLY bad.

Vastly outnumbered by the surrounding countries, the massive enemy troops, the enemy's superior amounts of equipment & weaponry, plus the enemy's thirst for blood, vengeance, and feeling super macho...these attacks really seemed like they might be the end of the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael.

Remember, prior to the 1967 Six Day War, the Syrians held "the eyes of the country"—the strategic Golan Heights.

In addition, the threat of mass genocide & the savagery of the enemy soldiers struck fear in the hearts of Jews everywhere.

Stories of mutilation of the bodies of dead Jewish soldiers—and even more chillingly, reports of mutilations committed against live, but helplessly wounded Jewish soldiers (not to mention the horrific abuses committed against civilians)—imbued the Jews with desperate terror & dread.

​So this rav living with his family in the North, not far from the Syrian border, saw the situation prior to the 1967 Six Day War and felt compelled to help by any means possible.​​

​ANY means possible.

And he had means others did not.

The Demon Draft

So just to recap: Back in Draa, the rav already developed solid experience in communicating with entities for protective purposes.

He sincerely intended to help others.

I don't (nor wish to) know the particulars, but apparently, it takes two people to perform the communication because the initiator needs the hands of another person, through which he sees the entities & communicates with them.

So the rav used 3 different people: his daughter, his son, and one of his talmidim.

He had other sons and daughters and talmidim, but these 3 were the ones who assisted him.

Combined with this, the rav went along the Syrian-Israeli border and placed amulets meant to stop the Syrian troops via the use of demons.

This actually isn't such a bad idea if you think about it.

Rather than stationing Jews to face military onslaughts, station demons!

Charedim against the IDF draft can demonstrate with signs saying:

Leave yeshivah students alone!
Draft demons!
Demons must share the burden!

Nezikin tzrichim l'set banatal!

(What else could Lapid have meant when he said "hatzibur kuuuulo"—the entire public!—must share the burden of military service? Let's be fair & share the burden across the entire breadth of ALL populations! Ha!)

This method obviously has the potential to save human lives, plus enables the continuous learning of Torah by our precious young men.

Also, it would be a lot more entertaining to see the above signs in the anti-draft protests.

After all, we're probably all tired of the same old slogans.

​Anyway...

The rav from Draa clearly possessed only the best of intentions.

And indeed, Israel won the war.

What Won the War?

At this point, my husband & I segued into an interesting discussion.

How much did the rav's efforts help stem the enemy invasion from the North?

I tended to think that the copious prayers going on at that time made the difference.

Plus, Hashem had His Plans. He clearly did not want the Syrians to win.

My husband of course agreed with this, but he also felt that the rav's entity-enlisting amulets still contributed something.

(He's very into the power of the chachamim.)

Certainly, my husband has good a point, but nonetheless, I tend to think the prayers and merits of Torah learning & other good deeds decided the outcome, not to mention the then-recent genocide suffered by the Jewish people only a couple of decades prior to the Six Day War.

In other words, I think the war & the land would've been won without the amulets.

Really, it's impossible to know their specific influence on the outcome, whether it protected the locals or nationally, or how much they protected at all.

So, I'm just stating the opinion of a small person, that I firmly believe in the power of the prayers & merits of that time, not to mention the tragic kaparah of the Shoah that preceded the Six Day War.

A Disclaimer for Any Brainwashed Jew-Haters Reading This

At this point, I feel beholden to provide a disclaimer to any Jew-haters out there who think that Jews are reptilians, utilizing black magic to exploit the "goyims" (learn proper Hebrew conjugation, bigots!), worshipping entities (clearly a projection of the crazed haters themselves because pretty much every other religion worships entities EXCEPT Judaism), and all sorts of other irrational accusations.

These entities are notoriously impossible to control.

They don't like human beings and the only way to control these entities is compulsion—meaning, against their will.

Holy & knowledgeable rabbis utilize the best of protection, but sort of like how even very holy people don't go walking off cliffs due to the effects of physical physics (i.e., gravity), very holy people also don't summon entities due to the effects of spiritual physics (i.e., the entities' insatiability & inborn compulsion to harm humans). 

This is why even holy & knowledgeable rabbinical Sages stay far away from this type of activity.

For example, a Sage in the Gemara decided to view these entities, took precautions to avoid harm, but was harmed anyway. (His fellow Sages helped him recover.)

So even the greatest & holiest people get no guarantee against the entities.

And even if these entities respect the holiness & purity of a Sage, it doesn't make them nice.

That's why in Minchat Yehudah (Parshat Miketz), the demon pretending to be Eliyahu HaNavi did not simply 'fess up when confronted by the holy tzaddik Rav Yehudah Petayah.

When directly confronted by such Torah greats as Rav Shimon Aharon Agassi & Rav Yaakov the son of the Ben Ish Chai, the deceptive demon did NOT say, "Aw, shucks...I simply cannot keep up the act any longer in the face of such good & holy people! No, I'm not really Eliyahu HaNavi, but simply a demon named Elijah. I sure am sorry about fooling everyone."

No, the demon kept up the deception until Rav Petayah tried to force him to translate a verse from Yirmiyahu 10:11 (a prediction of the eventual destruction of demons) and the demonic pretender got really angry & swore never to return—and he didn't.

So the vast majority of talmidei chachamim (and regular Jews) completely avoid them because they're icky & psychopathic—plus one is likely to pay an unbearably high price for any perceived benefit (as you'll unfortunately see in a moment).

The Bitter Ends

So here's what happened to the rav & his assistants & descendants later:

The talmid, whose hands the rav used in summoning demons, fought as a frum soldier in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, during which his body was riddled with bullets—yet he miraculously survived.

The twentysomething son died while riding a motorbike, which suddenly drove straight off the road & crashed.

(I know this kind of thing happens with motorbikes, but he wasn't reckless, there weren't problems in the road that might lead to this, and witnesses said it looked like he suddenly just drove off the road for no reason.)

The rav died relatively early, like in his fifties, leaving his faithful wife a widow.

And while the rav ended up with around 100 grandchildren & great-grandchildren so far, hardly any of them are frum & nearly all of them divorced once. Their second marriages aren't so happy either, and the one or two who remained in their first marriage also aren't happy.

But the most bizarre & disturbing outcome affected his daughter Ora (yes, her real name), who was in her early twenties around the time of the following story.

It was Ora's hands via which the rav used to communicate with the entities (in addition to those of his son and talmid).

After the rav died, Ora made the occasional journey to Yerushalayim to deal with acquiring property the family wanted to own there.

Back then, the bus ride from the North to Yerushalayim took hours & depended on erratic bus service. It was a big help to the widowed mother that Ora took this task upon herself.

On her last trip, Ora got on the bus in the North—but never got off.

She simply disappeared.

Now, I know what you're thinking because I was thinking the same thing: Surely she must have gotten off the bus and THEN something happened, rachmana litzlan.

But no.

The family made inquiries on their own, plus they reported her disappearance to the police who launched an investigation.

She disappeared en route. She never got off the bus.

There was simply no sign of her and no sign of criminal or terrorist activity involved in her disappearance.

​So, being from Draa & having lived with the rav all these years, the widow suspected the involvement of entities in Ora's disappearance.

​Despite the distance & wearying journey, the rav's widow made her way to Yerushalayim to speak with big rabbanim there, but no one wanted to get involved.

As stated earlier, these entities are extremely harmful & difficult to manage. In contrast to non-Jewish practitioners (priests, shamans, occultists, etc.), even a genuinely knowledgeable rabbi does not want to deal with these entities for any reason (BECAUSE he understands how things really work—unlike the non-Jewish practitioners).

Finally, the widow went to a Druze practitioner of kochot hatumah (impure powers) in the North.

​These types of practitioners—whether you call them demonologists or priests or sorcerers or shamans or whatever—also deal with these entities, but with impure manipulations. And just like human manipulators, these entities don't mind putting on an act as long as the practitioner gratifies their demands.

​Lacking any real connection to Hashem, these practitioners get fooled into thinking they possess real powers.

So this Druze practitioner contacted some demons who informed him that Ora was still alive, but held by the demons. They abducted her from the bus.

​Supplied with this information, the widow again asked qualified rabbis for help, but none of these big rabbanim wanted to get involved in retrieving Ora because in order to do so, they'd need to contact the entities themselves and then engage in some kind of transaction to free her—which is obviously extremely risky.

After all, that's how Ora got snatched in the first place, and what rav wants to risk his own family's well-being?

However, the Baba Sali was in Eretz Yisrael at that time (1964-1984), so why not ask him for assistance? Sure, he lived way down south in Netivot, which was a VERY long & unreliable journey from the North, but worth it.

However, the grandson of the rav (who provided my husband with all this information) said he didn't know why they didn't contact him.

​In Yerushalayim, some very great & holy mekubalim lived at that time, but the grandson wasn't sure exactly which ones were consulted. He only knows that out of all the rabbanim consulted, no one wished to get involved due to the great danger to both themselves & their families.

As an interesting correlation to this demonic abduction, Rabbi Wallerstein gave a famous lecture regarding a story in the Kav HaYashar that occurred a few hundred years ago.

Just to summarize it: A mohel is called upon by a wealthy stranger who needs to make a brit milah for his newborn son.

The mohel travels with the stranger in a luxury carriage for miles & miles until they arrive at a city populated by mansions hidden in a valley.

As the mohel prepared the baby for the brit milah, the baby's mother confides that she is a Jewish woman kidnapped by demons as a young girl. The entire luxury town consists of demons and the baby's father is a demon too. 

She tells the mohel how to prevent being trapped there too, and the story ends happily for the mohel, but no more is known about the young Jewish woman who remains behind with the demons.

Though she clearly lived a life of luxury, it doesn't seem like she enjoyed it so much. After all, she helped the mohel avoid her fate while making him promise not to let on that it was she who revealed the secret to him.

It all reminds me of Rebbe Nachman's story The Lost Princess, in which the viceroy initially finds the banished princess trapped in the opulent environment of a palace, surrounded by delicacies & the finest in music & entertainment—yet the lost princess called the environment the place of the Lo Tov—the Not Good (often translated as "the Evil One").

And just as the princess eventually merited rescue from the place of the Lo Tov, may Hashem rescue all of us from the Palace of the Lo Tov too!

​But back to our story...

The Importance of being Tamim with Hashem & the Power of a Mezuzah

Judaism places a powerful emphasis on being tamim with Hashem.

It's stated outright in the Torah: Devarim/Deuteronomy 18:13.

Tamim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha.

We need to go through our lives with wholehearted trust in Hashem.

Apart from normal hishtadlus, we need to rely on sincere prayer from the heart & improving our deeds, delving deep into our heart & psyche to accomplish this.

Sure, Syrian troops are scary.

But the best way to fight them is through teshuvah, prayer, tzedakah, and physical hishtadlus (like advanced weaponry).

On the other hand, if the Israeli government ever decides to abandon their pursuit of yeshivah bachurim in favor of recruiting demons, that might be a good idea.

Except that instead of well-meaning talmidei chachamim, we could have the Torah-hating Leftists summon the demons.

For example, just imagine if Tommy Lapid would have said, "Yair, come here please—I need to use your hands for something..."

And then later, while being chauffeured to dinner with fellow kofrim at a non-kosher restaurant, Yair suddenly disappears from the limousine!

The chauffeur alerts the Lapids: "One minute I see him uploading anti-charedi rants to all his social media accounts, and the next minute—my rearview mirror shows an empty seat, except for Yair's phone lying there with the annoying beeps of unanswered messages!"  

​A search reveals no criminal or terrorist activity. Illegal interrogations of hilltop youth ("We've never even been within dalet amot of a limo or a treif restaurant—leave us alone!") reveal no leads.

Finally, they consult a Hamas shaman, who informs them: "He's been kidnapped by demons. They're forcing him to serve as ringmaster for their circus, where he must now wear a black top hat for all performances, which so reminds him of charedim, he cries  and tantrums all day long." 

But getting back to reality now...

In the same chapter mentioned above (Chapter 34 of Chaim BaYad), Rav Palagi mentions the disturbing behavior of a specific group of Jewish women who discovered certain machinations to communicate with demons and compel them to do their bidding.

Again, they probably meant well. Women in those times possessed no rights in non-Jewish society. Outside of prayer, even Jewish women possessed little control over most aspects of life.

(The truth is that every person lacks control over life, but modern developments fool us into thinking we possess a lot more control than we actually do.)

Finances, childbirth, health, and many other aspects of life lay far out of control.

Back then, poverty meant life-threatening deprivation & hardship. Furthermore, antibiotics, infusions for those unconscious & incapable of eating, anesthesia, proper knowledge & sterilization of germs, and many other developments lay far in the future.

Also, their surrounding Muslim culture also indulged in this kind of behavior, making it seem normal. (Sort of like how we're influenced by our surrounding cultures today, even when Judaism outright forbids these influences.)

When the local rabbanim found out about their activities, they put a firm stop to it.

That kind of thing is completely forbidden in Judaism.

But what intrigued me about that anecdote was how the women removed the mezuzot from their homes in order for their machinations to work!

Meaning, even though they went through effective machinations to communicate with these forbidden entities, the entities still could not enter as long as the mezuzot remained in place!

This alone shows the power of a mezuzah.

And what is a mezuzah?

It's so little & passive.

​All in all, it's a little piece of kosher parchment with the routine Shema prayer properly inscribed on it by a knowledgeable scribe (sofer), and rolled up into a little case.

(For basic information about the mezuzah, please see here.)

While some mezuzot reside in beautiful cases, many reside in simple plastic cases.

​Yet see what powerful protection they provide!

Being Tamim with Hashem is the Best!

In Parshat Bo (I think), the Kli Yakar states the importance of not using Hashem's Name to accomplish things.

He addresses using Hashem's Name verbally, but with regard to our story, what was in the amulets stationed along the northern border by the rav?

Not sure, but usually amulets contain holy verses, holy names, etc.

There are different kinds of amulets.

But again, the main lesson here is to go tamim with Hashem.

Just keep on doing what you're supposed to & that's more than enough!

We see, despite the Draa rav's personal holiness & knowledge, the rav's extremely well-intentioned yet controversial efforts led to negative consequences affecting the rav's family at least 2 generations later and long after the rav's passing.

The fundamentals of Jewish Law & Jewish belief provide wonderful blessing & protection!:

  • Guarding your eyes brings blessing & protection.
  • Guarding your tongue brings blessing & protection.
  • Guarding yourself from anger brings blessing & protection.
  • Keep Shabbat & Shabbat keeps you! (It makes more sense in Hebrew. Basically being shomer Shabbat is shomer you. The observance of Shabbat provides blessing & protection.)
  • Prayer—particularly heartfelt prayer—brings blessing & protection.
  • Tsniyus (dignified & modest dress & behavior) brings blessing & protection.
  • Learning Torah brings blessing & protection.

Hashem gifted me with a tough example of this:

Once, due to rushed & stressful mornings, I decided to drop Pitom HaKetoret from my morning davening. Though it's an incredibly powerful part of davening with many compelling segulot, it's not strictly necessary, particularly in the obligations of Shacharit for women...and anyway, I found myself unable to say it with decent kavanah.

​Within a couple of days, one of the few people I know with psychopathic tendencies started contacting me after YEARS of no contact.

I could not figure out what the person wanted from me, but I knew from past experience that this person meant harm covered by a veneer of innocence or helpfulness. This person derived pleasure from hurting others & causing profound emotional distress.

As common among such people, this person reeled in other unsuspecting "helpers" to participate when I tried to avoid interaction.

This person also excels at trapping others into a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dynamic, making it impossible to reach a healthy response to the person's deviousness.

Fortunately, Chazal states that if you encounter suffering, you must examine your deeds.

So I did.

I realized that the whole distressing saga welled up shortly after I dropped Pitom HaKetoret from my morning davening. 

You can bet that I immediately made it part of my regular Shacharit again.

Right after I started Pitom Ketoret again, the entire distressing situation evaporated as if it never existed.

No one from that whole set-up contacted me again—neither the person nor the "helpers."

The entire time I'd been reciting Pitom HaKetoret, I hadn't seen any obvious blessing or protection.

It looked like it wasn't "working."

And anyway, I hadn't been saying it with much kavanah.

But the entire time, it HAD been protecting me—I just didn't know it!

Why?

Because if the distress doesn't occur, then how can you ever know about it?

So that was a big lesson for me. Talk about tough love!

Just keep on doing what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do.

​Even when not perfect, it still contains value & power.

Tamim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha.

That's more than good enough!

Postscript

I just have to add a funny-spooky thing that happened in conjunction with the story of the family from Draa.

As my husband & I discussed the particulars of the story with the rav & Ora & everything else, two lights in our living room suddenly went out.

My husband and I looked at each other and he gave me a reassuring smile.

But as a joke, I put my hands to my face & gave a fake quiet scream, like how they do in the stupid horror movies. (I made it quiet because we live in an apartment and it would be onaat devarim to distress my neighbors by screaming for real.)

The truth is that those 2 lights are connected & have flickered out on their own a couple of times before. 

But then, my husband's kosher Hadran cell phone clicked on all by itself while lying on the table out of reach of either my husband or I.

As we listened to the duet emanating on its own from the cell phone, I said, "Gosh, who knew that demons also like music by Yishai Ribbo and Amir Dadon?"

But my husband pointed out that his phone contained mostly songs by Yishai Ribbo and that any random press of the cell phone would most likely elicit a song by Yishai Ribbo.

Also, he noted that sometimes the cell phone clicked on by itself.

That's true; I've seen it happen.

But the timing, during that particular conversation, was freaky.

And funny. We laughed.

Also, we have kosher mezuzot—so nothing to fear! 

And there you go.

Related posts:
  • Temimus: Wholeheartedness is Necessary to Build Torah Institutions
  • Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Mitzvah of Mezuzah
  • The Theory of Absolute (one of several times Rabbi Wallerstein tells his story of gambling addiction & exit; his story starts at around 15 minutes)
  • Torah Perspectives on Addiction (one of several talks Rabbi Wallerstein has given on his prior addiction and lessons learned; I think this is one of the times when he tells the mohel story from the Kav HaYashar)
  • Past posts about Rav Yehudah Petayah & his book Minchat Yehudah


The Erev Rav Psyche

24/1/2021

2 Comments

 
UPDATE: It was brought to my attention by a thoughtful reader that this post possibly gives the impression of singling out baalei teshuvah in a negative way. So I just wish to clarify that the lessons of the post apply to ALL Jews. 

The Rabbi Winston post referenced within simply reminded me of this specific couple, who happen to be baalei teshuvah. Also, because the husband described within made the proactive decision to enter into frumkeit (when he could've continued his secular lifestyle, which would've been a lot more convenient for himself and his friends & family), it's all the more striking that not only did he refuse to fully embrace core Torah values, but after forcing himself & his family to unnecessary extremes, he abandoned everything.

After all, he faced no pressure to start up with frumkeit in the first place. 

But it goes without saying that EVERY JEW must strive to internalize Torah values & that FFBs face similar challenges (either succeeding or failing as per each person's middot).

Reading Going Home...To Yerushalayim's re-post of Rabbi Winston's dvar Torah reminded me of a couple I once knew.

The initially secular husband found himself attracted to the kiruv he encountered. He then delved into frumkeit via a very knowledgeable & caring rav.

The secular Jewish woman he wished to marry at the beginning of his kiruv refused to follow him on this journey, so they broke up and he married someone else who loved him deeply & was fully willing to follow him on his journey into frumkeit—but with whom he never felt fully satisfied.

The woman he ended up marrying was a pretty girl with good middot & a nurturing personality. She came from a wealthy home with a tennis court & a swimming pool, and she only ever wanted to become a little bit more frum than she'd been raised, but she willingly followed him into ultra-Orthodoxy & a kollel life, which meant living in deprivation.

​But though she embraced it all with a good attitude, he never managed to really appreciate her.

Over time, he forced his growing family into a very insulated frum community, including speaking Yiddish at home (which his wife never managed to learn well) and sending them to chassidic Yiddish schools (carefully avoiding telling the school that they weren't FFB—which is never a good sign; if you have to fool the school, you probably don't belong there).  

Observing the appalling way he often spoke to & treated her felt very discomfiting. He seemed to resent her for no reason.

But except for the occasional times she reached her limit in patience, she usually accepted his poor behavior with equanimity & even an understanding smile—as was her nature.

Then the rav passed away & things started to really deteriorate.

The problem was that the husband's connection with the rav acted as the glue that held the husband to frumkeit.

Sure, all the learning also felt good; wonderful ideas exist in our holy books. But the main attraction for him was the rav.

In addition to growing up in a cold society, the husband always lacked a father figure in life too, and this wonderful rav provided warmth, love, and direction.

When the rav passed away, that source of warmth, love, and direction disappeared too.

The husband's treatment of his wife & children worsened and his grip of Yiddishkeit also deteriorated.

Via social media, he found the woman he originally wanted to marry (who was still secular and now married to an equally secular Jew) and he ended up spending tons of money (further depriving his own family) to re-establish a connection with her until her husband put a stop to it by threatening to divorce her & deny her all custody of their children.

Gradually, all the formerly frum husband's children went off the derech while his wife took sedatives to deal with the situation.

Chazal speaks about this, that a man's debauchery will deprive his wife & children of their rightful parnassa, and his unsavory behavior influences them to behave badly too, whether they're consciously aware of his transgressions or not.

The couple divorced and he left the children in her custody with barely any financial resources, not paying child support & allowing only the most occasional visitation with his own children (and not even all of them).

The wife (ex-wife by now) mostly drifted out of frumkeit, except she maintained her Shabbat observance. She struggled for several years to get on her feet financially. (Actually, I don't know if she ever did, or if she continued to live off of sympathetic family & government programs).

He took his cushiony new livelihood and went on to marry a financially independent woman and start a new family.

​And up to here is all I know.

2 Lessons: Derech Eretz Kadmah l'Torah & The Erev Rav Psyche

​Some major lessons can be elicited from this dismaying saga, but one is connected to Rabbi Winston's description of the Erev Rav—well, it's actually Chazal's description of the Erev Rav, and Rabbi Winston focuses on this aspect:

They belonged to Moshe Rabbeinu. The Erev Rav are called his—Moshe Rabbeinu's.

In speaking to Moshe Rabbeinu, Hashem calls them "YOUR people that YOU brought up from the land of Egypt (Shemot 32:7)."

He fought for them (Hashem hadn't wanted them). They followed a leader whom they expected to take care of them.

They never fully connected to Hashem & Torah.

Likewise, in the above example, the man looked like a sincere baal teshuvah on the outside, but his real connection to frumkeit was via this special rav—and only for ego reasons.

Any kiruv, any rav or rebbetzin, any shiur is only ever a MEANS to connect to Hashem & Torah.

It's a way to learn.

Most people use them that way. It's obvious.

But some people don't.

And that's a defect in them.

Secondly, there's also the idea of Derech eretz kadmah l'Torah—that common decency precedes Torah.

Meaning that if you're a total jerk, you're not going to be able to follow Torah properly.

You have to WANT for Torah to influence you positively.

​But if you're a jerk, then every time you encounter a situation in which the upper road feels hard & awkward, you simply take the lower road.

That's why the man in the above situation treated his wife & children so badly. Most of the times he needed to hold his tongue, speak nicely, or be considerate, he simply refused and behaved however he felt.

(BTW, people who do this generally feel like they're the victim, which allows them—in their own mind—to abuse others. They honestly think they don't NEED to be nice because they perceive the other person as the one victimizing them!)

His self-indulgence of bad middot led to snarly bouts of depression (being a jerk is pretty depressing) and eventually slid into the terrible sins of disloyalty to his own wife & aishet ish with somebody else's wife, until the final descent into complete secularity.

Because of his lack of derech eretz & his desire to fulfill his emotional needs (rather than his soul needs), he never managed to embrace the essence of Judaism.

So despite his extremely frum-looking external appearance (wearing chassidish clothes) and his external behavior (living a kollel lifestyle & speaking Yiddish), he was always a fake (even though during his phase with the lovely rav, he FELT sincere). 

It's heartbreaking that his wife & children got both duped & dumped in the process.

But that's what happens when derech eretz doesn't precede Torah and also when a person pursues Judaism for ego fulfillment without ever transitioning to soul fulfillment.

Just like the Erev Rav.

We also see from the above why the Erev Rav pack such a devastating punch against the mitzvah-observance of Am Yisrael. They suck all the meaning right out of everything, leaving you with a cloudy, painfully false experience of Torah.

Despite the grueling challenge they present, it's up to us to look behind the smoke-and-mirrors of the Erev Rav. They believe in what they're doing, which makes it harder for us to see behind their façade.

Reading the last part (the section entitled "Melave Malka") of the above-mentioned post sheds the necessary light on why they are so hard to perceive.

But that's a big part of our avodah: seeing the Truth.

(Note: It's routine for baalei teshuvah & converts to enter Torah observance with a combination of motives. That's normal & to be expected. But at some point, inner work needs to occur & at least the beginning of a transition needs to be made into internalizing the Torah's essence & values. For converts, the conversion process really needs to do this, the responsibility of which lies on the rabbi involved. But either way, the transition needs to happen at some point for all Jews.)

​Related posts:
  • ​The Erev Rav Strategy: Follow the Biggest "Bully"
  • What's the Message of the Erev Rav for Us on 17 Tammuz?


2 Comments

Happy Update on Rachel Naomi bat Esther Chana, Plus a Very Disturbing COVID-19 Case

22/1/2021

4 Comments

 
Baruch Hashem, Rachel Naomi bat Esther Chana has improved and her family is so grateful for all the prayers & good acts.

(Please see a previous post about her here.)

However, they're not out of the woods, yet. So please continue to daven for her and her newborn, Rach Hanolad ben Rachel Naomi.

Also, please see this verified campaign page for Rabbi Avraham Rachamim Chaim Sofer. Hopefully, you can donate. But it's also important to read his story (included on the page) of medical malpractice in the treatment of his covid-19 virus.

It's a very disturbing eye-opener. 

The severely limited access (based on the claim the covid-19 is sooooo dangerous & contagious) to ill family members allows a certain type of hospital staff to injure & kill patients because there is no outsider allowed in to supervise the treatment of the patient.

How convenient for those who are heartless zombies in hospital uniform (not all, but some; some are extremely dedicated & courageous in their work).

Please daven for him: Avraham Rachamim Chaim ben Yeshuah Alexandra.


4 Comments

How to Laugh & Not Get Lost: Rav Avigdor Miller on Parshat Bo

21/1/2021

 
Before we go to Rav Avigdor Miller's dvar Torah for Parshat Bo 4 – Take for Yourselves Sheep, we need some background.

Ancient Egyptians felt toward sheep similarly to how the culture in India feels about cows: reverence.

Furthermore, the astrological sign of Nissan is Taleh/Aries—a lamb.

Nissan is considered the first of the months, so that makes Taleh/Aries the most powerful sign, and highly esteemed by ancient Egyptian idol-worshippers (Kli Yakar).

Ancient Egypt looked down on shepherds—yet another reason to despise Am Yisrael, a nation of shepherds whose greatest holy men worked as shepherds at some point.

Rabbi Dovid Kass at Neve Yerushalayim once described the dynamic of taking the pascal lamb and slaughtering it at that time as similar to a Jew burning the Nazi flag in front of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

So when we read about Am Yisrael taking the pascal lamb & slaughtering it, we need to understand the powerful context in which it occurred.

The Egyptian Demand for Safe Spaces!

With the above in mind, Rav Miller explains on page 5 about the Egyptians:
And a terrible idea began to enter their minds: “Who knows what these depraved people are going to do to these sheep! They certainly don't worship them. Oh no! Could it be that it’s true what we’ve heard that the Hebrews do horrible things; they didn't do it in public, but secretly we hear that they eat sheep! The Hebrews are preparing for a sheep massacre!” 

During these four days, the land of Egypt was in an uproar.

There were meetings about what to do, how to deal with the Hebrews. The fact that they didn’t make a massacre was a mofes in itself.

The Egyptians didn't make massacres by the way; they were civilized people but this was going too far already!

​“To slaughter our god in front of our eyes?! And to do it with such brazenness?!”

It kind of recalls today, with all the morality written in the Torah that so many people find so offensive today.

You can picture the more activist & diplomatic members of Am Yisrael back then bending over backward to explain their controversial attitude toward sheep to Egyptian society in strenuous attempts to make shepherding & lamb chops more palatable to Egyptians.

Or the renegades of Am Yisrael who stand up & say, "I ALSO revere sheep! Even though our ancestors roasted lamb & shepherded sheep & made delicious cheese with their milk, many people find that offensive today. Just the phrase 'braised lamb chops' triggers some people—how can we not be sensitive to that? Let's make safe spaces for sheep & those who worship sheep. We need to progress with the times!"

I don't know if anyone did, but they sure would today.

Anyway, this whole mitzvah caused tremendous anxiety for Am Yisrael.

Looking back, we know nothing happened during those tense days.

​But Rav Miller notes that in real time, Am Yisrael lived in dread of mass pogroms & genocide carried out by triggered Egyptians.

The Value of Mishchu: It Protects Us from Getting Lost

Rav Miller emphasizes that Hashem not only wanted Am Yisrael to take the sheep for holy slaughter, but to make a demonstration of it.

He explains this on page 6 by using a modern-day example (Toras Avigdor gave it a very witty title: "Concealed Carry"):
It’s like the person who buys a lulav, and he’s traveling on the bus.

He went to Crown Heights to purchase a lulav and now he’s riding the bus back to Flatbush, a bus full of gentiles.

What does he do? He wraps it in paper so that people should think it’s a curtain rod.

He doesn’t have a backbone so he’s hiding it. He wants to fit in better with the Italians. 

I once got on a bus with a lulav and esrog – I used to ride the bus to go to shul. 

​As soon as I got on the bus, all the Jews on the bus looked for a crack in the floor where they could hide from embarrassment.

I didn’t hide my arba minim like a curtain rod, you understand. It was killing them! And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every minute of it.

That was one of the most important lessons of mishchu ["pull"—as in the verse: "Pull and acquire for yourselves sheep."]

It means you should grow some backbone.

“Everybody get busy and do some pulling on your own; your job is to do it not secretly.”

And that’s why when this command came from Hakodosh Boruch Hu it was a very unwelcome kind of mitzvah.

It was a mitzvah that required readiness for martyrdom; it was actual mesiras nefesh.

If you think about, this display of holy spiritual backbone must have been great preparation for freedom.

Such a display breaks the slave mentality.

Interestingly, Rav Miller states that all those who refused to pull the sheep through the streets (rather than taken them quietly, disguising them, or taking them somewhere else for slaughter)—they ended up lost to the Jewish people.

​Rav Miller brings more modern-day examples of this (page 7):
It’s like the Orthodox Jew who wears a big beard.

A beard is a flag.

You know, if you walk down the street waving an American flag, then you’re going to be the target of all the bums, of all the beatniks, of all the liberals.

Whereas if you carry the American flag inside, beneath your lapel, you might be a big patriot, but you’re not suffering for it.

A Jewish patriot is willing to suffer for it – it happened to me more than once.

Three times people spat in my face.

I was walking once up the subway stairs and a woman looks at me and spits directly into my face.

In those days people didn’t wear beards.

Today, meshugaim also wear beards, but in those days it was different....Stones have been thrown at me.

Once I was bruised! All because of the beard.

Now, you think I would sell that? I wouldn’t sell any one of these incidents!

It could be that if you offered me a very big sum I might weaken, but for a mere five hundred dollars I wouldn’t sell it because that’s what it means to be a proud eved Hashem.
​

​Rav Miller ends that particular chunk of mussar with some very sobering food for thought (page 7):
That’s the lesson of mishchu; it means that if you're interested in being redeemed from Egypt, if you don't want to be destroyed when the destroyer passes over the land, you'll have to be willing to stick your neck out for Hakodosh Boruch Hu.

​And all the people who keep their necks inside their collars and try to hide, those who are only interested in their own protection, the end will be that they will go lost.

The Struggle to Maintain a Torah-Based Identity

While we accept today that Am Yisrael kept their core identity in Egypt, we also know that we were redeemed for 3 aspects:
​
  1. We kept our Hebrew names.
  2. We kept our modest, dignified Hebrew dress.
  3. We spoke our holy Hebrew language (not modern Hebrew polluted by secular Leftists, but authentic, uplifting, refined Hebrew).​

Yet Rav Miller notes that Egyptian culture influenced Am Yisrael in other ways.

He compares the length of time Am Yisrael remained in Egypt to a Jewish family in America from 1770 to 1980.

(Or in the current time, from 1811 to 2021.)

The fact is that Jew arrived in America in 1811 and before. 

Yet where are those families now?

​So Rav Miller notes that whatever Am Yisrael preserved of their core identity, wisps of Egyptian culture still seeped in.

The whole episode with the pascal lamb helped uproot these wisps from the hearts of Am Yisrael.

​Rav Miller again uses a modern example (page 9):
It’s like the shomer Shabbos Jew who walks out of his house on a Sunday morning and he's happy; it's so peaceful and quiet.

The factories are closed, the streets are quiet and he enjoys the peace.

Sunday is a part of his life; it could be he gets up a little later for davening; other things too.

That's a good thing about going to Eretz Yisroel; the first thing you notice in Eretz Yisroel is that there's no Sunday.

But if you walk on the street in Flatbush or even in Williamsburg on a Sunday so you appreciate it; it’s a nice quiet holiday.
 
***

It’s like the man who says, “I don't have, let’s say, a Christmas tree in my house. Never!”

But as he passes by the stores and he hears the holiday music coming out of the stores; they play it in order entice the customers in order to buy gifts for the season; so the carols are coming out of the stores and it's hard not to have some sentiment about it; you become sentimental about the season.

​So even though you certainly are a religious Jew; you don’t subscribe to that at all, but a certain sentiment you have.

***
But that's also idolatry; if you have some respect for the gilulim of the ovdei avodah zarah, the abominations that they worship, the ideals and attitudes that they live with, that’s already a mistake.

“I don't subscribe to it,” you’ll say, “but there's a certain beauty, a certain poetry in it.”

​Ooh, once you say that, you're hooked – you’re in trouble.

Authentically Kosher Jewish Humor

The idea Jewish humor is well-known.

(After I became frum, life became so much funnier; there was more opportunity to find things amusing; I thought maybe it was just me, but others said it too: Life becomes more amusing when you become frum!)

Yet despite our ready humor, Judaism frowns sternly on leitzanut: mockery, ridicule, joking around, making fun, and the like. 

In modern society—in which leitzanut earns you popularity, likes, retweets, and even money—this utter contempt of leitzanut sounds strange.

Yet even leitzanut can be used for holy purposes: to fight avodah zarah—idolatry, the occult. Rav Miller includes in this definition: wrong ideas, wicked ideas, and lies.

​And that's exactly what Rav Miller does on page 4:
That’s the way of the Torah when it speaks about idols; it degrades them.

It calls them elilim from the word al – the nothing gods.

Or gilulim, like gelalim, manure.

Manure gods!

Because that's exactly what it is; bowing down to an idol is like bowing down to a full chamber pot of feces. 

How to Live Forever

I didn't write much on my own in this post. Most of it end up copied 'n' pasted from the PDF.

I couldn't help myself. It just flowed like that.
​
So let's end with this final idea (in Rav Miller's own words yet again), which applies so strongly to us today, wherever we live, especially in this oppressive darkness of cancel culture:
​You know, when you have to fight back against the public so you gain a certain hardiness.

And you need that to survive because there’s a lot of propaganda; the poor Jew is kicked around and scorned.

And if an Orthodox Jew maintains his principles in the face of all of that, that's one of the greatest achievements of life; that’s why we’re going to have a kiyum [existence] – that’s why the Am Yisroel will survive. 

Everyone else, every nation, every country will go lost one day, but the Am Yisroel, the ones who have backbone, will remain forever and walk on their ruins.
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Thank you very much to Toras Avigdor for helping us be proud Jews. All credit for quotes & material go to them.
Don't forget to check out their practical tip on page 15!


A Segulah for Producing Daughters, Plus How Rav Kanievsky Solved the Mystery of the Segulah that Seemed Not to Work

20/1/2021

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After having 3 boys, my friend's husband went to a rav to ask if there's a segulah for having girls.

The rav answered yes—use dry wine rather than sweet for Havdalah.

So they started making Havdalah over dry wine.

Then with a beaming smile, my friend said, "And our fourth was a girl!"

The Mystery of the Segulah that Seemed Not to Work

​I've no idea of the segulah's source, but maybe it's because daughters tend to bring more sweetness to life and when you don't use sweet wine at Havdalah, Hashem decides to add more sweetness on His own?

No idea. I made that up. (And anyway, boys can also be sweet—I mean, at least when they're not bringing home mud, ripped pants, scratches, bruises, or scorpions, and the like...)

Anyway, a father of boys went to Rav Kanievsky to elicit a blessing for a daughter, and Rav Kanievsky recommended the above segulah.

After 2 years, the man returned to Rav Kanievsky to report that since then, Hashem continues to bless them with sons, not daughters.

"Yayin nesech," replied Rav Kanievsky—wine handled improperly, making it halachically prohibited for drinking.

The answer startled the father because he & his family were very frum people committed to Jewish Law.

However, they frequently made Havdalah at the home of his wife's father.

So this father of boys contacted his father-in-law to ask about the handling of the wine used for Havdalah and discovered that, indeed, this father of boys had unknowingly been using yayin nesach for Havdalah.

Hopefully, with their newfound knowledge (and newly bought & guarded dry wine), they'll be making a kiddush rather than a brit milah in the upcoming future!
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COVID-19 Worldwide Tehillim #121 at 6PM Israel-Time, Plus a Link to an Amazing Lecture & Transcript from Rav Eliyahu Brog (a Grandson of Rav Avigdor Miller)

19/1/2021

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Thank you very much to the caring friend who made sure I knew about this:
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And for intelligent insights into a lot of the "why?" aspects of COVID-19 by a grandson of Rav Avigdor Miller, please see:
Rav Eliyahu Brog: COVID Crisis - Middah Kineged Middah Of How We Persecuted Our Unvaccinated Brethren 

I experienced so many "Aha!" moments while reading the transcript. The actual shiur is available on the same page as the transcript.

Note: Just to be transparent about where I'm coming from: I'm not an anti-vaxxer in general; I & my children have received the standard vaccinations over the years. However, research has caused me to be undecided regarding the measles & mumps vaccines, see no reason for the chicken pox or diphtheria vaccine, and am highly suspicious of the COVID-19 vaccine.)

Thank you so much to Neshama of Going Home...To Yerushalayim blog for publicizing the above link (and also for all her investigative research into the whole topic).

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