Category: Books

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Making a Workbook Cover...

8/8/2017

Does this say "serious cheshbon hanefesh" to you?

When I was working up a cover for the Cheshbon Hanefesh (Self-Accounting) Workbook, I found a gorgeous image that suited the idea of illuminating one's soul.

And so I worked up a cover.

But then 2 thoughts occurred to me:

How would a man feel holding a workbook with a cover like this?

Heck, even a lot of women would find it hard to take seriously a Cheshbon Hanefesh Workbook that looks like a pink and purple gamma-ray burst.

So the workbook ended up with the more sedate yet still attractive cover it wears now:

Click image to order!

You can order your copy now at Amazon for the special low introductory price.

It will be available from Book Depository in another few weeks.

Sample chapters and more information about the workbook in previous post.

Thank you and wishing you much hatzlacha!

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New "Duties of the Heart" Cheshbon Hanefesh Workbook on Sale for Elul

7/8/2017

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UPDATE: More sample chapters are included either by pressing the blue button below or the blue button underneath the workbook image on the sidebar.

Throughout the years, I’ve read over Rabbeinu Bachya’s Cheshbon Hanefesh ("Self-Accounting" or "Soul Accounting") within Chovot Halevavot (Duties of the Heart) several times, but always got stuck as if it couldn’t penetrate my brain.

Every few years, I looked at it anew hoping that wherever I was holding anew in my frumkeit and advancing knowledge would finally reveal to me what I didn’t perceive before.

But to my puzzlement, it remained the same impenetrable chapter.

My problem was that instead of it reading as I thought a self-accounting should read, it contained urging after urging to “contemplate this” and “contemplate that,” or “imagine that you didn’t have this” and “imagine that you had something else instead.”
It seemed to be a convoluted way of merely counting your blessings.

Where were the middot I needed to scrutinize, the transgressions I needed to root out?
What I only realized later was that my own mind was too narrow. I got stuck on what I thought a cheshbon hanefesh was supposed to be and couldn’t see Rabbeinu Bachya’s view of what a chesbon hanefesh really is.

It was only after I read Rav Shalom Arush’s book on saying thank you that the light bulb went on.

Contemplating Hashem’s Goodness along with the Unfathomable Wisdom with which He created the human soul, human mind, and human body leads to teshuvah and avodat hamiddot. In other words, gratitude on its own is transformative.

Sure, there are a few cheshbonot in which Rabbeinu Bachya describes what you’d conventionally consider a “cheshbon.” But mostly, it’s “contemplate the different parts and organs of your body, how smoothly they all function, and how bones and sockets fit so perfectly together.”

Rabbeinu Bachya guides you to start at the root: become a good person...NOW.

Had I just sat down and started doing any of the 30 techniques he details within, I would’ve automatically become less bitter, more expanded, more attuned to what I was doing wrong, and increased my overall emuna.

But I’m the type of person who likes to understand how and why something works before I start. This is usually a good tendency. Yet sometimes, the best way to understand something is to just do it. And with a tzaddik on the level of Rabbeinu Bachya, I have nothing to fear. It’s okay to just trust his guidance and take the leap.

So I finally took the leap, but felt I would manage better if I could break each technique down to the steps detailed within. Then I wished I could organize it into a workbook form because I needed to make it even more concrete in order to get my head around it. Then I thought, if I’m going to make a workbook anyway, why not make it available to a wider audience?

And that's how 30 Ways to Make Your Soul Shine: A Workbook Guide to Making a Self-Accounting Based on Rabbeinu Bachya's Classic "Duties of the Heart" was born. (Sample pages available for download below.)

I’m not the only person who has read mussar sefarim and come away feeling perplexed or dissatisfied because I couldn’t figure out how to do what they suggested.

The thing is, you just have to jump in (which is hard if you're like me).

Either with paper and pen or with your mouth, just do what they say. Meaning, if they say “contemplate,” do it verbally or manually (like with a pencil and paper), and not just mentally.

My big disclaimer is that the workbook falls very short of what you could do for each technique if you just sat down and did it. Really, you could spend 30-60 minutes on each technique, either talking it through with Hashem or doing a stream-of-consciousness freewrite. So if you don’t need the workbook, then GREAT. That’s ideal; you’ll get more out of it. But if you ran into the same issues I did, then this workbook can help you get more out of it than you would otherwise.

Note: It's fine if you don't fill out every single line of the workbook, if you fill out only one page, or if most of it ends up blank. In the spiritual world (i.e. real world), even the tiniest baby step reaps tremendous results, whether you sense them or not. Any good act you perform can never be erased. So if you write down only one thing to be grateful for, only one organ you appreciate in your body, or whatever, that is very powerful and stays with you forever...whether you feel this or not.

Rabbeinu Bachya himself did not state any order and he stressed the need for each person to do it according to one’s individual level and situation.

So there is a lot of room for flexibility and no room for guilt or pressure.

Practical Stuff

Right now, it’s being offered on Amazon at the special low introductory price of $5.99. (It is currently available at several of the Amazon sites in that country's currency of pound or euro.)

It will automatically appear in Book Depository within the next 6-8 weeks, hopefully earlier.

(Admittedly inconvenient if you want it before Rosh Hashanah, but I didn’t even come up with the idea until too late. However, since teshuvah should anyway be done every single day of the year, you’re never really too late.)

I'm publishing it under the name "Myrtle Rising."

I'm also trying to see if I can also get it sold through Barnes and Noble.

There is a glossary of all non-English terms to make the workbook accessible for everyone.
Each cheshbon includes suggestions if you get stuck.

Table of Contents
Introduction

Gratitude Owed to Hashem as Your Rescuer and Benefactor
Gratitude Owed to Hashem for Your Physical Body
Gratitude Owed to Hashem for Your Intellect
Gratitude Owed to Hashem for the Torah
Your Obligation to Resist being Superficial
Your Obligation to Obey Hashem out of a Sense of Gratitude
Your Obligation to Serve Hashem out of Gratitude
Your Obligation to Serve Hashem with Gratitude and Sincerity
Your Responsibility to Perform Mitzvot with Enthusiasm
Remembering the Attention Hashem Lavishes on You
An Accounting of Your Gifts and How You Use Them
Redirecting Your Pursuit of the Physical World
Your Obligation to Avoid Wasting Time
Using Gratitude to Prevent a Spider Web
How to Prepare for Your Ultimate Journey
Reflections When Remembering Another’s Death
The Benefits of Solitude
Your Very Greatness as a Human Being Obligates You in Humility
Gratitude toward Hashem When Bad Things DON’T Happen
Your Obligation to Cultivate a Healthy Attitude toward Money
Asking for Hashem’s Help
Loving Your Fellow as Yourself
Gratitude to Hashem regarding Natural Occurrences
Looking at the Torah through “New” Eyes
Minimizing the Material while Maximizing the Spiritual
Really Feeling Hashem as King
Thanking Hashem for What Seems Bad
Complete Acceptance of Hashem’s Will
The Greatness of Your Soul Over Your Body and Other Attributes
Recognition of Your True Position in This World

Glossary

Sample Pages
I've included the Introduction and the first 15 Cheshbonot, and Cheshbon #21 because #21 is the only one I saw fit to get artistic about.

Sample PDF Cheshbon Hanefesh Chapters

Thank you more than I can say.

May we all have a lot of hatzlacha in scrubbing our souls.

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Minchat Yehudah Part III: The Reassuring Truth about Hell, Punishment, Avenging Angels...and How to Avoid Them!

22/6/2017

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Go back to Part I or Part II

Man in washing machine...scrub-a-dub-dub!

One of the more difficult aspects of striving to be a spiritual God-oriented person is the concept of Heavenly punishment.

The Torah emphasizes repeatedly that Hashem is full of chessed/loving-kindness, He is unimaginably Forgiving and Patient, Slow to Anger, Infinitely Merciful and Compassionate, and only does good.

But the Torah also mentions punishment. And we certainly see in our own lives events that are clearly not rewards, but events which are painful and distressing. At such times, we certainly feel “punished.”

Yet even in those times, we are meant to understand those events as somehow beneficial and the act of a loving Creator.

Yes, it’s challenging.

Yes, it’s a paradox.

And to complicate things, if you were raised by punitive parents or teachers or other authority figures, if you’ve slaved under a punitive boss or married a punitive spouse, or invested in friendships with punitive and manipulative people, your concept of negative-yet-loving-consequences may have been warped and twisted into something very ugly.

You may have rarely or even never seen an example of “loving” punishment.

So how can you internalize a concept which you can’t even imagine?

It takes work, no doubt about it.

And if God put you in that kind of a dynamic in this lifetime, it’s one of the things you’re meant to work on for the good of your own holy soul. It’s like a muscle that needs to be worked in order for that muscle to bulk up and strengthen.

But God wouldn’t have put you in this situation if you couldn’t do it. This means that no matter how much resistance, despair, or resentment you may (or may not) feel about this matter, you definitely possess the ability to do it.

Beings and Events beyond Our 3-Dimensional World

Perhaps it’s helpful to read what the great tzaddik and mekubal, Rav Yehudah Fetiyah, wrote about it. In his book, Minchat Yehudah, he spoke directly to one of the angelic officials appointed over a particularly sullied soul suffering in the dreaded Kaf Hakelah.

While many people think very simplistically about the Afterlife—just Heaven or Hell, with maybe Purgatory—Judaism teaches us that it is a varied and complex place of many levels. In Hashem’s Great Love for us, He wants us all to enter Gan Eden (Heaven), but our deeds in This World may prevent that from happening. Therefore, various “cleansing” situations exist to allow a soul to reach the state in which it can finally enter Gan Eden.

Some “cleansing” examples are:

Reincarnation (as humans, animals, plantlife, or rocks)
Wandering around the world not even knowing one is dead (an example of this is given in Words of Faith by Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Bender)
Kaf Hakelah (“The Slingshot,” whereby a soul is chased around by angelic officials appointed over it, and they chase and strike him with fiery whips, and the soul can only find refuge by invading a body, like a person or even an animal)
Gehinnom (Hell, of which there are many levels and types)
Other freaky situations

There are also different levels of the paradise of Gan Eden.

Even though I just listed a whole bunch of stuff based on what I’ve read, I don’t claim to actually understand what all this means. Living in this 3-dimensional world is very limiting and the above take place in other dimensions, i.e. non-physical.

For example, in a conversation with an angelic official named Yosef (who was one of the angels appointed to chase souls around with a fiery implement in Kaf Hakelah), Yosef described his angelic race and its characteristics as follows:

“We do not sleep at all, not during the day and not during the night. And we stand day and night because we have no knees, only a straight leg. And our foot is like the foot of a donkey and we are not wearied by standing. And we eat two meals a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. And the meal appears by itself and appears before each and every one and stands in midair across from one’s chest placed in a bowl. And [the meals] consist of a type of sweet red lentils equal to the amount of a man’s handful. And the entire meal is eaten and not even one lentil is left over and it is the amount for our satiation. And afterwards, the bowls disappear before our eyes and we don’t know who gathers them…and at the time we strike the spirits, a rod or strap materializes in our hand and our hand strikes that spirit on its own, whether strongly or gently, whether a little bit or a lot. And after that, the rod or strap vanishes from our hand.”

Furthermore, when Rav Fetiyah asked Yosef to show himself, the angel declined, saying:

“This is not possible. For I fear lest you become frightened and panic-stricken.”

I said to him, “Do not worry about that. I do not become panic-stricken from seeing your face because I am used to these types of matters.”

He said to me, “I am embarrassed and ashamed to reveal myself because the structure of our face is different than the structure of human beings who are made with image and likeness.” [i.e. the Image of God, I think he means – MR]

I said to him, “If so, please make known to me the structure of your face.”

He sighed and said, “For our face is on the side of the shoulder and our nose is very long, reaching until the chest and also it is very crooked.”

Clearly, this is not a 3-dimensional being.

Heavenly Penalties: Not Petty Revenge or Punishment, But Beneficial Cleansing

Later, Rav Fetiyah describes the question and answer session he had with the angelic official named Yosef (emphases mine-MR):

Question: If the Beit Din [Heavenly Tribunal] decreed on the spirit to be in Kaf Hakelah thus-and-thus years and I rectify the spirit via yichudim [profoundly holy meditations], and by this means, the decree of the Beit Din upon it is nullified, is that bad in the eyes of the Beit Din because I was the cause to nullify that which they decreed?

Answer: The intention of the Beit Din is not to take revenge against he who does evil. Their intention is only to cleanse the stains that were made by the transgressions in his nefesh, ruach, and neshamah, in order to admit him into Gan Eden. And they know how many years the stains need and what kind of punishment will cleanse and purify. And if you purify and cleanse in a short time, what does that matter to the Beit Din? … because Kaf Hakelah and Gehinnom are not revenge and punishment for his sin. On the contrary, everything is for the sake of cleansing him from the stains that were made on his soul in order to admit him later to Gan Eden. And he resembles a man who buys new clothing and even though it is known and revealed before him that later, the same clothing will become dirty, nonetheless, this doesn’t prevent him from buying it. When it will become dirty later, he launders it. And during the laundering, his thoughts aren’t that he is taking revenge on the clothing because it got dirty. He only wants to clean it.

Again, this is very good news for all of us.

God doesn’t want us to suffer. God and His Heavenly Agents aren’t sadistic or punitive. In fact, even these angelic officials appointed to the role of striking the sullied soul with a fiery implement aren’t doing so out of free will or emotion. As Yosef describes above, the implement appears and then the hand of the angelic official operates on its own, apparently according to the dictates Above and what is necessary to cleanse that soul.

God WANTS us to do teshuvah!

And yes, teshuvah can be very painful (though not as painful as Kaf Hakelah and all the above).

Try to Feel Happy about Feeling Bad

So...what if you discover an aspect of yourself that is shameful or disgusting? What if you’ve been in deep denial of your motives or the harm you’ve been causing all this time?
Without getting too personal, I’ve definitely discovered things about myself that made me cringe.

But you also have really beautiful and wonderful aspects, too, so don’t get bogged down in shame or self-hatred.

It’s very comforting and important to realize that GOD ALREADY KNOWS ALL YOUR FILTHY ROTTEN POINTS. You’re not really hiding anything…except from yourself.

So just purge it out to Hashem.

Even if you discover that you’ve had a terrible case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder since your teens, that’s okay. You might have a lot of amends to make, but believe me, you likely didn’t do anything as bad as Shabtai Tzvi nor any of the people mentioned in Parts I & II.

(I didn’t even post the really bad things they did because they were so disturbing and unmentionable. What is described in those posts are the milder transgressions mentioned in the book, and as you can see yourself, those were already pretty extreme.)

So just find a private place to sit with God and say something like:
“Thank you for being so Compassionate and Accepting, Hashem. I’m ashamed to admit that I actually enjoyed torturing that ladybug to death in my flashlight. That shows sadistic tendencies, right? Well, I’m very sorry about that. Please help me overcome them. Thanks!”

Or here’s one that I really wish a lot of people would do ;) :
“Thanks for being You, Hashem, and for gifting us with the opportunity to do teshuvah. Um, if I’m being really honest, I think I kind of enjoy shooting nasty little barbs at people and justifying that passive-aggressive behavior by pretending that those targeted somehow deserve it. I’m really sorry. Please help me change. Please help me become more compassionate, empathetic, and filled with emuna. And please imbue me with the courage and humility to apologize to whomever I need to apologize. Thanks!”

Yes, the shame and discomfort can really burn.

But better to burn a little now than to burn a lot later!

I kept forgetting to say that all this translation is mine and therefore any errors are also mine.

Go back to Part I or Part II

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Minchat Yehudah Part II: True and Astounding Compassion

21/6/2017

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Fall back to Part I
Spring forward to Part III

Rav Fatiyah was an incredibly compassionate and loving person.

Here's just one of example of his tenderness and holiness:

Later, in the year 5673/1912 15 Elul, a 17-year-old virtuous unmarried girl came to me and her name was Katun the daughter of Aziza and she said to me, “I am an orphan from my father and in 5672/1911, my mother went to the land of Persia to visit my brother who was there because he was ill. And she left me and my little brother and my little sister with the sister of my mother, who was a very angry and irritable person.

Katun went on to describe her great suffering from this verbally and emotionally abusive aunt and how Katun could not say a word in her defense or to stop the abuse for fear of being thrown out on the street. One night, during an episode of profuse weeping over her awful fate, Katun says:

“I felt as if a large cat had fallen on my back between my two shoulders and was scratching my flesh with great scratches in order to make for itself a way to enter into me. And I feared to scream lest the naughty sister of my father also get angry at me. And afterwards, I felt this cat enter my left arm.”

Katun then described physical and audial sensations she experienced from then on, which robbed her of her sleep. She suffered this way until her mother returned around a year later and immediately sought help for her daughter.

"My mother took me to a Yishmaelite plil."

[Note: I could not find a translation for plil, but I’m assuming it some sort of exorciser or someone who utilizes the forces of impurity to “help” others.—MR]

"After several exertions, he said that it was a very strong Christian demon and the plil exhausted himself to exorcise it and he could not overcome it. And we went to the grave of Yehoshuah the Kohen Gadol and I did hitbodedut there alone, and I prayed there with copious tears. And amid this, a great trembling seized me and my eyes closed. And I saw an awesomely venerable man dressed in white clothes and wrapped in white wool. And I couldn’t gaze at his face and he stood at a distance of four amot and he was standing and gazing at me without speaking or words. And when we returned from prostrating, our goal was to go to the plil. Yet without meaning to, we found ourselves standing before your home..."

Rav Fetiyah was very moved by Katun’s suffering. He said:

“And I...when I saw Katun cry and her tears on her cheeks, my heart broke within me, and my heart went out to her.”

Anyway, far from being possessed by "a very strong Christian demon," poor Katun was actually possessed by a very tough Jewish spirit name Roza, who’d sinned quite a lot with a particular boy before she died. In fact, it took Rav Fetiyah an entire year just to get Roza to admit her name and to expel her from Katun took even longer with a lot of struggle.

Eventually, Katun got married in Iran and Roza left her then.

But it wasn’t just Rav Fetiyah’s compassion toward Katun that touched me. Any normal person would feel the same toward such a poor, innocent girl. It was that Rav Fetiyah insisted on helping Roza to rectify herself so that she could escape the terrible torments of Kaf Hakelah.

And just as a side note:
In the stories of spirit possession, the opening for the spirit is usually made by a transgression on the part of the host. In Katun’s case, no sin is apparent. Even Roza herself admitted that was why she needed to fight so much to enter into Katun's body; Katun hadn’t sinned. However, Katun became possessed while in a state of despondency and bitterness.
Having myself been caught up in states of despondency and bitterness, I certainly don’t blame her and neither does Rav Fetiyah, but it certainly is something to consider…

It's also noteworthy to see that praying sincerely from the heart in a holy place (the gravesite of Yehoshuah the Kohen Gadol) brought Katun to the right agent of salvation.

The fact that Rav Fetiyah really wanted to help these lost souls, despite the fact that some of them had behaved horribly when alive and some even continued to do truly depraved and awful things while dead! (I know, this is so weird.) Yet he had so much compassion on them. He even assisted souls such as Shabtai Tzvi and others to achieve rectification.

Believe me, after reading some of the reprehensible events here, I would not care about some of these souls. I’d say, Let ’em burn! But after reading Rav Fetiyah’s example, I see that I’m very wrong.

We need to help people get better and praying for them is the best (and sometimes only) way.
__________
Here is a conversation between one spirit and Rav Fetiyah, who displays astounding humility:

[Yonah the spirit] said to me, “May God bestow goodness upon you for all your work and great chessed [loving-kindness], which is beyond value and it is more precious than all the treasure in the world.”

I said to him, “May the Blessed God also bestow chessed upon you all for the chessed that you all perform for me.”

And Yonah was amazed at my words and said to me, “How are we bestowing chessed upon you?”

I said to him, “I’ll give you the parable of a baby who suckles milk from his mother. And yes, she performs a great chessed by nursing him, because if she didn’t nurse him, he would certainly die. But indeed, the baby is also bestowing chessed upon his mother to empty the milk from her because if he wouldn’t, then the milk would dry up and [cause a lot of physical torment] and the doctor would need to lance them. Likewise, the issue in our matter. Because I exerted myself for a long time until God merited me to learn these yichudim. And if a buyer wouldn’t be found for them, then all the exertion would be for nothing, may God have mercy. But now I have found in you all a buyer, my mind is content within me that all the exertion wasn’t for nothing.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In fact, when dealing with the notorious Shabtai Tzvi, Rav Fetiyah said:

“Tell me, is it my desire to torment you with yichudim? Because I hope to receive a good reward for my efforts from this young man [possessed by Shabbatai Tzvi]?”

And he said to me, “That is not so. For isn’t this young man a poor man, and he can’t even give you a penny?”

I said to him, “If so, guess why I am straining myself and depriving myself of my business and my studies if not that I pity your soul because it is part of the Godliness Above and it shines like a pearl. It’s just that because of the transgressions, 'rust' has encrusted upon it. And the Holy One Blessed Be He, Who is the Cause of all causes and the Reason for all reasons orchestrated the matter to insert you within the body of this young man so that by this means, there will be an end and a limit to the rectification of your soul through my hands, that I will toil to rectify you.”

If his soul was “part of the Godliness Above” and “shines like a pearl,” then what about ours, which is surely not nearly as sullied as his?
__________

I feel like it’s very helpful to read about tzaddikim in their own words, as was also done in the post: The Secret Saga of a Righteous Convert as Told by a True Tzaddik.

When we see the world through the eyes of tzaddikim, we get the truth.

We also get a lot of love and compassion, because that is where true tzaddikim are coming from.

And even if we can’t be like them, allowing ourselves to be influenced by their viewpoint and attitudes enables us to be a little bit better than we were before.

The potential within each of us is definitely there.

Fall back to Part I
Spring forward to Part III

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Minchat Yehudah Part I: Teshuvah and What Happens After You Die

20/6/2017

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Go on to Part II
Or skip to Part III

Since I first started on my journey toward Torah-true Judaism, I kept hearing about what a great gift teshuvah (repentance and returning to the path of truth and goodness) is.

And while I thought, sure, teshuvah is pretty nice, I didn’t feel amazed by the concept.

After all, it made sense:

You do something wrong.
We all mess up sometimes.
So you apologize.
And then you’re forgiven.

And even though human beings aren’t always so forgiving, no matter how sincerely sorry you are, God sees what’s really in your heart and is anyway above petty ego considerations, so of course HE will forgive you.

But I didn’t realize exactly HOW powerful teshuvah is. It can literally save you from the most terrible things—and I don’t even mean in this physical world.

The book Minchat Yehudah was published by an Iraqi-born mekubal (a great and holy sage thoroughly versed in theoretical and practical kabbalah) named Rabbi Yehudah Fetiyah (1859-1942). Minchat Yehudah contains Rav Fetiyah’s elucidations on many aspects of Tanach, Pirke Avot, and more. He asks and answers interesting questions like, “How did the Snake get into Gan Eden in the first place?” and he also describes what goes on behind the scenes, spiritually speaking.

(Transliteration note: My husband and children keep insisting that his name is pronounced peh-TYE-yah, but because all the English spellings of his name seem to be written with an "F", I’ve left it like that so as not to confuse the English reader.)

In his section on Yechezkel/Ezekiel, he goes into copious detail regarding his experiences with dead spirits, some of whom did such reprehensible things while alive, I can’t describe them here.

In fact, these departed souls were so corrupt that even while dead, they still managed to do reprehensible acts EVEN THOUGH they KNEW they’d immediately be punished with fiery whips by the angels appointed over them.

I know. It’s so bizarre.

Two things struck me as I read over Rav Fetiyah’s mind-boggling experiences:

Teshuvah is vitally important and powerful.
Rav Fetiyah is one of the most compassionate and loving people I’ve ever heard of.

I'll save a discussion of Rav Fetiyah's great compassion for Part II.
Let’s talk about the power of teshuvah first.

What's Worse than Hell?

The dead souls Rav Fetiyah dealt with were people who’d sinned so appallingly that upon dying, they couldn’t even get into Gehinnom (Hell). They were in something called Kaf Hakelah (Slingshot), which is when angelic officials chase them around the world with whips of fire (sometimes for even 200 years) and the only time these spirits can get relief is when they invade the body of a live human (or animal).

(This is not exact, BTW. We’re limited to using physical 3-dimensional descriptions to describe a spiritual phenomenon occurring outside our narrow 3-dimensional world.)

And actually, even people who were fairly good in life could still find themselves in this state of Kaf Hakelah if they hadn’t done teshuvah on the things they did do wrong.
(The book gives examples of this too.)

These spirits usually find an opening to possess a person when that person sins in some way.

Anyway, the big chessed here was that upon being possessed, these people turned to Rav Fetiyah, who not only was able to free the person from the blemished spirit, but also effect a tikkun (rectification) on the dead spirit, enabling that soul to eventually enter Gehinnom, and from there, Gan Eden (Heaven, so to speak).

(Sometimes, this necessitated Rav Fetiyah working with this blemished soul for years until rectification was achieved.)

It shocking to see how teshuvah could have saved people from even very serious sins that most of us could not imagine committing.

Yonah: A One-Time Sinner with Major Repercussions

Here is one episode with a soul named Yonah (the words in parentheses are Rav Fetiyah's thoughts):

I said to Yonah, "First of all, please tell me and don’t hide anything from me: What was your sin that you’ve remained today 15 years in Kaf Hakelah? And who knows how many more years you’ll be in Kaf Hakelah for the same transgression?"

He said to me, “I never sinned all my days except for one time only. And this is how the matter came about: For I was an agent between merchants selling raw silk, and blue and purple dyes, to be the go-between for the sellers and buyers. And from this I earned a living for myself and my home. And sometimes a pressing situation arose which required an early visit to the home of the merchants themselves to speak with them. And one time it happened that the merchant was not at home and his wife said to me, ‘Sit a while until I’ll send for him to call him.’ And she sent her maidservant to call her husband and when she sent off her maidservant…and there was nobody with us in the home…and she withdrew 20 shekels and laid it on my chest. And I couldn’t overcome my inclination and I fulfilled her request. And this was my transgression. And this is why I’m 15 years in Kaf Hakelah and I don’t know how long I’ll be in this torment because the Beit Din didn’t make it known."

(Perhaps because he caused her to be forbidden to her husband, therefore each time her husband co habited with her, it was considered a transgression for Yonah in and of itself, and they added to Yonah even more years in Kaf Hakelah because this transgression reaped fruits. And thus the Beit Din didn’t inform Yonah how many years he’ll be in Kaf Hakelah.)

"And because of this transgression alone, I am struck."

I said to him, “Why didn’t you do teshuvah for this transgression during your lifetime?”

He said to me, “Because I was embarrassed and ashamed to tell of my crime and sin to a wise man, and I didn’t perform any rectification.”

It goes without saying that he still could’ve done teshuvah on his own, just speaking of his regret and humiliation to Hashem.

Nonetheless, implication here is that some kind of teshuvah still could have been effective, even for such a sin.

Ephraim: A Shockingly Depraved Sinner Even For Our Time

Another dead spirit named Ephraim, who engaged in a mind-boggling cruel and degenerate behavior during his lifetime, ended up being murdered in Kfar Akuba, a place where he’d committed a particularly depraved sin. He described his death to Rav Fetiyah, who wrote the following:

A few years later, a quarrel occurred between [Ephraim] and some Yishmaelite donkey drivers. And when he was transporting some merchandise to Kfar Akuba, these same Yishmaelites ganged up on him and killed him. And they moved his body outside the village and buried him there and didn’t leave any sign of his burial place. And they left his donkeys and their load abandoned on the road and didn’t take even one thing from those.

Finally, his brother Shaul went and took the abandoned items and didn’t return anything to the owners. And he didn’t search for his body. And [Shaul] also took all the money and everything that [Ephraim] had in his home, and [Shaul] didn’t pay his creditors a thing. And [Shaul] also performed nothing for the gratification of his soul according to the way we are accustomed to do for the dead during the first 12 months.

And because [Ephraim] suffered greatly over this, therefore it caused [Shaul] many obstacles and he lost all his fortune until finally he passed on in a bad way and a very difficult illness.

"And know, that in the place I am buried, there are also other Jews buried there, too. And it has been 17 years since I was killed."

I asked the spirit whether he made teshuvah in the moment he was killed. He said to me that because he was so panic-stricken, it didn’t occur to him to do teshuvah, and especially since he was an am haaretz, he doesn’t even feel the apprehension [that usually ignites a person] to do teshuvah. He also never put on tzitzit or tefillin all his days, except for 3 times and he didn’t daven except for Yom Kippur.

It’s absolutely shocking to me, especially in light of the truly awful things Ephraim did, that just doing split-second teshuvah in his mind at his moment of death would’ve eased things so much.

Ephraim’s story is much more convoluted than what appears here because prior to his lifetime as Ephraim, he also went through several incarnations in which he heaped sin upon sin, and this most recent and putrid lifetime was just one in a long-lasting pattern of depravity.

Yet Rav Fetiyah still wanted to know if he’d even managed one moment of mental teshuvah.

Repenting, feeling regret, and expressing this to God is really that powerful.
____________________

A Severe Sinner with a Happy Ending: The Power of Teshuvah

On the more positive side, Rav Fetiyah describes how doing teshuvah - even minimal partial teshuvah - is able to prevent centuries of post-death torments.

And this I learned from an episode that arrived to me in the year 5683/1922, when one elderly man came to me and said to me that he came upon his daughter-in-law during the life of his son and he cannot undergo fasts and penitential purifications (such as donning a sack and sleeping on ashes and the like of which are all called sigufim/penitential purifications).

I said to him, “Can you not fast at least one day and one night like Yom Kippur?”

And he said yes.

I said to him, “Go and immerse seven immersions before the final meal (because seven immersions are favorable to purify the soul from the tzaraat [spiritual leprosy] within it, as is written about Elisha the Prophet to Naaman the army official, king of Aram; Kings II: 5, 10) and accept upon yourself a fast of 24 hours for the mentioned sin like Yom Kippur (except that you are permitted to perform any kind of malachah). And on the day of the fast, come to me with redemption money equal to 325 fasts and I will perform a rectification for you."

And he did just so.

Rav Fetiyah then describes the whole process of the man confessing and of the transfer of the redemption money, which Rav Fetiyah received for tzedakah and the prayer that Rav Fetiyah recited at that time for this elderly man.

And because I perceived that this elderly man was a poor man and borrowed the above money from others, therefore I returned to him all the above money as a donation of charity and I did not take from it except 2 pennies alone.

And behold, two years later, this same elderly man passed away and I saw him in a dream that he is standing before the Beit Din/Heavenly Tribunal. And they gazed at him and they saw that he was a baal teshuvah, except that he only did teshuvah on adultery with a married woman, but not on the prohibition [against doing so with] one’s daughter-in-law.

And they didn’t speak with him a word regarding that prohibition. And without speaking or words himself, he entered one room on the side of the court of the Beit Din. And this room was dark and gloomy, and there wasn’t even a mat to sit on. And he enters there and sits on his knees in the corner of this room. And the Beit Din raised their eyes upwards and immediately, 3 angels descended from the heavens above the Beit Din. And these same angels are called Great Healers Who are Experts in the Wisdom of Surgery.

And they entered the room with the elderly man and closed the door. And they performed surgery on his organ and removed from there the “rust” and the blemish that had been done to the organ [because of his sin]. And they healed him completely and went out.

I saw until here.

And from this, a person should know the precious beauty of teshuvah!
How it is so great that it saved this same elderly man from several hundreds of years that he should have been sentenced to Kaf Hakelah!
And how many years he should have undergone incarnations as inanimate objects, plants, animals, and people.

And after he would undergo incarnations as inanimate objects, plants, animals, and people, he would enter Gehinnom because the sentence of Gehinnom comes after incarnations as inanimate objects, plants, animals, and people as is written in Shaar Hagilgulim, Introduction 22, page 22 72, and as is copied in his words nearby.

And therefore, our Sages said (Avot 4:17): “How beautiful is one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in This World than all life in the World to Come.”

Incredibly, the elderly man didn't even need to really donate the money. Rav Fetiyah immediately gave it back to him.

So what did he do? He fasted for 24 hours and said a truly remorseful Vidui/Confession, and Rav Fetiyah recited a fervent "Yehi Ratzon" over him.

And he didn't even do full teshuvah! His dastardly act was a two-sin transgression, of which he did teshuvah for only one.

It's really, really astounding.

Notably, there are different opinions on fasting (Rebbe Nachman states that hitbodedut—talking directly to God in your own words—is even more powerful and effective than fasting), but to superficially summarize Rav Fetiyah’s recommendations:

fasting (even just once and even just from sunrise to sunset)
giving tzedakah (with the intent of atonement)
sincere confession to Hashem accompanied by sincere regret

These are very, very powerful in atoning for even particularly ugly sins.

I also can't help wondering about the power of Tikkun Haklali to assist in this. Rebbe Nachman's designation of 10 specific Psalms (16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150) are known as the Tikkun Haklali, which is usually translated as "The General Remedy."

But "tikkun" also means rectification, fixing, repair.

Judging by what has been said about the power and deeper meanings of this particular collection of Psalms, it seems like it would be of profound benefit to whoever recites them with as much feeling as possible.

It goes without saying that if at all possible, you should apologize and make amends to anyone you’ve hurt.

It’s very unlikely you’ve done anything anywhere near as corrupt and strange as this elderly man. (And remember, this was in a time and place where society was more moral and more connected to Torah law. Yet he still transgressed in such a bizarre and disgusting way…)

Please reflect on what this man’s judgement should have been and what great relief happened instead. And he hadn't even done full teshuvah!

This is wonderful hope for each and every one one of us.

May we all succeed in doing complete teshuvah from love.

Go on to Part II
Or skip to Part III

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The Secret Saga of a Righteous Convert as Told by a True Tzaddik

14/6/2017

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Even though I’m not Breslov, I ended up getting a 2-volume set of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Bender’s lectures called Words of Faith (Diburei Emunah), which was translated from a Hebrew translation of Rav Bender’s original Yiddish.

He offers a lot of passionate and thought-provoking advice accompanied by many fascinating true stories, both of his own life and the lives of other jaw-droppingly special Jews.

I highly recommend acquiring this set to reread again and again.

To keep as close to the original tone as possible, the compilers obviously chose as literal a translation as possible, choosing strict accuracy over style and at times, incorporating the original Yiddish into the text. Yet the lectures (some of which are only a paragraph or two) make for some of the most compelling reading and provide tremendous mussar and inspiration.

There is no dry sermonizing here. Rav Bender’s words exemplify the passion of Torah Judaism. His heart was not only awake but on fire for Hashem.

Rav Bender was a complete tzaddik and it’s quite an experience to read his actual thoughts, his viewpoints, and many stories he heard and experiences he underwent...all described directly from him.

For example, if I start enthusing about another Jew’s greatness and self-sacrifice, it’s not that big a deal because who the heck am I. Because I am very far from spiritual perfection, I’m easily awed by any example of tzidkut.

This is one of the unspoken issues with biographies of great people. Those of us who are regular people can’t really explain or portray the tzaddik or tzaddikah properly because we lack the perspective that spiritual greatness would give us.

Having said that, there are extremely worthwhile biographies of great people. Some of the best biographers are Sara Yoheved Rigler, Yonason Rosenblum, and Yisroel Besser.

But when at all possible, it’s best to hear from the great person him- or herself AND descriptions of spiritually great people by other spiritually great people.

And Words of Faith does both.

Self-Sacrifice from an Entire Village of Righteous Converts

At the beginning of the first volume, we meet several righteous converts. Here's one of the first (Words of Faith, Vol. 1, pgs. 14-16) told in Rav Bender's own words:

In our time, there was a certain village called Sinitsa near the city of Rostov—all of its inhabitants converted. Their conversion was in Uman because others were all afraid to convert them. But we worked on the matter and converted them.

This was at a time when Communism had taken hold, in addition to the standard anti-Jewish sentiments of the local Christians.

These converts were particularly strong men—tall, powerful, and big-boned. They all came together for Rosh Hashanah. They had their own table in the Kloiz [big synagogue]. Their wives filled the women’s section. They stood the whole time in prayer. They just cried and cried and let tears flow like water because they did not know how to recite one letter of the prayer.

Of course, I would also describe these people with great awe and admiration. But this is a great tzaddik doing so. He’s seeing them with exalted spiritual vision. Can you feel the difference between his expressing of admiration and that of a regular person?

Then he goes on to describe a Sinitsa convert who was learned:

I knew him well. He was from those who prayed in the Beis Hamidrash in Uman. One day, they sent him to Siberia, thousands of kilometers deep into a thick dreadful forest!

He then describes the enormous, stout centuries-old trees that grew there in watery areas, such as rivers and “endlessly deep marshes.”

They sent millions of people there. The set work for a group of three…that is, to chop down a gigantic tree and cut it into small pieces of wood that are ready to send. Not only once, when a tree shook and fell, it buried many people alive underneath it.

But this matter did not disturb the evil government, may their names be erased.

Rav Bender doesn’t mince words. He wasn’t there, but his empathy is so profound that he speaks as if he himself saw these trees and the terrible suffering of the people who slaved there. He doesn’t forget to mention that “millions” of people were sent there. This obviously includes people who aren’t Jewish, whose suffering and deaths clearly pained him too, judging by the tzaar he obviously experiences in the recalling.

He continues:

Some government officials knew that our convert was a very smart person.

“Our” convert. Is that how you or I describe people who joined the Jewish community? Rabbi Bender obviously cherishes this man as a brother with great fondness and warmth. This convert is not “other,” but “ours.”

And the truth is that, coming from a regular person, describing one of your newer fellow Jews as "our" convert might even feel condescending or patronizing for that convert. It could actually be an icky experience. But coming from a tzaddik, it's totally different.

Then Rabbi Bender describes how the government officials offered this learned man a cozy position teaching indoors, protected from the harsh labor and horrific cold.

The downside? He would have to work on Shabbat:

He did not acquiesce to this very enticing proposition.

He answered them in strong refusal. With holy brazenness, he said to them, "The whole reason I left my pleasant life and my birthplace to become Jewish was because of the holy Shabbos. How could you possibly think to convince me to work on the Holy Shabbos?"

Despite the fact that a tzaddik like Rav Bender would also likely refuse the proposition, he still acknowledges that it the option is "enticing." He has no problem acknowledging the reality of the whole situation.

Also...do you ever describe people as behaving with “holy brazenness”? But let’s say I did. It just wouldn’t sound the same. But when a true tzaddik labels something as “holy brazenness,” then that’s a whole other ballgame.

His brazenness and refusal to cooperate aroused their wrath. From then on, they related to him very strictly and caused him extra problems. They forced him to perform body-breaking labor steeped in a sinking canoe amid burning frost that broke the bones.

Despite his tremendous physical power, he could not bear this awesome burden.

Rav Bender then describes how this holy man grew continuously weaker, turning white and transforming “from a he-man to a shadow of a human being.” The man’s wife came to visit him in the forest and fainted upon seeing his emaciated appearance. Out of concern for him, she begged him to acquiesce, citing pikuach nefesh as a halachically legitimate reason to violate Shabbat.

But Rav Bender describes the man's response:

“It doesn’t make any difference to me if it is permissible. I became Jewish for the sake of the holy Shabbos. I am prepared to give myself up and die for the sake of the holy Shabbos!”

He answered without hesitation and did not continue to speak to her.

Indeed, he passed away there in that awful thick forest for the sake of His Blessed Holy Name.

Happy is he!

Seen through the eyes of This World, the nameless convert’s story has a tragic ending.

No miracle came to save this incredible man.

He just died unnamed with his grave and specific death unknown.
It's chilling and depressing as perceived through the physical world.

And Rav Bender certainly empathizes with the man’s suffering.

But Rav Bender is also very aware of the Heavenly reward this convert ended up receiving and continues to receive: “Happy is he!”

Hashem and all of Heaven know all about this holy man and that's all that really matters.

If I ended the story with those words, it would just sound weird. But from a tzaddik, those final words have a different ring to them.

Words of Faith contains many stories like the above. And I can’t help wondering whether the mind-boggling mesirut nefesh these Jews had for Hashem’s mitzvot is what protected Russian Jewry from the worst of the Shoah.

Yes, Russian Jewry certainly suffered in labor camps during that time, but the Nazis and their death camps never made it there.

It’s these uncelebrated acts by unknown yet holy Jews that can be the most powerful.

*Note: In transcribing the text, I cleaned up the translation a tiny bit by adding punctuation and syntax.

Siberian forest in the winter

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Scaling that Steep Mountain

21/3/2017

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Note: This post contains spoilers regarding the true story, A Daughter of Two Mothers.

However, all the spoilers take place by page 65 out of a 540-page book that has so much more going on in it, I don’t think it will ruin the experience if you’ll be reading it for the first time.

But some people resent spoilers of any kind, so here's your fair warning: Spoilers ahoy, matey!
____________________

In my favorite book, A Daughter of Two Mothers, Sheina Ruchel Fruchter describes how she felt when her baby daughter was first kidnapped from her by a woman named Mrs. Goldman.

“I threw myself down, put my head on the floor and shouted: ‘Leichu, my Leichu, come back to me! Dovid, my dear husband up in Heaven, I implore you: Help me to bring my daughter back from the evil people who stole her from me…!”

Sheina Ruchel had been widowed twice, lost most of one arm to a life-saving amputation and lived in poverty in a remote village near the Carpathian Mountains of Hungary. Three children had distanced themselves from both her and Judaism. All she had in the world was her baby daughter.

And the people who'd volunteered to babysit her daughter had sold her daughter to a wealthy childless couple.

And every time Sheina Ruchel retold that part of the story, she would raise her remaining hand to Heaven and declare, “Ribbono shel Olam, Father of orphans and Judge of widows, repay this woman for the years of pain and anguish she caused me!”

Later, Sheina Ruchel often mused, “If I'd been a violent or hot-headed person…I might have even killed Mrs. Goldman that day.”

Yet at one point, she was able to give the benefit of the doubt to all the people involved:
“[T]hey felt they were doing the right thing—they felt that a ‘poor, disabled and widowed woman’ simply couldn’t bring up a child.”

But what about the large amount of money involved?
What about the people who acted as the go-between didn’t act merely out of a warped sense of compassion?
The amount of financial compensation they received was so large, they never told Sheina Ruchel where her daughter was, no matter how much she nor how much some rabbis begged over the years.
Regarding this issue, Sheina Ruchel explained sadly, “They could not resist the temptation they faced; a large sum of money is a very difficult temptation indeed...But it is not up to you or I to judge them.”

When Sheina Ruchel’s best friend, Rivka Klar was told of Sheina Ruchel’s refusal to judge these hard-hearted people, and also hears the conclusion that Sheina Ruchel must be a tzadekes (a perfectly righteous woman), Rivka Klar doesn’t respond right away.

(Rivka Klar herself was an incredibly good and kind person. You can read a little bit about her and her husband in How the Worst Turned Out for the Best: A True Story.)

After mulling it over, Rivka Klar maintains,
“That is the correct way to look at this whole situation…I do not know if that makes her a tzadekes; she is simply acting as a person should, and as she always does, with honesty and uprightness.”

We often hear about great people and the great acts they performed.
We repeatedly hear about the correct and heroic choices they made.

Yet we rarely hear about their starting point.

It just seems like they always made the right choices.

Sure, a really good biography may describes the righteous person’s dilemma, but in the end, the righteous person always makes the right choice (and never the natural, all-to-human choice).

And it’s obvious to me from reading the book that Sheina Ruchel truly was a tzadekes. She proved this so many times, making a particularly heroic choice in the end, which saved a life.

Yet when the initial abduction occurred, she was understandably wild with rage and grief. She did not thank God for the good along with the bad, nor automatically accept it as Hashem’s Will, nor any other lofty ideal—nope.

She literally wanted to kill the person who’d given her baby up for adoption.

And then she asked God to curse that person. In fact, it sounds like, over the course of many years, she repeatedly demanded that God “repay” that person for the pitiless and greedy act.

And who can blame Sheina Ruchel? Of course the people who knowingly participated in the unethical adoption behaved with great cruelty. Their lack of remorse or any attempt at rectification in the face of Sheina Ruchel’s pain—even years later—is truly incomprehensible.

Yet an emuna mindset knows that even this heart-breaking ordeal is from Hashem, that even this is somehow for the best in ways that seem unfathomable. We can’t know most of the ins and outs in this world (although growing up in the adopted family enabled the kidnapped girl to make connections that later saved her life), but we can at least claw our way toward the intellectual acceptance of everything as Hashem’s Will.

I do not know exactly how Sheina Ruchel crossed the wide gulf between her completely justified and understandable fury and finding a small speck of merit in those heartless people, even going as far as to refuse to judge their merciless greed.

Sheina Ruchel lived in poverty incomparable to those who buckled under temptation of immorally obtained money, while she herself never would have submitted to that temptation. So how could someone like her not judge someone like them?

Yet it’s clear in the book that she dealt with the issue spiritually. She frequently recited Tehillim, asked for blessings from Rebbes, and constantly poured out her heart to Hashem, speaking to Him in her own words as she would her own father.

And it sounds like she wobbled on that point. It’s not entirely clear from the book, but it seems that while sometimes, she was able to rise above her natural feelings and see it all with perfect emuna, even to the point of refusing to judge the people who’d hurt her so badly, yet other times showed her as demanding Heavenly retribution against Mrs. Goldman.

The point is, she needed to work up to that lofty level.

And indeed, she became a very great person.

I think part of the secret is in the words of Rivka Klar:
“That is the correct way to look at this whole situation…she is simply acting as a person should.”

Our Sages tell us repeatedly in so many books and so many ways what the right mindset is. Even if we can’t bring ourselves to look and act as they say, we at least know that is our goal. We know what the “correct way” is and we also know how to act “as a person should.”

And even if we can’t maintain the ideal state for more than a moment, the mere act of trying is still worth more than we can imagine and affects us in profound ways (even if we don't always perceive them).

Furthermore, it’s perfectly natural to wobble between a lofty state of emuna and a very human and understandable state of fury and resentment.
And it's perfectly natural to wobble like this for years.

Sheina Ruchel was truly wronged. There is no justifying what those people did.
And so, she spent years trusting Hashem, leaning on Him, praying to Him, clinging to Torah and mitzvot—while at the same time, hating and cursing those people and demanding revenge.

Yet eventually, she made it to the top (spiritually speaking).

And without being thrust into such a traumatic and excruciating challenge, she never would’ve been able to become the exalted person she eventually became.

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Part 11-America's Scary New Direction: Entertainment Propaganda

4/12/2016

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One of the most powerful weapons of propaganda used by the Left has been TV and movies.

Nazis and Communists also used entertainment media as weapons. Back then, radio took the place of today’s TV, but movies were certainly utilized to push the desired narrative.

For example, children dying for the Nazi cause were glorified, especially in one film based on a true incident in which a teenage boy died in a brutal streetfight against Communists in Germany.

But Hitler also appeared on screen. In one 1934 docudrama, Hitler makes a speech which contains statements like:

“And we want you, German boys and girls, to absorb everything that we wish for Germany. We want to be one people and through you, to become this people. We want a society with neither castes nor ranks and you must not allow these ideas to grow within you…And you must educate yourselves for this…we want this people to be peace-loving, but at the same time to be courageous. And you, for that reason, must be both peace-loving and strong.”

"Be both peace-loving and strong!"

It almost sounds like Sesame Street.

Except that he left out the part in which hundreds of thousands of Jewish babies are dumped into fire pits.

Making Moral Degeneracy Appealing

The American film industry has always been horrible.

Film and TV producers were moral degenerates. Time and again, movie stars engaged in behavior so disturbing that Hollywood conspired to hide it from the public. The American reaction to such behavior depended on the times.

In the Fifties, having a child conceived extramaritally was terribly scandalous (as it should be) and the appearance of virtue was de riguer. Today, standards are nauseatingly low. A racist epithet uttered by a white person (reverse racism is okay, though) could erase a celebrity’s popularity, as could violating a child (not a teenager, but an actual child). But almost anything else goes.

It depends.

But the point is that the main influence on American culture has always been run by moral degenerates who were always pushing the bar of decency to reflect their own values and make the world a more comfortable place for moral degenerates like themselves.

And in order for them to succeed, they had to make their worldview appealing.

A few years ago, someone showed me a 20-minute 1928 Laurel & Hardy film. I was shocked at how indecent it was—and all the indecency was covered up by theatrical “Har-har, just kidding!” wackiness:

Cops were portrayed as petty incompetents.

Convicted criminals escaping from prison were portrayed sympathetically, with the audience clearly meant to hope for the prison escapee’s success.

The running joke through the movie was getting pinched on the backside by hermit crabs (naughty kindergarten humor) and there was even a scene that clearly hinted at same-gender relations in an alley, but to innocents, would merely seem like more naughty kindergarten humor (i.e., two men exiting an alley after using it as a bathroom).

And this was 1928!

Back then, most Americans considered police officers to be the good guys and prison escapees as posing a serious threat to public safety. But in the movies, you could completely switch these values as long as it was all in fun.

Even today, as long as you make people laugh, you can get away with anything on TV.

Emphasizing the "Right" Look: Nazi Germany and Modern America
Just as the Nazis promoted a certain “look” as Aryan, Western media also portrays attractive people in a certain way—even if that way changes slightly from decade to decade. Women and girls have been particularly targeted, with the result being a dramatic increase in eating disorders, plastic surgery (including bizarre plastic surgery, like the Pacific Asian girls who change their bellybuttons or eyelids to conform to those of Caucasians), and the increasingly complex use of cosmetics.

And despite all the “black pride” blather, female black celebrities continue to use hair treatments, make-up, and Photoshop to achieve the “white” look considered more attractive (to Hollywood people, anyway).

In fact, despite all the media focus on “racism,” I think that a fat girl or boy is much more likely to experience harassment and discrimination than a black boy or girl in an all-white environment.

Hollywood-Style Strategic Propoganda and Brainwashing
In his bestselling book Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV*, Ben Shapiro (a Modern Orthodox activist for political Conservatism) goes through the greedy history of TV programming and shows how even family-oriented TV shows promoted Liberal values. He also captured on tape the TV producers’ blatant agenda to warp American values via their TV shows.

For example, the 1983 made-for-TV movie, The Day After, which freaked out my generation with its graphic images of the effect of a nuclear bombs, was produced and directed by a man who stated: "My private, grandiose notion was that this movie would unseat Ronald Reagan when he ran for re-election."

While some Hollywood writers and directors focused primarily on getting a good story on screen, with their programs only incidentally reflecting their Liberal politics, many clearly stated an agenda to actively change the minds of society.

It’s chilling to realize how much thought and care they put into portraying a controversial opinion or character in just the right way, so as to manipulate their viewers.

Some of it was good and fair representation, such as putting non-white actors on TV and moving away from racial pigeon-holing (with positive presentations like The Cosby Show and the introduction of an attractive, well-spoken black couple on The Dick van Dyke Show).

But some writers and directors describe outright their agendas.

For example, some knowingly downplayed the actual behavior common in men attracted to their own gender while portraying women as behaving—not even as straight men behave, think, or speak—but as how men-attracted-to-men behave, think, and speak. They do this knowing that the average woman does not behave this way.

Fathers have been increasingly portrayed as fools or completely irrelevant.

In fact, Hollywood considers the paternal role so irrelevant that a TV program may choose not to feature the father of a baby (unborn or otherwise) at all.

In some Hollywood minds, fathers aren't just invisible; they don't even seem to exist.

Yet Hollywood responds to any criticism by claiming it is merely reflecting real life.

Sometimes, enclosed within their urban Manhattan or luxurious LA bubble, they honestly believe that the nihilistic, atheistic, pagan, or degenerate views and lifestyles they depict on their shows are, indeed, “real life.” But sometimes, they simply feel that such views and lifestyles should be real life and actively seek to impose this on society at large.

This is one of the most disturbing aspects and most similar to Nazi propaganda:
They willfully portray a group as very different than that group actually is in order to change the beliefs and value system of society.

In other words, they knowingly promote a false image in order to fool society.

It’s really no different than the cultivated propaganda of the Nazi or Communist era. It’s a lot more sophisticated this time around, but no less intentional. And like Nazis and Communists, they intentionally inflame hatred against target groups and ideas while garnering sympathy for other target groups or ideas.

Sacrificing Everything to Moloch - What Altruistic Dedication!
Even more shockingly, Hollywood directors and writers are so committed to their degenerate propaganda that they cast aside their own greed to these deceptive ends.

For example, they’ll fight to keep a show that promotes their sick value system even if the show loses money for their network and even if viewers show no interest (or lose interest) in that show. This kind of warped mesirut nefesh is what the Nazis displayed in World War II when, despite heavy losses on the war front, they diverted their people’s much-needed resources to keep the death camps going.

The Nazis' genocidal ideals became more important than the most basic survival of their society and the physical survival of their fellow citizens. To the Nazis, killing a Jewish baby was more important than saving a fellow German soldier or citizen and even took precedence over the barest survival of their glorified Third Reich.

Likewise, Hollywood Leftists consider the destruction of unborn babies and fundamentally essential institutions (like marriage and basic morality) to be more important than anything else. In fact, the cop shows and music videos of a rap culture that glorifies violence, misogyny, and licentiousness show black people at their worst (all created by self-preening white Liberals). Such programming not only perpetuates negative stereotypes, but has imposed this culture so forcefully that even white upper-class youth seek to imitate it.

The Very Real and Destructive Effect of Hollywood on Society
As un-PC as it is to say it, widespread unwed motherhood has basically destroyed America's black community and is on its way to destroying the rest of the USA.

Regardless of race or class, prison incarceration, drug and alcohol use, dissolute and indiscriminate behavior on the part of girls, same-gender-attraction, and more can all be traced back to whether there was a steady and positive paternal influence in life or not.

(For example, a lot of problems in the black community - including the higher prison rates - correlate with being raised by an unwed mother with no steady father around. Meaning, that problems in the black community have nothing to do with racism and everything to do with radical feminism. White people raised by unwed mothers show similar statistics to black people raised by unwed mothers. The rate of unwed motherhood in the black community is 70%, which is why you see higher crime rates and the like.)

Hardly anyone wants to talk about or acknowledge this.
(And if you want to point out the pervasive influence of entertainment media on society, the importance of fathers has become somewhat taboo in frum society, to the point that clear halachic obligations applying to men are either dismissed or minimized - despite the fact that many frum people do not watch TV or movies. Yet the influences of general society eventually licks at the frum community, too.)

Of course, some people raised by an unwed mother without any father at all still turn out splendidly and boast of what a wonderful life they've had in their one-parent home. But most people either fare poorly OR fare okay, but could have fared better with a decent father at home.

And the Moral and Virtuous Right Did...Nothing! Of Course!
And right-wing Conservatives basically laid themselves down before the media steamroller. With the exception of scattered individuals, they didn’t turn off their TVs (nor did they limit themselves to watching the very few “kosher” programs available), they didn’t stop going to the movie theaters, nor did they consistently organize massive letter-writing campaigns to protest the programming.
(Sometimes, huge letter-writing campaigns occurred, but not frequently enough.)

And even though Conservatives have the financial resources to do so, they never tried to make a “Conservative TV channel,” even through cable or Internet streaming, and have done very little with independent movie productions (admittedly a big challenge, technologically and financially speaking, but not impossible—and with rising success, opportunities also rise).

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR MEN!!! If a man shows up dressed like this to a board meeting, to present news on TV, for a job interview, or as a presidential candidate, you MUST take him seriously or else you are a pig-brained chauvinist who objectifies men. Why are revealing clothes only okay for women, huh?!! (Oh, and if you're a man and you don't take a guy dressed like this seriously, then it is because you're jealous and catty. Too bad.)

Not only that, right-wing Conservatives even allowed themselves to absorb some of the values of the Left. When discussing their pro-life position, they no longer push the “wait until marriage” method, but instead promote methods of pregnancy prevention or, b’dievad, placing one’s child up for adoption.
And even self-defined religious Conservative women have fallen into the desire to look “hot,” with the accompanying expectation to be taken seriously as a professional no matter how distracting or alluring their appearance—and with the blatant double standard that men absolutely may NEVER do the same.

Using foul language has also become acceptable among right-wing Conservatives, even those who consider themselves religious.

So TV and movies continue to promote same-gender attraction, premarital intimacy, unwed motherhood, abortion, fake science, paganism (witches started to be portrayed sympathetically in the Eighties and Eastern spiritualism is promoted), environmentalism, atheism, animal rights (beyond the Torah prohibition of cruelty toward animals), and more.

And they continue to succeed in brainwashing society to think like them.
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*Due to the incredibly foul language and concepts (and even the plot lines of some of the TV shows themselves) expressed by many of the Hollywood bigwigs interviewed by Shapiro in Primetime Propaganda (which was softened a bit via the time-honored method of “strategically placed hyphens”), I ended up not reading the whole book, but simply skipped to the end where Shapiro offers analyses and solutions. It’s a great expose if you need it (or if someone you know needs it) and Shapiro shows his usual brilliance and thoroughness, but because of the language, it falls in the “Did I REALLY need to read this after all?” category of books as far as I’m concerned.

Just being honest.

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Part II - America's Scary New Direction: Jewish Communists

3/11/2016

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The Fire of Justice becomes the Firing Squad

I guess everyone knows that uncommitted Jews were some of the biggest supporters and promoters of Communism.

And at the beginning, even anti-Communist Orthodox Jews were sympathetic to their Communist brothers and sisters.

Why?

Because the discrimination against and the persecution of Jews (plus the poor treatment of working class & peasant non-Jews) was very real.
Laws, regulations, and hateful attitudes limited where Jews could live, what occupations they could engage in, how much they needed to pay in taxes, how much protection they deserved, and so on.

Pogroms and other horrific treatment also plagued the Jews of Eastern Europe.

My own family (the Russian side) decided to immigrate to America when, after their business caught (or was set) on fire, they alerted the fire department—who then proceeded to burn the rest of it down.

Oh, those wacky Moldavian firemen!

But it was a blessing in disguise because it meant they arrived in the USA at the turn of the 20th Century and avoided facing both World Wars on European soil.

Anyway, the point is that whether you are a Communist or not, it’s easy to understand why a global call for equality and the elimination of poverty was so appealing. Early accounts of Orthodox Jews’ attitudes toward their Communist fellows read somewhat like how Orthodox Jews today feel toward their Liberal family and friends:
“They’re basically decent people who just don’t know any better. They’re good people who mean well, but they just don’t understand.”
______________________________________________________

In the compelling true story These Children are Mine: A Story of Survival and Rescue, Polish-born Orthodox Jew Dov B. Lederman recalls his Jewish Communist nanny, Rachelka (whose non-Jewish boyfriend, Edward Ochab, was in jail at the time for Communist activities), whom many people refused to hire because of her Communist affiliations:

“Hence, she came to us without a recommendation; but Mother pitied her and hired her nonetheless.”

Presumably, the Ledermans forbade Rachelka from influencing their son because he never knew then that she was a Communist. And regarding his Orthodox mother’s attitude toward Communism, he stated:

“…being deeply religious, she rejected Communism with its material-atheistic notions of Utopia.”

But at the same time, he explains that the unjust treatment of the working class upset his mother. In order to make just enough to live on, the working class was forced to toil for long hours in unhealthy and sometimes dangerous environments for low pay.

“She even sympathized with the fiery proclamations about the need for change…” he writes of his mother.

Mrs. Lederman sounds like a lot of us, right? There are a lot of extremely likeable Jews with anti-Torah attitudes and non-Jewish partners. And we do like them. (As we should.)

Mrs. Lederman also helped Rachelka send her boyfriend food and books in prison, and helped Rachelka herself flee the Polish police, which paid off later when Rachelka and Ochab (now a married couple) became successful Communists of wealth and power, who used their high position to help Mrs. Lederman make aliyah after the Shoah.

(And no matter how high he rose—and he rose pretty high, Ochab also never tolerated discrimination against Jews—perhaps also because of Mrs. Lederman’s early kindnesses.)

As Lederman writes of the time his mother approached the Ochabs to ask for their help in joining her children in Eretz Yisrael after the Shoah: “Rachelka welcomed mother warmly, murmuring apologies for living in posh surroundings which did not exactly bespeak the ‘equality of men on earth,’ which she had preached with all the idealistic heat of her youth.”

Interestingly, Mrs. Lederman had to tell the Ochabs they might as well put her in front of a firing squad if she could not join her two children in Eretz Yisrael before they agreed to wield all the necessary influence on behalf of Mrs. Lederman. As Rachelka herself explained, “It would be dangerous even for someone in our position to do more than we have already done.”

Yet Mrs. Lederman’s assistance toward them during a time of anti-Communist persecution—hiring a Communist, providing for an imprisoned Communist, and helping a Communist escape—surely must have been dangerous for Mrs. Lederman. Yet she did all that, apparently without anyone needing to make such dramatic proclamations as she needed to make to the Ochabs.

(Highly recommended, this book describes the Nazi invasion of Poland, the Ledermans experience as a family—sans the father—in a Siberian labor camp, Mrs. Lederman’s incredible activities in rescuing Jewish Holocaust orphans from non-Jewish institutions and guardians, and the Ledermans’ post-war aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. The section describing in compelling detail how Mrs. Lederman rescued these orphans is particularly captivating.)
______________________________________________

But out of the Communist fire for “equality” came intolerance.

Eventually, the heinous Yevsektsiya formed, a Jewish arm of the Communists which hunted and persecuted Orthodox Jews for being religious and, well, not Communist.

Their stated goal emphasized the "destruction of traditional Jewish life, the Zionist movement, and Hebrew culture"

In a book of fascinating stories called Harav Schach: Conversations - Stories to Inspire the Yeshiva World compiled by Rav Asher Bergman, Rav Schach recalls his time in Slutzk:

“In those days, the Communist movement attracted many Jews to their ranks because of their supposed love of equality for all people of all races.”

But then he describes the vicious turn life took as Jews shed their Judaism and Torah values in favor of Communism, emphasizing their hatred for anyone who studied Torah:

“The persecution was so great that my uncle Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer and I were forced to go into hiding in the ezras nashim [women's section] of the shul, and there we learned with the greatest caution and readiness, because if those Communist Jews would suddenly come in, we would have to close our Gemaras and flee…one day, they…discovered our hiding place. At that point, Rav Isser Zalman and I jumped right out of the window onto the street, fled, and slipped over the border, away from Russia.” (pg. 40-41)

How loving!

Additionally, Rachelka and Ochab’s original sincerity and idealism mirror that of Liberal/Leftist Jews—along with their eventual immersion into materialism and power.

Notice, too, how Rachelka and Ochab—despite their power—lived in fear of their own party. This is true today, when Liberals who don’t chant the party line down to the last detail will be taken down by their own supporters. (For example, Hillary Clinton's history shows her to be a war-monger, but she talks like a peacenik to her constituents, except for the times she slips.)

As indicated in Part I, Leftist Jews haven’t yet reached the point in which frum Jews in America must learn Torah in secret and jump out of windows upon discovery, but it is close to that point regarding Leftist Jews’ attitudes toward pro-Israel Jews.

(And Leftists in Israel have done some pretty nasty things to Torah Jews in the recent past.)

Leftist Jews—mostly irreligious and Jewishly ignorant—attend or even organize fiery rallies against Eretz Yisrael and her most loyal inhabitants.

They’re also deeply ashamed of your average IDF soldier and actively side with the worst of the Sharia-zombies to persecute the loyal Jews in Eretz Yisrael.

Again, it's important to note that early Communists, whether Jewish or not and whether Eastern European or Chinese, were sparked by the very real injustices they saw around them and comprised many very earnest and self-sacrificing people. Initially, many were driven by genuine compassion.

But then everything took a horrific turn.

If you look at the history of Communism from its beginning until its evolution into a terror-inducing bear, you can see where American Leftists are holding now on that timeline.
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Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4|Part 5|Part 6|Part 7|Part 8|Part 9|Part 10|Part 11|Part 12|

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Book Review: The Kli Yakar Rendered into English

27/10/2016

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I’ve been going through Rabbi Elihu Levine’s English rendering of the Kli Yakar on the first few parshas of Sefer Beresheit. As written in the post How to Avoid Getting Lost in Translation, I don’t usually go for English translations because of all the inherent problems involved.

But this is probably the first English translation of any classic work that is nearly flawless in capturing the true intent and meaning of the original Hebrew without sacrificing English eloquence and readability.

Oftentimes, translators must sacrifice either clarity and accuracy for smoother and less “clunky” reading experience, or sacrifice smoother reading for clarity and accuracy—but Rabbi Levine maintains both without sacrificing either. And I have no idea how he managed to pull that off. But the result is that you can just sit down and read through it, although Rabbi Levine himself humbly insists that the English rendering is only meant to be an aid to the Hebrew (which I suppose is why he refers to his work as “rendered” into English” and not “translated”).

Furthermore, the layout of the book is just wonderful. Both the English and Hebrew typefaces and fonts are perfect for easy and pleasant reading. Even the paper used is of higher-quality and strength.

The book is footnoted well, but not annoyingly so. Rabbi Levine provides the necessary sources for all the Kli Yakar’s references, magically intuiting when a simple citation of chapter and verse will suffice—or when the reader needs more explanation. I really needed this because my Aramaic is so poor and I didn’t always understand the connection between the Kli Yakar’s ideas and the source he referenced.

The entire work is incredible and I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Finally, I very much agree with Rabbi Beryl Wein’s opinion as expressed in the Foreword: “…if the translator does not become a piece of the author himself, so to speak, the translation ultimately fails. This is what makes Elihu Levine’s work so important and significant. He has truly captured the spirit and essence of the goals and ideas of [the Kli Yakar].”

HIGHLY recommended!

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Minchat Yehudah Part II: True and Astounding Compassion

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Yonah: A One-Time Sinner with Major Repercussions

Ephraim: A Shockingly Depraved Sinner Even For Our Time

A Severe Sinner with a Happy Ending: The Power of Teshuvah

The Secret Saga of a Righteous Convert as Told by a True Tzaddik

Self-Sacrifice from an Entire Village of Righteous Converts

Scaling that Steep Mountain

Part 11-America's Scary New Direction: Entertainment Propaganda

Part II - America's Scary New Direction: Jewish Communists

The Fire of Justice becomes the Firing Squad

Book Review: The Kli Yakar Rendered into English

Myrtle Rising

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