"Instead of stinging nettle, myrtle will rise" (Isaiah 55:13)
 "Instead of evil, good will rise." (The Malbim's Interpretation)
Myrtle Rising
  • Blog
  • Comments Disabled
    • Privacy Policy
  • Aliyah
    • Mini-Intro
    • General Cultural Insights
    • School Tips
  • Kli Yakar Index
  • Most Popular
  • Contact

The 2 Most Important Ideas to Remember for Rosh Hashanah

29/9/2019

0 Comments

 
There are 2 vital ideas to remember for Rosh Hashanah (these also apply to the time period throughout Yom Kippur & Sukkot).

And the second is merely an aspect of the first.

The first is as Rav Avigdor Miller emphasized in his Rosh Hashanah shuirim:

Rosh Hashanah is the time to focus on & internalized EIN OD MILVADO —​ THERE IS NOTHING IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE EXCEPT HASHEM.

Internalizing this all-important emuna is the intrinsic focus of Rosh Hashanah.

If you do nothing else Rosh Hashanah, you must at least do that.

Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky used to recommend that people say "Ein od milvado" with all the heartfelt kavanah they could muster as a segula for being saved from whatever troubles they suffered.

From Rav Chaim Volozhin's book, Nefesh Hachaim:
When a person determines in his heart to say that Hashem surely is the True God, and there is none other than Him Yitbarach, no power in the world and in any of the worlds at all, and all is filled only with His Simple Oneness Yitbarach Shemo, and nullifies within his heart complete nullification that he [the person] doesn't supervise at all any power and will in the world, and subserviates and cleaves the purity of his thought only to the Unique Master Blessed be He — then He Yitbarach will satisfy his hand and will automatically nullify from upon him [the person] all the powers and wills that exist in the world, so they cannot do anything at all to him.

And everything that he [the person] decrees will be fulfilled for him, to activate matters and wondrous miracles in contradiction to the natural order...

In the siddur Ahuvah L'Tzaddik, it explains that accepting upon oneself Hashem's Total Mastery over the entire Universe will remove & nullify from a person all judgement and other wills, so that nothing else can overpower him or control him at all.

​(This siddur is also from where I copied the above passage from Nefesh Hachaim. Any mistakes in translation are mine.)

​This brings us to Vital Ideal #2...

Stay Sweet When Things Have Soured! A True Story

The famed mekubal Rav Yehudah Petiyah sat at the table one Rosh Hashanah with his family and guests.

The rav wore pure white garments in honor of the special day.

A candelabra lit in honor of the chag stood on the table.

Everything was set up according to his profound knowledge of holy standards.

The rabbanit was just bringing out a whole tray of fish to start the main meal when someone bumped the table in a way that overturned the lights, plunging the entire room into darkness.

(In our times, it's hard for us to imagine the depth of darkness without electric lights in the home and without electric streetlights along the road outside.)

The rabbanit could not see where she was going or where to put the heavy unwieldy tray, plus the sudden turn of events startled her, and the tray slipped from her hands, plunging all the specially prepared fish to the ground.

The rav rose to assist and fix the problem, but he slipped in the all the fish jelly and sauces, falling smack to the ground, which soiled his special white garments.

You can imagine what this all meant, and how hard it is to get the fish smell out of things and how bad fish smells when it hangs around for too long.

Furthermore, I don't know whether the Petiyahs had indoor plumbing.

And were they still in Baghdad or had they already arrived in Eretz Yisrael?

​It doesn't say, but the clean-up of both the floor and the rav using pump-water must have been difficult, particularly in the dark (though they likely had some light from the stove). 

Rosh Hashanah is 2 days and that meant that the rav likely had no more special white garments for the rest of the chag. Not to mention the loss of the fish...

Yet Rav Yehudah Petiyah did not get angry.

Interestingly, that year ended up being a splendid year for Rav Yehudah Petiyah.

He experienced success with everything he attempted. He found increased success in his Torah, producing new & wonderful chiddushim.

And he traced back all that success to not getting angry over the disaster of that first night of Rosh Hashanah.

The REAL Segula for a Sweet Year — ​And It's Not the Apples Dipped in Honey...It's YOU.

The above story is found in Rav Elimelech Biderman's Be'er Haparsha.

He emphasizes that the most powerful segulah on Rosh Hashanah for having a sweet year is...BE A YEHUDI MATOK — BE A SWEET JEW.

​If we turn around Rav Petiyah's situation, we see that in Heaven, he already had a sweet year decreed for him...he just needed to earn it.

And the way he was meant to earn it was by having someone knock over his Rosh Hashanah lights, ruin his fish, fall down (which must have hurt at least a little), and get soaked in a big fishy mess that ruined his special white garments -- all without getting angry.

And that could be the dynamic for any of us.

If you're reading this after Rosh Hashanah, don't despair.

I've noticed that Hashem gives us our final chances to get things right during Sukkot, before the din is decided in its finality. Lots of challenges still pop up throughout this time.

The main thing is to resist getting angry about them. (And here, I'm writing this for myself as much as for anyone else.)

​They're from Hashem & possibly the key to giving you a wonderfully sweet year.

So to sum it all up:
  1. Do everything you can to internalize the idea that there is nothing other than Hashem.
  2. Don't get angry no matter what.

May we all be sweet Jews who merit a very sweet year!
Picture
For more on the holy Rav Yehudah Petiyah, please see the blog posts under the category Minchat Yehudah.
0 Comments

The Jewess Mystique: The Truth about Women & Mitzvot

26/6/2018

4 Comments

 
Perhaps it's a good idea to talk a bit about women's real standing in Judaism.

As usual with anything that is authentic Judaism, it's not superficial. It's more complex and contains paradox.

So with that...

There's a very interesting incident described on page 101 in Rav Yehudah Petiya's book Minchat Yehudah (written around 1933) in the chapter on Parshat Ekev. This incident occurred while the rav was still living in Baghdad.

An elderly Jewish woman came to him with the following story:

She owned millstones and had been sifting wheat during in the morning hours when she found a date among the wheat. With the purest of intentions, she made the wrong blessing (she said borei pri ha'adamah instead of borei pri ha'etz) and ate the date.

When she returned to her sifting, she suddenly dozed off and saw an old man standing before her.

"Chen, chen lach, ishah tovah!" he greeted her.

(Chen is often translated as beauty, charm, favor, or grace and the phrase "Chen, chen lah" is found in Zechariah 4:7. So this old man used a beautiful expression of gratitude by saying, "Chen, chen to you, good woman!")

And this old man continued:
"And I give you thanks because you rescued me from the suffering I was enduring, even though you did not rescue me completely."

Then he disappeared.

So Rav Petiyah explained that the soul of this old man had been reincarnated into a date. And just by this simple yet pious woman eating the date, the old man ascended two levels together. As a date, he was at the level of tzomech (plant), skipped the level of chai (animal), and went straight to chai medaber (human).

Rav Petiyah states:
"By virtue of the blessing, he was rectified -- but not completely. Because she made the blessing of borei pri ha'adamah over the date when she should have made the blessing borei pri ha'etz, it's possible that he would have been rectified completely."
(Borei pri ha'adamah blesses the "fruit of the ground" -- usually vegetables. "Borei pri ha'etz blesses the fruit of the tree.)

It's very interesting that this sincere albeit simple & unlearned elderly woman possessed the ability to completely rectify a lost soul, and even her incorrect blessing still managed to achieve near-rectification. Rectifying souls is what kabbalists on the level of Rav Petiyah do. There are famous stories of tzaddikim rectifying souls by focusing on the special profound kavanot of a blessing before biting into a fruit.

But a simple elderly lady who doesn't even know the correct blessing?

Rav Petiyah offers an astounding reason for this:
"Since women are not obligated to occupy themselves with Torah and learning the secrets of the Zohar, therefore, it was enough for her to rectify the soul of this old man by virtue of a blessing alone."
The spiritual physics here are intriguing.

Men can rectify souls only after lots of learning, mind-focus, and inner purification.

But women can rectify souls just by making a sincere blessing (even if it's the wrong one).

Even more intriguingly, the brief description in the book indicates a particularly simple old woman, a woman who owns millstones and sifts wheat, rather than crochets or embroiders or cooks and bakes like other ladies her age. She's a woman so illiterate and ignorant, she doesn't even know the correct blessing even when the blessing is obvious. (Some blessings are more complicated, like needing to say "ha'adamah" over a banana rather than "ha'etz," but a date blessing is fairly straightforward.)

Furthermore, there's also a chance that she didn't really know Hebrew. Iraqi Jews spoke a form of Judeo-Arabic, which utilized many Hebrew terms (in much the way Yiddish utilizes many Hebrew terms), but she still may not have understood the literal meaning of the all-Hebrew blessing -- which, if true, means that she couldn't have said it with basic kavanah of the literal meaning, which makes it even more incredible that just her sincerity and purity counted for so much.

Finally, unlike the tzaddikim who made specially focused blessings over food, knowing the food often possessed souls in need of rectification, this elderly Jewess had no idea about this possibility.

Yet she was a sincere and pious Jewish lady, so Hashem gave her the merit to achieve a powerful kabbalistic accomplishment without her even realizing it.

But as implied by Rav Petiyah's words above, an illiterate ignorant man could never have achieved the same thing.

Yet there are even deeper and more enlightening implications in this story.

The Jewess Mystique

For around a century, there has been increasing back-and-forth about women's role in Judaism, the variations of it, in comparison to men's role, how a woman's role adjusts to modern times, and so on.

Likewise, there are Jewish laws purely based on gender that either forbid or permit men or woman to do or not do certain things.

And grounded knowledgeable frum women pleasantly explain that they don't feel the need to engage in men's mitzvot, and that they're even happy they don't bear the same yoke men do. (And men presumably prefer going to a minyan 3 times a day & learning the Daf Yomi to enduring monthly cycles, pregnancy, birth, and menopause.)

Yet it's even deeper than that, according to Rav Petiyah.

For example, because women are mostly forbidden to wear tefillin, this means that women don't NEED to wear tefillin in order to achieve whatever men achieve by wearing tefillin.

In other words, WOMEN CAN ACHIEVE what men achieve WITHOUT specifically male mitzvot.

When I took a tznius class years ago, the speaker explained that a married woman covering her hair is equal to a man donning tefillin shel rosh. Covering your elbows is equal to tefillin shel yad.

Unfortunately, due to the spirit of the times, whenever people talk like this, it sounds like apologetics and patronizing appeasement, like how you try to get a child to do a "biiiiiiig mitzvah!".

(This is despite the fact that specialized photo technology has revealed special changes in the auras of women before and after covering their hair and in the auras of men before and after donning tefillin -- link at the end of the post.)

That's why I like to take sources from before these modern movements. The above story may have been published in 1930s Jerusalem, but it occurred in Baghdad much earlier. Needless to say, turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Iraq was not a bastion of feminism, so we need not suspect that Rav Petiyah was just trying to bulk up women's egos. It's also clear that he wrote the book expecting men to read it, not women.

So we can take his words to heart in the innocence, sincerity, and wisdom with which they were intended.

Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty

There's another point here that often gets lost in the crowd.

Judaism is not a dry, intellectual collection of scholarship.

The entire point of halacha is for the SOUL.

The soul is eternal. This World is a narrow, finite, dim world of only 3-dimensions.

The real world beyond this consists of several different levels and many different dimensions imperceptible and unimaginable to us in our current state.

Our life in this world is finite, 120 years at most.

Beyond that, there is eternity.

This is why the focus needs to go deeper than feel-good or feel-contemporary academic-based arguments, even though a genuine and deeper focus becomes impossible when faced with an opposition that is agnostic at best, and immature, petty, superficial, and glory-seeking.

The Tools You Need

I want to point out that Sara Imeinu did not don tefillin nor did she undergo bris milah, wear a kippah...yet she achieved a higher level of prophecy than Avraham Avinu and merited to speak directly to angels.

Chana was never and could never be counted in a minyan or lead prayers as chazzan, yet she merited to be the model of prayer for all generations and produced Shmuel Hanavi, who was only second to Moshe Rabbeinu (H/T to informed reader Bracha), achieving more than her illustrious husband, Elkanah. Also, it's interesting to point out that Chana initially achieved the level she did without performing the traditional women's mitzvot connected to giving birth, nursing, and Jewish child-rearing.

Furthermore, holy women achieve their holiness despite regularly entering into a state a spiritual tumah called niddah.

Yes, there are mitzvot traditionally considered in the male realm (like learning Chumash with commentaries), but that women are not only permitted to do, and even receive Heavenly reward for this. (As Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg explained, a woman receives the reward for one who is not obligated in the mitzvah while a man receives the reward for one who is obligated in that mitzvah.)

But as stated above, there are also gender-based prohibitions for both men and women. Those who transgress these prohibitions aren't doing themselves or the Jewish community any good.

Each person has been given the tools he or she needs in order to reach his or her maximum potential.

No one wants a surgeon performing surgery with an electric chainsaw and no one wants logs cut with a scalpel.

You need the tools meant for YOU.

And you'll find your personal tools within your gender, personality, innate character traits, state of health, life situation, culture, and much more.

The Treasure in Your Own Backyard

Hashem is Perfectly Just and has the spiritual physics set up exactly right for each person, regardless of gender, to achieve whatever potential Hashem has set for him or her.

It's not about women "settling" for second place or being second-best.

It's about women resisting the pressure to expend the time, mental gymnastics, money, and sweat to go digging for gold among rocks in a distant place when she has a field sown with diamonds in her own backyard.
Picture
Rav Yehudah Petiyah (also spelled Fatiyah) was born in Bagdad in 1859 and passed away in Jerusalem in 1942. He was humble and deeply compassionate Jew of tremendous spiritual stature and abilities. To learn more about him and his book Minchat Yehudah, please start here:
Minchat Yehudah Part I: Teshuvah & What Happens After You Die

For a good explanation and photos of the auras of Jewish men before and after tefillin and Jewish women before and after hair-covering, please see:
The Human Aura (may it be a zechut & an ilui neshama for Menachem ben Reuven -- formerly, I had him identified by his mother's name as per Sefardi minhag, but thank you to Neshama who reminded me that Ashkenazi minhag is different, and thank you to Stella for going out of her way to supply his father's name)

Please click on WOMEN to read more about the holy Jewish women mentioned above.
________________
P.S. Regarding the feminist tides against Torah Judaism: There is a lot more to say, like how some of the leading feminist rabble rebelling against Jewish tradition don't even believe in God, so what do they care about Torah and mitzvot and where women pray and how? They are obviously disreputable hypocrites and rapacious autocrats, may Hashem have mercy and atone for us all.
4 Comments

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

22/6/2017

0 Comments

 
Go back to Part I or Part II

PictureMan 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 Petiyah, 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 Petiyah 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 the angel 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!
Picture
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
0 Comments

Minchat Yehudah Part II: True and Astounding Compassion

21/6/2017

2 Comments

 
Fall back to Part I
Spring forward to Part III

The Saga of a Suffering Teenage Jewess

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 exorcist 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.

Rav Yehuda Fetiyah's Humble Motivation for Helping Such Awful Souls

​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?

All the more so, the souls of those of us who may be flawed, but not nearly as flawed as the soul of the above.

The Profound Love & Compassion Within

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
Picture
2 Comments

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

20/6/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture
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, Pirkeh 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 in this post so as not to confuse the English reader. UPDATE 2021: But in later posts, I decided it's actually not that confusing, so his name is written in later posts according to its authentic pronunciation: Petiyah.)
 
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 encountered.
 
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 didn’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

Note: Many people like to extract the above examples to show how bad the Jewish community was in the olden days when "everyone was Orthodox" or something like that.

They use it to justify their image of themselves & their modern Jewish community as "an upright Jew" or "perfectly acceptable Jew" (regardless of how lax they are with actual Jewish Law).

Yet it's clear the above examples represent the exception & not the rule.

In the entire book, such examples represent a small handful of the vast Jewish community Rav Fetiyah served in both Iraq & Eretz Yisrael.
2 Comments
Forward>>
    Privacy Policy

    Picture
    Please note this is an affiliate link. Meaning, I get a small cut but at NO extra cost to you. If you use it, I'm grateful. If not, you still get a giant mitzvah connected to Eretz Yisrael.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner


    Myrtle Rising

    I'm a middle-aged housewife and mother in Eretz Yisrael who likes to read and write a lot.


    Picture
    Sample Chapters

    Categories

    All
    Aliyah
    Anti Jewish Bigotry
    Anti-jewish-bigotry
    Astronomy
    Book Review
    Books
    Chagim/Holidays
    Chinuch
    Coronavirus
    Dictionaries
    Emuna
    Eretz Yisrael
    Erev Rav
    Gender
    Hitbodedut
    "If The Torah..."
    Jewish Astrology
    Kav Hayashar
    Kli Yakar
    Lashon Hara
    Love
    Me'am Loez
    Minchat Yehudah
    Mishlei/Proverbs
    Netivot Shalom
    Parenting
    Parsha
    Pele Yoetz
    Perek Shira
    Pesach
    Politics
    Prayer
    Purim
    Rav Avigdor Miller
    Rav Itamar Schwartz
    Rav L.Y. Bender
    Recipes
    "Regular" Jews
    Rosh Hashanah
    Society
    Sukkot
    Tammuz
    Technology
    Tehillim/Psalms
    Teshuvah
    The Lost Princess
    Tisha B'Av
    USA Scary Direction
    Women
    Yom Kippur

    Jewish Blogs

    Daf Yomi Review
    Derech Emet
    Going...Habayitah
    Halacha Q&A
    Hava haAharona
    Miriam Adahan
    My Perspective

    Shirat Devorah
    Tomer Devorah
    Toras Avigdor
    True Tzaddikim
    Tznius Blog

    Yeranen Yaakov
    Rabbi Ofer Erez (Hebrew lectures)

    Jewish Current Events

    Hamodia
    Sultan Knish
    Tomer Devorah
    Yeranen Yaakov

    Jewish Health

    People Smarts

    Archives

    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    RSS Feed

    Copyright Notice

    ©2015-2022 Myrtle Rising
    Excerpts and links may be used without express permission as long as a link is provided back to the appropriate Myrtle Rising page.

Home/Blog

Most Popular

Kli Yakar in English

Aliyah

Contact

Copyright © 2023
Photos used under Creative Commons from Brett Jordan, BAMCorp, Terrazzo, Abode of Chaos, Michele Dorsey Walfred, marklordphotography, M.Burak Erbaş, torbakhopper, jhritz, Rina Pitucci (Tilling 67), Svadilfari, kum111, Tim simpson1, FindYourSearch, Giorgio Galeotti, ChrisYunker, Jaykhuang, YourCastlesDecor, bluebirdsandteapots, Natalia Medd, Stefans02, Israel_photo_gallery, Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet, BradPerkins, zeevveez, dfarrell07, h.koppdelaney, Edgardo W. Olivera, nafrenkel88, zeevveez, mtchlra, Liz | populational, TraumaAndDissociation, thinboyfatter, garofalo.christina, skpy, Free Grunge Textures - www.freestock.ca, Nerru, Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith, trendingtopics, dolbinator1000, DonkeyHotey, zeevveez, erix!, zeevveez, h.koppdelaney, MAURO CATEB, kevin dooley, keepitsurreal, annikaleigh, bjornmeansbear, publicdomainphotography, Leonard J Matthews, Exile on Ontario St, Nicholas_T, marcoverch, planman, PhilWolff, j_lai, t.kunikuni, zeevveez, Ian W Scott, Brett Jordan, RonAlmog, Bob Linsdell, NASA Goddard Photo and Video, aaron_anderer, ** RCB **, Tony Webster, mypubliclands, AntonStetner, Zachi Evenor, MrJamesBaker, sammydavisdog, Frode Ramone, Wonder woman0731, wrachele, kennethkonica, Skall_Edit, Pleuntje, Rennett Stowe, *S A N D E E P*, symphony of love, AlexanderJonesi, Arya Ziai, ePublicist, Enokson, Tony Webster, Art4TheGlryOfGod, seaternity, Andrew Tarvin, zeevveez, Israel_photo_gallery, Iqbal Osman1, Matt From London, Tribes of the World, Eric Kilby, miracle design, RonAlmog, slgckgc, Kim Scarborough, DonkeyHotey, Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, h.koppdelaney, gleonhard, Pedro Travassos, nociveglia, RonAlmog, Israel_photo_gallery, Septemia, Paulann_Egelhoff, Tatiana12, MAD Hippies Life, Neta Bartal, milesgehm, shooting brooklyn, RonAlmog, smilygrl, gospelportals, leighblackall, symensphotographie, zeevveez, Kyknoord, wotashot (taking a break), Tambako the Jaguar, bitmask, Arnie Sacknooson, mattymatt, Rob Swystun, zeevveez, Dun.can, Tim Patterson, timeflicks, garlandcannon, HRYMX, fred_v, Yair Aronshtam, zeevveez, Ron Cogswell, FindYourSearch, Israel_photo_gallery, Serendipity Diamonds, zeevveez, Steve Corey, Dominic's pics, leighklotz, Stefans02, dannyman, RonAlmog, Stephen O, RonAlmog, Tips For Travellers, Futurilla, anomalous4, Bob Linsdell, AndyMcLemore, symphony of love, andydr, sara~, Gamma Man, Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, robef, European Southern Observatory, Brett Jordan, Johnny Silvercloud, Israel_photo_gallery, smkybear, --Sam--, Paulann_Egelhoff, Selena Sheridan, D'oh Boy, campbelj45ca, 19melissa68, entirelysubjective, Leimenide, dheera.net, Brett Jordan, HonestReporting.com, Iqbal Osman1, One Way Stock, Jake Waage, picto:graphic, Marcelo Alves, KAZVorpal, Sparkle Motion, Brett Jordan, Ambernectar 13, Howdy, I'm H. Michael Karshis, Steven DuBois, Cristian V., tortuga767, Jake Cvnningham, D'oh Boy, Eric Kilby, quinn.anya, Lenny K Photography, One Way Stock, Bird Eye, ell brown, Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, Kevin M. Gill, lunar caustic, gerrybuckel, quinn.anya, Kaz Andrew, kodomut, kayugee, jintae kim's photography, Futurilla, terri_bateman, Patty Mooney, Amydeanne, Paulann_Egelhoff, Mulling it Over, Ungry Young Man, Ruth and Dave, yangouyang374, symphony of love, kennethkonica, young@art, Brett Jordan, slgckgc, Celestine Chua, rkimpeljr, Kristoffer Trolle, TooFarNorth, D'oh Boy, Grace to You, LittleStuff.me, Kevin M. Gill, philozopher, traveltipy.com, Alan Cleaver, crazyoctopus, d_vdm, tonynetone, penjelly, TheToch, JohnE777, hello-julie, DaveBleasdale, Michael Candelori Photography, andessurvivor, slgckgc, byzantiumbooks, sasha diamanti