I am here to
offer a free business opportunity -
You know how
these days everything Jewish is sold in pre-packaged kits – arba minim sets, bedikas chametz
kits, 44-piece Chanukah oil kits, tefillin accessories kits, etc. Well, I have
a great idea for another pre-packaged Jewish product gimmick that will sell
like felafel here in Eretz Yisrael and in frum communities world-wide. Personally,
I am beyond the stage of entrepreneurship, so I don’t plan on doing it myself. Instead,
I am offering it to the world. Anyone who wants…here’s your chance!
All you need are
medium size aluminum baking pans, lots of tea candles, books of matches, and an
instruction guide.
What do I
want to sell?
I want to
sell pre-packaged Matya ben Charash Segulah kits. Guaranteed to work, or your
money back!
I’ll give a
testimonial – it worked for me. Actually, I am obligated to give the
testimonial. It’s part of the segulah. And this is why I am writing this
post. Since I happen to have a public forum, I have no excuse not to use it to
publicize the “yeshuah”.
Okay, I am a
little ahead of myself, so let’s discuss who was Matya ben Charash and what the
segulah is.
For most of
us, all we know about Matya ben Charash is his profound advice in Pirkei Avos:
רבי מתיא בן
חרש אומר, הוי מקדים בשלום כל
אדם. והוי זנב לאריות, ואל תהי ראש לשועלים.
Rabi Matya ben Charash says – One should initiate in greeting any man; and it is better for one to be the follower of lions than to be the leader of foxes.
He also has
an appearance in Yoma 4b and later, in Yoma 83a (Mishna 8:6), he gives us some
medical advice, but that’s about all.
Okay. He can
give good advice, but who was he really?
The sources
say that he was a post-churban Tanna and a contemporary of Rabi Shimon ben
Yochai and the Bnei Beseira. He tried to run away from Eretz Yisrael but
initially turned back. Subsequently, he emigrated to Rome and established a
renowned yeshiva there.
I found one
source that says that it was due to his absence from Eretz Yisrael that we
don’t have any Halachic statements in the Mishna in his name. Nevertheless, it
is claimed that he is buried in the town of Eilabun in the Galil. I find this
to be a bit paradoxical.
Anyway, for those of us connected with Jewish legend (agadata) and mussar, there is a well-known powerful story about Rabi Matya ben Charash (Yalkut Shimoni Torah 161). The story goes as follows:
RMBC was in the Beis Midrash studying with fervor and his face shone because he had never gazed at a woman. The Satan just happened in (to the Beis Midrash??) and was envious of his purity. The Satan requested permission to test him which was granted. Hence. he made himself look like a beautiful woman and passed in front of him (very slowly). Rabi Matya ben Charash turned away but “she” kept making new passes in every direction. Finally, he ordered his student to bring him a nail and he poked out his eyes. HKBH immediately ordered the Angel Refael to come and heal his eyes. RMBC initially refused but finally relented when he was told that he would not be put to the test ever again.
The Book of
Gilgulim claims that he was a gilgul of Palti ben Layish who, upon the orders
of Shaul HaMelech, lived with Shaul’s daughter Michal even though she was
Halachically betrothed to Dovid. Even though Palti made it his business not to
touch her, he still could not abstain from looking at her and so this needed to
be rectified in the person of RMBC. It continues that both of them were
gilgulim of Yosef HaTzadik. In fact, the story of the nail is stated in Yalkut
Shimoni in reference to Yosef.
Because of
this, it is known to be a big segulah that anyone who suffers from
vision problems should visit his (alleged) kever in Eilabun and daven there and
should have a yeshuah in his/her eyesight.
This is what
we know about the Tanna Rabi Matya ben Charash – but that segulah is not
the one that I’m discussing here. The widely known, and practiced, segulah
that I want to discuss is the one of eighteen candles.
Before I
describe the segulah, it is important to remind everyone that only HKBH
can help us with anything. All our tefillos go straight to Him. When we
daven at one’s kever or in their zechus, all we want to do is to invoke their
merit to help us with our tefillos. One must never lose sight of this.
The segulah
of Rabi Matya ben Charash works likes like this. One gathers eighteen candles
to one spot. He, or she, lights one candle and announces that it is l’iluy
nishmas the Tanna Matya ben Charash. Thereupon, he/she recites chapter 86
in Tehillim. The person then lights the next candle for the merit of RMBC and,
once again, recites chapter 86. This is repeated for a total of eighteen times.
Then the
petitioner goes to chapter 119 of Tehillim and recites the alphabetic sections
that correspond to the letters קרע שטן (kuf-resh-ayin-shin-tes-nun).
After this,
the petitioner davens to HKBH for His help and salvation on a specific
issue that needs to be addressed in the zechus of the kedusha of this
great Tanna.
That’s about
it, but there is just one more thing. The petitioner should accept on himself
that when he has a yeshuah, he/she will publicize it.
Incidentally,
it is always a good idea to embellish such a segulah with a few coins to
the tzedakah box. Some people put in a coin or two beforehand, and some after,
and there are those who put in something like a shekel as part of each recital,
eighteen times.
This segulah
has been gaining awareness and popularity over recent years and people like me
are saying that it really helps. As such, I thought it may be a great business
enterprise to package it all up in one kit and sell it on the open market.
Go right
ahead. I won’t even ask for royalties.
As I wrote
above, the true purpose of this post is not to give people business advice.
Based on my business record, I am the last person to give financial advice. (Of
course, when we look at paradoxes such as that most marriage counselors are
products of failed marriages, I may be the best person to give business
advice.) The purpose of this post is to use my forum to publicize the great yeshuah
that I so far obtained after I undertook the segulah of Rabi
Matya ben Charash.
I say “so
far” because the episode is far from over and there is no telling where it will
stand when the music stops. Nevertheless, the mere fact that it stands where it
does, at this point in time, is itself a great yeshuah. I continue to
daven for a happy ending when all the dust settles, but there is still a whole
lot of dust flying around.
It is acutely
appropriate to discuss this in my blog because this yeshuah relates to
the things I have written in this blog. As you might guess, it has to do with
the never-ending Malka Leifer episode and the long-standing feud that I have
been having with the now-defunct organization known as Jewish Community Watch
(JCW), its astute and pious leaders, Meyer Seewald and Shana Aaronson, and
subsequently with the accusers of Malka Leifer (the amazing Sapper sisters) and
a biased Israeli judge.
Note that I
provided an update regarding the Malka Leifer episode and JCW in my previous post.
I am a bit ambivalent
where to go from here. If I tell over the story with all the relevant details,
this post will grow into another very long megillah. If I only give the basics,
it may come across vague. The best thing is to keep it as brief as I can and,
if need be, to elaborate in some future posts.
Those who
follow my blog know that on the one hand, I am bucking the tide. On the other
hand, the chareidi and Halachic position is typically not the most popular one.
I stand for such values as presumption of innocence, burden of proof, looking
at the whole picture, sticking with the guidelines of Chazal, and Kedushas Eretz
Yisrael. I can attest that from all of my detractors and even some very learned
Jews, these values are in short supply.
There is no
glory in promoting very unpopular positions just because it happens to be the
perspective of our Halacha and mesora – which alone is intrinsically unpopular.
As others have said, “It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it.”
Throughout
this episode, numerous people have respectfully told me that they disagree with
my position, but not a single person has been able to tell me what is wrong
with my position and in what way their opposing position concurs with the
Halachic sources that I (and all of us) rely on.
אין
חכמה ואין תבונה ואין עצה לנגד ה
Alas, we find
in our midst some patronizing people who believe they are above the rules of
Halacha and that age-old statutes do not apply to them or to their mighty task
of doing in bad guys. As such, they have no boundaries. I described these types
of people at length in my 2017 post Victim Turned Predator.
These people
cannot face up to the restrictions that the Torah places on their activities
and need to find any means to justify what they do. As part of this impulse,
they believe that it is a G-d given mitzvah to defame, discredit and deplatform
anybody who inhibits their glory and agenda by preaching what the Torah
really says.
If the truth would
be on their side, they could use it to legitimately refute opposing viewpoints.
But, since it is not, and they have no legitimate disputation, they resort to
demonization and character assassination.
This is
precisely the level that Meyer Seewald and Shana Aaronson of JCW and Magen L’Kehillot
HaYehudiyot, respectively, stooped down to as I was writing my series of posts
about Malka Leifer. They were unable to legitimately refute my position and
they were too intimidated by it to just ignore it, so they felt compelled to
compose a defamatory and demonizing article about me and post it on their
website. I alluded to this in some previous posts (HERE and HERE).
The
defamation was so malicious and JCW was so obstinate about not removing it that
I eventually decided that this needs to go to Beis Din. Due to numerous
technical difficulties, Beis Din was not feasible, and I obtained permission to
take it to court. After JCW ignored the requisite cease and desist warnings, I
had no choice but to proceed with the suit.
Instead of
retracting or settling, JCW chose to distract the court with a countersuit.
There was nothing written about JCW or the Sapper sisters that was not true and
legitimate – which does not meet the threshold of defamation - but,
nevertheless, they cherry-picked some true criticisms and a few cynical remarks
from about 5 or 6 of my posts and pulled them out of context and recruited the
Sapper sisters to file a countersuit as maligned “victims”.
They engaged
some high-end lawyer from one of Israel’s largest and costliest law firms. I am
assuming that JCW footed the costs and paid for all this with money from their
donors. They can correct me if I am wrong.
There is a
well-known witticism: A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the
judge.
I don’t think
the lawyer had any special connection to the judge, nor do I think he is such a
great lawyer. He didn’t need to be. She (the judge) was a better lawyer than he
was. And she certainly “knows” the judge.
In my very
humble opinion, the judge in this case was overtly biased, untruthful,
irrational, unethical and hypocritical. This is a verbose way of saying that
she was (and is) agenda driven. I believe that she was overstepping her
authority and overstepping the law and she was certainly overstepping the
halacha which, in her ruling, she claimed to uphold.
The judge
invested 48 pages in a very flawed ruling replete with falsehoods,
inaccuracies, and double standards. Her ruling was basically one long and
irrational criticism against me for trying to dan l’kaf zechus an accused
sexual offender because she strongly believes that accused sexual offenders
should not be defended. She as much as said so.
Of course,
she believes this. She’s only been a judge for about five years. Prior to that,
she was a prosecutor for fifteen years! A prosecutor does not
believe in presumption of innocence. A prosecutor is paid to incriminate people
they don’t know regardless of whether they are truly guilty or not.
Hence, due to
her personal bias and inherent presumption of guilt, she rationalized JCW's defamation
against me and, simultaneously, callously dismissed all the legal defenses
which were (to an unbiased person) clearly in my favor. In order to dispel the
fact that I presented the Halachic perspective, the judge pretended that she
understands and respects the Halacha and drummed up some irrelevant sources in
a feeble attempt to show that the Halacha is “debatable”.
At the end of
it all, she used her twisted logic to incriminate me for presenting the
Halachic perspective and to whitewash their defamation against me. To chastise
me, she awarded a very inflated judgement to Dassi Erlich and a few thousand shekels
to Meyer Seewald and slapped me with legal fees for both cases. All of this
worked out to the shekel equivalent of almost $100,000.
She also
ordered me to remove entire op-ed posts based on the marginal frivolous
complaints that could be and were edited. This is blatant censorship and beyond
the authority of the court. She had no problem with the JCW article against me
because, even though she conceded that it is defamatory, in her rationale it
was “justified” defamation. Her words were, "It wasn't more harmful than was called for". I am at a loss to figure out why intentionally harmful banter is ever called for.
This is where
I was at the end of October, 2022.
Now this sum happens
to be a lot of money. It’s more than I have in my bank account (which is in
heavy overdraft), so I am not very interested in paying it. Especially as I see
it as being unjust and unjustified, I don’t think it should be paid. Not only
that, as I wrote earlier, the ruling was flawed in many ways. (I wrote above
that it is just too overwhelming to elaborate in this post. If there is a need
and interest, I may follow up with more details in future posts.) There are
clearly solid grounds for an appeal.
There are two
things one requires to file an appeal:
- A seasoned
lawyer who is geared for handling an appeal
- Money to pay such lawyer and other legal costs
An appeal in
a civil case must be filed within 60 days of the ruling. The lawyers who
represented me in the double case were quite busy and did not want to take on
the appeal. So, as of late October, I had neither a lawyer nor money.
No sweat. I
have HKBH.
The truth is,
one thing there is no shortage of in Eretz Israel is lawyers. I shopped around
and got some leads but, surprise of surprise, they all wanted to get paid. (There
is a very big shortage of pro bono lawyers.) I had some ideas of how to get a
hold of some money, which primarily consisted of begging, borrowing and crowdfunding.
None of which guaranteed success.
Regardless - אין לנו לסמוך אלא על אבינו שבשמים
So, I turned
to Him. But, to give it an added boost, I endeavored to enlist the help of Rabi
Matya ben Charash. So, one day in November, my wife and I undertook the segulah
of Rabi Matya ben Charash – the eighteen candles and reciting perek 86 and all
the trimmings. I needed to get an appeal filed within [less than] 60 days and I
needed HKBH to help me.
It all
happened.
Firstly, I
was introduced to a young energetic and religious lawyer who understands the
case, understands this judge, understands the system, and knows how to handle
it. He gave me a reasonable price offer but needed to know that the money will
be there.
Very shortly
thereafter, one generous benefactor, who has helped me in the past, offered to
cover about two thirds of the expenses. That was all I needed to get started
and to meet the preliminary court expenses and mandated security bond.
We got the
appeal filed on time and we immediately applied for a “stay of execution” (עיכוב ביצוע הליכים). The stay of execution is a request that the initial judgement
is not enforceable until after the appeal is decided. This is necessary
because it is not automatic that when one files an appeal, the initial judgement
is frozen and does not need to be carried out. If a stay of execution is not
granted by the court, the victorious party can enforce the judgement even while
the appeal is in progress.
In our case,
we did not get an official response from the court on the stay of execution, but
the court did order the other parties to respond to the appeal and set a date
for oral arguments. This means that the appeal is taken seriously and has
preliminary merit. As far as the stay of execution goes, since the court did
not address it, then the sides maintain the status quo and the initial judgement
is frozen ipso facto.
The beauty of
all this is that not only is my [alleged] money staying put for the time being but, also, I am not forced to comply with the first judge’s censorship order for the time
being. Currently, all my posts are still up.
The last yeshuah
on the list is that the initial defamatory article against me finally came down. Since 2017, it was parked in the
News section of JCW’s original website. JCW refused to voluntarily take it down, even after the case went to litigation. But ironically, as they rejuvenated their website and transferred virtually
all the existing content and news articles into their new-look habitat, they
very wisely refrained from transferring the defamatory article. So, for now at
least, it is finally off the Internet. I expect it to remain that way. If it does
not, I will continue to hold Shana Aaronson (the author), Rabbi Blau, JCW, and
the new Jewish Australian webhost accountable.
To sum up,
since the time I carried out the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash, I received
funding for the appeal, found a capable lawyer, filed the appeal, obtained a
temporary stay of execution of payment, retained all my writings, and have seen
the defamatory post removed from the Internet.
Not a bad day
at the office.
Yet,
the game is not over. On one hand, I am still dealing with the Israeli court
system. On the other hand, instead of a clearly biased, female, ex-prosecutor
judge who ruled and manipulated the case single-handedly, I currently am facing an all-male, three-judge panel who, to date, are not showing any clear biases. Two of the
three were never prosecutors. One of them was a prosecutor for only two years
and this was more than twenty years ago.
None of this
really matters because the ultimate Judge is the שופט כל הארץ. I don’t know where this case is going to go, but with the siyatta
d’shemaya I’ve been having, there is nothing to worry about. This will have a happy ending and, bli neder, I'll be writing about it again.
השיבה
שופטנו כבראשונה ויועצנו כבתחילה והסר ממנו יגון ואנחה
Appeal for my Appeal
My One Above
and Seven Below project has always been not for profit. Over the years, I have
gotten some meager revenues from selling my books, but they only served to
offset the printing costs.
For all the
years of my blog, I have never even thought of asking readers for any support
or donations. I am not writing my blog for profit or glory, and I haven’t
gotten any of either. I am doing it for all the reasons I wrote in the
beginning of my book – to help people understand the Torah world and the
Halachic perspective on current issues and to assist those who want to become
part of it. It is all לשם שמים.
The generous
benefactor who offered me two thirds of the expenses came through with his
donation and with Hashem’s help, I have covered a lot of the remainder. I will
manage to cover it all, IY”H, but I’m not there yet.
If any
readers feel that they have gained from my blog and want to help me cover my
legal expenses, it would be greatly appreciated.
Currently, I
do not use PayPal due to their globalist censorship policies. I am only using
Zelle. The Zelle address is:
This address
is also suitable to email me with inquiries and for further details.
Donations are
not tax deductible. I do believe they are deductible from maaser but one
needs to consult their own Rabbi.
Thank you.
Yechezkel
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