Simanim and the Segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash - An Update

 

  

As Rosh Hashanah and the Yamim Noraim approach, we run to the stores to buy apples and honey, dates, raisins, pomegranates, squash, carrots, leek, black-eyed peas, fish heads and beet leaves.

Maybe not all of us, but many of us.

Why?

Well, these are the traditional “simanim”, or signs, through which we hope to inspire a sweet and successful upcoming year. These go into the realm of what we call “segulos” (omens).

The strange thing is that we are not supposed to acknowledge omens. The Torah tells us תמים תהיה עם ה' אלקיך. One should be unassuming in regard to HKBH. So why is there such a big hullabaloo about these simanim? Do they really work?

And the answer is No, the simanim by themselves don’t work at all. But…before we stuff the apple with honey or the date or pomegranate into our mouths (or after, doesn’t matter) we say a little prayer that says Yehi Ratzon – may it be Your will – that the events of the coming year should be sweet and productive, etc. Rosh Hashanah is a big eiss ratzon, time of favor. So, even small tefillos like this can make a difference.

So, if it’s the prayer that helps and not the apple with honey, what do we need them for?

We really don’t. But they inspire us to say these brief prayers. Also, we have a bit of fun with them.

This is really the story with everything that we consider a segulah anytime of the year. They are meant to be carried out along with some tefillos and tzedaka. And it is meant to bring us closer to HKBH, which is teshuva. So, if there is tefillah and teshuva and tzedaka, this is indeed an effective segulah for all good things.

In addition to this, we do have a belief that the merits of tzaddikim give us a boost. It is not in place of the tefilla and teshuva and tzedakah but in conjunction with them. Whenever we daven, we try to invoke the zechus of our fathers Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov. Specifically on Rosh Hashanah, we clasp onto the zechus of Avraham and Yitzchok for their mesiras nefesh at the akaida.

From here we learn that any tzaddik (or even simple Jew) who endured an episode of mesiras nefesh or Kiddush Hashem can add his zechus to our tefillos. This is why we go to the kevarim of tzadikim, so that their merits can help our tefillos. Or we go to a live tzaddik or mekubal or Admor and give him a pidyon to daven for us.

Thus, on the one hand there certainly is value to the simanim of Rosh Hashanah, to go to kivrei tzadikim and to living ones. But, on the other hand, there are no guarantees whatsoever and, at the end of the day, or the end of the year, or the end of Yom Tov, it all boils down to what HKBH thinks is best for us.

As such, it is hard to ever know if a segulah or even an actual tefillah was effective. It’s a lot like adding bleach to your white load to get it snowy white. If it comes out as white as you want, you can’t really know if it wouldn’t be just as white without the bleach. If it isn’t so white, you can’t tell if without the bleach it would have been worse.

Another thing is that rarely do we get as much as we hoped for. For sure, whenever we daven and implement segulos for things like health, parnassa or another form of yeshuah, we always prefer to merit a geulah sheleima. This means a resolution that eradicates our problem once and for all. Rarely do we a get a “response” that is so resolute. Very often we get only a partial yeshuah. Things are better than they were but not as rosy as we want them to be.

What would life be without its challenges?

For me personally, parnassah is always a challenge. This is while being blessed with a very large family and very limited earning opportunities once I came to Eretz Yisroel and had to abandon the diamond business. Two years ago, I was thrilled to marry off two daughters within five months of each other and this past year I married off two sons in even less time. It’s very taxing but, praised be HKBH, I got past it.

But I had some unexpected (or should I say, unwanted) challenges as well. Specifically, it is the defamation case that I wrote about six months ago. This was my original post about the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash. I wrote there that the efforts of a very biased judge and a very unscrupulous lawyer resulted in a malicious judgement which amounted to close to $100,000 US dollars. I wrote that I successfully launched an appeal and that, at the time, the appeal was pending. I would update my readers after it was fully resolved.

I later wrote that I implemented the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash a second time on behalf of Malka Leifer as the jury was deliberating the verdict in her case.

As is a “condition” of the segulah, it is my duty to discuss the positive results.

In both cases, I did not enjoy the geulah sheleima that I was hoping for. I suppose that it is fair to say that a geulah sheleima is too much  למעלה מן הטבע to be considered practical. Yet, in both cases there was a substantial yeshuah for each of us, respectively, that indicates that our tefillos were not ignored.

Firstly, in my defamation case.

The judges scheduled a hearing for oral arguments about mid-April. The lead judge claimed that they read all the material and then asked us if we have anything to add to our petition. My lawyer said a few points and the other lawyer said a few points and I said a few points. Then, the lead judge said that he doesn’t think I should be released from liability, and he sort of reiterated some of the bias of the initial judge. Yet, he said, that the judgement was exorbitant and exaggerated. So how about cutting it in half (just about) as a court suggested settlement?

We adjourned for a recess to allow me to mull over the “suggestion”.

I thought there are no grounds for liability and that even half is exorbitant and exaggerated. However, my lawyer said to me that the extreme exaggerated nature of the judgement makes it very difficult for an appeals judge to go to the other extreme. It’s not worth forcing the judges into deliberation to try to get a better outcome.

So, I took my lawyer’s advice and agreed to the settlement. I believe this means that the case is now deemed to be a settlement of the sides and it totally nullifies the original ruling. As such, the few thousand additional shekels that the original judge awarded to Meyer Seewald were wiped out. JCW came away with almost nothing (there was some expense money that was not nullified.) One more thing, as part of the settlement, their lawyer made me agree to remove the content of the posts that they singled out in their suit.

The Sapper sisters who are being portrayed as the poor victims got collectively NIS 150,000 to be paid out over time. I assume that most of this money is going to their lawyer. Either way, I equate their demeanor to that of Roye Ron in Ron vs. Versano. They did it for money and censorship. And they had to misrepresent my words, invent and distort “facts”, and pull other shtick to do it.* Just like the Ron vs. Versano case, the money they are taking is not kosher money.

I am not taking all this sitting down. Now that I can claim a concrete monetary loss, it is much more feasible than it was earlier to bring some of the offending parties to a Din Torah. I am currently pursuing that route to reclaim some or all of these losses.

This is not where I really wanted to be, but it is a lot better than where I was when the malicious judgement first came out last October. It is definitely a yeshuah. Can I credit the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash? Like the bleach in the white wash, I will never know. But it certainly did not do me any harm.

So much for me. What about Mrs. Leifer?

I undertook the segulah for her shortly before the verdict was announced. Of course, I was hoping for a full acquittal, and this did not come to be. Still, out of 90 potential counts, she was only tried for 29 and only convicted for 18. Of these, she was totally acquitted for all counts involving the oldest sister, Nicole. I wrote all about my impressions of the verdict right HERE.

But the verdict is only half the story. The main point is what kind of a sentence did she get?

One thing is certain. The Sapper sisters were not content merely to obtain a guilty verdict to show the world how much Mrs. Leifer is really the evil person they made her out to be. Nor were they content with the monetary compensation they got from illegitimate lawsuits against the school and Mrs. Leifer. They wanted as long a sentence as they could possibly get.

This is evidenced by the pre-sentencing plea hearing that was held on June 28, 2023 in which the accusers were permitted to expound how much Mrs. Leifer ruined their lives. Thus, what they were after was punishment for allegedly ruining their lives, not any kind of compensation as our Torah dictates. This constitutes nekama plain and simple.

The good thing is that Nicole Meyer wasn’t allowed to present at that hearing since all of the charges that pertained to her were dropped. Of course, Elly Sapper was, even though she is the one who voluntarily made herself available to Mrs. Leifer. She clearly intimated that her anguish about this case – which did not have to take place – is responsible for her miscarrying her child.

Perhaps. But one thing we know is that ever since the rollout of the Covid vaccinations, there has been a startling increase in the percentages of miscarriages in Australia and throughout the world. (See HERE and HERE.) Virtually all Australians are vaccinated.

On that note, and with all things considered, I expected to hear a very harsh sentence being pronounced.

The sentence was delivered on August 24, 2023, as the winds of Elul were blowing. Much to my [pleasant] surprise, the sentence was much milder than I anticipated. For all of the 18 counts, Mrs. Leifer was sentenced to 15 years in prison. She is to be eligible for parole after 11.5 of those.

The reports say the Judge Gamble “took into account” 5.6 years that she has been held in pre-trial detention and house arrest in Israel and in Australia. I am not sure if this means that this time is deducted from the 15 years or not, but I think it is. The reports are saying that this means she is eligible for parole in less than six years, so it implies that her total net sentence is only 8.4 years. Also, if I understood the Israeli extradition law properly, the Medinah can only extradite a citizen on condition that jail time be served here in Israel.

Thus, unless I am making some mistake, the result of this entire fiasco as of now is 8.4 years of incarceration here in Israel with eligibility for parole in less than six years.

This is definitely a tremendous yeshuah even though it falls short of the geulah sheleima that we hope for. Did the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash play any role?

We’ll never know. But I would say that the simanim that we eat on Rosh Hashanah and the brief tefillos that go along with them are nothing to be scorned.

As for the Sapper sisters, it doesn’t look to me like they got any geulah sheleima either. Yet, they all went on camera looking ecstatic and jubilant because they managed to get a Jewish woman sentenced to jail time even though there is nothing in our Halacha that condones such a thing under any conditions. I believe it constitutes gonev nefesh m’Yisrael. But, I suppose, a small nekama is better than no nekama.

All three sisters talk about “healing”. Dassi Erlich says, “This marks the end of this chapter in our lives and opens the chapter on our healing.” Nicole says, “We will start healing.” But Elie Sapper says it best, “The more time and distance we create we move further away from this trauma, the more ability we have to start healing.”

I hope they are right. I sincerely wish them all a refuah sheleima. But if they really wanted to heal, they should have created time and distance since 2008. Instead, they actively pursued this episode for over 15 years and, in my opinion, they inflicted a lot of damage along the way. I mentioned some of it in my previous posts. It includes Halachically illegitimate money they have squeezed out of the Adass school and out of me and who knows who else. It includes all the iniquities of mesira and gonev nefesh and, worst of all, the great Chillul Hashem.

Dassi Erlich is still pursuing “justice” against the Adass school officials for allowing Mrs. Leifer to leave Australia back in 2008. Currently, she submitted a manuscript of her autobiography to a publisher. The main goal of this autobiography is to demonize the Adass community. It says so right on the subtitle of the proposed cover.

Whether everything she writes is true or not, I cannot see the toelles of such a book (aside from more money). From my experiences in my defamation case, it is hard to say that they really care about the truth.* I am not convinced this book is being written in good faith.

*[One of the most amazing things about their televised statement was when Nicole Meyer openly stated (2:48), "Female perpetrators are under-reported and we had nothing to base it on." I wrote exactly this in some of my posts and the Sapper sisters actually accused me in their lawsuit of "lying" when I wrote that they had nothing to base it on. And here is Nicole Meyer admitting it openly in front of millions of viewers!]

All said, none of the above is a recipe for healing. There is a lot of teshuva that must be done and until it is, it is not possible to heal.

The apples and honey, dates, pomegranates, squash, fish heads and everything else are meant to awaken us that we want a happy and successful year. But we know that we really need to earn it through tefillah, tzedakah and teshuva. Without these things the zechus of our fathers and tzadikim such as Rabi Matya ben Charash will not help us, either.  

We don’t want partial geulos. We yearn for the geula sheleima. May it come speedily in our time. And also for a refuah sheleima - a complete healing. But we all have our work cut out for us.

תכיל שנה וקללותיה – תחל שנה וברכותיה.

 

שנה טובה ומבורכת וכתיבה וחתימה טובה לכולם!