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!
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