Lazer Beams

New week, New start

Sunday is here it's a new week. In fact, tonight is a new month too, the month of Av. We now start the 9-day countdown to Tisha B'Av, the worst day of our national calendar - the day our Holy Temple was destroyed and our 2000-year long exile and Diaspora began.

Baba Elazar was brutally murdered right before Shabbat (see Friday's post). Yet, the sun rose today as usual. That doesn't mean we're back to business as usual...

How many wake-up calls do we need to get our act together? Outside of a few alligator tears, have the brutal murders of the Fogel family, Leiby Kletzky, and Baba Elazar - all of sacred memory - moved us in the slightest to better ourselves?

The first Intifada began with rock-throwing. The rocks became knives, but nobody woke up. The knives became pistols, and everybody's still deep in spiritual slumber. The pistols became bombs, the bombs became shahidim, the shahidim became Kassam rockets and the Kassam rockets became Katyusha Grad missiles. Now the tzaddikim are getting murdered. Anybody waking up? What does Hashem need to do for us to get our act together?

Meanwhile, Achmedinejad is building his A-bomb and Hizbulla is itching for a missile war...

Rav Shalom Arush, my beloved teacher and spiritual guide, said right before Shabbat the what we thought was serving Hashem with dedication is not enough any more in light of the severe judgments facing our people. We all must make a new and much more dedicated start by rethinking our priorities in life and taking stock of ourselves - how can each of us improve? Every person knows in his or her heart what he or she needs to do. There's no need for preaching - let's just get to work.

Baba Elazar, another tragic sacrifice

We're so choked with tears and emotions that the keyboard is barely visible. The Jewish people have just suffered an inestimable loss - that of Baba Elazar from BeerSheva, may his pure and holy soul plead for all of us at the Heavenly Throne.

The south of Israel is known for its special tzadikim, one of the greatest and holiest was "Baba Elazar" - Rabbi Elazar AbuChatzera of saintly and blessed memory - who was stabbed to death after midnight by a deranged individual. All of us here at Breslev Israel, Emuna Outreach, and the Beams mourn the untimely disappearance of this tremendous tzaddik who never raised his eyes to look at the physical and material world. Continuing in the path of his holy father Baba Meir zatza'l from Ashdod and his holy grandfather and light unto our eyes the Baba Sali of Netivot, Baba Elazar is survived by his brothers - each a tzaddik in his own right: Rabbi David of Nahariya, Rabbi Yekutiel and Rabbi Raphael of Ashdod, and Rabbi Yehoshua Rahamim. Their one sister is married to Rabbi Chaim Pinto, the head Sefardi Rabbi of Ashdod.

Rabbi Raphael Abuchatzera once told me that there holy father made sure that all the brothers knew Zoher and Aramaic by age 8. He also told me that his brother Elazar was particularly special in his learning and in his personal holiness from the time he was a little boy.

Volumes are required to record the miracles that Baba Elazar performed. But greater than the miracles was his love for every single Jew, no matter what his or her background was.

People ask why. We certainly don't want to recall the misdeeds of our people; yet, the true tzaddikim of our generation have been fighting a bloody spiritual war to rescind or at least mitigate the severe judgments levelled at our people. Don't even ask what they are, because they're unthinkable. In the past month alone we've lost little Leiby Kletzky, Rav Michel Lefkowitz, the Sphinka Rebbe, and now Baba Elazar, all of saintly and blessed memory. Look how we're all paying the price:

Leiby Kletzky - sacrifice taken from American Jewry

Rav Lefkowitz - Lithuanian Jewry's sacrifice

Sphinka Rebbe - Chassidic Jewry's sacrifice

Baba Elazar - Sefardic Jewry's sacrifice

This must stop! Hashem is talking to us loud and clear, but few seem to understand the message. How many more holy sacrifices will we have to pay to prevent whatever catastrophes that the accusing forces are demanding? How much longer can we tolerate ugly hate and prejudice as well as the breach in personal modesty and holiness? When will we finally make teshuva from the heart and make ourselves worthy receptacles for the light of the Divine Presence? Don't forget - we're in the midst of the Three Weeks, and it's not even Rosh Chodesh Av yet. What will be? Who will wake up before it's too late?

Baba Elazar was the epitome of holiness. His untimely death was a mere hours after the gay-pride parade contaminated Jerusalem. For those with short memories, the kidnapping of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser together with the outbreak of the second Lebanon War and the unbelievable damage to the north of Israel also occured shortly after the 2006 gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

We cannot afford to lose any more tzaddikim.

First, we each must do our part to better our unconditional love for each other and at least start by removing hate and prejudice from our midst. For those who think we hate gays - you're wrong. We merely oppose public flaunts of Torah prohibitions, particularly in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Second, each of us must accept upon ourselves - as a loving sanctification of Baba Elazar's holy memory - a commitment to strengthen our personal holiness and modesty in some way. Hashem regards the slightest improvement as a great sacrifice. In fact, our commitment to Ahavat Yisrael and to personal holiness will undoubtedly lead to the true consolation of our people, the coming of Moshiach, and the rebuilding of our Holy Temple in Jerusalem, amen.

 

Your Good Points

Here's a two-minute segment of one of our recent talks in Uman, 3 weeks ago. With all the negative around that pulls us down, let's pick ourselves up by focusing on our good points. Rebbe Nachman says that each of our good points is like a musical note; the notes come together to make our own personal niggun (melody), which rises upward and gives Hashem tremendous gratification. Now, you can go into Shabbat feeling much better about yourself:

TTTT at Mule Creek Prison

Emuna Outreach is proud to be sponsoring the distribution of hundreds of copies of The Trail to Tranquility to inmates in the California State Prison system. Thanks to our friends at the Aleph Institute and Emuna Outeach activists David and Racheli Reckles, The Trail to Tranquility is already all widely distributed among inmates in the Florida and New York State prisons. Here's one of the many letters we received from inmates, this one from Mule Creek Prison in California:

Shalom, Emuna Outreach!

I read the Trail to Tranquility by Lazer Brody and am amazed at how universally that could be applied here in this prison. It would aid my Lifer’s Group in forming a Anger management Peer Education Group. What a precious gift it would be to prepare these men for the Parole Board and for life once released.

As you probably have heard, California has the most deplorable conditions of confinement in the country.  It is also true that California has done away with all educational and vocational training and made all rehabilitation inmate initiated and paid for. There is no rehabilitation left in this massive prison system. So we have formed our own self-help groups, with administrative permission of course. Even the religious services have been drastically cut.

I am the secretary of the C Facility Lifer’s Support Group. Part of what I do is send away for support materials for the group. I am looking for reentry programs in California, both faith based and secular. We have zero Jewish Reentry programs that I have found. but I did read The Trail of Tranquility with an eye of how perfect it would be for use as a Anger Management Program here. What I need to know is: Is it feasible to use Lazer Brody’s book as a basis for a program here? Could you arrange to donate copies for us? It would be helping so many, including the society these men will be paroling to.

Help us today, for a brighter tomorrow for us all.

May you be Blessed each day, 
Respectfully yours, 

T.H., Mule Creek State Prison

Thanks to your contributions to Emuna Outreach, the books are already on their way to California!

How to Love

We're happy to show the video replay of this past week's emuna lesson - enjoy it!

Rebuilding a Soul

It's easy to destroy a soul; rebuilding it is another story. Today's emuna lesson is an eye-opener - come join us:

Self-Made Jews

Everyone respects the self-made man, the person who attained success by starting at the bottom rung of the ladder; the one who overcame all sorts of obstacles with perseverance, dedication, and hard work to ascend to the top. People have little respect for the person born with the proverbial silver-spoon in his mouth; the one who never accomplished anything on his own but inherited everything he has from Mommy and Daddy.

If we respect the self-made man who attained material abundance by virtue of his own efforts, then we can’t help but respecting the “self-made Jew,” the one who travelled a rocky uphill road – with Hashem’s loving guidance, of course - to attain every morsel of spiritual gain while paying the price of sweat, blood, and tears.

Don’t get me wrong – we BTs (baalei teshuva, spiritually-awakened Jews) were certainly not born with a kosher silver spoon in our mouths, yet I’m referring to another type of self-made Jew. These are the young people who were born in observant homes and for any number of reasons (which we’ll soon touch on, G-d willing) fell by the spiritual wayside. Now, they are returning on their own accord to observant Judaism.

We often hear the negative attitudes toward the “off the derech” kids, also known as the “at risk” kids. These are the youth that are on a dangerous downward spiral – or more accurately a nosedive – in their observance of Torah and mitzvoth.

During my recent speaking tours in the USA, I had the rare privilege of sitting down and candidly discussing the worrisome phenomenon of “falling off the derech” with many young people who were born in the Chassidic strongholds of Williamsburg, Monsey, Boro Park and Monroe. The good news is that many of these same wonderful young people – and I purposely stress wonderful – are coming back to observant Judaism in droves, largely by virtue of the the teachings of my beloved teacher and spiritual guide, Rabbi Shalom Arush, may Hashem bless him. Last year, over four hundred of these recently self-made Jews attended our emuna shiur in Williamsburg’s Kollel W. This year, over six hundred attended “Dynamite Night”, an evening of song and emuna that we did in Monsey with the popular Jewish-music star Lipa Schmeltzer.

Lipa Schmeltzer has attained a reputation in recent years of being a Chassidic black sheep as well as the bad boy of Jewish music. Yet, I’ve been privileged to witness his amazing spiritual growth in recent months, which includes his thirst for the teachings of Rav Shalom Arush as well as two pilgrimages to Rebbe Nachman’s holy gravesite in Uman. Lipa and his close friend Sam Indig asked me to tutor them on the fine points of personal prayer, then stood with me for a full hour on Shabbat afternoon – instead of sleeping off their cholent – to spend a solemn sixty minutes straight in hitbodedut by Rebbe Nachman’s holy gravesite. Not only that, but Lipa and Sam are instrumental in bringing dozens (that I know about, but it could be hundreds) of the off-the-derech young people back to the fold, but this time as self-made Jews who are choosing to return to Hashem on their own accord and to serve Hashem the way they choose, not the way they were forced. I had an interesting discussion with several of the self-made chevrei who accompanied Lipa and Sam to Uman:

Continue reading Self-Made Jews on this week's stimulating issue of Breslev Israel web magazine. Also featured this week:

Rabbi Shalom Arush: Reb Yitzchak's Bitachon

Rabbi Avraham HaCohen Cook: A Leader for Israel

Zev Ballen: Like a Seal

Noahide Corner: Shark Fins and Shabbat, all about Noahides in Singapore

Rivka Levy: The Bee Man

Natalie Kovan: Facebook Survivor

Dovber Halevi: Divine Eyesight

Chaya Ovadia: A Mouthful of Good

Yael Karni: Rabbi Arush's Masterpieces

Important reminder: Rosh Hashana 5772 is only 9 short weeks away. You're invited to join our group at InnUman.

Have a wonderful week and please drive both safely and defensively. Remember, your concentration on the road goes down drastically when you're talking on the cell-phone. Save the phone calls for when you park the car. We care so much about you and want you to be happy and healthy, amen!