Happy post-Chanukah pre-Purim time!

As I write this email, a few beautiful souls are partaking in a community melava malka, just outside the Old City gates, exactly where knife-wielding terrorists killed 2 Jews and severely injured 1 more less than 3 weeks ago. Only Am Yisroel, victims of constant onslaught from all sides, still perseveres to make light where there is darkness.  How could Hashem not have nachat from us?

It is said that in the times before Mashiach, Hashem will shake a rope, and it will be up to each of us to grab onto that rope as it swings, if we want to make it.  We grab onto this rope with Emunah.

So too with our personal tests.  The first step is to know that it is a test tailor-made for us and not just random suffering.  If we want to pass, we should focus on first accepting our circumstances.  Then we beg Hashem to help us, knowing that it was brought in order to bring out untapped inner strength and beauty.  Then comes patience.  We have to be patient with Hashem, but impatient with ourselves.  To look inside and see in what way we can grow from the hardship, while at the same time pray and pray for help.  If we do it right, at some point we may not even perceive that we have the hardship anymore.

And on a lighter note, we have a gift for you.  You may remember that there is a Shidduch Segula to hang your name around an almond tree for the whole of Tu Bi’shvat.  After Tu Bi’shvat, the name is taken down and kept by the person at all times (either under their pillow or in their purse/wallet).  Hamodia wrote about this Segula a few years ago here.

If you’d like us to do this for you or a friend in the Holy Land, it would be our pleasure. This year, rather than mailing an envelope, you can just fill in your details and prepay the postage online and we’ll mail you the almond-tree wrapped paper directly.  Tu Bi’shvat falls on January 25th  this year.  Just click here to sign up and feel free to post/send to friends.

With blessings that we all tap into our potential and grab onto the Geula rope,

Batya

On my way home into a very barren Old City last night (save for the dozens of border policemen), I ran into a neighbor and friend. He told me a very disturbing story. 2 weeks ago as he was walking from the Kotel into the Muslim quarter with his friend, the friend suddenly fell to the ground before him unconscious. Looking down, he saw a knife in his friend’s back and an 18 year old Arab girl – who looked more like 15 – full of rage trying to continue to stab him and grab his gun on the side of his body. 

Batya

Brachot from the holiest place on earth!

This is not the usual post-Succot message letting you know about the crowds of tourists and excitement here. This is not the usual pre-Chanukah coming down from an incredible spiritual high update. This is a message to let you know about our life here, and our duty here and abroad to continue our incredible project to keep Jewish prayers and people at the Kotel where we belong.

As you have surely heard, the terrorist stabbings in the Old City and all over Israel update every several hours now. The Old City is a ghost-town compared to the last 10 years, save for a few brave non-Jewish tourists and Old City locals and shopkeepers. Police in riot gear pass us on the way to our kindergartens, park and neighborhood excursions on weekdays and shabbosim. Helicopters circle. And we continue praying, learning, living and educating our children. Our prayers increase. Our hearts feel for all of our friends and neighbors who live and walk daily in the most dangerous area (the Muslim quarter near the entrance to the Kotel).

But, the true irony is that the Jewish quarter of the Old City, thankfully and bli ayin hara, remains the safest place to be. We go to the Kotel daily just through the Jewish routes and are saddened that the media has convinced most people that this route is too dangerous, when this is simply not true. So we WILL be there for you for your prayers. And we urge you to continue supporting Jews praying at the Kotel where we belong!

Now to the good news…

Mazel tov to Roshan, whose baby girl born at 22 weeks and 460 grams survived 10 blood transfusions, 2 infections and 4 months on ventilator support – appropriately named Nasya (miracle of Hashem) after 2 rounds of 40-day prayers at the Kotel. We are so happy and relieved to hear that mommy and baby are reunited in good health.

Congratulations also to Andrea, whose son got himself a job after our 40 days and to Lewis whose career reputation was saved when the truth came to light about his job performance during our 40 days. Please keep your good news coming – we love sharing in your joy after being there for you in your sorrow.

And if you still don’t see your prayers taking fruit – try not to despair. Keep your head held high. The key is to trust and know that each prayer is doing something and each trial is a blessing in disguise to build you. If you don’t feel this, push yourself to a place of mind over matter. This is your test – to think it anyway. If you can’t, ask G-d to help you trust that what you are going through is for the best. Tell Him that you want to believe this and to help you believe this. At the same time, keep praying for what you want and pushing as hard as you can. Both are necessary. This is your avoda (work) as a Jew and the formula to get your prayers answered.

Rosh Hashanah’s power is not over yet! There is still time to influence the judgment! The sources say that on Zos Chanukah, a regular person can accomplish what only a tzaddik can accomplish on Yom Kippur. 40 days leading up to this special day start in just three weeks on November 5th.

We will be there praying for you G-d-willing!

With blessings from a very grateful Old City dweller…

Batya

Thank G-d, Elul is off to a beautiful start, with thousands filling the Kotel plaza daily from all walks of life and places, trying to connect, forgive, be forgiven and merit goodness.

It is a time to re-focus, re-sensitize, and let go of that which is holding us back from true connection with Hashem. I met a friend of mine the other day and was so happy to see such a beautiful change in her – many years of stress seemed to have fallen off her face. She said, “I just came back from Uman.”  It made me want to go myself :-).

But as I don’t have that luxury this Rosh Hashanah – I decided to send a Torah scholar to pray for me instead. You can too! We are sending a few of our Jerusalem learners to Rebbe Nachman’s tomb in Uman, Ukraine to say the special Tikun HaKlali prayer (10 specific psalms said in a certain order) specifically for each prayer request on Erev Rosh Hashanah.

Rebbe Nachman was known to have said that he will help whoever comes to his tomb and says the tikun to get out of gehenom. The Rebbe also said that on Erev Rosh Hashanah he has the ability to do extra tikkunim unavailable during the rest of the year. What once was a strictly Breslev tradition has spread to much of the Jewish world because of the great inspiration experienced there.

Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to affect your upcoming year!

Pray for me in Uman!
(Under “Prayer Option” at the bottom of the page, choose “($36) Uman – Erev Rosh Hashanah Tikun Haklali”)

You should be signed and sealed for a Sweet New Year!

Batya

It’s very exciting, and nerve-wracking to some extent.  The year 5776 is almost here.

What do you want this year to look like?
Who do you want to be?
What do you want to happen?  For you?  Family?  A friend?

This is your chance to have us beg Hashem for you at the place where all prayer goes up and the future site of the Beit HaMikdash!!! (If you haven’t already signed up.)

May all of our prayers be quickly answered!

With great love and brachos for a beautiful year ahead for you, and a b’sha’ah tova to Shira who we hope will hold on long enough to get your prayers out in time. 🙂

Batya

Shalom,

Thank G-d I am happy to be writing you from a peaceful Jerusalem despite the plans of our enemies – may we continue to be protected!

First the good news… Mazel Tov to ‘Sara’ who started dating her husband on the first day her prayer agent went to the Kotel, to ‘Binyamin’ who got a job on day 37 at the Kotel, to ‘Bracha’ who gave birth to a healthy baby after our prayers and to ‘Vicky’ whose husband’s court case was incredibly successful. Keep sending in your stories! We love hearing them and we feel a special privilege to be part of the most sensitive aspects of your lives.

Well…it’s almost Elul. It’s almost Judgment Day. Life is almost starting again and anything can happen.

The future is ours to create, the past is ours to erase. There’s strength in numbers and in partnerships and we can help each other to be more successful!

The verse from Shir HaShirim, “Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li” (“I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me”) alludes to the time between Rosh Chodesh Elul and Yom Kippur when Moshe went up to Har Sinai to pray for the forgiveness of the Jewish people. This is so because the total gematria of the last letter of each word equals exactly 40 (the number of days Moshe ascended to pray).

There is a very special power to praying these 40 days from R”Ch Elul to Yom Kippur. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to have a talmid chacham pray for you at the Kotel!

What will be – only Hashem knows. But what can be depends largely on the efforts you put forth towards it.

Reserve your spot at the Kotel NOW!

Thank you for partnering with us in supporting Torah in the most important place in the world! I only pray that Hashem keeps rewarding you and blessing us to be the channel through which your prayers are soon answered!

Shana Tova u’Metuka!

Batya

Click to read: Connecting Heaven and Earth – A Conversation with Mrs. Batya Burd

This is it. Almost another new year. I usually write a mass email text and work very hard to first feel, and then transmit to you the spiritual energy in Jerusalem and the impending awe that we are supposed to feel in the upcoming weeks because of the severity and weight of what is going to take place based on the chaggim ahead. I bring the notes into play in my head, the growth of Elul, the help and closeness we have with Hashem, and then as if with a Mozart crescendo, finalize it in the Yom HaDin, duh duh. Can you feel it? Are you scared?

And then now, this year, I can’t imagine doing such a thing again knowing where I stand vis-a-vis the Master of the World based on my last year’s din.
There is no stepping into the role here anymore. There is just humility. I can’t tell you how much is decided in these 2 days. I can’t tell you just how much a person’s life can change for the better or for the worse in these two seemingly innocent and mouth-stuffing days. I can’t tell you just how much one day can change to the next and mazal can switch in an instant. You can read it all over my blog.

And then if you didn’t ask, you must have thought – well didn’t she daven at the Kotel last year for a good din? Didn’t she have someone daven at Rebbe Nachman’s kever in Uman last year? And the answer is .. yes she did.

A few years ago when her late husband got the job of executive director at Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah and was now single-handedly responsible for an almost million dollar a year budget, she went to the kotel for 40 days between Elul and Yom Kippur to daven that he would raise all the money he needed without travelling. At his shloshim it was revealed that in all the years he worked and succeeded at his job, he was the one fundraiser in the history of Jerusalem yeshivot that never had to travel (as far as we knew).

A few years before that when we were forced to move out of the Old City, she also went to daven 40 days at the Kotel for a place to live near her husband’s yeshiva and the world bent over backwards to give them an apartment exactly where they needed.

And so on, and so on…

This year I am back for those 40 days not only because I know it’s a mitzva to daven, but because I believe in the power of prayer and I see the power of these special days and place and segula.

Speaking to a group of beginner Torah-learners the other day I described prayer like a choose-your-own adventure book.
The author writes a book, and the reader can choose many different directions based on their decisions. If they choose option A, they have the potential to get all the way to the mazel the author wrote would happen in option A. Same with option B, C and D based on the reader’s choices. Let’s say the reader wants a different option and davens very very hard for that option? Let’s say the option is for instance, winning the lottery. If winning the lottery is within the written options that the author wrote in his book, then he has a good chance of getting it. But let’s say this option doesn’t exist in his potential mazalim, in any of the choose your own adventure paths? It is not in his book at all. Like a blind person davening hard to see….
Did Hashem not answer his prayers?

Really, Hashem didn’t set forth those potential options to be actualized through prayer in his life. It was not a potential mazal.

So, those prayers will instead be redirected to an option that is good and is available in their book or their future generation’s books.

Gershon z”l living past his 40th birthday was not an option in our book. But Gershon becoming a hero for the way he did live was an option. My family and I being showered with kindness and getting the strength to overcome this tragedy was also an option and I thank each one of you for your prayers in making this happen.

With love and blessings from Jerusalem and with brachos to be signed and sealed for a sweet new year,

Batya

The death of my husband forced me to reexamine the purpose of my existence.

It was 7 am Sunday morning and I had been asleep for a scant hour after being awake for 45 hours. My good friend Menucha leaned down to the hospital couch and tapped me on the shoulder.

It had been 38 hours since I had pulled my husband’s lifeless, 6-foot body out of the jaws of the Tel Aviv ocean one beautiful Friday. After 20 minutes of CPR on the sand, a faint pulse had returned, and he was rushed to the hospital where he lay in critical condition, while doctors checked for brain activity to determine if he had a chance of making it back. A lifetime had passed since then – a living nightmare filled with countless do-or-die moments.

We got the call to come back to the hospital – the signs had become more serious. “The nurses say this is it,” whispered Menucha. “You have to come now.” No more battle-plans, prayers or mitzvah pledges.

Hope for life was over. “It’s a mitzvah to escort the neshama (soul),” she said.

Back in the hospital, I sensed no signs of life at all. The fight to save him was startlingly over. At that moment, the darkest moment – the time when the finality of his life as my husband was apparent – the greatest presence I have ever felt from him came forward. My personal Mount Sinai. The exit was enlightening. I was his midwife to the Next World.

Everyone present was touched. Enveloped in the Shechina (Divine Presence) that came to take him, we were left with a spark of it to take with us – like an embryo to later form into a new being. The end of his life in this world began a new life for us with a glimpse into the Next World. I didn’t want to leave that embrace.

As I sat on my shiva chair, I felt the same connection and light as I did when enthroned on my kallah chair at my wedding years back. It was as if I was just an agent to pass on the messages that were coming through me, to the recipients who arrived to receive them. Then there were the times when I was the recipient.

Hitting Bottom

Three months passed, and my friends and community won the championship for supporting me in every way. Babysitters helped me with the children. Meals were sent in while in my silent protest to stop living, I let the kitchen go. Enlightenment aside, I would accept God’s judgment, but I wasn’t going to truly live and give proactively – a decision made by my subconscious without asking me for my approval.

Each kid had been assigned the right therapist and put on the right schedule. The shock was seemingly wearing off and the havoc of scrambling to see what life was now going to be like had dissipated.

Through living day-by-day the kids and I saw that, to our surprise, we could exist and function and eat and sleep and go to school and have friends – without Abba. The terror of not knowing if we could survive a day without him also disappeared.

It slowly became safer to examine my internal reality. And then, one day, it collapsed altogether. I was leaving a family’s house motzei Shabbos and the woman said to me: “Most people live for one of three things: their children, their husband, or God. You have to find a reason to live.” So I searched. I searched hard internally for what made me tick. I looked past the truth that sits in my head and discerned the driving force of my heart. The force that pushes me to wake up, to change diapers and to cook dinner.

What I realized shocked me.

Almost everything I did in my day – from choosing what clothes to wear to what I cooked for dinner and how to arrange my day was shaped by one thing – what my husband wanted. I chose where I lived because of my husband’s spiritual ambition. We chose where our kids go to school because of my husband’s Torah outlook. Everything was for him.

Now what?

I felt like the thread holding together all of the pieces of me snapped. In an instant, the pieces clattered to the ground. They no longer formed a human being. They were just pieces on the floor. I was left holding all of them at once, clueless what to do with them, if to put them back together and with what.

I hit rock bottom. Where to now?

I sat across a teacher of mine one day to question the traumatic beach image embedded in my psyche.

He looked at me and said, “There is a principle in psychology that one has to hit bottom before they can truly change.” Bottom was a place that wasn’t anywhere. I looked around and didn’t see anything to grab onto. No ropes. No sights. Just the feeling of terror and the absence of form. A black, non-existent quicksand. Nowhere to go to and nowhere to go from. No floodlights. No road.

This Way Up

I started asking questions – what do I do with the pieces of me? Why do I do this?

Kids?

That was no point. As cute and lovely as they may be, I knew that I couldn’t maintain my happiness through my children. How many people live for their kids, only to be sorely disappointed that all didn’t work out as planned? As much as I put in, I cannot control whether my children do the right thing and are happy on any given day. I can only control whether I do the right thing. And, of course, kids move on and get married. The only thing that could energize me is something true. Real.

And real equals God.

But was it realistic for me to live for God? I explored my inner world. I found that the ideal was too big for me. Too impractical to maintain for life. I am not an angel.

I examined some more. How could I live for something that would have no end, in a way that gave me enough of a feeling of pleasure to maintain the drive? Eventually I realized that the goal that really moved me was for me to live and develop myself and become the greatest person I could be.

To be Godly. This was a goal that was upward, not outward. Children change depending on a person’s incarnation – they are a challenge that are assigned to us at different times. God, and our spiritual potential, is always constant on the other hand. We are always given life in order to perfect ourselves.

Children are just one of the ways.

Being Godly was an infinite goal and constant goal, never to be accomplished. Never to end, that truly did give me a tangible feeling of life, self-love and goodness. To just know that I am doing my mission in the world, aligning my will with His will. To become spiritually great. It makes me love God more, humanity more and of course myself more if I am Godly.

Done. I felt lighter. Less fragile. New person, charged from the inside with the infinite force day-to-day.

Same day schedule, give or take. But my motivation is more aligned to the source of it all. When one wants to send a spacecraft to the moon, the angle of the launch has to be exact if it is going straight there. If the angle is off by just half a centimeter, the spacecraft will miss the moon by hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. If we are trying to hit our spiritual target here, we have to come at it from the right angle. Hitting bottom realigned me so I could reach up to my Godly self.

Our Rock Bottom: Tisha B’Av

I see a mirror of my own work in the Jewish calendar. God actually gave us a mitzvah to hit bottom on Tisha B’Av. We are supposed to see and experience the lack, the suffering, the darkness. For three weeks we descend into this ultimate low.

And yet, in the darkest hour, the messiah is born. There, in the unformed blackness lies our salvation. Pain is an energy. When we decide to use this energy to connect back up to the Almighty, we sanctify it. We take emotional energy and transform it into spiritual light through our free will. God doesn’t do that; only we do that. We take the pain and we make ourselves Godly through it.

Our spiritual labor of hitting rock bottom comes just before the month of change, the Jewish month of Elul. One feeds into the other. The pain, the agony: these can be the forces that push us forward, to a Rosh Hashanah of real change and growth. To the newness of our being. To the inner peace of God’s embrace.

May it fill us all.

(reprinted from www.Aish.com)

Shalom WWP family,

There have been so many posts lately – news and especially opinion pieces.
Everyone has one. Everyone agrees with some and disagrees with others.

Someone wrote me hate mail the last couple of days. You see they are not Jewish and anti-Zionist and anti-American and anti-Fox news and wanted me to know that they are boycotting anything to do with Israel. I decided that this must be a socially-conscious human being and so opened the discussion – hoping to show them the error of their ways and the misguided-ness of their genuinely good character trait of compassion.

Not to be.

They hate Israel. Any force or action is justified in the face of being occupied. Ok I thought. This is the world. This is just the reality – just breathe. I walk around Jerusalem with a constant lump in my throat from the uncertainty of the situation – when it will end and we can go back to enjoying life and summer ‘vacation’. A pain in my heart from the knowing how many families are sitting shiva and are are also missing their Abas at their Shabbos tables weekly, either through ending their service or continuing it. And, most evidently, an existential anguish from knowing that there is no real solution here – I can’t convince anyone of true morality. I can’t even be sure that we are being moral – do the Israeli leaders get Torah psak on their every move and so know they are doing Hashem’s will at every moment? I don’t know if eliminating Hamas will lead to more problems, I don’t know if ending the war will lead to more deaths. I know nothing and it is not clear what is a win except for peace on earth and Mashiach…

Here we go again – that frustration and anguish over the “unfairness of life”. No different test than my husband tragically dying in a beautiful moment. We all know that nothing is fair according to what we think of fair. We get what we need spiritually – in order to overcome and achieve our spiritual potential. Same story, different station.

ISIS destroyed the prophet Yonah’s tomb the other day in Iraq. I thought it was strange, since they already did it by hand a week or two ago but they felt the need to drive the point home again by also bombing it to bits and then videotaping and posting it. It was a bit extreme. I decided perhaps Hashem wanted us to pay attention to it for a reason. So I popped open the book of Yonah – journey of the soul – based on the Vilna Gaon’s Kabbalistic teachings of the story of Yonah – as a parable of the soul’s journey in this world. According to the Gaon, the story is a metaphor for the soul who doesn’t want to come into the world, but is forced to do its job anyway.

The first two pages I read said the following:

A Jewish soul sits blissfully in the next world and does not want to go down. In the world in which it must be sent, it may be confused by the temptations of the body and pleasures that will make it lose its beautiful neshama essence. But, also, and more specifically pointed to my current struggles – it must face the test of challenges and of the antagonism of the nations. Built into this world in which a Jewish soul travels is the hate of the nations surrounding it. A Jewish soul is here to keep the mitzvos and bond with Hashem through it all the while enduring the challenges from within and from without – like a sailor navigating a ship against great waves trying to swallow it.

This sea -that is currently making me sea-sick by the way, is exactly the way it was designed in order for this soul, and your soul, to accomplish its purpose. Just ride the wave Batya, I say. Ride the wave – it is meant to be this way. You are fighting the stage – get back to your character and improve your mitzvot – it will make the reward only that much greater. No need to feel pain over the absurdity of world opinion and dislike – it is perfectly instrumented and purposeful to Hashem’s plan. You mind your business and Hashem will mind His business.

With love from the holy land and with immense prayers for victory and peace,
Batya