Ingathering Part IV – Baalei Teshuva – Amalek and Erev Rav

Baalei Teshuva – The Bigger Picture

This is a Five Part Series on Baalei Teshuva, the Ingathering, the Geulah, and the Tribes – Lost and Found – and Where they are Settling Today

In furtherance to The Yeshiva World and the Children of Baalei Yeshiva the following comments were particularly poignant. This topic relates especially to the INGATHERING OF EXILES AND THE GEULAH.

. . .it remains a test "min haShaymayim" for the BTs. we didn't become frum for others. as for the school issue, it is a ferociously painful problem 

. . .there is always a bigger picture. everyone has to answer for their actions and choices. Hashem sees everything and the wheels turn from generation to generation 

. . . I think that BTs are the giants of our generation. Most are so idealistic and earnest in their desire for a relationship with HKB”H. 

. . . when Moshiach comes he's not just coming to bring back lost jews to torah... he's also coming to bring the Charedi mindset damaged by 200 yrs of persecution in the exile back to the full perspective of the complete torah and out from the shtetlized torah they've always felt forced to shelter themselves in from fear of the goyim and fear of the rest of the jewish people... 

. . . the trouble is the charedi world is trying to m'kayam the world of eastern european jewry of the 1600s... this is not who we are... that outgrowth was due to the golut… 

. . . we seek a system of thought that unites us and elevates us to true holiness... that's open to all jews who return to torah true judaism despite where they've been and we reject out of hand the pseudo holiness based on yechus and supposedly insular purity that we know has many flaws in its transmission that has led to some gross violations of halacha 

. . .BTs understand educational needs probably much better than FFBs do, who in reality, just hide behind the vail of purity when it comes to the need to actually change their institutions and acknowledge problems. 

. . . Does anyone here not see it from the FFB perspective? Is it not true that there could be negative influences coming from BT families? 

. . . we are fragmented unto distraction and i haven't even mentioned political associations... agudah centrist rca all the parties in the israeli electoral structure… ou yu ok chafk stark... ad infinitum ad nauseam... we have forgotten that we are one nation... not just a bunch of kehilot kodesh... this city ... state or country... this synagogue's jews or that yeshiva's community of or circle of adherents followers and affiliates... this rebbe's chasidim or that one's... ashkenazi or sephardic or edat mizrach... secular or dati... israeli or diaspora jews... reform conservative orthodox egalitarian or reconstruction... and the list goes on...ffb or bt... native born or convert... modern orth... litvish... chasidish... charedi... chabad... yeshivish... haimish... erlech... eidel… u just want to scream!!

G-d is warning: You must not discriminate between the different ethnic groups in the holy land of Israel; they are all Jews! You must unite and help each other. Whoever discriminates will be discriminated by G-d.

(R’ Nir Ben Artzi, AbsoluteTruth613

The Ingathering – The Redemption – The Process

"The Gaon of Vilna illuminates in Kol HaTor (the Gaon’s teachings on the process of Israel’s redemption) how even great scholars can miss the significance of events taking place in their generation.

“[…] How strong is the power of the Sitra Acḥra that it succeeds in hiding from the eyes of our holy fathers the dangers of the klipot; from the eyes of Avraham our father, the klipah of exile… and in the time of the Messiah, the Sitra Acḥra attacks the guardians of Torah with blinders…

"Rabbi Zvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook was once asked by the newspaper Maariv how Torah leaders in his day, like those in the times of Yehoshua and Kalev, could err in their opposition to the struggle for Eretz Yisrael. He answered, 

'When one believes that the redemption of Israel and the coming of the Messiah must appear miraculously from out of the heavens in a way which transcends the natural order of life, 

then . . .

one fails to see the hand of HaShem in all of the events of the world. ‘ "

This ties into the beginning of this post about The Yeshiva World and the Children of Baalei Yeshiva, being that judgmental thinking must be held until Moshiach ben Yosef comes to clear the air and tell Jews who their ancestors were, who is really a Halachic Jew, and what Tribe we all belong to. This belongs to the period of the Ingathering, when Jewish Neshomos want to return and are returning to HKB”H. 

“I heard from my teacher and father-in-law, who was the chief disciple of Rebbe Yechiel Michal of Zlotchov, that once when the Baal Shem Tov was traveling on the road, he stepped into a wooded area to pray the afternoon prayer. His disciples were dumbfounded to see him hitting his head against a tree, crying and screaming. Afterward, they asked him what had happened. He explained that he had seen, with divine inspiration, that in the generations before the coming of the Moshiach there would be a multitude of rabbis, and that they would be the very ones who would impede the redemption. [Otzar Chayim]"

Rabbi Moshe Ḥaim Lutzatto explains in Mesillat Yesharim (chapter 11) that the tribal chiefs “feared a lessening of their honor, lest, upon entering the land, they would no longer be princes of Israel, and others would be appointed in their place.” [This is referring to the Meraglim and Tisha B’Av.]

THE WORK OF AMALEK AND THE EREV RAV

  . . . to put a wedge between Am Yisrael and Toras Yisrael

Defeating Klipa Amalek by Meir Ettinger
(The following is a loose translation of the first part of an article posted by Meir Ettinger on the 1st of August, 2016 in Hebrew on the website Voice of the Jewish Heart)

Amalek’s klipa of hopelessness and coldness can be broken only with a stubborn knowledge and unshakable conviction that there is absolutely no such thing such as hopelessness in the world.

To win in our battle against Amalek, we need to be tenacious in our certainty that there is no hopelessness in the world at all.

This concept of “no choice” has become an environment that is forced upon us from all directions and in all configurations, by the Shin Bet investigators, the media, and desperate politicians.

We are talking about things that are simply illogical and lacking any substance. Strange how they dare to say such things in the first place. How can you convince a person that he does not have a choice?

In the language of the Hasidim, this is called klipat Amalek—the aggression of chutzpah and rudeness that is governing wisdom. Amalek knows that there is no logic to his argument yet with impudence he repeats his false contentions. Because Amalek knows that in a world like this, lies can be absorbed and people will break if only he will make his case loudly and with confidence.

The secret of how to stand against a poison (Amalek) like this is to use exactly the same impudent strength, but of Kedusha. In the face of the bellows from klipot Amalek about there being no choice, Rabbi Nachman screamed with a great voice, “there is no hopelessness in the world at all.”  Even if all wisdom and logic tells us that we are in a hopeless situation, we must stand up against it without any elucidation and say, “there is no hopelessness in the world at all.”

Medinat Israel is not Medinat Ya’acov

Meir urges us to see how far Eretz Yisrael has fallen down from Torah, to really focus in and observe the situation with crystal vision. We can see how Medinat Israel not only fails to protect the Jews, but is actively hunting down and persecuting Jews for no reason other than their attachment to Torah. The medinat Israel has fallen all the way down to the level of torturing Jews. The realities of what is going on before our eyes exposes in the most potent way how much we need Medinat Ya’acov, the true Eretz Yisrael.


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What Meir is saying relates also to being a Halachic Jew and wanting the State of Israel to become a Jewish State governed by the Torah. However, this clashes mightily with the members of the Old Yishuv who came from Socialist Russia, the Pale of Settlement area, and the devastation of Jews who discarded their heritage before WWI and between WWI and WWII. Many of these neshomas were lost to Yiddishkeit, while some traveled on a wing and a prayer of escaping to a new Land and new life in Old Eretz Yisrael. I believe many Baalei Teshuva are remnants from this spiritual travesty.