The Final Redemption

February 2011

Life continued back in London with the usual activity – working, dating, socialising – I felt like I was on a hamster wheel, and despite seemingly having a great life, I was deeply unhappy. I felt confusion about my life purpose and passion. I still didn’t know what it was, or should be, and I felt lost. To cheer me up, some friends invited me along to an Oscar long weekend in Los Angeles. I decided to go, feeling as though I needed a change of scenery. The trip was a heady concoction of glamour and parties – way more than I was used to.

I decided to attend the Shabbat service at the Kabbalah Centre in LA as a way of balancing out my weekend. My friends giggled, rolling their eyes at me as I wandered off. I smiled back knowing that just as they would be going for a massage or spa treatment to give them energy for the rest of the parties, I needed pampering for my soul.

I hoped to see the Rav but didn’t think it was likely that I would. The centre in LA felt much more like a synagogue than the centre in London. It was smack bang in the middle of a very Jewish area with lots of ‘proper’ synagogues nearby. The LA community seemed much more religious and had a much higher proportion of Jews than the London community, which was an eclectic bunch of people from all kinds of backgrounds. It was a bit of a culture shock for me.

At the end of the service I bumped into an old Kabbalah teacher friend from the London centre, and she said I should wait around and see if I could catch the Rav for a quick hello. As usual, people were milling around him at the end of the service and finally the Rav seemed to be being helped up to his feet having finished talking to people. I was hanging back, but somehow he saw me. He looked over and smiled sweetly – this was more like the sweet, frail, elderly man I had spotted before the ‘zapping’. He beckoned me and I shyly wandered over, anxious if I was about to be in for another zapping – although deep down wasn’t that what I was looking for?

‘Hello, how are you?’ he asked. I replied that I was a student from London, had met him briefly at last year’s Rosh Hashanah and that I was in LA for a few days and wanted to come and see him.

‘That is so sweet! You are so sweet. And that is dedication’ he said. Before I knew what I was saying I said, ‘London is waiting for you, everyone wants you to come visit. They are preparing the vessel for you to visit,’ and he looked at me again and smiled and said, ‘That is so sweet. Well, you tell London I say hello.’

I bid him goodbye, and bizarrely felt hugely emotional and teary as I left, inexplicably so. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed that I hadn’t been zapped again. I pondered that perhaps my experience post-Rosh Hashanah was a one off and the Rav was just this cute, spiritual, elderly man. The rest of the weekend passed in a blur of cocktails and parties and I was beyond ready to return to London. LA was so not my town for more than just a long weekend. Then the day before I was due to fly back to London I woke at 5am gasping from a dream. It was so vivid and powerful and the message was that I must move to LA. Looking back I know with absolute certainty that despite not ‘zapping’ me that day, the Rav saw where I needed to be for my soul’s purpose and for my fulfillment – spiritually, personally, professionally – in every way, and did something magical, without me even knowing, to make me realise I needed to move.

Upon returning to London I arranged to take a three month sabbatical to LA. It wasn’t as simple as just moving for good, there were way too many considerations to take into account. Within a few weeks of getting there I knew I wanted to move permanently but had no idea how I would make that happen. I enjoyed a glorious three months of long, hot, lazy summer days. It was a summer of adventure and fun, but before I knew it the carefree days of my sabbatical were over and I was back in London preparing for Rosh Hashanah.

September 2011

Shortly after Rosh Hashanah, I had the most bizarre, mystical experience. I was at a meditation at the Alchemy Centre (which had no links with the Kabbalah centre in any way). It was a 40-minute silent group meditation with quiet background recording of Tibetan monks singing AUM and playing some kind of twinkling instruments. For the first twenty minutes, my mind did its usual thing of thinking overtime and being distracted, but somewhere along the way I found stillness and my mind quieted.

And then I saw them. I had what I can only describe as an odd vision, well – as much of a vision as you can have with your eyes closed. Two old Rabbis, dressed like frummers from a different generation appeared in my head. I could ‘see’ them huddled together and nodding over at me and talking to each other and looking back at me. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I knew the message. ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to be ok’. I then had the most bizarre almost out of body experience where I saw an almost aerial view of myself in the future. They showed me something which has yet to manifest, hence I don’t want to share it as yet… I looked back at the Rabbis and they kept nodding and I kept getting the same message: ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to be ok’.

At this point two names came to me. Two names I hadn’t heard before. Elimelech and Zusha. These were the Rabbis names, I just knew it. The whole experience was so beyond bizarre. When the meditation ended, I left without saying a word to anyone about my experiences but sent a message to my then Kabbalah teacher Chana asking if she knew who Elimelech and Zusha were. She replied instantly saying ‘Yes, two great Kabbalist brothers, why?’ ‘I’ve seen them in a meditation just now,’ I said. I could see on instant messenger that she was writing back frantically. And then I got the message that threw my head into another dimension.

Chana had been surprised the day before with a Tzadikim trip to Poland for her birthday by the Berg family. She had missed her flight and the trip had almost not happened, but somehow she made it there. She had been at Elimelech’s grave where she had been praying for me, amongst her other students, for my soulmate and for me to find love and have the family I had always wanted.

I was floored. I honestly could not understand what had just happened, how or exactly what it meant but for the first time in a long time I felt utter faith that despite evidence to the contrary, somewhere out there was my special person and our paths would cross at the right time, and that I was being divinely guided to them.

A couple of months later as Winter approached I went to LA for an extended sabbatical – six months this time using an extended business/tourism visa – still unsure of how I would make the move more permanent. I remained confused about my life purpose and path and was battling with many internal and external demons. Despite being delighted to be back in LA, it was a challenging time where life felt very much in limbo. I attended the Kabbalah centre regularly but didn’t enjoy the services as I had in London. I very much felt like I was practicing Judaism without actually converting and rather than looking forward to the weekly Shabbat services to gain some kind of spiritual enlightenment, I felt I was attending them out of some sort of misplaced guilt that I associated with religion, not spirituality. It was a confusing time.

Nonetheless the following January I decided to go to Israel with the centre on an organised trip to visit Tzadikim sites coinciding with Shabbat Beshalach – the Shabbat that reflected the Torah portion of the splitting of the Red Sea, and for the Kabbalists was all about the energy of certainty and faith for the year.

It was rainy, and we were warned that the trip wouldn’t be glamorous. We would be spending hours on coaches travelling across the country to visit different gravesites and make connections/prayers. My friends and family thought I was absolutely insane to be going to Israel to hang out at gravesites. But I was very excited for what I would experience, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The first gravesite I visited was that of the Ari Hakodesh, and we went on to visit about twenty sites in total. I had a very strange experience at one Tzadik we visited whose name I could barely pronounce and now know to be Beniyahu ben Yehoyuda. I felt odd as soon as I walked into his site and didn’t dutifully circle the site along with all the other students, touching my hand on the grave as we did at all the sites to connect to the energy of the Tzadik’s nefesh. I leant back against a wall feeling woozy. A few students came up to me to check if I was ok. I mumbled that I was fine and then walked to the grave and as I touched it felt a strange almost electric sensation and then out of nowhere began to sob so hard my entire body was shaking. I opened my eyes almost on cue, and the first thing I made contact with was the eyes of Yehuda Berg who had come to talk to us about the Tzadik and make the connection with us. As he stared at me he whispered into the ear of the teacher from the London centre, Avi, who came over to me and said, ‘Yehuda wants to do a blessing for you.’ We walked back to the grave and Yehuda placed one hand on my shoulder and one on the grave as I had my hand on the grave and we both closed our eyes. I honestly didn’t understand what was happening and part of me didn’t want to. It was all a bit too kooky and beyond my comprehension.

The entire trip continued to be surreal and magical. Being at places from the Bible – seeing Rachel the matriarch’s grave and seeing the red string being wrapped around it with meditations to attach the energy of Rachel the matriarchal protector (the very same red string that I wear around my wrist). Floating in the Dead Sea. Visiting a Bedouin camp. Walking around the old city of Jerusalem. It was a wonderful, soul-enriching experience.

I returned to LA feeling an even stronger affinity to Judaism and to Israel, and feeling even more confused about my destiny, even re-considering conversion. Was I meant to become a Jew? Not for love or a man, but because it was my destiny? I wanted to talk to a Rabbi, someone with no connection to the centre. Literally a few hours later, in a stroke of serendipity, I received an email from my LA ‘Mum’ and mentor, inviting me to an evening at a Hollywood agent’s house where an esteemed Chassidic rabbi was coming from Brooklyn to give spiritual counseling.

Days later I found myself sitting at the house thinking, ‘This is the oddest thing ever. What am I doing here?!’ But I got chatting with some lovely people, and eventually after the stream of guests had their sessions with the Rabbi, right at the end of the evening, I finally got the nod from his aides and approached the door nervously. As I walked in I gasped. Mainly because I felt I was in some kind of time warp and had gone back in time a couple of hundred years. His beard and outfit alone were quite something. He looked right at me kindly as I walked in and started speaking immediately, ‘Ah, you have come to see me. And what a great, great soul you are. You have a heart of gold. Do you know who you were in a past life?’

I had barely sat down and whilst I wasn’t scared of the Rabbi himself, I was scared of what I was about to find out. ‘No’ I replied. He peered at me intensely and asked, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ ‘Yes,’ I nodded. And then he told me. And suddenly my entire life long affinity with Judaism/internal debates about converting, continued attraction to Jewish men – fascination with Kabbalah, tears at Beniyahu ben Yehoyuda’s grave in Israel – in that split second, everything made sense. I sobbed and sobbed and the Rabbi comforted me with his words and his love. He asked me questions, I answered. I told him of my vision of the two Polish Rabbi brothers and he smiled. ‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Well, I know you’re the Nikolsburg Rebbe, but that is all I know’. ‘I am the great great grandson of Reb Zusha who you saw. It is no surprise you are here today.’ At which point having just about composed myself I burst into tears again.

He said he wanted to do a blessing for me and asked for a piece of jewellery so I could wear it and be protected, but I barely wore jewellery and then suddenly I remembered – of course – I was wearing my Shema necklace purchased from the centre. I gave it to him, we prayed together and then he blessed it and gave it back to me and I left. As I left I noticed that one tiny gem from the necklace was missing and I hoped it would forever be with the Nikolsburg Rebbe, and would somehow connect us for life.

For that evening he uncovered such a great mystery for me and in many ways re-set me on my path.

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