January 24, 2019 3:53 p.m.
“It’s crazy.”
“Are you for real?!?!”
“Wow wow wow this is mind blowing!”
“Yupppp insane.”
The day before: January 23, 2019 10:51 p.m.
With urgency in her “WhatsApp texting voice”, the current conversation halted, Liz Schwartz typed “I need to share something incredible.”
It was a Rivka Malka Perlman video. “My friend was just diagnosed with cancer. My other friend recently lost her child. You know anybody like that? I feel like we all do….A lot of our great people have passed away recently…and it just feels like there’s some kind of time bomb ticking, ticking, ticking, there’s some kind of crisis. Bad things are happening and they must be stopped. What should I do? My friend said to me…We know why this is happening. We were told way back when, a long time ago that the Bais Hamikdash was destroyed because we weren’t unified. And if we can get the women unified… then I’m sure we can make a huge difference…this is going to overturn these terrible decrees…and on February 26th at the Liberty Jewish Center (in Baltimore), we are going to make an explosion of unity…We don’t want 300 women to come. We want 700 women to come.
We want to make such an eruption of unity…the ripples spread throughout the entire world and reach the people who need help. Because we can do something. So I’m asking you, my dear friend, my dear sister…I know that you know someone who is suffering now. Don’t ignore this video. Listen to it. Share it. Set aside the time that you’ll show Hashem that you’re showing up as best you can on February 26th. And all we ask is that you bring your heart, you bring your willingness, and we cry out to Hashem together, and we create a force field with our hands joined, and say, “We’re together, send down your brochos. When we’re together, that makes a vessel, like a basket for Hashem’s brochos. And when we’re not together, the Shechina disappears, and look what we’re left with. I think we can do this. I know we can do this. Please come.”
Baruch Hashem, I’m on a Torah WhatsApp group with a group of incredible women. The idea caught like wild fire. “Is anyone going to Baltimore?” LR asked. “We are being asked to pull this off in the Five Towns,” was Liz’s response. Within moments, 45 women had ideas flying about how to do this, where, and what would it look like? “It reminds me of the worldwide Shabbos project!” said HL. What a foreshadowing.
Zehava Farbman posted a video from Israel, where women had just recently held a tefilla l’geula this past summer in Jerusalem, on Har Hazeitim. It was a most beautiful and moving gathering outside, traversing the Yerushalayim sunset, for one purpose only — for tefilla to bring the geulah. With guest speaker Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi, and singer Shlomo Katz, women poured out their hearts as only women can do. That was to be our model. Zehava posted, “If we could do this on an international level, wow, Hashem would have no choice but to bring the geula.” More foreshadowing of what was to come.
My friend DW posted, “I’m literally picturing us like Choni HaMagil…like drawing a circle around ourselves saying, “I’m not moving until the rain falls,” only we are saying, “I’m not moving until you bring Moshiach.”
Jan 23, 2019 3:21 p.m.
A separate WhatsApp Chat is made, called “Friends! It’s Geula Now!” That chat’s members grew rapidly. And then it happened.
Jan 23, 2019 3:41 p.m.
We received another video from Rivka Malka Perlman.
“…SEVEN years ago I put out a video calling for an Ahavas Yisrael event. It was a promotional video, and somehow, someone got a hold of it from YouTube, and downloaded it on WhatsApp a few days ago. Everyone started to get excited. People were saying, ‘We are in January now! February 26th!? I can’t believe it, when is it happening?!’ And I’m thinking, don’t I look a bit older? It’s seven years later! But in fact, it was Hashem’s way of telling us, ‘It’s time to do it again.’”
After the video
For those of us involved, it’s been a frenzy of activity, exciting, exhilarating, ascending a spiral staircase to new heights of spiritual preparation every day. How do you organize thirty locations around the world, including Five Towns/Far Rockaway, Brooklyn, Denver, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, Eretz Yisrael, and South Africa? The answer: WhatsApp groups! A “Main Geula Chat”, and then a separate chat for each location hosting an event.
Our five towns organizers are dong an incredible job. While most of us were still throwing ideas around, Zehava Farbman and Liz Schwartz sprang into action and began formulating a plan. Our program is simple. Zehava says, tefilla l’geula. That’s the basis. Toward that end, a beautiful laminated compilation of tefillos are being put together for each woman. We will have a female lead singer, and musical accompaniment. The highlight of every group location will be a pre-recorded very special film presentation with internationally known and loved, Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi speaking to and inspiring us, as well as our beloved unifier and facilitator at the helm of our entire project, Rivka Malka Perlman. The film will also include a montage of thirty second to one minute clips from both well-known speakers and women who are not well known, but like each and every one of us, are stars in Hashem’s eyes. Each will speak about what the Geula means to them. Baruch Hashem even our young daughters are sharing their thoughts!
There are many people who deserve credit for making this event happen both locally and worldwide, and each one has contributed their own special gifts. As Rivka Malka has said over and over, it’s this process of getting ready, all of us making this happen together (as opposed to the actual event!) that’s actually going to bring the Geula!
According to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson OBM, the Jewish women believed wholeheartedly in the words of the prophet Moshe, that they would be redeemed. Even while experiencing the suffering of exile, they prepared tambourines with which to rejoice when they would leave Egypt. In that spirit, our women have created our own tambourines to give out throughout our locations, with our logo, “Get ready, Get set, Geula!”
Baruch Hashem, the Five Towns/Far Rockaway event will be held at Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, N.Y. with the haskama and brocha of Mora D’Asra Rav Moshe Weinberger, on February 26th, 2019. A general haskama was given to all our events by HaRav Reuven Feinstein, and a very special brocha from Rebbetzin Kolodetsky, daughter of Rav Chaim Kanievsky in Eretz Yisrael. May they all be granted long life.
On the day Rivka Malka released her second video to us, Hashem gave Rivka Malka complete clarity of an aspiration. “Hashem gave us the file. It says ‘Your mission is to gather the people in unity’…that my friends is really all that’s left. That’s the end. And the beginning. And we must bring the Geula. It’s right here. We can taste it.”
Anyone who wishes to join the Five Towns/Far Rockaway Geula WhatsApp group and get more involved, please send a text message to 732-404-7909 and type in 3 words only: “5T Geula Group”. All seventy of us look forward to seeing you there!
