Birthday Blessing

Today is my birthday.

I've never felt younger or freer.

I've never felt more fortunate to be alive.

I never felt more blessed.

I've never felt more grateful for my loved ones & friends.

I've never felt a greater sense of gratitude to and reliance on my Creator.

I've never felt more needed & appreciated by my fellow humans. 

I've never felt more humbled by the awesome opportunity to be a source of assistance and inspiration to others.

I've never felt more humbled and thankful for the many friends and relatives who helped our family in our own hour of need.

I've never been more awed by the miracle of creation and the wonders of nature.

I never before appreciated the sweetness of fruit as I did today.

It's customary to make a shehechiyanu blessing over a new fruit or garment on one's Hebrew birthday.

As we're currently living in a rather remote place, it's not so easy to get to a supermarket that sells exotic fruits. Consequently, I didn't purchase a tropical fruit or imported fresh fig like I had in previous years, and forgot all about this tradition.

And then my wife and children brought in today's harvest from our abundant garden, including our watermelons that have been growing all summer long and are finally ripe.

It felt like a most appropriate occasion for a shehechiyanu!

“Blessed are You, GOD our God, King of the world, Who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion!” (We then recited the blessing borei pri ha'adamah: “Blessed are You…Who creates fruit of the earth”).

We sliced the first watermelon and tasted it. So incredibly sweet 🍉... but the sweetest thing of all was that it was the fruit of our labor, grown from the fertile earth that God Almighty gave us, watered exclusively by the rain that God Almighty blessed us with. No sprinklers. No pesticides, fertilizers, or GMOs. Just organic watermelon seeds that we planted and watched grow. Tended to by my beloved children who walk freely and barefoot throughout our farm and garden while they tenderly care for our animals, birds, young trees and plants. Free from fear of government harassment or threats. Free from cell phone towers. Free from the hustle and bustle of urban and suburban New England or NYC. Free from constant car exhaust, traffic, CPS agents or authoritarian cops. Free from tyranny and dystopian mandates.

Even though we reaped an abundant harvest, not a single part of the watermelon was wasted. We ate the delicious fruit and made sure to save its seeds on a dish for future seeding (unlike how we used to spit out the seeds and toss them in the garbage). The rind was fed to our chickens (who provide us with fresh eggs daily), and remaining green skin left by the chickens was put into compost to naturally fertilize our garden.

I never before savored the sweetness of a fruit as much as I did today. It was the culmination of months of sweetness that my family has been blessed to experience.

It is this sweetness that I wish to share with you, my dear friend, subscriber, or reader.

"The dove returned to Noah in the evening -- and behold! an olive branch it had plucked in its mouth! And Noah knew that the waters had subsided from upon the earth." [Gen.8:11]

Said the dove: "Let my food be bitter as (raw) olive but from God's hand, and not sweet as honey from the hand of mortal men" [Midrash agada cited by Rashi].

Although the dove must have been grateful after being sustained by Noah for an entire year in the ark, he nevertheless preferred to sustained directly by God. And it was this expressed preference that assured Noah that the destructive flood was over.

So too in our times:

Humanity is under assault, threatened by unprecedented existential risk, perhaps akin to the menacing waters of the Great Flood. The noose of totalitarian tyranny is tightening around the necks of humans everywhere. The food chain is owned by eugenicist sociopaths who are conspiring to euthanize the population and enslave the survivors. So is the power grid, media, medicine, and transportation. Forced injections, "15-minute cities," 24/7 biometrics surveillance, social credit scores, and transhuman chip implants all loom ominously on the horizon for humankind.

Starting from 2019, I chose to speak out against their bioweapon injections and assisted tens of thousands in defending their God-given body sovereignty and individual liberties. For this "crime," I was punished by the vengeful State of Massachusetts, singled out for Orwellian persecution. 

Fortunately, the state thugs were unable to locate and harm our family. Nevertheless, their unlawful pursuit caused much upheaval in our lives and inspired our hasty departure from that police state.

We are now in a beautiful place blessed with the ability and resources to draw our own water, heat our home with wood from our own forest, and grow our own food.

We are now sustained from God's hand, and not from the hand of mortal men who seek our doom.

Even if our food had been bitter as olives but from God's hand, we'd vastly prefer it to "biologically enhanced" frankenfood from the hand of our mortal enemy. How much more so that our food from God's hand is sweeter than anything we've ever tasted!

When we internalize this appreciation, we'll be ready to call an end to the destructive waves of the contemporary Great Flood.

Let's wean ourselves off their tainted supply chain and return to nature, to the nourishing earth that God gives us.

Dear friend, please heed my birthday advice. Leave the cities as Lot left the doomed city of Sodom. Vacate the suburb and any area besieged by industry. Come visit us in the mountains. Experience life how life was intended. Leave your smart homes and smart devices behind. You won't regret it.

Forget about your fancy house or modern condo. Liberate yourself from your mortgage, insurance, and other manmade shackles. Embrace a healthier reality, live among the natural foliage that adorns your Sukkah roof on Sukkot.

Feel the joy of zman simchaseinu (the season of our joy) all year long.

Trust me, my friends. There's nothing sweeter.

Happy Sukkot.