Today, everyone is an “expert” — on the size of a missile, how dangerous it is, what is the correct way to defend against it, etc. But in the end, we all know that everything being done and said is only speculation, and the outcome is in the hands of the Creator Yisbarach. Only He decides who shall live and who shall die, which missile shall strike and which shall not. But if someone were to come and reveal to us a true, secret segulah, a spiritual remedy — how one can be saved, and it is guaranteed to work — would we not “jump at the opportunity”?
Am Yisrael, like a sheep among seventy wolves, is surrounded on all sides by enemies who seek to destroy us, and if not for the G-d of our forefathers helping us, chas v’shalom, they would long ago have succeeded in their schemes. But it is always clear to all of us — especially now, when no one knows what the day will bring — that we must increase in merits. And suddenly, we discover an ancient segulah, whose origin is very old, and it is a tried and tested segulah. Would we not jump at the opportunity?
When wrath went forth from before Hashem upon Am Yisrael and the plague began among the people, Moshe Rabbeinu said to Aharon (17:11): ’עליהם וכפר העדה אל מהרה והולך קטורת ושים ...המחתה את קח‘ - “Take the censer... and place incense on it and go quickly to the congregation and atone for them.” Rashi says: “This secret was conveyed to him by the Angel of Death when Moshe ascended to the heavens, that the incense halts a plague.” And immediately it is written (17:13): ’’המגפה ותעצר החיים ובין המתים בין ויעמוד - “And he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was halted.” Do you think this was simple? Let us see what truly happened there. Rashi tells us: “He seized the Angel and forced him to stop. The Angel said to him: ‘Let me fulfill my mission.‘ He said to him: ’Moshe commanded me to hold you back.‘ The Angel said to him: ’I am the emissary of the Almighty, and you are the emissary of Moshe.‘ He said to him: ’Moshe says nothing of his own, but only from the mouth of the Almighty.‘” Thus Aharon stopped the Angel of Death against his will.
We have an ancient and tested segulah — ‘the recitation of the Ketores‘ — and it is a segulah to be saved from all harm. And so it is written in the holy Zohar: “Come and see: this person upon whom judgment is pursuing — he needs to recite the passage of the Ketores. And first, he must repent before his Creator. Then the Ketoret is a help for the judgments to be removed from him, and through this, the judgments certainly depart from him — if he is accustomed to mention the passage of the Ketoret twice a day, in the morning and in the evening.”
- Tiv HaTorah - Korach
