Anti-Semitism In US Colleges

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Breitbart): “A study titled ‘National Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students 2014,’ conducted in the spring of 2014 by Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, revealed that over half of Jewish college students have experienced anti-Semitism on campus.

“The rates of victimization for students with different social characteristics – such as type of campus, year of study, academic major, demographics, religiosity, or politics – ranged from a low of 44 percent to a high of 73 percent. There was only a slight variation in the rates across the regions of the United States, strongly suggesting that anti-Semitism on campus is a nationwide problem. …

“The survey found that female students were more likely than their male counterparts to report anti-Semitism.

“’Jewish women seem to feel more vulnerable on campus, with 59 percent of female students versus 51 percent of males telling us that they have personally witnessed or experienced anti-Semitism,’ said Keysar. ‘This gender gap is alarming and needs to be further explored.’

“Historically, Orthodox Jewish men were most likely targets of hate, as they tend to be easily identifiable. This study revealed that on college campuses, ‘Conservative and Reform Jewish students are more likely than Orthodox students to report being victims. Membership in a Jewish campus organization also raises the likelihood of a student reporting anti-Semitism.’…

“This study was conducted prior to last summer’s war between Hamas and Israel that led to an increase in anti-Semitism worldwide.”

My Comment: The war is just a pretext for the manifestation of the hatred that breaks out of the anti-Semite to the Jew. Needless to say, neither Europeans nor Americans feel sorry for the Arabs; likewise, the Arabs in these countries do not feel sorry for the unfortunate people of Gaza. Otherwise, they would have stopped the war!

But they are actually looking for an excuse for the destruction of Israel—and if several thousand die in achieving this goal—it doesn’t matter. Hatred is a greater than love for one’s children!

According to the Torah, there is nothing above human life. It turns out that Israel exchanges thousands of murderers for a kidnapped soldier. But Israel is to blame—and precisely because that lack of unity of itself does not lead the whole world to unification, i.e., it is indirectly responsible for all the wars and suffering…
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A Centaur Becomes A Man

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is it possible to explain the Wisdom of Kabbalah in the language of modern sociology?

Answer: What else is the wisdom of Kabbalah involved with if not sociology? Sociology is a science about the structure of society. But the wisdom of Kabbalah also talks about how to raise the society to the next level.

We, like the rest of nature, develop from inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature and reach the level of a beast that looks like a man, like a centaur with the head of man and the body of a horse. We exist in a form like this. But today our head works for the body.

And we must transform the situation so that the body will work for the head, for the sake of an idea. This is already another level—the level of Adam (Man), which doesn’t exist in our world. In other words, the body, all of our beastly life, must be directed towards elevating the head, the ideals and the goals of the next level.

We have reached a state where the power of nature that moves us (the Creator) has stopped pushing humanity forward. It no longer forces us to advance because we must now advance through our own powers—rising to the next stage, to the next level. And at the level we are on now there is only one problem: the more we dwell on it, the worse it will be.

As we have developed, we have always preferred some new form of social system. Throughout the history of humanity, creating new forms of this system, we gradually discover its deficiencies, and then start feeling it as intolerable, and so we make revolutions: either peaceful, a psychological revolution, or by force, and that is how we have advanced, giving birth to the next level.

We did all of this involuntarily, driven by the force of nature (the Creator) that pushes us forward. It always showed us the next stage. But this is not happening now. The next stage stands before us, but it is not clear to us at all because it is completely different; it is an altruistic stage. It is discovered as a need for complete connection, mutual collective dependence among us, and we don’t understand how to do this.

Now we are gradually beginning to understand the insignificance, the destructiveness of how much our miserable and destructive situation—it is overripe. And if we continue to remain in it, we will only increase the suffering. And the next stage must be revealed in any case. But how much suffering is required to reach it?! Therefore, we need to disseminate, otherwise humanity will sink into terrible suffering.

It is possible to reach the next state only from a general desire, and not from some decision. Therefore unlike the previous stages, we must continue to develop consciously. It is up to us to understand this clearly.

So we must disseminate, otherwise the world will plunge into great problems. We must do everything that is in our ability, and we will see that this works despite the fact that we are few.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Can A Person Be Reincarnated As A Cat?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can I be incarnated as a cat in the next cycle of life or will I also be a person?

Answer: A person always remains a person, a man – a man, a woman – a woman, and a cat – a cat. Matter remains the same matter.

All of the theories and fantasies about the reincarnation of souls in various animals and even in plants are erroneous.

And in general, the soul doesn’t belong to the body. The body exists only to create conditions for developing the soul. But to the degree that the soul is developed, the body begins to receive new physical characteristics, which help us to develop the soul further. Everything happens for this purpose only.

Question: I don’t understand; what happens with a person after he dies?

Answer: Don’t we see what happens to a person after his body dies? The body rots and turns into dust. If a person doesn’t develop the soul within him, then only a conscious element of the soul is left, which must create a body again.

Question: What happens if I have developed a soul?

Answer: If you have developed your soul to the necessary level, meaning you have corrected it absolutely, then you no longer need to be incarnated any more into this world, and the soul will live forever.

Question: Will that soul itself be my “self”?

Answer: Specifically the soul is the “self.” A person is his soul, whereas the body is only material that accompanies him and helps in developing the soul.

Question: So why do the Kabbalists sometimes write that a person is reincarnated into animals, for example, into a pig?

Answer: This is written metaphorically. “Reincarnated as a pig” means that desires like those of a pig come to a person, which he had apparently abandoned a long time ago.

Just as sometimes in a person’s life he behaves like this and we call him a “pig.” In the same sense Kabbalists speak about incarnation as a pig, meaning such characteristics like a pig appear in a person, but it is clear that he remains a person.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103 FM, 2/1/15

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Recharged By The Group

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When we come to Israel for conventions and holidays, we feel a unique connection and happiness. And when we return home, everything becomes exactly the opposite. Why does that happen?

Answer: When I go abroad, I am not affected by the change of location and society. I can enjoy the beautiful views, but all the time I am inside myself. My personal micro-climate does not change.

But your problem is that when you go somewhere, you immerse into the local atmosphere and fall under a strong influence from the outside that knocks you off track.

It is necessary to get less caught up with the influence of the surrounding society. Suppose that around you someone is spinning, running, doing something while you need to remain one step higher and live within completely different thoughts and expectations. You must learn to do this.

If you want to reach this as fast as possible, then you must be recharged by the group, and when you leave the lesson in the morning, you need to be afraid of losing that warmth, that group feeling that appears in you as a result of the lesson. After all, our classes are required only to invite the Upper Light onto the desire to connect.

The yearning for unity comes before everything. After that the Light must arrive according to your prayer. And after that, in the connection between you, we begin to feel the Creator. You must be in this work all the time.

But if you fall under the influence of the external egoistic field, this indicates that you have not advanced. Throughout the day you must return to the need for feeling the center of the group at least several times.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Like A Bundle Of Reeds—Expendable, Part 4

Like a Bundle of ReedsLike A Bundle of Reeds, Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour, Michael Laitman, Ph.D.

Chapter 6: Expendable
Contemporary Anti-Semitism

Out of Favor

To demonstrate how expendable the world might think we are, consider the following facts: In 1938, Adolf Hitler was willing to send German and Austrian Jews out to whomever would have them. No one responded. Hitler declared that he could “only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We [Nazi Germany], on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.”[i]

And yet, the nations unanimously declined to take in the Jews. In July of 1938, representatives of most of the countries of the free world gathered in Évian-les-Bains, a resort town on the Southern shore of the pristine Lake Geneva, in France. Their goal was to discuss, and find solutions to the “Jewish problem,” namely the Jews who wished to flee from Germany and Austria before it was too late. The German and Austrian Jews were very hopeful about the conference. They believed the participating countries would genuinely seek to help them and offer them a safe haven. They were bitterly disillusioned.

While the conference delegates did express empathy for the plight of the Jews under the Nazi regime, they made no commitments and offered no solutions. Instead, they portrayed the conference as a mere beginning, which was never continued. Diplomatically, the delegates stated that, “The involuntary emigration of people in large numbers has become so great that it renders racial and religious problems more acute, increases international unrest, and may seriously hinder the processes of appeasement in international relations.”[ii]

However, since the conference, convened by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, assembled under a precondition that “no country would be forced to change its immigration quotas, but would instead be asked to volunteer changes,”[iii] to no one’s surprise, the resolutions of the conference offered the desperate Jews of Germany and Austria very little hope.

According to Yad Vashem, World Center for Holocaust Research, Documentation, Education and Commemoration, Israel’s official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, “As the conference proceeded, delegate after delegate excused his country from accepting additional refugees. The United States delegate, Myron C. Taylor, stated that his country’s contribution was to make the German and Austrian immigration quota, which up to the time had remained unfilled, fully available. The British delegate declared that their overseas territories were largely unsuitable for European settlement, except for parts of East Africa, which might offer possibilities for limited numbers. Britain itself, being fully populated and suffering unemployment, also was unavailable for immigration; and he excluded Palestine from the Evian discussion entirely. The French delegate stated that France had reached ‘the extreme point of saturation as regards admission of refugees.’ The other European countries echoed this sentiment, with minor variations. Australia could not encourage refugee immigration because, ‘as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.’ The delegates from New Zealand, Canada, and the Latin American nations cited the Depression as the reason they could not accept refugees. Only the tiny Dominican Republic volunteered to contribute large, but unspecified areas for agricultural colonization.”[iv]

A few months after the conference, the doors had closed and the fate of Europe’s Jewry was sealed.

[i] Ronnie S. Landau, The Nazi Holocaust: Its History and Meaning (US, Ivan R. Dee, 1994), 137.

[ii] “Decisions Taken at the Evian Conference On Jewish Refugees” (July 14, 1938), Jewish Virtual Library, url: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/evian.html

[iii] Yad Vashem, Shoah Resource Center, “Evian Conference,” url: http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206305.pdf

[iv] Yad Vashem, “Related Resources, Evian conference,” url: http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/resources/evian_conference.asp

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 03.15.15

Workshop

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Shamati #68 “Man’s Connection to the Sefirot

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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts,  Chapter “Torah,” Item 163

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