Audio Version Of The Blog – 03.19.15

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The Economy Of The Unhappy Future

laitman_220Opinion (Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies): “How would you like to live in an economy where robots do everything that can be predictably programmed in advance, and almost all profits go to the robots’ owners?

“Meanwhile, human beings do the work that’s unpredictable – odd jobs, on-call projects, fetching and fixing, driving and delivering, tiny tasks needed at any and all hours – and patch together barely enough to live on.

“Brace yourself. This is the economy we’re now barreling toward. …

“New software technologies are allowing almost any job to be divided up into discrete tasks that can be parceled out to workers when they’re needed, with pay determined by demand for that particular job at that particular moment.

“Customers and workers are matched online. Workers are rated on quality and reliability. The big money goes to the corporations that own the software. The scraps go to the on-demand workers.

“Consider Amazon’s ‘Mechanical Turk.’ Amazon calls it ‘a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence.’

“In reality, it’s an Internet job board offering minimal pay for mindlessly-boring bite-sized chores. Computers can’t do them because they require some minimal judgment, so human beings do them for peanuts — say, writing a product description, for $3; or choosing the best of several photographs, for 30 cents; or deciphering handwriting, for 50 cents. Amazon takes a healthy cut of every transaction.

“This is the logical culmination of a process that began thirty years ago when corporations began turning over full-time jobs to temporary workers, independent contractors, free-lancers, and consultants.

“It was a way to shift risks and uncertainties onto the workers – work that might entail more hours than planned for, or was more stressful than expected.

“And a way to circumvent labor laws that set minimal standards for wages, hours, and working conditions. And that enabled employees to join together to bargain for better pay and benefits.

“The new on-demand work shifts risks entirely onto workers, and eliminates minimal standards completely.

“In effect, on-demand work is a reversion to the piece work of the nineteenth century – when workers had no power and no legal rights, took all the risks, and worked all hours for almost nothing.

“Amazon’s Mechanical Turks work for pennies, literally. Minimum wage? Time-and-a half for overtime? Amazon says it just connects buyers and sellers so it’s not responsible.

“Defenders of on-demand work emphasize its flexibility. Workers can put in whatever time they want, work around their schedules, fill in the downtime in their calendars. …

“An opportunity to make some extra bucks can seem mighty attractive in an economy whose median wage has been stagnant for thirty years and almost all of whose economic gains have been going to the top. …

“On this measure, the share-the-scraps economy is hurtling us backwards.”

My Comment: I have to repeat again that without connecting people through integral education, they will pointlessly and endlessly exploit each other until they return to the Stone Age. In store for us are sufferings that will show us a way out of this dead end where egoism drives us. But this is the path of suffering.

The path of Light is also possible—drawing the force of correction by our unity in integral education. As soon as we begin to implement it, we will immediately discover its remarkable properties in all aspects of our lives.
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What Is The Soul?

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe soul is a desire to love and to bestow, which a person develops within himself. In this way, he begins to feel the spiritual world.

We now only have a desire to receive and to enjoy, pulling toward ourselves everything that seems to us as good, whereas the desire for bestowal indicates that I include the desires of other people and begin to fulfill them.

With this, I acquire my soul, for the soul is found outside of my body and not within it. I don’t identify myself with this world, but with my desire to bestow. I come out of myself and feel the external reality. In this manner I begin to perceive the spiritual reality, the next level.

Baal HaSulam writes in Pri Hacham (The Sages Fruit), “The Emanation of the Soul”: Every person was not created but to attain a complete and enlightened soul from the Creator, be He blessed, worthy of constant and eternal adhesion.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/1/15

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Why Are We Living In This World?

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhy are we living in this world?—Every child asks this question beginning around the age of five, and this is because within us is found a Reshimo (reminiscence), a spiritual gene that must be developed. It pushes us from within.

This gene, this desire, requires fulfillment, an answer to the question, “What are we living for? What is the meaning of life?” Later, we forget this question, and in our pursuit of life, we no longer return to it since we don’t have time to think about it and regard it as a useless thought.

However, we see that this question constantly draws our attention in all kinds of situations throughout our lives, and considering how many people are in despair, get divorced, need drugs, and require antidepressants, we see that in spite of everything, this question still is very strong.

This gene is planted in us because at the end of our development, our evolution, we need to reach a state in which all of us ask the question, “What are we living for?” Why live?” “What is the meaning of life?”

It is possible to ask this question in another way: “Why does nature, which is so perfect and purposeful, create a person with such great potential, but leave him without an answer to the questions of how to build one’s life,  and what to achieve in life?”

We see what tremendous wisdom is latent in every cell, in every body, in the connection between us, and we see how much information we haven’t yet discovered! However, even from what we have discovered with the help of science, we see such a wonderful wisdom hidden in all of this rich mechanism, and yet, we who are at the summit of this science, at its peak, don’t see any meaning in our lives. How is such a thing possible? Without a doubt there is a purpose to our existence, but we don’t know what it is and we need to discover it.

So, someone who asks himself about the meaning of life ultimately reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103 FM, 1/18/15

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What Happens To A Person’s Soul When He Dies?

laitman_760_2I once asked my teacher Rabash the same question: “What happens to a person’s soul when he dies?” And he answered that it is just like when you take a dirty shirt off at the end of the day and throw it into the washing machine….

So also at the end of life you take off the body from the soul and discard it. The body rots, whereas the soul continues to live. After all, you remain alive after you take off your old shirt. In this way you remain alive even after taking off the physical body.

Question: So how does the soul exist without a body?

Answer: The soul even exists now without a body. It only accompanies it and doesn’t touch it. The soul exists in another dimension that you don’t feel.

Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “The Peace,” that: “Thus, in our world, there are no new souls the way bodies are renewed, but only a certain amount of souls that incarnate….Therefore, with regard to the souls, all generations since the beginning of creation to the end of correction are as one generation that has extended its life over several thousand years….”

The period of the development of the soul here in this world is 6,000 years. This development began with Adam HaRishon (the first man) who lived 5,775 years ago, and will continue to the end of 6,000 years. This means that another 225 years are left for us. During this time all of us must develop our soul, meaning our part in the collective soul, and connect everyone together into one soul.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this entire process. 14 billion years ago the material evolution of our universe began from one spark; it was used as the beginning of the “Big Bang.” That is how the evolution of inanimate nature began. Two billion years ago the first plants appeared on Earth, then the animals, and after that the human. The human species developed until a desire to attain the source of his life, the upper world, the next level, began to develop in him.

Development proceeds and advances from the inanimate to vegetative, to animate, and after that, the human. And the human must attain a higher level, which is called the development of his soul, and rise to the next level, the upper world. And in the upper world there are also the phases of the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human. But there are spiritual levels that we need to develop and rise to an even higher world. And that is how we pass by way of the five worlds.

Question: Does it follow that Adam HaRishon lived 5,775 years ago, who developed the soul within him?

Answer: Yes, and so he is called Adam HaRishon.

Question: Does this mean that everyone must develop the souls within them during the next 225 years?

Answer: Yes, all of them without exception, in 225 years or before then. So we see how this development is accelerating; time is becoming very thick and is seemingly shrinking and compressing. If we don’t develop the soul within us, if we don’t push ourselves towards development, we will be thrown into terrible pressure from the forces of nature that will pressure us through all kinds of disasters and problems; they will push us towards development of the soul.

Development of the soul can only happen in this world, and secondly, it can be renewed only through connection between people. Through the connection between us we give shape to the single soul that is general and common to us all.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/1/15

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Heaven And Hell – Here And Now

laitman_207Question: Is there a heavenly court that determines where the person will go after his death, heaven or hell?

Answer: We are within a rigid system that is bound with iron fetters. This is a program that encompasses and includes all of creation.

Through our behavior, which depends upon our characteristics, we influence the system and feel its reaction. This is called judgment and mercy. According to how the person influences the system, it reacts, influences, and acts on him. This is called the “heavenly court.” So, we need to learn how to behave to influence the system only positively.

Question: Does it follow that we feel heaven or hell here and now and not somewhere after death?

Answer: Absolutely! There is no other heaven or hell other than what is found here in this world. I myself determine where I am found, in heaven or in hell. If I determine that my egoistic desire is hell because it buries me underneath it and doesn’t let me reach and attain eternal life, I feel myself in hell.

It is excellent that you have understood this. It means that now you will try to break out of your ego and attain heaven, and you truly will begin to feel yourself in an eternal and perfect world. You will feel that you are living in heaven and will not be concerned about your body at all.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/1/15

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Destroying The Idols Inside Me

Laitman_115_05The Zohar, Sulam Commentary, Chapter “BaHar,” Item 69: Abraham repented and shattered the idols of paganism and the food that had been placed before them.

Everything that is considered holy and sublime on the previous level that was worth living for, working for, and dedicating myself to, needs to be shattered. All the actions that are performed in our world for the sake of our ego, for our children, for humanity, and for nature belong to that.

Unfortunately, we live simply in order to survive, saying, “Let us live the years that we were given from Above in peace, and I don’t care what may happen afterward.” This is what everyone thinks, not realizing that they deceive themselves that way. Such an attitude is harmful and destructive.

Abraham believed that our world wasn’t created in order to appease the idols—our work, our studies, our children, and the good life, after which we can lay down and die in peace—but that our world was created so that we would reach the next world in this lifetime.

Noah was the first who broke away from the past. He built an ark and hid in it. He realized that he had to be saved from this world and he created his own protection, a shelter from the thoughts and the temptations that surrounded him, and sailed away from them. Therefore, all his egoistic feelings, thoughts, and desires died during the flood.

The point is that we need to perceive the still, vegetative, and animate natures, and mankind as one unique whole. Only a part of this whole, called Noah, survived the flood, which means that this part had been corrected under the influence of the Surrounding Light (the ark is the Light of Hassadim). The part that couldn’t be corrected that way died. However, later it undergoes its own correction in a different manner and is reborn in a new form.

The same thing happened to Abraham. The parts that couldn’t be corrected remained in Babylon, while Abraham shattered, burned, and threw away all the idols and left Babylon. He had a higher understanding than Noah: that everything that belonged to his egoistic state was on the level of still nature and that there was no Upper Light in it. He discerned and distinguished the higher level from the lower and cut off the layer of the still, vegetative, and animate nature and the human level that are inside his soul. He could not be free of the domination of Nimrod (the ego), and so he left.

We see that here, too, the general soul distinguishes and sets aside a certain part that cannot be corrected and follows its own way. Just as Noah detached himself from the entire world, Abraham also detached himself from it. The part of the Babylonians remained and developed following a different path.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/18/15

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In A World Of Causes

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What happens if we perform actions that are not directed towards the Creator?

Answer: If we don’t direct our actions towards the Creator, then we lock ourselves into the smallest circle. Then the Creator is not in any of the circles of this world and we live on this Earth: the same nations, the same people, the still, vegetative, and animate nature, the same universe, and we don’t see anything except this.

We don’t see the reason that we are alive. And this is our central problem. We don’t know what this life is for, where it comes from, and where it is leading us. What happens before our birth and after death? We are compressed into a very limited framework.

Animals also don’t know anything about their lives. A person comes to them, wants to kill and eat them, but they don’t suspect anything and live according to what is allocated to them. If we don’t aspire to break out from the framework of this world, then our attitude towards life and reality is no different in any way. We simply live and continue to live and constantly search for what is better for us, just like animals.

An animal behaves in order to find a place that is most comfortable for it at each moment in life. We also constantly search for where things will be better for us and don’t think beyond that. We cannot rise above this, so we are also found on the level of the animal except within a more developed system of clarification. I search for where things will be better for me according to many criteria; it is important to me what others say about me, what is now in fashion.

With animals everything is simpler, and with humans everything is much more complex and complicated. But basically, it is the same primitive approach: An aspiration for maximal material enjoyment of life, and that is all.

Everyone is managed by the same approach except for those people who receive a desire to open their eyes and break out of their physical boundaries. Then another focus of all the senses is required for them directed outside instead of inside.

And this is what we learn: how it is possible to be detached from the previous focus, to stop concentrating and focusing on the material, to remove these egoistic glasses and see the world differently, as the causes for everything that happens.
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From the Convention in France, Day Two, 5/11/14, Lesson 4

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Face To Face With The Creator

laitman_537The individual and the group need to behave as if they are in a constant dialogue with the Creator. This is to such a degree that any dialogue with any person in the world is not important to me since they are all managed by a higher force and basically don’t determine anything.

I gradually cleanse the world of all illusory influences. I am in a world, in a natural environment, and with people, a multitude of forces and various factors that influence me: government, neighbors, family, enemies, and friends. But I begin to think: No, there is a Creator above who arranges everything.

One On One With The Creator
He determines all the influences of the forces of nature upon us because I see that people are unable to manage them. The Creator controls all of this: the rain, the sun, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

After that, I attribute the next circle to the Creator: the government. I understand that the government basically doesn’t decide anything and is managed by the Creator. For the Creator influences us through the government, as it is said: “The hearts of princes and kings are in the hands of the Creator.”

Then I also attribute to the Creator all my colleagues at work, all of the people in my city, my family, and how my wife and children behave towards me; I can say that all of this comes from the Creator.

And after that, I also move to the group. I gradually advance from above to below; I attain such a state where the entire world (Olam) disappears. All of the concealment (Alam) disappears and I see the Creator everywhere in the world.

And everything that filled this world: nature, the government, people who are familiar and who are strangers to me, my family and friends, all become one vessel in the place where the Creator is revealed, which is called Divinity. Instead of this world, I see the Upper Light that fills all of reality.

Nothing more is left. I only see the Light clothing the world. Where are my friends, where is my family, where is the government, where is all of nature? There is nothing! Everything disappears, and I find myself face to face with the Creator.

So this is the key principle: at every moment to settle accounts only with the Creator and to clarify that everything comes from Him. He first wants me to understand that everything that happens in front of me is the Creator turning towards me at a given moment so that now in these circumstances I will come to adhesion. And there is more and more adhesion every second until I attain a state of wholeness.
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From the Convention in France, Day Two, 5/11/14, Lesson 4

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Like A Bundle Of Reeds—Mingle Bells, Part 3

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 7: Mingle Bells
To Be Jewish, or Not to Be Jewish—That Is the Question

Nazi Germany—Horror Beyond Words

As pointed out earlier in the chapter, another notable example of Jewish assimilation and rejection took place in Germany, preceding and during World War II. The horrific consequences of the unfolding that took place in Germany have been thoroughly discussed and analyzed, and there is not much to add concerning what took place. What we should point out, however, is the repetition of the culprits that affected the Spanish Inquisition and ultimate expulsion from Spain.

Historically, German Jewry did not enjoy the freedom and affinity with its host duchies and cities as did the Jews in Spain. Instead, for centuries they would wander from city to city, reside where permitted, always under harsh restrictions and discrimination, and at times, such as during the Crusades, suffering persecution, expulsion, and even massacres.

And yet, starting from the 16th century, in tandem with the Renaissance, the Jews in Germany enjoyed relative peace. While they did not receive equal status or citizenship at any of their hosting cities or duchies, they were left to run their own lives relatively uninterrupted and separate from the rest of the German society.

“Behind their ghetto walls,” writes Sol Scharfstein in Understanding Jewish History: From Renaissance to the 21st Century, “following their own traditions and their own way of life, Jews weathered the storms of the centuries that followed, the struggles between Christians, between the church and princes, and the wars and revolutions set off by the new conditions and new ideas.

“…[Pope] Paul IV argued that it was foolish for Christians to be friendly to a people who had not accepted Christ as their savior. In a papal bull he decreed that Jews living in areas controlled by the church were to be confined in the ghettos. They would be permitted to leave the ghetto in daytime to go to work, but forbidden to be outside at other times. The ghetto gates were to be closed at night and on Christian holidays,” and the gates were “…guarded by non-Jews watchmen who controlled the entry and exit of those imprisoned inside.”[i]

But contrary to popular belief, initially the Jewish ghettos were not compulsory. That came later, once the Jews were already concentrated in their living areas. Renowned historian, Salo Wittmayer Baron, wrote that “Jews had fewer duties and more rights than the great bulk of the population. …They could move freely from place to place with few exceptions, they could marry whomever they wanted, they had their own courts, and were judged according to their own laws. Even in mixed cases with non-Jews, not the local tribunal but usually a special judge appointed by the king or some high official had competence.”[ii]

A few pages later, continues Prof. Wittmayer Baron, “…The Jewish community enjoyed full internal autonomy. Complex, isolated, in a sense foreign, it was left more severely alone by the State than most corporations. Thus, the Jewish community of pre-Revolutionary days had more competence over its members than the modern Federal, State, and Municipal governments combined [relevant to 1928, year of publication]. Education, administration of justice between Jew and Jew, taxation for communal and State purposes, health, markets, public order, were all within the jurisdiction of the community-corporation, and in addition, the Jewish community was the fountainhead of social work of a quality generally superior to that outside Jewry.

“…A phase of this corporate existence generally regarded by emancipated Jewry as an unmitigated evil was the Ghetto. But it must not be forgotten that the Ghetto grew up voluntarily as a result of Jewish self-government, and it was only in a later development that public law interfered and made it a legal compulsion for all Jews to live in a secluded district.”[iii]

Thus, relying on each other for their subsistence, the Jews grew closer, cultivated their own literature, and lived modestly and piously. Once again, we see that when Jews stick together, they are unharmed. And once again, we see that when cohesion and unity are not the Jews’ choice in life, circumstances impose it upon them from outside. Albeit coercive, it is always unity that keeps them safe.

And yet, despite the safety provided by unity, and the fact that Jews, as Prof. Grant noted, are “inassimilable,” as soon as the door opens and the Jews are allowed outside, they begin to mingle in the very same manner that brought upon them the calamity in Spain—cultural assimilation, and, worse yet, religious assimilation. Somehow, we always seem to forget the words of our sages, who repeatedly claim, “When they [Israel] are as one man with one heart, they are as a fortified wall against the forces of evil.”[iv] Indeed, as we have shown throughout this book, the neglect of unity is what caused the ruin of the Temple and the dispersion of the people from its land, and indeed every calamity that struck the Jews since then.

As the Jewish emancipation progressed and German Jews were allowed into the German Christian society, they gradually became estranged from their spiritual roots. Toward the end of the 18th century, they were so eager to be admitted into the Christian society that they would do virtually anything to be accepted. Thus, according to Professors of Jewish culture and history, Steven J. Zipperstein of Stanford University and Jonathan Frankel of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in 1799, only a few years after the start of the Jewish emancipation, David Friedlander, one of the Jewish community’s most prominent leaders, went as far as to suggest that Berlin Jews would convert to Christianity en masse.[v]

But even without converting, German Jews were willing to relinquish everything their forefathers had held sacred. “In order to prove the absolute loyalty of the Jews to state and country,” write Zipperstein and Frankel later in their book, “[the Jews] were ready to remove from the prayer-books any reference to the age-old hope for a return to the ancient homeland in Palestine and to interpret the dispersion of the Jews across the world not as Exile but as of positive value, as the way for the Jews to carry the message of monotheistic ethics to all of mankind, as a divinely ordained mission. Thus, the Reform movement made it possible to claim that the Jews constituted a strictly religious community divested of all national attributes, that they were Germans (or Poles or Frenchmen, as the case might be) of the ‘Mosaic persuasion.’ In this way, reformed Judaism became the symbol, as it were, of a readiness to trade in age-old beliefs in exchange for civil equality and social acceptance.”[vi]

The relinquishing of the Jews’ connection to Zion, the land of Israel and the desire for the Creator—the Law of Bestowal—symbolizes more than anything the extent to which German Jews had alienated themselves from their heritage. As we have seen so many times, and as we learn from the teachings of our sages throughout history, once the Jews willingly abandon their role, they are forced back into it by the very nations within which they strive to mingle.

Alas, the German Jews did not know this fact. They were in exile, banished from the quality of bestowal and oblivious to their task. They were ignorant of their mistake that the minute they traded cohesion for acceptance by the general society, they put their future and the future of their children in harm’s way. While no one could have predicted the magnitude of the horror that would befall them, the path toward it had been paved, and their conduct continued to shore it up.

From approximately 1780 through 1869, despite several setbacks, gradual advancement of the Jewish emancipation took place. Eventually, “The law of equality was passed by the Parliament of the North German Confederation on July 3, 1869. With the extension of this law to the states united within the German Empire, the struggle of Germany’s Jews for emancipation achieved success.”[vii]

But the price of the success was the complete abandonment of everything that had kept the Jews together. According to Werner Eugen Mosse, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of East Anglia, “In 1843, the first radical Reform society—rejecting circumcision and calling for the moving of the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday—came into existence to Frankfurt. …In the next two or three decades, the religious Reform movement would re-structure the religious service in most large communities and develop into the Liberal religious movement which dominated twentieth-century German Jewry.

“…The pressure for social integration into general society led many to abandon practices which they felt set up a barrier against social intercourse (e.g. the dietary laws), while the need to be economically competitive forced many to do business on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. In addition, many acculturated Jews found themselves repelled by the traditional Jewish service for aesthetic reasons.”[viii]

“Another aspect of Reform closely tied to education,” continues Prof. Eugen Mosse, “was the new ceremony of confirmation. This ceremony, based on Christian models, was intended to supplement (or more rarely, replace) the traditional bar mitzvah. Both girls and boys, on graduating from religious school, were given a public oral examination on the bases of the Jewish religion and were then blessed by the rabbi and formally inducted into Judaism.”[ix]

Thus, just as it happened in Spain some four centuries earlier, the Reform Jews were in effect becoming “Ashkenazi conversos.” According to Donald L. Niewyk, Professor Emeritus of History at SMU, “The vast majority of Jews was passionately committed to the well-being of its sole Fatherland, Germany.”[x]

And just as it happened in Spain, when the tide began to turn against the Jews, and anti-Semitism began to rise in the Weimar Republic of Germany, the Jews were blissfully oblivious to the sounding alarms. “Not a few saw anti-Semitism as a positive boon that alone could keep the Jews from gradual amalgamation with the larger society and ultimate disappearance as a distinctive religious group,” narrates Prof. Niewyk.[xi] Without noticing that letting the nations keep us together instead of doing so ourselves bears unimaginable consequences, Dr. Kurt Fleischer, the leader of the Liberals in the Berlin Jewish Community Assembly, argued in 1929 that “Anti-Semitism is the scourge that God has sent us in order to lead us together and weld us together.”[xii] This, again, proves right the earlier-cited words of Prof. Cohn-Sherbok: “The paradox of Jewish life is that … without anti-Semitism, we may be doomed to extinction.”[xiii] Indeed, how tragically right they all are.

As it turned out, Hitler, too, thought that the Creator was using the Nazis to do His work. In Mein Kampf, he wrote similar words to the abovementioned statement of Isabella, queen of Spain, about the Lord punishing the Jews through the king: “Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands. Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”[xiv]

Since the Creator is the quality of love and bestowal, the Jews’ emergence from the ghettos exposed their exile from that quality. Consequently, instead of bringing solidarity and mutual responsibility to their host societies, they were spreading egotism, which is ruinous to any society, and were therefore met with intolerance and repulsion soon after their acceptance. German philosopher and anthropologist, Ludwig Feuerbach, connected Jews with egotism in the following manner: “The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this day. Their principle, their God, is the most practical principle in the world—namely egoism. And moreover, egoism in the form of religion. Egoism is the God who will not let his servants come to shame. Egoism is essentially monotheistic, for it has only one, only self, as its end.”[xv]

Indeed, who would welcome such a menace into society? It is precisely that egotism that causes each and every nation within which we live to rethink, and eventually regret and repeal its openness.

The one thing that made Jews unique and powerful in ancient times was their unity, their altruism, and as we have shown, that was the one thing that Abraham and Moses wished to give to the world. At first, the nations welcome us into their midst, subconsciously hoping we will share with them that quality. But upon discovering that we are giving them the opposite, their joy turns to disillusionment and anger. As long as we continue to disappoint the nations, we will continue to receive the same treatment, and the trend is showing that the means by which they’ll show their disappointment will grow even harsher.

[i] Sol Scharfstein, Understanding Jewish History: From Renaissance to the 21st Century (Printed in Hong Kong, Ktav Publishing House, 1997), 163-164.

[ii] Salo W. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation: Shall We Revise the Traditional Views?” in: The Menorah Treasury: Harvest of Half a Century (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1964), 52.

[iii] Salo W. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation: Shall We Revise the Traditional Views?” in: The Menorah Treasury: Harvest of Half a Century, 54-55.

[iv] Rabbi Shmuel Bornstein, Shem MiShmuel [A Name Out of Samuel], VaYakhel [And Moses Assembled], TAR’AV (1916)

[v] Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Ed: Jonathan Frankel, Steven J. Zipperstein (UK, Cambridge University Press, 1992), 8.

[vi] Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Ed: J. Frankel, S.J. Zipperstein, 12.

[vii] “Emancipation,” Jewish Virtual Library, url: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0006_0_05916.html

[viii] Werner Eugen Mosse, Revolution and Evolution: 1848 in German-Jewish History (Germany, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Tubingen, 1981), 255-256.

[ix] Eugen Mosse, Revolution and Evolution: 1848 in German-Jewish History, 260.

[x] Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (New Jersey, Transactions Publishers, New Brunswick, 2001), 95.

[xi] Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, 84.

[xii] ibid.

[xiii] Cohn-Sherbok, The Paradox of Anti-Semitism, XIV (Preface).

[xiv] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (US, Noontide Press, 2003), 51.

[xv] Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. Marian Evans (London, John Chapman, 1843), 113.