New Life 705 – Jewish Culture: The Synagogue
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The internal essence of the synagogue is a place where people connect and ask for the power to love one another. Today the attitude to the synagogue is very far from the attitude to a place that the synagogue is supposed to represent.

When Abraham and Sarah gathered people in their tents they taught them to connect and to reveal the upper force in the connection between them. When the Temple was destroyed we drew away from the upper force, from love of others, and the synagogues became formal rituals.

Unfortunately there is no warmth or love in the synagogue today and so people are not attracted to it. They only come to pray and then hurry back home. There is no soul in the synagogue, no spirit of life, and this is a state called exile. In order to come out of exile we need the force of the Messiah, the force that can draw us from exile, from the separation between us to connection, to the revelation of the soul. The Temple and the Ark of the Covenant, and nowadays the synagogue and the Holy Ark, are symbols of spiritual roots.

There is no holiness in stones if there is no holiness in the heart, and holiness is love. We have to pray for the love to be restored between us.

A Minyan, a prayer, reading the Torah, etc. are all symbols of the right connection in which the Creator is revealed. There is no trace of the inner essence of spirituality in all the rituals held in the synagogue these days. One can be psychologically moved by these rituals, but this isn’t the necessary correction of the heart. In the synagogue, all the hearts should melt into one heart in which the force of love is revealed, and the real Torah is the force that can connect all the hearts despite the evil inclination that is revealed.

A Minyan, a group of ten people who come to the synagogue wishing to connect, can reveal the Creator, the force of love between them. The revelation of the force of love in the world is the purpose of development, as it is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.”
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From KabTV’s “New Life 705 – Jewish Culture: The Synagogue,” 3/17/16

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