A question I received: Can you please remind all of us of the story about the student of a Kabbalist, who served the other students by preparing the study room, cleaning it and serving the students food and coffee, and how he had the highest spiritual attainment of all of them?

My Answer: This story is about Joshua, who helped Moses to teach his students by preparing the place of study and creating the necessary conditions. By helping his Teacher, he merited to become his successor, to be the spiritual leader of the nation.

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In the News (from MailOnline): “How bad bed habits are forcing 20% of couples to sleep alone… and leading 7% to divorce” Problems and arguments caused through lack of sleep due to being kept awake by their partner caused 7 per cent of men and women questioned to file for divorce. Couples are admitting to sleeping in a separate room to avoid being disturbed by their partners.

In the News (translated from La Repubblica): “Sleeping in separate rooms is good for your marriage” Studies show that a night spent in separate rooms makes a relationship better.

My Comment: According to Kabbalah, spouses meet in bed only for conversation and sex, but not for sleep. They should sleep in different rooms, or at least in separate beds.

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In the News (from The Telegraph):“Showing anger ‘is good for career‘” Showing your anger rather than repressing emotions is the key to a successful professional and personal life, according to research. A recent study published in the Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality found that more than 55 per cent of people said an angry episode produced a positive outcome, while almost a third admitted the episode helped them see their own faults.

My Comment: Nothing was created in vain; everything has a purpose. You only have to find out how to use it correctly.

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Two questions I received on studying Kabbalah in Hebrew:

Question: I constantly listen to your lessons in English, and I recently started wanting to learn Hebrew. Does this mean that I am realizing my Reshimot, or is it just an altruistic desire to know the language of someone close to me? Later, when our points in the heart will fully develop, will we want to speak the same language as everyone around us, as we did before the Tower of Babel?

My Answer: Hebrew and Aramaic came to us from the times of ancient Babylon, and I believe we’ll be using them in the future as well. It’s worthwhile to study them, at least to the extent they are necessary for understanding our lessons and discussions.

Question: Why are some texts translated, while others – very important ones, in my opinion – aren’t? Maybe you do have them, but you only make them available to your closest students? For example, there is no official translation of some of Rabash’s articles, which are studied in the first part of the lesson. So I am forced to listen to the simultaneous translation while you are reading the text, but simultaneous translation is not always precise.

My Answer: Everything we have is available to everyone, free of charge. We translate what we can, and when we have the means, we will translate all the lessons.

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A new member of the Kabbalah blog family has been launched.  The blog in Catalan called “Bnei Baruch Kabbalah” is now up on the Internet. This language is spoken in Catalonia, Valencia (Spain), France, the Balearic Islands, and several other European countries.

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy” Growing joblessness may reflect a wrenching restructuring of the American economy. In key industries — manufacturing, financial services and retail — many companies are abandoning whole areas of business. “Businesses [are] deciding to close down operations or get out of a line of certain activity,” said Martin N. Baily, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The stimulus spending bill signed last month includes $4.5 billion for job training. That only begins to address an area long neglected, said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project in New York. “You’ve got to use this moment to retrain for jobs” said Mr. Stettner.

My Comment: This is true, but even a new economy will not work unless its aim is global and integral, in line with producing goods and services for the benefit of the whole world. The producer should only receive what’s necessary for him and give the rest to the common fund. Retraining people for jobs should incorporate reeducating people about life in a globalized world. Otherwise, people won’t understand the laws of Nature, and therefore, will not be able to succeed under the new conditions.

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In the News (from Economist): “What went wrong” The IMF blames inadequate regulation, rather than global imbalances, for the financial crisis. It argues that the “main culprit” was deficient regulation of the financial system, together with a failure of market discipline.

My Comment: And these are the people managing the world’s economy today! They just don’t understand that egoism has grown beyond the boundaries of regulation and management. Instead, they are being manipulated by their blind urge to keep everything under their own control.

In the meantime, their rigid thinking and unwillingness to understand the structure of the new world are causing more problems. Because they refuse to see that the world is now global and integrated like a “small village,” with a mutual “butterfly effect” (the mutual influence of everyone on everyone), new effects of the crisis are starting to emerge in America – tent cities.

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A question I received: You wrote that man developed from the ape because of a spiritual gene he has. Did you mean that man developed from an ape physically, or was it a spiritual process, which led to the emergence of a person with a soul?

My Answer: Man physically emerged from the ape when a new Reshimo (gene) emerged in it. However, in spirituality, a “man” is someone who has begun to acquire the quality of bestowal and love. A person then becomes Adam, which in Hebrew means, “similar to the Creator.” The great Kabbalist the Ari writes about this, as does Baal HaSulam in Chapter 3 of Talmud Eser Sefirot. The Biblical story about the creation of the world is also talking about the spiritual creation of the worlds and man, and in fact, the whole Torah is about this.

The physical matter was formed after the Big Bang according to the laws of nature. Baal HaSulam writes about the geological periods of gradual cooling and heating of the earth, with each period lasting 30,000 years. Kabbalah is a science – the physics of the Upper World, and it does not contradict other sciences. On the other hand, religion interprets the Torah (or the Bible) literally, without understanding that the Torah’s text is Kabbalistic.

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In the News (from The Truthout Organisation): “After the Financial Crisis, Civil War? Get Ready to ‘Leave Your Region’” Will the economic and financial crisis degenerate into violent social explosions? That’s the rather alarming conclusion that the experts of European think tank LEAP/Europe 2020 lay out. The experts foresee a state of “generalized every man for himself” in the countries stricken by the crisis. That panic would then conclude in logical confrontations, in other words, with partial civil wars. According to that association, the most dangerous regions are those where the system of social protection is the weakest. Latin America, as well as the United States, are the areas most at risk. “There are 200 million guns in circulation in the United States,” LEAP head, Franck Biancheri, reminds us.

Stock Up on Supplies: LEAP alerts us to the risks of possible energy, food and water shortages in regions dependent on the outside for supplies, and it advises that people stock up on provisions.

Must we conclude from this that the global crisis could transform itself into a world war? “LEAP’s forecasts are extreme, but social violence is arising,” concedes Barclays’s economist Laurence Boone.

One hope remains, a “last chance” according to LEAP, that would lie in the ability of the G-20 – which meets April 2 in London to promulgate a “convincing and audacious” action plan. In that case, the world would still not be out of the woods, because – as the experts do not fail to also remind us – a severe climate crisis is also materializing.

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