“Can Jews Be Anti-Semites?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Can Jews be anti-Semites?

Not only can Jews be anti-Semites, they can be the biggest and most severe kind of anti-Semites.

Why?

It is because we Jews have a point that connects us to humanity’s corrected and unified state—“love your neighbor as yourself”—which we once discovered under Abraham’s guidance some 3,800 years ago. Together with that point, we also play host to the shattered egoistic desire, which opposes the point of unification, detaching us all from each other.

Every Jew accommodates this duality: an egoistic desire to receive, which seeks personal benefit at the expense of others, coupled with the altruistic point of unification that is attached to humanity’s peak unified state of development.

Whoever feels closer to the central point of unification is drawn to develop differently than those swept into the rat race of the masses, to positive connection in society. Whoever resists such development, letting the ego determine his or her goals and pleasures in life, is against unification, and is thus, according to its deeper definition, an anti-Semite.

However, whether or not certain people are anti-Semitic is not the main issue. We rather need to understand how such inclinations surface as part of a natural phenomenon, where they originate, and how our sentiments emerge from the interplay between these inner forces.

If awareness of the authentic cause of Jewish self-hatred arose among more and more people, then we would be able to somewhat influence humanity’s balance with nature. Humanity would then be able to better understand what it is going through.

In short, Jews are the biggest anti-Semites, precisely because they host the two extreme points of unity and anti-unity.

These two points have constantly changing relations. They actually exist in every person, and we see them in every nation and in every stage of development. However, due to once discovering unity upon the great differences between the people in ancient Babylon, the Jews have a much more prominent differentiation between these two points: on one hand, access to the same method Abraham used to unite people above their differences, and on the other hand, a more inflated ego that resists such unity and makes Jews disproportionately successful in egoistic endeavors compared to other nations.

Therefore, the more humanity develops, the more the nations of the world feel hatred toward Jews. It is because anti-Semitism is a natural response of the ego’s growth, which hates the point opposite itself, a desire that wishes to concede upon the ego in order to positively connect with others.

People in undeveloped areas, such as tribal peoples, have no such attitude to Jews. The more people develop in a civilization, with its amassing egoistic competition and materialistic individualism, the more their attitude toward Jews develops. All of a sudden, people who encounter more and more problems from trying to make their way in the modern civilized world, start feeling that they dislike Jews. It is due to the ego’s growth, and the subsequent tension between the ego and the deeper point within the person that yearns for positive connection with others.

We will reach a state where the whole world will reveal their negative attitude to Jews. It thus all depends on how soon, and to what extent, we Jews will start exercising our potential: to realize the method to unite (“love your neighbor as yourself”) above divisions (“love will cover all transgressions”), through which we can become a conduit for unity to spread among humanity (“a light unto the nations”).

When such a transformation takes place, the rising hateful attitude to Jews will invert to its positive form: a supportive, respectful and even loving attitude toward a people who bring a new elated sensation of happiness and togetherness to the world.

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