Medium published my new article “What Declining Birth Rates Mean to Humanity”

Is it right to bring more children to this world now? This is a question that seems more relevant than ever in these days when economic, social, and environmental uncertainty are making women think twice about motherhood. The number of births in the United States hit the lowest levels yet during the last three decades, according to an official recently released study of 2019. It is expected that the distress caused by the coronavirus pandemic will lower those record-breaking statistics even more. But beyond the numbers, our main concern should be how to improve the quality of life for the world’s population, the quality of our relations for the benefit of society.

“As humanity evolves, people are becoming increasingly reluctant to have children because people’s egos are growing, producing a self-centered approach toward all aspects of life.”

The fertility rate per woman needed to replace a generation is 2.1 children, a level that is not currently met, according to a recent report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The preliminary study found that on average, women in America are expected to bear only 1.71 children. It also reveals that the total number of births fell to about 3.7 million last year, nearly 1% less than in 2018.

The baby boom predicted as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown will not materialize. Quite the opposite: Birth control requests in America have nearly doubled due to the virus outbreak. As a result of the soaring unemployment and economic pressure, economists expect to see approximately 500,000 fewer births in America next year.

Today’s society does not cultivate a desire to have children. As humanity evolves, people are becoming increasingly reluctant to have children because people’s egos are growing, producing a self-centered approach toward all aspects of life. The ego grows day by day, generation after generation, and makes people focus more and more on pleasing themselves, to the point that today many young people do not even want to marry. Couples have developed a new approach to life, centered around self-fulfillment, and many question why they should lose their freedom and tie themselves to fulfilling the needs of children.

At the same time, medical advancements have given us the sensation of control over births. Women can now choose whether they want children or not, when and how, depending on their careers or life priorities. They are even able to choose the baby’s gender prior to conception. From the naive couple of past society with very little knowledge about pregnancy and childbirth, we have transformed into a society of well-planned and carefully-calculated childbirth.

The sharp decline in fertility rates has swept through many countries as a global trend, as studies confirm. But this is not necessarily a negative situation. One may ask, “Since we already have a worldwide population of 8 billion, why do we need to increase it? What for?

In fact, a person needs meaning, a higher purpose than just living. What does fertility give to a person? Every person’s life on earth is purposeful. Every human being is meant to correct his egoistic nature. This goal can be attained through the gradual process of connecting with others, until a new humanity is born, a humanity based on mutual responsibility and unity.

What the world needs now is a qualitative change not a quantitative one. A society in which every person rises above his egoistic nature and aims at benefitting his surrounding environment does not require billions of people. This epitomizes a qualitative change instead of a quantitative one.

Concern about how to educate our children and not the number of births is what should occupy our minds.

When we educate our children to love others, toward the purpose of life, toward discovering the correct connection between people, this will be the time to bring as many children into the world as possible. In a global and integral system, each child brings tremendous benefit to the development of all of humanity.
Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash
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Question: Since I began to study Kabbalah, my life has fundamentally changed for the better, and I have become a completely different person. Does this mean that I’m on the right track?

Answer: Possibly, but not necessarily.

Question: Does non-kosher food prevent me from revealing the Creator?

Answer: I cannot say so.

Question: If someone gets sick, does it mean that I’m doing something wrong?

Answer: We are connected with each other, and therefore, we are as if responsible for one another.

Question: If there is none else besides Him, then what demands can be made to a person?

Answer: The claim is that the Creator wants to educate a person, and his response is unsynchronized and inadequate.

Question: What should the first step in attaining the Creator be?

Answer: The first step is to set off on the path “there is none else besides Him.”

Question: Who, in your opinion, is the Creator?

Answer: The Creator is the common force of all nature, the single unchanging force which manifests itself within relation to us in absolute bestowal and love, but is attained by us to the extent of our resemblance to it.

Question: Is our world like a computer program, a stimulator of the world? What do you say about this option?

Answer: Our world can really be called a specific computer program, because everything in it is absolutely determined, organized, and defined. And I cannot confirm the rest of what you have said.

Question: Should the connection between people be corrected on the earthly level?

Answer: Yes, definitely. We must establish peace, good connection, and love, and reveal the property of bestowal in both worlds, on both earthly and spiritual levels.

Question: What should I do if I change myself, but see that people around me do not change?

Answer: This suggests that you yourself have not yet changed.

Question: When I bestow, does this bestowal depend on the sensitivity of a recipient?

Answer: This is true, bestowal depends on the perception of the recipient of my bestowal. There necessarily must be reciprocity here. I cannot evaluate my bestowal on my own, it can be done precisely by the one to whom I bestow.

Question: Sometimes it happens that it looks like nothing good has happened, but you feel joy inside. What is that?

Answer: This is the joy that is within you. You just do not know why. 🙂
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/26/20

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Question: What kind of connection, what attitude, does the Creator have toward a person?

Answer: It is a direct connection. The Creator created the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature and man, and He manages all these levels. The first three levels function only in order to sustain and to support the existence of the human nature.

The human nature is also divided into four parts: still, vegetative, animate, and human levels in a person.

The last level, the human level in a person, feels the need to reveal the Creator, whereas all the other parts, which means all the other people in whom the last part of the development of the desire has not been revealed, don’t feel the need to reveal Him yet and it does not concern them. They live a peaceful animate-level life.

Those in whom the desire to reach the human level in a person has already developed begin to feel the need and the necessity of attaining the force that manages them, the force that is above us. On the whole, such people come to study the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/1/19

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Question: What does it mean: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”? What does it mean to love yourself?

Answer: To the same extent that you can egoistically imagine how to love yourself, you must also love another.

Naturally, it will be different at different levels. The more you rise with the help of your growing egoism, the more you will love yourself. And this will serve as an example of how you should love the other even more.

Question: If a person grows on the spiritual level, does he become better in everyday life and change on the physical level?

Answer: No. A person who grows spiritually is absolutely invisible in our world in his growth, in his changes. After all, this does not happen in properties that people can detect, determine, and measure.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/26/20

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Lesson Preparation

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati 13 “A Pomegranate”

Lesson on the Topic “Concerning Above Reason” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 45

Selected Highlights

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Medium published my new article “Modern Time Plagues”

We have not yet recovered from one plague and the next one arrives. A giant dust cloud from the Sahara Desert reached the states along the US Gulf Coast affecting air quality. The phenomenon is not uncommon, but its size and strength is unusual, according to NASA. The record-setting dust storm came at the same time as information of a locust swarm’s invasion in South America, destroying up to 80% of the crops in their path. And all this is happening while the coronavirus pandemic is spreading ever faster. Nature’s signals are unequivocal; we just need to learn how to read them in order to shift from helplessness state to hopefulness.

After long generations of development, nature now requires us to mature and ask ourselves, what we are living for, what is the point of our existence, do we want to continue to carry on with daily life without understanding what we should do, and for what purpose.

We are definitely experiencing times similar to the ten plagues of ancient Egypt. More maladies are forecast to arrive. Without considering the impact of other environmental factors that already put food sufficiency at risk, the UN estimates that the coronavirus crisis alone could double the number of people suffering acute hunger to 265 million globally by the end of this year.

When people face incomprehensible blows and take a surface look at them, end of-time theories emerge. The magnitude and frequency of disasters are certainly perceived as a worrisome “perfect storm” to people. However, such epidemics and other natural calamities occur in order to lead humanity to examine its course of action toward nature and rethink its goals above a mere existential life.

After long generations of development, nature now requires us to mature and ask ourselves, what we are living for, what is the point of our existence, do we want to continue to carry on with daily life without understanding what we should do, and for what purpose. Nature wants us to answer these questions and grow. Until now, we have advanced unconsciously like small children, led by a selfish desire to receive for ourselves, running after futile pleasures to the detriment of others.

The human egoistic approach contradicts the perfect balance of the entire natural system. Therefore, nature pushes us from behind until we become aware and understand the program that controls creation. It is a sort of inner “software of nature” that operates every aspect of our planet. We need to crack that system’s code, penetrate it, and take an active part in managing the entire reality.

Once we understand how this program works, adjusting our attitude toward one another, fixing our relationships, we will positively affect the whole system. Above all natural egoistic tendencies, we must learn to build bonds of connection, consideration, mutual responsibility, and love. By merely thinking in the direction of mutual consideration, all of nature will begin to calm. We will bring balance to all mankind, to the whole earth, and to the entire universe, since thought is the most powerful force in reality.

Thoughts work similar to a magnetic field. We do not see the forces operating behind that field but they exist and influence each other. Likewise, we humans positively affect others through our thoughts about how to increase connection.

Nothing happens by chance or without purpose. The world is enduring tremendous challenges. Even though they are usually perceived as unbearable, we can see their positive side if we realize that these blows help us accelerate the process of connecting. They are aimed at uniting us, at revealing how we depend on each other to survive and prosper. But we should not wait for disasters to awaken the sense of unity among us. By fixing our human relations and our interaction with nature, we will be able to avoid these blows and feel wholeness and benevolence from nature.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “Anti-Semitism and Pandemics”

Be it a plague or a war, a flood or an earthquake, a revolution or a financial meltdown, in the end, there is always one culprit: the Jews. In America, too, many already blame COVID-19 on the Jews, as is the case with the riots engulfing the tormented country.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the Jews stood shoulder to shoulder with the blacks in their fight for equal rights. No one remembers and no one gives them credit. Now, too, they stand shoulder to shoulder with the protesters. No one will remember and no one will give them credit.

The Jews donate to various charities and NGOs more money than any ethnic or racial group. But what do people say? “First they stole it, now they’re giving us the crumbs to buy our gratitude.” Of course, not everyone says it, but a great many do, and an even greater many tacitly agrees with them. It’s always been like that and it’ll always be like that until we learn what fundamental flaw we Jews have in our approach.

Jews are the only nation that has ever been tasked with bringing peace and love to the entire world. We gave the world the most altruistic motto ever conceived, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” yet we display the complete opposite of it: internal enmity and odium. We may sympathize with strangers’ pains, but we loathe our own coreligionists. And even though they don’t verbalize it, deep down, this is what Jew haters hate about Jews: that Jews hate each other.

When we became a nation, we were given a task: Unite “as one man with one heart,” and thereby become “a light unto nations.” For centuries, we have been trying everything to avoid our vocation. We talk about morals, ethics, justice, but we refuse to talk about love.

Morals are a miserable surrogate for love. Just as a mother doesn’t need morals to tend to her child because her love guides her, if we cultivate love among us we won’t need morals, and we will treat each other beautifully. Then, and only then will non-Jews say, “Now we respect them.”

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Comment: People tend to use good feelings and altruistic love.

My Response: Indeed, people have this quality. It is clear that they want to use everyone for themselves. But that doesn’t mean we should do the same.

If I want to rise above animal life and not exist only for the number of years that I have been given in this animal body, if I want to reach the level of perception of eternity, perfection, all of nature now, before my body ceases to exist, then I must change my attitude to the world.

Even for purely egoistic reasons, I should do it.

Question: How many years should it take before a person changes his egoism to altruism?

Answer: This depends on the person and the time in which he lives. In our time, it can be quite fast, 5 to 15 years—but these are years! They are still years.

What do you want? Why are they given to us? Imagine that your life is coming to an end. What did you live for? To feel all the good and the bad? And then what?—With no one and not for anyone.

So you need to use the years to achieve exactly the goal with which you remain onward.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/19/20

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Question: The Creator is between us. Do I need to ask the Creator to correct me or to correct the whole ten, the whole world ten? Does the Creator hear me wherever I am or only when I am in the ten?

Answer: The Creator feels the created being only to the extent that he resembles Him.

The Creator’s attribute is bestowal, while a person’s attribute is receiving. In this state, a person does not feel the Creator. We can see that on ourselves.

If a desire to reveal the Creator appears in a person, he can fulfill this desire only if he creates the right conditions for that, such as being in a group and working seriously on the connection with the friends.

If a person unites with the friends in the group, he will begin to feel the Creator through the ten. A person actually feels the connection with the Creator to the extent that he merges with the ten, and not in any other way.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/1/19

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