From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 11/3/20

Eduard (Edi) Yosupov is a veteran student and a friend. He has been studying with me for 20 years now, and during most of those years he was living in Vienna. In 2005, I visited him and went to the local chapter of our worldwide group. Not far from there is Edi’s business, a medical aesthetics center. Edi does not live in Austria anymore; he moved with his family to Israel two years ago, but his clinic is still there.

Last night, Edi’s phone rang unexpectedly; it was one of his employees. With tremor in her voice, she whispered that she is alone in the clinic, the only one who didn’t leave in time, before the shooting started. She was terrified. A number of bullets went through the glass and into the clinic and she didn’t know where to hide. She said the other employees had left the clinic a few minutes earlier, right when the shooting started, and fled from the scene as soon as it started. Thankfully, they were unharmed.

Moments later, Edi’s phone started receiving pictures of smashed windows, bullet holes in panes, and blood, a lot of blood.

This morning, we met for a zoom conversation. Edi said “There is panic in the streets. They have closed the entire downtown Vienna and prohibited people from going to work.” The Austrians are horrified. “Austria is a neutral country,” he said, “and people ask themselves why they deserve this.” And, he added, “The shock among the Jews is the worst.”

This is where I stopped him. You can say whatever you want, but Austria is not a neutral country. Adolf Hitler was Austrian, Adolf Eichmann was Austrian, and Austria in general has a long history of antisemitism. Perhaps Austrian Jews like to tell themselves untrue stories to calm themselves down, but this is unwise and will leave them with nowhere to run when the time comes, and it will.

The event that happened yesterday is part of an escalating crisis at the end of which the Jews will be accused of all the troubles that afflict Europe and will suffer the same fate that Europe’s Jews suffered in the 1940s. Nevertheless, there are two ways they might avoid that fate: 1) Run away and look for a new place to settle. It was barely possible to do so eighty years ago since no Western country would accept Jews from Germany and Austria, and it will be much more difficult now, but if they’re not too picky, they might find a temporary haven. 2) Revolutionize the whole meaning of Judaism and turn it from a culture that focuses on customs and traditions to an ideology that enshrines unity above all other values in the spirit of mutual responsibility and the motto, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This latter option is the true essence of Judaism. Although it is very hard emotionally, and Jews have not been united since they waged a civil war inside the walls of Jerusalem before the Romans conquered it and ruined the Temple, but if they can do it, they will be safe and welcome wherever they are.

The essence of Judaism is care for others, as old Hillel said, “That which you hate, do not do unto your neighbor. The rest is commentary, go and study.” Only when Jews employ that motto, or at least do not hate each other, are they true to their legacy and to their mission to be “a light unto nations.”

It may sound counterintuitive, but internal unity is what the nations want to see from us. Being the light of the nations does not mean we have to preach to them or teach them anything. It simply means we should set an example of love of others.

We have given the world the idea that loving our neighbors as ourselves is the core of the Torah, but we are not living it out. In that, we are untrue to ourselves and the world feels it. All that the nations want is for us to be what we are meant to be, united as one, and then they will appreciate us and want us among them, and we will not have to go through the ordeal that European Jews are beginning to experience.

[A man holds his hands up as police officers check him on a street after exchanges of gunfire in Vienna, Austria November 2, 2020. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner]

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Question: Western people are subject to a lot of psychological pressure and stress. They cannot concentrate on anything for a long time, unlike Eastern people.

Recently, special meditation practices have been developed for Westerners, which involve a large number of actions. A person does not just sit and concentrate on one thing, as in the Indian teachings, but on the contrary, performs many actions to calm down.

Do you think Westerners should practice meditation?

Answer: I do not think this will help much because Westerners and Easterners have completely different psychological models, personalities with different goals. What is created in Western society can only be applied there. Neither the Native Americans, nor the Indians of Asia, nor the Africans can have this.

It is possible that something Western can be, somehow, applied in Russia, but also here we see that this lasts only in a special group of the population that is similar in its level of intelligence and mentality to the West.

In principle, each continent has its own internal prerequisite, which method of attitude to the world, to the development of itself and society is chosen by the population. Europeans are Europeans, North Americans are North Americans, although, in principle, they are the same Europeans who managed to suppress the culture of the Native Americans.

South America is South America because the psychology of the indigenous peoples there dominates. When you come to one of the South American countries, you immediately understand that this is a special world. It is the same in Asia and Africa.

You cannot make one type of person into another. The only thing we can do is leave everyone with their own perception of the world and lead them to understand the need for the proper integration among all. At the same time, everyone remains in their own culture, as it was once said in the Soviet Union: “national in form, but socialist in content.”

It is the same here. The content should be Kabbalistic. This is an aspiration to a common world, to connection, kindness, and love but in the form in which a person understands the language of nature, and can correctly understand others.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/27/20

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New Life 466 – The Jewish Potential, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Jews have a special gene that makes them successful in many areas. They are the descendants of special people who followed Abraham, revealed the upper force, and eventually became the nation of Israel. They don’t use the powers they have as Jews correctly. The fulfillment of the Jewish potential could build a state that is managed according to mutual guarantee, love, and equality. If Jews fulfilled their potential, they would receive a general Nobel Prize for bringing happiness to all of humanity.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 466 – The Jewish Potential, Part 2,” 12/4/14

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Question: What does the expression “The Creator is jealous” mean? After all, we see Him as the law of nature. In addition, it is said: “If you leave Me for one day, then I will leave you for two days.” How can the law of nature be jealous?

Answer: The Creator is a higher power that requires development from us. Therefore, if we let go of Him and do not pay attention to this power, then He plays with us in such a way that we begin to feel our behavior was wrong. If we leave Him for a day, He leaves us for two days so that we can hold on to Him.

Question: How does this manifest itself?

Answer: Just like you have with your child who does not pay attention to you and you think about how you can attract him to you.

Question: Yes, but with the child, we have common organs of sensation, with the Creator, we do not. How can I decipher that the Creator left me for two days?

Answer: You feel on yourself that you suddenly stopped doing the things that you need. You have to deal with them, but you cannot, so you have no attraction to them.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/7/20

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Question: What is fear? Many sources speak about awe before the Creator. If we consider the Creator to be a single law of nature, what does it mean to be in awe before this law?

Answer: Awe means that I am in a state of increased self-examination of whether I am following the laws of nature correctly. I am afraid to break these laws and hurt others.

At that, I do this not out of fear, but because I really want to fulfill them, to support the Creator, nature, in all its qualities.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/7/20

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Question: Let’s suppose people are suffering from being lonely and you are invited to give a lecture on how to get out of this state. Should you know everything about this subject before talking about it?

Answer: I will tell them that a person exists one-on-one with his soul, with his requests. He comes into this world and leaves it alone. And the thing he can get in this world, he will not get anywhere else. This is why our world is so important.

And loneliness is given to us so that we understand ourselves more, to feel this world through it, etc. That is, I would praise the quality of loneliness and explain how to use it correctly.

Question: Is it better to prepare for a performance alone or as a team?

Answer: It’s better in a team of course. You are going to speak in front of a big audience after all, and advice from many is a desirable thing in this case.

Question: Do you think it is imperative to rehearse your performance?

Answer: No. But I used to sketch out several sentences for myself, often two or three lines.

Question: How can you win the audience over?

Answer: Show them that they are very important to you, you are not indifferent, and you want to tell them something useful for them. Show a little warmth.

Question: What is the best way to end the performance?

Answer: By the fact that only good lies ahead. This is very important for a person.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/14/20

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The essence of human relations is in the emergence of a common general state. But even before it appears, all kinds of positive and negative impressions, understandings, and relationships begin to emerge in each of the two people who are communicating. And something new that was not there before is born from their encounter.

This all depends on how prepared we are for interconnection between each other by our previous upbringing. This is why we need to worry not about the interactions themselves but about how we prepare people for them. Like a mother who is sending her little son to kindergarten, or to school, or even to visit a friend, she instructs him how to behave, how to perceive others, etc.

A completely new feeling is formed in each of us this way, the feeling of perceiving another. From our mutual perception, these sensations turn into something common. Therefore, the goal of education is what kind of common platform we want to see between us.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 7/30/20

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, “Three Lines”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Table of Questions for Topics, Vol. 1, Part 1, Item 75” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”

Selected Highlights

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 11/5/20

According to a recently published survey by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), nearly 90 percent of US Jews are worried about rising antisemitism. As always with antisemitism, Jews don’t think they deserve it. At the same time, Jews are leading figures in pitting the parties against each other. Nobody likes warmongers, especially Jewish ones, since they are supposed to do the exact opposite—to bring sides together, to reconcile them. So unless Jews quickly reverse course, they will pay the same price that Jews have paid through the ages, if not worse.

The only thing that makes American Jewry Jewish today is customs, nothing more. It’s a culture based on fading traditions and a feeling of belonging to a community. But why does going to shul on Yom Kippur or donating to charity make one Jewish? They may create a sense of belonging, but they don’t promote what Jews were made to promote.

As just stated, Jews are supposed to bring the opposite of partisanship. They came from dispersed nations and peoples from all over the Fertile Crescent in antiquity and forged a nation by rising above their instinctive hatred and suspicion. They did that by lauding the value of unity, mutual responsibility, and love of others to such levels that they became more important than anything else, more important even than their instinctive hatred. Only when they achieved that, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, they were declared a nation, and only then were instructed with being “a light unto nations.”

They were told to show the world how they united. They were instructed to set an example of uniting vicious enemies into the closest of people. But what do they do instead? They employ tactics in legal wizardry that help people cheat, bamboozle, and dupe their way to the top while portraying themselves as paragons of virtue, and the other side as demonic, immoral, and corrupt.

In my eyes, such people are not Jews. They have abandoned the core of Judaism, namely unity above hatred. Instead, they vilify in the name of war against corruption; deride in the name of exposing incompetence, and spread venomous hatred in the name of being “ethical.” In short, they are polarizing factors, warmongers, and deserve what warmongers deserve.

Of course, not all Jews are like that. Most, simply want to live their lives and not worry too much about anything. But tacitly agreeing to what their leaders do is bad enough these days. The Jews are seen as a collective and will be punished as such. It’s not my wish, it’s how things have always worked, and nothing will change that. The only way that Jews can change their dismal fate is if they, as a collective, reverse course and show how they reconcile their own divisions, set an example to American society, and this way help solidify it rather than divide it.

To conclude, Jews must show how they cultivate affection instead of rancor, kindness instead of malice. This is the purpose of their existence as a nation and as individuals. As of now, they’re nowhere near it.

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