My new article on Linkedin “Cultured Meat Will Not Save Us”

A week ago, Food & Wine magazine broke the story that lab-grown chicken meat will make its restaurant debut. According to the story, “Good Meat Cultured Chicken was approved for sale in Singapore. Now, it’s heading to its first commercial restaurant.”

I’m all for it. Anything that helps people is good, and what’s more helpful than securing food and water supply? In fact, in recent years, there has been an influx of inventions that can help people cope with food and water deficiencies. We can produce water out of the moisture in the air, grow vegetables without soil, desalinate seawater into fresh drinking water, and now we can even produce meat without animals.

It seems as though we have defeated nature. But in truth, we haven’t. It is our own nature that’s developing these wonderful inventions, and it is our own nature that will prevent us from using them for people’s benefit. As long as we do not change who we are, life on Earth will not improve. In fact, they will go from bad to worse.

These inventions enable us not to worry about anything and focus our attention on improving our societies, strengthening our bonds with one another, and solidifying our communities. But will we choose to use them in this way or will we choose to profit off of them, just as we are doing with the coronavirus vaccine? We all know the answer.

Life on Earth can be as good as it should be only when we change how we relate to one another; nothing else needs to change. People will be happy only when they live in solidarity with the people in their community, and the countries they live in are at peace with the rest of the countries. Our ill-will toward each other is the only cause of misery, and the only cure to our woes is changing our intentions from wanting to exploit or destroy each other to wanting to help and support one another. Until we change our bad thoughts about each other, water and food from (almost) thin air will be just two more disappointments on the pain-filled road humanity has been treading since the dawn of time.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “On Jewish Unity and Antisemitism – Emerging from Exile and Starting Anew”

(Article No. 5 in a series) In the previous article, we discussed the rise and fall of the First Temple due to bloodshed and sins among the kings of Israel. When Israel were exiled, they were sent to Babylon, from which Abraham had previously come. There, in Babylon, they dispersed and assimilated until once again, a great hater of Jews arose and sought to destroy them: the arch-antisemite known as Wicked Haman.

Haman said to King Ahasuerus that the Jews were separated: “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom” (Esther 3:8). However, their physical dispersion was not what instigated Haman’s hatred; it was their disunity. The 17th century commentary on the Torah, Kli Yakar, states it very clearly: “‘a certain people scattered and dispersed’ means that they were scattered and dispersed from one another.” Likewise, the prominent interpretation of Jewish law, Yalkut Yosef, takes “separated” to mean that “there was separation of hearts among them.” So, as it happened with Pharaoh, and as it happened with Nebuchadnezzar, separation among the people of Israel leads to emergence of enemies who wish to destroy them. Haman was just another link in the chain, albeit quite a vicious one.

To get what he wanted, Haman told King Ahasuerus that the Jews “do not observe the king’s laws” (Esther 3:8). Yet, even though the king permitted him to eliminate the Jews, each year on Purim, we celebrate the miracle of our survival because at the very last minute, Mordechai united all the Jews. “‘Go gather all the Jews,’ meaning tell them words of blandishment,” writes Haim Yosef David Azulai (the CHIDA) in the book Pnei David, “so they will all be in one unity. Go gather as one, the hearts of all the Jews.” This telling 18th century description demonstrates the desperation of Esther and Mordechai at the prospect of seeing their entire fold obliterated, as was Haman’s intent. Their last resort was unity. When the Jews united, they saved themselves and facilitated the beginning of the return from Babylon.

But unlike Egypt, when the Jews had to flee in the dead of night, this time, they left not only with the king’s blessing, but with his full moral, financial, and spiritual support: As soon as Cyrus came to power, he felt that God had ordered him to send the Jews back to their land and rebuild the Temple. He sensed he had been commanded to help them in their task. He gave the famous Cyrus Declaration which stated, “Every [Jewish] survivor, at whatever place he may live, let the men of that place support him with silver and gold, with goods and cattle, together with a freewill offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:4). After his order was carried out, “King Cyrus brought out the utensils of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away [plundered] from Jerusalem and put in the house of his gods” (Ezra 1:7).

The Cyrus Declaration marked the official end of the exile in Babylon and the beginning of the era of the Second Temple, though the Temple itself had not yet been built. During that period, the Jews achieved great heights, but eventually declined to two civil wars, the last of which was so bloody and brutal that its wounds have yet to heal.

The next article in the series will tell the story of the “golden era” in the history of the Jews in the land of Israel, when the nations of the world wanted to learn from them how to conduct their social lives.

–

For much more on this topic, please see my latest publication, The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism: Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.
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Question: What is morality for you?

Answer: Morality is a clear implementation of the principle of love your neighbor.

Question: What associations do you have with the word “morality”?

Answer: Realization of the principle love your neighbor.

Question: Which of the moral principles is most important from your point of view?

Answer: Love your neighbor.

Question: The absolute absence of moral principles is impossible. Even the most primitive people have a concept of what is allowed and what is not. And what moral principle cannot be crossed?

Answer: That which prevents you from fulfilling the law love your neighbor.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/9/20

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Everything that is around us, the system in which we exist, or the matrix, is the Creator. Therefore, Kabbalists believe that we are not in a human society but are in the Creator, and everyone needs to find the right interaction with Him.

The Creator is one single force that controls everything and constantly plays with me through the objects around me: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human.

Then, I have to figure out how to react to them correctly. For this purpose, the science of Kabbalah has been given, which tells us how—through the correct reaction to the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and, mainly, human levels in nature—it is possible to reach a state where, behind all of the objects and phenomena, I will see a single, governing force that talks to me in this way.

It will become clear to me what the Creator wants from me, and by my reaction to the four levels of nature, I can transmit back to Him.

Question: That is, I have to somehow learn how to decipher what this power, the Creator, wants to tell me?

Answer: Yes, and then I’ll recognize His language. I will hear everything: the birds and animals, the rustle of plants, the wind, and the hum of the Earth.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 2/4/19

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Question: There are a number of approaches to eliminating discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, and various phobias. These involve legal activity where laws are supported by the state through educational and learning programs or other activities on the part of civil society, when people act from below.

What would you add to these programs? What knowledge should a person acquire in order to get rid of all the phenomena that interfere with our communication?

Answer: At the level of our world we cannot fix anything. We need to go higher, to the quality of bestowal or connection.

You can, of course, send, for example, African-Americans to universities and give them an education, but the psychological difference between people will still remain.

In order to destroy this difference, one must rise above it to the general root of all people, from the quality of egoistic separation to the quality of altruistic unity. Only then can one achieve success. The solution lies at a different level.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/14/20

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Question: Which tools does a spiritual teacher use in order to focus and fine tune my internal attributes?

Answer: First it takes place only during the lesson in which we discuss different topics together, when students ask and the teacher explains. When the students interact with the teacher and try to understand him in depth, they seemingly enter him, and try to connect with him emotionally and not mentally.

Emotionally means in their desires, as it says: “make your desire like his desire.” This connection is very important. You don’t need to be physically close to the teacher in order to do that. You don’t need to be in direct contact with him and to sit in the same building with him.

I, for example, have a very good connection with the group in Santiago. I feel how close they are to me despite the physical distance.

There are groups that I have known for a long time, but which I don’t feel so closely, since it depends on the internal yearning for connection with each other.

Generally speaking, you need to understand that the teacher aspires for that and is ready for it, although he can also be blunt and tough. After all, it is an absolutely precise act with regard to the student. Everything is determined only by the need to be in mutual contact so that you will receive spiritual energy from me, the feeling, the understanding, the connection between what we study and our internal world, our actions.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/2/18

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic of “I Dwell Among My Own People”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 11, Item 2″    

Lesson on the Topic of “The Law of Love in the System of Adam HaRishon”

Selected Highlights

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First of all, everyone needs to nullify themselves. The first condition for entering the ten is to nullify yourself to zero. It is as if the ten is in a room behind a closed door, and there is only a narrow gap between the door and the floor where I can crawl through.

The door is locked, everyone can only get through the crack. So, they enter the group without any conditions and claims. If I want to enter the group, I must completely nullify myself or I will remain outside.

If I do not revoke all my claims in the ten, I have nothing to do in it. A person entering the ten goes through purgatory, clearing himself of all his claims and demands. He enters with one plea: to be accepted in the ten. He is ready to serve his friends, to pay them, to do whatever they want as long as he is accepted in the ten without any conditions on his part. Otherwise, the ten cannot even begin to move toward the goal of creation.

A person enters the ten in order to nullify himself through connection with it, to receive the properties of the Creator, and to continue stage by stage: to nullify himself more and more, to connect more and more with the ten, to receive the properties of the Creator and to ascend. When he completely cleaves to the ten, this is called love for the creation, and he will come to love for the Creator from there.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/20, “Close to the Creator During a Descent”

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Comment: The holiday of Hanukkah is called the celebration of the victory of light over darkness, purity over conformism, spirituality over corporeality. And I think, clearly this is not only a Jewish holiday. The whole world is now on the threshold of victory or defeat of light over darkness.

My Response: There are actually no Jewish holidays. This is the interaction between the quality of bestowal, love, and the quality of reception, hatred, which always fight with each other.

Question: Was there a day in history when the forces of light defeated darkness?

Answer: Yes. The forces of connection.

Question: The forces of connection, of love, suddenly defeated the darkness in this egoistic, dark world of ours. Was there such a fragment in history?

Could you reveal it? How can we expand this fragment now and bring it to the present? Everyone is interested in the present time and only few people are interested in history. How can we bring light, the holiday of Hanukkah to this melancholy, to this despondency of humanity?

Answer: In general, this is a constant, ecumenical opposition between Rome and Jerusalem. Rome is power, it is strength, the conquest of Europe, the conquest of all the savage tribes that lived in Europe then. It is no secret that almost until the 10th century people there lived in trees, underground, and so on. There was barbarism in Europe, and they ate each other.

And Jerusalem wanted to bring to the world a completely different law: the law not of power, not of supremacy of authority, but of the spirit. This was the motto, the goal of Jerusalem. Of course, people were not ready for this.

Question: Is this the time when the Temple was built on the height of love for the neighbor?

Answer: Yes, for a thousand years from the 10th century before our era to year zero of our era, there was a struggle of what would overcome. Eventually, Judea fell. And at the end, when it was already crushed, during the fall, there was a great uprising. It was led by the Maccabees. It was the Maccabees who were carrying this light. This last surge in the fight for ideals marked Hanukkah.

Question: This was a fragment of history. How can we transfer it to our time? What is Hanukkah for the world today?

Answer: Hanukkah is an image of light, bestowal, love, connection of all and everything no matter at what level. The main thing is the good attitude of everyone toward everyone, above all prejudices, religions, philosophies, above everything.

In this dark time, there is an opportunity to tell the world what it should be like. This is because the advantage of light is precisely over darkness. And also because the world today, during these 2,000 years, has already been completely imbued with this ideology of Romans and Greeks.

Question: That is, with complete materialism?

Answer: Yes. Since the world has realized where it is heading, where it is, and also its end, today it is already possible to tell, explain, and try to pull the world to look in a different way, with different eyes. We are not going to conquer the world; we just want to explain to it that it is falling and that this is very threatening.

Question: So, is this holiday very relevant and necessary?

Answer: Of course.

Question: How can a person now light this little fire in himself?

Answer: It is very simple. We have nothing else left but to turn ourselves inside out, to begin to negotiate between all our hatreds, adversities, desires to destroy, humiliate, and subjugate each other, and so on. We should stop playing these games.

Today we can say: “Let us remember, let us see what those true ancient Maccabees, the Jews, were talking about.” They talked only about restoring the kingdom of understanding, mutual help, and love between all the people in the world. Not on an egoistic basis because it is impossible—we would be building something unsuccessful again—but on the basis on which the wisdom of Kabbalah is founded.

There is a force in nature that can reveal itself and subjugate our egoism. This will happen. I do not just believe it, I see it coming closer every day.

It is on the ruins of the old world, and now we see how its last bastion that is built on capital is crumbling, and crumbling, and crumbling, that a different world will be built: a world of mutual respect, love, opposite to the past one.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/7/20

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