Audio Version Of The Blog – 2/10/21

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“The Strongest Force Of All” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “The Strongest Force of All

In relationships, at work, in society, in the country, in the world, in relationships of all kinds and at any level, one can see power, exploitation, and control. Where does this come from and how can we better cope with these destructive impulses?

The material from which we are made is a desire to enjoy. This is why we constantly set norms that define an excessive activation of our desire to receive at the expense of others as forceful and invalid. Unlike animals that act by instinct, nature gave human beings the freedom of choice to determine how they treat others within society.

Today’s unsettling state thus points the way to the need for us to draw an opposite, balancing, positive force in order for us to create good relations between each other and with nature. It is the force of love, the strongest of all. If we open up the ability to live under the premise of “love your neighbor as yourself,” we will create a pleasant and encouraging atmosphere that will free us from the need of taking advantage of others.

The education we receive, the environment that surrounds us, our individual attributes, and the circumstances in which we live, form a comprehensive account that determines when we exercise power toward others, in what form, and how much we allow our egoism to act to control others in order to achieve our goals.

There are struggles in nature also, but only in humans is there egoism, an evil instinct. No animal wants to harm another animal or enjoys controlling and abusing another. Humans, on the other hand, have no boundaries, no limits. As egoism develops, we want to swallow up the whole world and to subdue everyone under us. It is not enough for us to have everything we want at our disposal; we differ from animals in our desire for control.

If we could recognize the material we are made of, we would discover that we never see the person in front of us as such, but only as an object for our dominance who could be used for our benefit. There is always a subconscious communication between us about how much I can overpower you and vice versa and how much can I enjoy what I get from you. Our lives revolve around such measurements and calculations with each and every one in every way possible.

But eventually, we will discover that no matter how hard we try to bend each other, we do not achieve lasting satisfaction. Perhaps we seemingly gain something for a moment as a result of exploiting someone to our advantage, but in such circumstances we are never relaxed, nor do we experience the potential good life nature has given us to realize.

Our era marks a unique and highly significant transition point, we bear witness to our egoistic development reaching a dead end, we feel increasing difficulty to be fulfilled from selfish pursuits, which gives rise to a plethora of negative attitudes in society. People are taking their dissatisfaction out on each other more and more, which leads to increasing polarization and hatred throughout society.

Today’s unsettling state thus points the way to the need for us to draw an opposite, balancing, positive force in order for us to create good relations between each other and with nature. It is the force of love, the strongest of all. If we open up the ability to live under the premise of “love your neighbor as yourself,” we will create a pleasant and encouraging atmosphere that will free us from the need of taking advantage of others.

The best example of the immense potential of love is in our relationship with our children. Nature has given us love for them so we constantly make sure that everything is good for them, that they are happy. No one pressures us to do so, we feel a tendency from within, and this is also what makes us the happiest in life.

We are advancing toward a more connected world where we will discover from day to day how much we all depend on each other. The only relationships that will allow us to live a secure life involve complementary connection between people from all different backgrounds and characteristics, even opposites, to a level of mutual love. And as we each struggle with our own egoism, which pushes us in opposite directions, we will begin to feel how indispensable it is to support and cherish each other to enjoy life in the full sense of the word.

“Justice Is Blind, Until It Concerns Israel” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “.Justice Is Blind, Until It Concerns Israel

Israel is once again singled out as it was recently announced that it is threatened to be put on the docket 0f the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes. Meanwhile, the actions of blatantly oppressive regimes are being conveniently overlooked. So how can the “special treatment” toward the Jewish nation be explained if not by the motivation of antisemitism? We have to understand where the hatred comes from. It is not the result of what we do, but what we fail to deliver: unity to the world.

The international community looks at us through a magnifying glass. They hate us and want to see an end to the Israeli enterprise. Hostile organizations are rising up and multiplying against us day by day, and those who showed some restraint in the past, in line with the previous US administration’s friendly policies toward Israel, now feel more comfortable to act in step with the new White House.

We can continue fighting those who are not on our side, our instinctive reaction is to hate back, but this only confuses our vision and blurs our thoughts. We need to understand hatred from a deeper level, from an internal goal-oriented role demanded of the Jewish people.

We are the ones who fail to rise above the hatred and rejection between us, and the nations of the world reflect the state of our relations. In fact, the hostility against us is not because of our necessity for self-defense, but due to our lack of awareness of what the world demands from us: to connect and provide the world with the system for ultimate connection.

The nation of Israel was created differently from all other nations. Ours is a nation established to serve as a source for humanity’s future connection, for and of every nation in the world. It is why Israel was created and it is our destiny. Moreover, it is what the world subconsciously expects of us. They instinctively feel Jews know how to achieve peace and prosperity in the world and are not sharing it with them, so their complaint is manifested as antisemitism.

Understanding our background is therefore key to understanding that the Jewish people is not a nation in the common sense of the word, but a group of people from many different tribes and cultures who subscribed to an idea. This common vision was the fact that there is one force that governs the universe, the force of unity, the only power that can connect us above our differences.

We agreed to unite “as one man with one heart” at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and received the code of law for conducting a society whose members are united at heart. The task we were given is as valid now as it was then, and the world demands that we carry it out. Is Israel detrimental to the world? We are as long as we do no not overcome our deep divisions and get closer to each other. Thus, the only solution to end the animosity against the Jewish nation is becoming one unified people. As Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag wrote during WWII in his 1940 paper The Nation:

“It is also clear that the enormous effort that the rugged road ahead requires of us mandates unity that is as solid and as hard as steel from all parts of the nation, without exception. If we do not come out with united ranks toward the mighty forces that are standing on our way to harm us, we will find that our hope is doomed in advance.”

Therefore, if we can find this desire to unify within us and fan its flames, we will become a positive force that will permeate the world and hatred against us will vanish.
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“What Politicians “Want”” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “What Politicians “Want”

When you examine how Republicans and Democrats treat Israel, it is easy to tell the difference: Republicans are palpably pro Israel, while Democrats give Israel a cold shoulder. We, in Israel, may feel their attitude as a reflection of their “feelings,” but there is no such thing in politics. In truth, neither Republican nor Democrat politicians care about Israel; if it were up to them, they would casually kick us out of here and into the Mediterranean Sea.

What politicians do want is to be reelected, and in order to be reelected, they must cater to their constituency’s taste. If their voters favor Israel, so will their messengers in the House of Representatives. If their voters dislike Israel, so will their reps.

In addition to the above, there is one person in the White House with a real agenda when it comes to Israel: Barack Hussein Obama. He is the one pulling the strings in the current administration, and the Biden-Harris title is just a front. Obama’s odium toward Israel is religiously, geographically, and politically motivated. We must have no illusions about this.

Nevertheless, Israel is not helpless. We may not be able to change the opinion of politicians about Israel, but we can change the opinion of their voters, and this is what really counts. If we, in Israel, unite above our (countless) differences, we will dissolve any hatred that the world currently feels toward us, and it does. The world’s eyes are always on Israel, often even more than on domestic affairs. People feel that what happens here affects them personally. The loathing we are showing to each other here radiates throughout the world and its ripples ignite conflicts and wars the world over. This is why Jew haters blame Israel and Jews for causing all the wars. They don’t really think that we start wars everywhere on the planet, but they feel that it’s our fault.

And the truth is that they’re right. We are starting wars by fighting among ourselves. The world constantly pays us attention; we project hatred; the world absorbs the hatred we project; and the hatred starts wars. We think that the world has forgotten about the “nonsense” of that Biblical obligation of Israel to be “a light unto nations,” and the world, too, may not think about it consciously. But the fact that the world is always looking at us, always examining our every move, and always judging us by a higher standard than it judges the rest of the nations, is because it expects us to be “a light unto nations.”

Actions are not determined by people’s words, but by people’s feelings. They feel that we, Jews in general and Israel in particular, are a source of trouble. The only way we can stop being a burden and a menace in the eyes of the world is if we reinstate the unity that had made us into a nation, stop projecting hatred, and the stream of hatred threatening to drown the world will stop. We may not want to unite with our brothers, but we cannot say that there is nothing we can do against Jew hatred. In fact, we are the only nation on Earth whose fate is solely in its own hands.

For 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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The Path Between Good And Evil

562.02We must always look for how to balance all the bad qualities in us, by compensating them with the qualities of light. “Love will cover all crimes,” that is, we must always build the right connection between all parts: within ourselves and between us and the environment.

The Torah describes the laws of how to treat inanimate nature, plants, animals, people, and the upper force, the Creator, that is, how to organize all five levels of desire so that nature takes the form of a sphere, perfection.

When we try to create such a perfect form, we reveal its source, the upper force, that created everything. Our life begins with the Big Bang, with a complete shattering, with a negative force that scattered all the particles in all directions. And then, when the particles are collected and incorporated into each other, creation begins. This is how we need to see our work: gathering all the opposing parts of nature and bringing them together so that they support each other.

Evil does not disappear because good does not exist without evil. As long as humanity does not understand it, it will approach war. After all, we do not understand the laws of nature, according to which our separation will only grow, and on top of it we must come to unity and connection.

A small child is able to accept only good things. But an adult understands that it is impossible without problems. During a person’s development, one realizes that the evil is not outside, but inside oneself, and in order to correct the evil, it is necessary to compensate for it with love, with connection. There is nothing but separation and connection.

“Peace” (Shalom) means “perfection” (Shlemut), completion. Evil remains, because it came from the Creator. But we ask the Creator to give us a second force, the good one, to build a middle line between good and evil. Just as the Creator does not relate to evil or good, so we also do not relate to good and evil, but we only want to organize ourselves between them in the middle line.

In this middle line, we discover the Creator more and more by working together with Him. By covering all the revealed evil with good, we come to the middle line and understand that everything was in order to reveal the Creator and establish a connection with Him. Therefore, through the attitude of “all sins will be covered with love,” we build a relationship with the Creator and achieve integration with Him.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/8/21 “Love Will Cover All Crimes” (Preparation for the Convention 2021)

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Not By Chance

528.02Nothing in the world happens by chance; everything happens only for the single purpose of advancing us toward the goal to be united as one man with one heart and to connect with the Creator.

This is the purpose of all of reality. And if we aspire for it, we perceive any problem as an opportunity to accelerate our progress and guide us in the shortest and best way.

The main thing is to detect the center of the ten, and from this center, to yearn for the Creator in order to ask and demand His help to advance, to thank Him for connecting us in the ten and giving us the mind and feelings to advance toward Him.

Prayer should consist of gratitude and request. Gratitude for the fact that the Creator did not leave us in an unconscious state like the other people in the world, but He gave us the understanding of where we are and how we should move toward the truth, to the world of truth, to the true state, and thus learn to control our destiny.

All this is in order to give the Creator contentment by the fact that we can come closer to Him and draw all the people of this world with us. The Creator wants to see all people united together in one ten, in the ten Sefirot of the soul of Adam HaRishon.

This is our duty with regard to the Creator and to all of humanity because we are in the middle between them and must connect the Creator with other people. And therefore, we are called the servants of the Creator. On one hand, we are in the corporeal world and are connected with all the people, and on the other hand, we are connected to the Creator and should serve as a passageway between Him and the created beings.

We have both of these parts, a part of the Creator and a part of the created beings, which we must connect within us as Galgalta ve Einaim and AHAP, and establish our soul.

The Creator has chosen us for this work: to serve as a connecting channel, a means of communication, a passageway, between Him and humanity, and we want to justify His trust. It is hard work because it requires us to care not only about our own destiny, but for the destiny of the world, to feel the pain of everyone, and to feel their desires. At the same time, it is a special honor to receive such a mission.

The center of the ten is the place where we connect all the time due to the fact that everyone nullifies himself before the ten, subjugates before it. In this way we reach the center of the ten from which we turn together to the Creator. If everyone nullifies himself before the others, then we have nothing left but one common point in the center from which we turn to the Creator. Otherwise, the Creator will not hear what we want to say to Him.

If I see that my friends are burning and my heart is deaf, then I should feel like a little one among the big ones and participate to the best of my ability. Even if I sit in class and I do not hear anything, do not see anything, do not understand anything, if my thoughts and feelings are numb, I am among my friends despite everything. This means that I become an embryo inside the ten like a child inside the mother.

The child in the mother’s belly lies curled up and does nothing, it only annuls itself, and the upper develops it. In the same way, I must nullify myself in the ten, become incorporated in it as much as possible, and wait for my friends to influence me. This is a very high state and such self-nullification allows us to grow.

By nullifying myself and wanting to incorporate in the ten, I am doing them a great favor, because I am performing the right action according to the conditions that the Creator now sets for me. We always represent the ten Sefirot in the ten, and we play a different role in these ten Sefirot each time. Therefore, the friends will not be able to advance if there is no one like me nullifying himself among them.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/5/21, “The Prayer of Many” (Preparation for the Convention 2021)

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“Permission To Harm” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Permission to Harm

The great 11th century commentator RASHI wrote, “Once the harm-doer is given permission to harm, he makes no distinction between righteous and wicked.” Examples? There are plenty of them: Hitler and the Holocaust, Torquemada (of Jewish ancestry) and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Titus and the ruin of the Second Temple, and countless others. There have also been other examples, though few, when a harm-doer was given permission but was later denied it. One such example is the story of Haman and the miracle of the salvation of the Jews in Persia, after which we celebrate Purim.

When looking at these fateful periods in our nation’s history, one common denominator stands out. Leading up to the rise of the harm-doer, the people of Israel are particularly divided and often sabotage the achievements of their coreligionist rivals. When this happens, eventually, an external saboteur comes to power and threatens to destroy Israel. At that time, one of two things happens: If the people of Israel unite, they save themselves. If not, they suffer unimaginable punishments.

It is a well-documented fact that brutal divisions engulfed the people of Israel prior to the ruin of the Second Temple. Perhaps less known, but just as true is the fact that this was also the case before the ruin of the First Temple. Later, before their expulsion from Spain, Spanish Jews were in disarray because many of them converted to Christianity (and often became antisemitic), while others wanted to maintain their faith. In the end, the Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, himself of Jewish descent, convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to sign the Edict of Expulsion, which drove all Jews out of Spain.

A similar process of Jewish division took place in Europe before the rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) party to power in Germany. German Jews, who were largely affluent and liberal, loathed Polish Jews, who were largely Orthodox and poor, especially those among them who immigrated to Germany, and both liberal and Orthodox Jews hated the Zionists, who were mostly socialists, if not communist, and secular. The latter, in turn, detested both the Orthodox Jews and the Bourgeois, as they referred to German Capitalist Jews. When the Nazis rose to power, they offered the Jews to exit Germany through what became known as the Transfer Agreement, where German Jews would keep much of their wealth and be shipped to Palestine. But the loathing of German Jewry toward Zionism and the idea of a Jewish state was so intense that the vast majority of them preferred to stay in Germany and ride out the storm or go to another country, if possible. In the end, we know, it was not possible to migrate to another country, they did not ride out the storm, and the rest of European Jewry perished along with them.

The only famous exception when Jews were able to dodge a tragic fate was when they united in support of Queen Esther, and in this way thwarted Haman’s plan to destroy them. Here, too, the plan to destroy the Jews began with Haman’s complaint that the Jews were dispersed and disunited, and the salvation of the Jews came after they united in the last minute.

November 3, 2020 marks another fateful date in the annals of our nation. The divisions within the Jewish people have been deepening for decades, and parties and factions within the people divided the nation into countless pieces, both between the two major communities, in Israel and in the US, and within the two communities. Today, not only is there a deep divide between Israel and American Jewry, but the majority of American Jewry would prefer the cessation of Israel’s existence altogether.

Such profound division calls for the rise of yet another harm-doer, and indeed one has risen. It makes no difference whether his name is Joe Biden or Barack Obama, who is pulling the strings behind the scenes. What does matter is that Israel has not only lost its only ally in the world, who happens to be the most powerful country in the world, but that now that ally has turned against it.

Permission to harm does not mean that the harm-doer will necessarily succeed. However, it does mean that we have no other weapons at our disposal but our unity. There is nothing we can do to change the tragic trajectory of fate unless we unite. Disunity has always been the reason for our downfalls, and unity has always been the cause of our achievements. It is beyond the scope of one short article to explain why, but it is vital that we recognize this simple fact—united we rise, divided we fall. For the more elaborate explanation, see the link below.
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“The Vicious Cycle Of Success And Hatred” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “The Vicious Cycle of Success and Hatred

We Jews have always been successful far beyond our proportion of the world’s population. The same goes for Israel, the Jewish State. We are world leaders in technology, in medicine, in development and manufacturing of arms and sophisticated weapons, and we even excel in agriculture and water solutions.

Overseas, Jewish people are at the top of the American finance industry, and not only in America. Many famous actors and comedians are Jewish, we shine in politics, law, and if you look at the list of Nobel Prize laureates throughout the years, you’ll find a staggering number of Jews there.

There is a very good reason that the world is largely unimpressed with our achievements, and when it is, it holds them against us. These achievements are not what the world wants from us. If it were, they would thank us, but they don’t. The world expects something totally different from the Jews: As unlikely as it sounds, the world expects from us to project unity, and nothing else.

You’d think that since we have contributed so much to the world, the world would cheer for us. It doesn’t. In fact, it does the opposite: It blames our arms industry for starting wars, and our financiers for causing financial crises and for taking people’s money. The world blames us for spreading bad values through the entertainment industry, and for manipulating politicians in Israel’s favor. And most recently, the world blames us for vaccinating the Israeli population so quickly instead of giving the vaccines to the Palestinians. Why doesn’t the world appreciate us? Why do they hate us?

There is a very good reason that the world is largely unimpressed with our achievements, and when it is, it holds them against us. These achievements are not what the world wants from us. If it were, they would thank us, but they don’t. The world expects something totally different from the Jews: As unlikely as it sounds, the world expects from us to project unity, and nothing else.

The global attention that the Jewish State and the Jewish people are constantly getting has a very deep root. Our forefathers came from all those nations that are now observing our every move. We don’t have a common root; our ancestors came from many tribes and peoples all over the ancient Fertile Crescent. These people were often sworn enemies, but under Abraham’s leadership, they forged a solid group and unique cohesion that has never been achieved before or after, except by Jews. Abraham’s descendants developed and polished their unity until they managed to turn complete strangers, who hated one another, into a unified nation.

To achieve such a miraculous union, they had to form a stronger bond than any nation had ever achieved, and that union turned a tiny group into a formidable power. The rulers of the strongest nations always respected the Jews, gave them freedom, and let them rule themselves. The Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans all let the Israelites rule themselves in Israel. They only conquered Israel and interfered with our lives if we invited them, since we did not want to stay united anymore.

But when we united, we were “a light unto nations.” The link between the strangers who formed Abraham’s first group and the nations they came from is still there, buried deep within them. This is why the nations cannot stop observing our every move. This is also why only we, the representatives of countless peoples, could become “a light unto nations,” an example of “world peace” within our nation. To this day, this is what the nations want to learn from us—that magical unity that formed thousands of hostile individuals into a solid nation. They feel deep down in their subconscious that we owe them this since we are inseparable from them, and deep down, we feel it, too.

But since we fell into unfounded hatred, we have demonstrated nothing but disdain and contempt for one another, the opposite of what the world expects from us. In such a state, no matter what we do, it will hate us, since we are denying it the one thing it needs from us.

Instead of demonstrating unity, we fell into a vicious cycle of success and great achievements, which lead to hubris, which causes us to divide among us even more, which then intensifies the world’s hatred toward us even more. We must understand that anything that separates us intensifies the world’s hatred toward us, and nothing separates us more than success. For this reason, whatever we do that’s currently considered an achievement, rest assured that it will eventually be held against us. It is a vicious cycle of success and hatred, and the only way to break it is to focus our attention solely on our unity.
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A Hero Is One Who Conquers Himself

507.03Question: Your teacher Rabash wrote that a hero among heroes is someone who transforms his hater into his lover, that a hero is the one who overcomes his evil inclination.

Looking at other people through my egoistic prism, I see them as low and base and myself as sublime. But if I make an effort to see them as elevated in my eyes, then I become a hero. Does being a hero mean to overcome your innate egoistic nature?

Answer: Yes. A hero is the one who conquers himself. In principle, we do not need anything other than this. If we overcome our egoistic nature, then to this extent we will simply enter the state of general goodness.

The fact is that nature created us as egoistic people who judge everything to the extent of our depravity. I always see negative properties in others. Therefore, I need to somehow understand that all these properties are inside me. This is the realization of evil.

Question: But if there were no other people, I would never have seen these negative properties in myself?

Answer: Yes, just like any animal.

Question: That is, I live from life cycle to life cycle, see negative properties in everyone, and complain about everyone. And then, at some stage, I suddenly begin to understand that this is all inside me?

Answer: But such an understanding is not easy to come to. Kabbalists revealed this and they wrote to us about it.

As we read their books, we begin to understand that they are telling the truth, but we do not see this. They revealed everything in their senses and described it in their writings, but we still do not feel it. Therefore, from what we read, we must gradually move to the realization that everything in nature is really created this way, and we perceive it in this way.

First we gain knowledge and then understanding and sensory attainment.

Question: How does this happen? What does inside me mean?

Answer: Everything that happens in the world happens in your perception. And you cannot say anything about what is outside. The world is depicted in us.

Question: Can you imagine how much evil happens in the world every second? Does a Kabbalist feel that this is all because of him?

Answer: Not only this. If you dig deeper, all this is me.

I cannot see anything except my “I,” my desire. Everything that happens in it is the world that I comprehend.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/13/19

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We Want To Know The Future

49.01The Book of Zohar, Chayei Sarah (The Life of Sarah), Item 87: When one observes the tweeting of fowl to know the future, why is it called “a serpent” and “witchcraft”? It is because it extends from that side of impurity, since the spirit of impurity is over that bird, which announces things in the world. And every spirit of impurity clings and comes to the world from the serpent, and there is none who is saved from him in the world, for he is in everything—until the time when the Creator is destined to remove him from the world, as it is written, “And death shall be swallowed up forever.”

Question: What do birds have to do with it? What harm did they do?

Answer: Birds are something that is higher than us, that is, a lighter desire. There are animals, fish, birds, plants, and so on. This means that our egoistic desire is stronger, heavier, coarser, and more subtle, light, graceful. Birds are the personification of less selfish desires.

Remark: But for some reason impurity comes from them.

Answer: Because people who are fortune tellers, in principle, already trust someone. Their egoism is not yet highly developed. Real strong egoists can trust someone only if they have a hopeless situation when very serious things are at stake.

They have done everything to ensure their success, and yet, they see that there is some element that they do not control. Then they go to fortune-tellers or shamans. It happens.

I have seen interesting examples of this in America. I have a friend who is a very wealthy man and owns huge motel estates in North Carolina. It so happened that drunkards and drug addicts started to visit these properties and committed tomfooleries.

Neither he, nor the police, nor the court could do anything. Then he turned to Indian shamans at the time I was passing through there visiting him. And what is interesting is he believed in it! I have seen all these primitive routines. People believe it will help.

Question: So did it help or not?

Answer: No, it did not help. In the end, he sold everything.

When does it help? When a man is sick and believes very much that what is recommended to him will help. The placebo effect. You take a sugar-pill believing that it is a medicine, and at the same time you include such inner forces that rejuvenate you and heal you. This is natural.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #4

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