Audio Version Of The Blog – 4/11/21

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The Holocaust Is Not History But Actual World Problem

203Every year we mark the Holocaust Remembrance Day to honor the memory of the victims—six million European Jews. However, as years go by distancing us more and more from this event, the memory of it begins to fade.

Many young people have not heard the stories about Holocaust in their families and have never met with witnesses of these terrible events.

Therefore, there is a fear that the memory of the Holocaust may disappear because after a certain number of years there will be no living witnesses of the Holocaust, and there will be no one to pass this story on to the next generations.

This should not surprise us, because these are laws of nature. Things that are not in front of our eyes gradually cease to be important, and if we do not want to lose them, we must constantly renew them as if reviving those pictures.

No matter how much we tried to maintain this memory, arranged study trips to concentration camps for school children, it does not help much. As living witnesses of the Holocaust disappear, a new generation that is not related to this time will no longer be able to observe this tradition the way it used to be.

I was born in Belarus, in a place where Nazis carried out mass executions of Jews. In Vitebsk, the city of my childhood, there was also a ghetto, which was destroyed. Many of my relatives died in the Holocaust.

Although I was born after the war and knew about it only from stories, this memory was still very alive in our family. I was raised by people who managed to escape the Holocaust, and they told me about those who died. This left a very deep impression on me because I have lived in this atmosphere since I was born.

However, if modern young people have not heard about the Holocaust from their loved ones, have not spoken with eyewitnesses, then for them, it is as if it did not happen. We cannot blame them for that. It makes no sense to sit and cry, but it is very important to determine our attitude to the Holocaust, to analyze again its causes and consequences. Otherwise, we will not get rid of the Holocaust or we will even come to a new one.

We must draw conclusions from the Holocaust and change ourselves so that it will never happen again. We must understand why it happened and who is to blame. This is serious scrutiny that we must perform within each of us and ultimately with all of humanity because everyone participated in this.

How did it happen that the nations of the world accepted and readily implemented Hitler’s plan without any questions or doubts?

First of all, we need to understand who the people of Israel are, why they are called that, and what their purpose is. Why did they survive after so many generations of scattering and why did all of mankind pay so much attention to it? Until we answer all these questions we will not be able to understand what we are talking about at all.

Why do all nations make some kind of claims against Jews? It is clear that there are quarrels between neighbors, but why does everyone have complaints against Jews? We need to investigate this phenomenon and understand the exact causes. After all, this is not only history but an actual, global problem that does not disappear but only occasionally calms down a little and then intensifies again.

This intensification does not really depend on the Jews or the nations of the world but simply happens because a suitable period in history comes. We see that anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in nature: there is such a concept as Israel, the people of Israel, the land of Israel. It is a spiritual concept that lives in the world and exists from the beginning of creation to the very end. This problem will continue to exist until Israel brings the entire creation to the correct form.

This is what the Torah and, even more clearly, the wisdom of Kabbalah says. Without the Kabbalistic explanation of the causes of anti-Semitism, we cannot find a solution regarding the Holocaust and, in general, to all of history, to the entire creation. After all, this is not an earthly problem of the people of Israel, but the confrontation of the forces of nature, like a physical, chemical, or mathematical law. There are special relations between the parts of creation as absolute, unchangeable laws that are set and cannot be violated.

The central law among all these principles concerns the existence of the people of Israel, the land of Israel, the beginning and the end of creation, and the entire process between them regarding any particle of the universe. All this is connected together in one system in which we are included as a central force.

Natural anti-Semitism is the consequence of every person’s inclination for bestowal, love for his neighbor, for the Creator, for the upper force. Although this force is hated and rejected by everyone, it exists, and to the same extent there is also a force of rejection and hatred toward those who represent this force in our world, that is, for the quality called Yehudi from the word “Yehud – unity.
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From KabTV’s “A Conversation with Journalists” 4/6/21

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“Are Jews Also To Blame For The US Border Crisis?” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Are Jews Also to Blame for the US Border Crisis?

The situation at the border should be called by its name, a crisis. The U.S. border crisis is close to a disaster for the country on multiple levels, first and foremost, the human. Nearly 19,000 children and teenagers traveling without a parent were stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in March, the most ever in a single month. Those children joined already crammed cage-style detention centers where they stay in deplorable conditions, are at risk for contracting coronavirus, and allegedly are exposed to physical violence and sexual assault. What does this forbode for the future? And what does it have to do with the Jews?

So we may ask, “How could the border crisis possibly be connected to us?” The link stems from one reason: we live in a global world, a network of intricate interconnection, in which Jews are held accountable for everyone’s well-being, or conversely, for everyone’s predicaments.

Illegal immigration to the U.S. is not a new phenomenon, but with President Biden coming to power and abolishing Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, the borders have been literally overrun. Immigrants from Mexico and Central America feel the doors are wide open. As a result, in March alone over 170,000 migrants were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, a 71% spike over February’s official statistics, and the pace continues to accelerate.

I am not a member of the UN or any international human rights organizations that deems it their responsibility to fix the immigration problem. Rather, I am a public figure who agreed with Trump’s rigid stance regarding building a wall to make clear that without a visa, there can be no entry. Only then would it be possible to consider the right steps for the absorption of immigrants so that the mental and physical anguish at the borders could be avoided, at the very least.

For now, all the steps of President Biden and those around him are aimed at undoing the political trajectories that Trump established during his time in office. This obliges Biden and those who follow him, to begin again from the ground up. The question is how high will the human cost be to start over from scratch? How much suffering and sorrow, hunger and pain will be endured?

Nothing good will come out of this new policy of open borders, only social collapse. America may well sink. Entrepreneurs and businessmen, one by one, will begin to abandon the land of opportunity, that is diving into misfortune, instability, and insecurity, and will look for new possibilities in other countries like Canada, even Cuba will look more promising.

Just as the American forefathers emigrated from Western Europe to America, so too will businessmen and entrepreneurs begin to migrate outside the borders of America to set up factories and offices, establish banks and businesses. These new changes will shake the United States to the core.

The people who rule the country will be unable to control the chaos g and will lead society to total destruction in the so-called name of “democracy.” From the incompatibility of worldviews and general dissatisfaction with the direction the country is heading, social unrest may erupt.

American society, in all its sectors and communities, is in a process of gradual evolution. Until the desired maturity is reached, there must be a stable government with leaders who have a vision of the nation’s progress, who know how to wisely motivate millions of people to move the country forward.

This is how England, Germany and France were built over hundreds of years. It is impossible one fine morning to allow millions of immigrants from underdeveloped countries to enter and expect them to suddenly assimilate into society. It is impossible to instantly extend to them the reins of power in the name of liberalism without completely disrupting the process of smooth development.

I do not underestimate the will of migrant workers or the situation of refugees suffering from poor conditions and without basic human rights in their homelands. On the contrary, my heart goes out to each and every one of them. But at the political level there are laws and protocols that need to be followed. An integration program must be established as part of the U.S. immigration policy, a process to allow each immigrant to learn the language, get to know the local culture in depth, and understand the laws and norms accepted in society.

This can only happen under leadership that designs and implements a clear and orderly plan. A government that does not know how to stop the crisis before it explodes will inflict disaster on itself. And for now, the Biden government appears to be degenerating into total mayhem.

Although the Biden administration is now preoccupied with its breached borders, when the storm subsides, its next “problem” to tackle will be the State of Israel. In the current U.S. government’s sweet dream—which is a nightmare for most Israelis—a Palestinian state will be established on Israeli soil and that will be our end. While there is silence on this issue now, later the increasingly malicious message against Israel will resonate loud and clear. From there the road to inflicting wounds on the Jewish state is short indeed.

And why would such thoughts even arise in the heads of the American administration? Because the Jews who supported and still support Biden are willing to risk Israel’s future. This may sound like rough stitching between two entirely different conflicts, but no. The border crisis in the U.S., along with many others, is like a snowball beginning to roll from the top of a very steep slope, accumulating problems and troubles along the way. Just as Jews have historically been accused of being responsible for pestilences and conflicts, the same scenario will unfold here. We are one step closer to also being blamed for the border crisis, as antisemites proclaim, “the Jews are guilty of all the evil in the world!”

So we may ask, “How could the border crisis possibly be connected to us?” The link stems from one reason: we live in a global world, a network of intricate interconnection, in which Jews are held accountable for everyone’s well-being, or conversely, for everyone’s predicaments.

There is a general perception that Jews are not performing the role assigned to them by the ancient wisdom they hold, the secret of eternity, which they fail to reveal to every person on this planet so we can all achieve the ultimate happiness. This ancient wisdom is called the wisdom of connection and it teaches how the world is built, what its purpose is, and how we can create one human family that functions as an egalitarian society that cares for the weak as well as the strong.

As it is written, “No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.” (Yevamot 63). The first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, Rav Kook, also wrote, “Humanity deserves to be united into a single family. At that time all the quarrels and the ill will that stem from divisions of nations and their boundaries shall cease. However, the world requires mitigation, whereby humanity will be perfected through each nation’s unique characteristics. This deficiency is what the Assembly of Israel will complement.” And in the words of foremost Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam),“The people of Israel, which has been chosen as an operator of the general purpose and correction … contains the preparation required for growing and developing until it moves the nations of the worlds, too, to achieve the common goal.”

In a nutshell, we need to implement what is deeply ingrained in our core values and heritage, our ability to connect as one man with one heart. When we put this law of nature into practice, we will truly become a “light unto the nations,” spreading an orderly system throughout the world and radiating warmth and love. This is the one and only mechanism for fending off threats and recovering the world’s balance.
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The Creator Will Gladly Help Us

528.02It is clear that we are not able to change our nature from egoistic to altruistic. It is like rising from the level of created being to the level of the Creator. Of course, it is not in our power because we are just created beings and rather low.

Obviously, we have the chance to grow, but this is still ahead of us. The more we try to rise to the spiritual reality, the deeper we plunge into the corporeal world because the Creator created one against the other. It is due to both forces, Pharaoh and the Creator, and learning how to use them correctly so that we rise between the two, in the middle line, toward the Creator.

Of course, we cannot unite in the ten by ourselves, but we can ask the Creator to help us connect. But it is impossible to ask until we have tried to do it ourselves. That is, we make efforts to connect and discover how different we are, that do not accept each other, how lazy we are and do not understand what connection is, or what it means to be one man with one heart.

When we fall into despair from our attempts, we turn to the Creator. Now we have something to show Him: “Look, we tried everything and nothing works. You must help us!”

But if we did not start trying on our own, the Creator would not be able to help us. He always makes corrections to our unsuccessful attempts. All our work is to try to do something, and after that we have the right to turn to the Creator and He will help us with great joy. After our own attempts, we realized where the shattering occurred and how to correct it, and that we ourselves are not capable of it.

When a person tries to achieve unity on his own, that is, the spiritual degree where he is united with others, he reveals his helplessness. He understands that he has no feelings, no understanding of how to do this, and he needs to receive the upper force, the upper desire for this. That is, he lacks the work in the mind and heart.

The Creator does everything, but we must come to Him with despair from the work that we tried to do and did not succeed. Until we try it ourselves, we do not know what to ask for.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/4/21, “Pesach (Passover)”

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“Covid Not Incentive For Antisemitism” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “Covid Not Incentive for Antisemitism

The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs 2020 Antisemitism Report argues that last year was good in the sense that in the previous year, no Jews were murdered for being Jews. At the same time, the report laments the rise of what it considers the most decisive power driving antisemitism in the previous year: the Covid-19 pandemic.

We should know better. Jews have always been blamed for the world’s woes. Were Jews not blamed for the Black Death in the Middle Ages? Were Jews not blamed for Germany’s woes before World War II broke out? And when Jews aren’t blamed for something as tragic as the Black Death, they’re still blamed for every little pain. In fact, Jews are hated even when there is nothing at all to blame them for.

Unless, of course, we put a stop to it. We, Jews, are the unexpected holders of the key to ending antisemitism. And once again, it is not a circumstantial solution. Nor is it a matter of policy, ideology, or stifling of antisemitic outbursts. We can and should apply sticking plaster solutions when possible, but we must not think that they will solve the problem. If we believe they will, reality will explode in our faces.

These days, the trend is to blame Israel for the intensification of antisemitism, as though this or that policy of the Israeli government will change how the world feels about Jews. I was born in Eastern Europe right after the war; almost my entire family perished in the Holocaust. There was no State of Israel to blame, and my family certainly didn’t cause the downfall of Germany in World War I, but they were murdered nonetheless. Their only “fault” was that they were Jews. Once it is legitimate to assail Jews, no pretext is needed, and no brutality is off limits.

According to the Internet Archive, since the Bar Kokhba Revolt, which ended in 135 CE, Jews have been expelled from their host countries, or altogether exterminated, more than 800 times! These pogroms predate the State of Israel, racism, and even Christianity. In fact, antisemitism is as old as Judaism itself. Therefore, if we want to find the solution to Jew-hatred, we have to look deeper than attributing it to some passing crisis that is here today and gone tomorrow.

But perhaps the most intriguing fact about Jew-hatred is the apparent dichotomy between the development of a country and the intensity and ferociousness of its antisemitism. Of all the countless atrocities that non-Jews have inflicted on Jews, none did so more potently and painfully than the most powerful nations of their time. Egypt under Pharaoh was the first, followed by Babylon, which ruined the First Temple. Then came Greece with the temporary destruction of the Second Temple, followed by Rome, which destroyed the Second Temple beyond repair and let the Jews destroy each other in a gruesome civil war. In the 15th century, Spain, a mighty and enlightened empire, expelled all the Jews from its midst in the second most traumatic event since the ruin of the Second Temple, and finally, the Holocaust that Nazi Germany had wrought on European Jewry was the worst trauma since the ruin of the Second Temple. In all those episodes, the decimators were the most advanced, cultured, and civilized nations of their time. But at some point, something made them turn against the Jews and let the monster loose.

Since this pattern has persisted throughout history, and only the pretexts changed to suit the circumstances, there is no reason to expect it to change going forward. The future of the Jews, it seems, is bleak, and another blow is nearing. Whether it will strike the State of Israel, American Jewry, or both is anyone’s guess, but there is no question that the two most developed and advanced Jewish communities are the targets of the next great blow to the Jewish people.

Unless, of course, we put a stop to it. We, Jews, are the unexpected holders of the key to ending antisemitism. And once again, it is not a circumstantial solution. Nor is it a matter of policy, ideology, or stifling of antisemitic outbursts. We can and should apply sticking plaster solutions when possible, but we must not think that they will solve the problem. If we believe they will, reality will explode in our faces.

The real solution lies not with the world, but with the Jews themselves. This is why this hatred persists through any circumstance. We must look for the solution not in how the world treats us, but in how we treat ourselves. Our relationships with one another generate the hatred of the nations toward us. It may sound outlandish, but our sages have known this throughout the ages, yet the people were reluctant to heed their advice.

Note that our sages do not attribute the ruin of the First Temple to the Babylonian conquest, but to the bloodshed and corruption within Israel. Likewise, they do not attribute the ruin of the Second Temple to the Romans, but to baseless hatred of the Jews for one another. Time and time again, they tell us that if we unite, no harm will come to us; time and time again we pay them no attention, conveniently adopt the victim narrative, and blame our woes on others.

When I look at the global political climate, I do not think it bodes well for the Jews. I don’t know how much time we have, but I do not believe it will be very long before the dark clouds on the horizon amass into a storm front that will unleash its wrath on the Jews. Worse yet, from what I can see, it will not be a single country that will give a free rein to hatred, but the entire world; there will be no escape. This is why I think it is so urgent that we apply the one cure we haven’t tried since before the ruin of the Temple: unity.

The incentive for antisemitism, our sages tell us, is our hatred of each other, and the cure for it is our unity, “as one man with one heart.”

For more on this topic, you may refer to the books Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour and The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.
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New Life 1086 – Recognizing Good And Evil

New Life 1086 – Recognizing Good And Evil
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Life is like an ongoing war for each person since we all want to benefit at the expense of others. A truly good person is someone who knows how to benefit others without personal benefit. We need a new educational process that depicts the benefit of caring for others so that people feel motivated to do good to one another. It must help us recognize that absolute darkness awaits us if we don’t’ change our human nature. More developed people will enjoy benefiting others because they will feel that we are all a single body.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1086 – Recognizing Good And Evil,” 2/26/19

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“What Is The Importance Of Interdependence In Nature?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: What is the importance of interdependence in nature?

Interdependence in nature exists on its still, vegetative and animate levels. No created being—including human beings—can exist on their own, separate from other beings. In nature, there is a constant exchange of substances with their environment. Even a rock feels its environment and the environment feels the rock through several forces and systems that we have yet to fully understand.

Also, the higher up the levels of nature we go, and also between the levels, the more interdependence there is. There is a very tight connection between the still, vegetative, animate and human levels of nature.

We people are, on one hand, part of the animate world, intimately connected to the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature. However, on the other hand, due to the human ego, we want control and power over nature, to make nature submit to our demands. Such an inclination backfires on us as the subjective ego is blind to what it really needs in order to truly benefit itself.

We are all parts of a whole interdependent and interconnected system. However, our egoistic attitude disrupts, corrupts and brings about imbalance in such a system.

Today, we live in an era where we are becoming more and more aware of the extent to which we harm nature, ourselves and our future generations. Moreover, we seemingly do not care much, if at all, about the harm we cause, which is also due to the same ego.

Therefore, the importance of interdependence in nature is that it should lead us humans to acknowledge how we think and act contrarily to such interdependence—in our egoistic attitudes to each other and to nature.

In order to reach balance with nature’s interdependence, we need to change our attitudes to each other so that they match the overriding attitude in nature: egoistic to altruistic, divisive to connected. We will then enter into balance with nature and experience a whole new kind of harmonious existence, the likes of which we cannot even imagine right now.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman

Passover From The Point Of View Of Modern Realities, Part 2

232.09Question: Why did Pharaoh while he wanted the Jews to stay in Egypt, order the boys to be thrown into the Nile but not girls? What is this power of boys? Why were they killed and not the girls?

Answer: Women are always passive, they can obey, this is their nature. “So, nothing will happen to them if they are left without their men. We will use them to our advantage and that’s it”—to use crude human language.

But, in principle, it is not about this but about the fact that in every person there is a female and a male source. If one kills his male nature, i.e., the intention to bestow, connect, and unite with the Creator, then all his actions become feminine, small, for their own sake, at the level of our world, and they do not affect anything but destroy the nation.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/12/19

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“To Solve Migrant Crisis—Redefine Humanitarian Crisis” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “To Solve Migrant Crisis – Redefine Humanitarian Crisis

Fox News reported that in March alone, “Border officials encountered 172,000 migrants at the border … a 71% increase from February and the latest indicator of the extent of the crisis at the southern border. The 172,000 migrants … included 18,890 unaccompanied children – a 100% increase from the already high numbers encountered in February, and the highest number recorded.” Once across the border, these children are crammed into “pens” where thousands occupy spaces that were built to contain no more than 250 children. These pens are not only grossly overcrowded, they are a breeding ground for violent and sexual assaults on helpless children. Already, the stories coming from these coops are heart-wrenching. By all accounts, this is a horrifying humanitarian crisis, and its solution is nowhere in sight.

I think we need to redefine “humanitarian crisis” to include the human part of the crisis even before we consider the material part. The reason these crises are happening is that people do not receive the proper education before they immigrate. They are promised a land of unlimited opportunities and end up in cages, or refugee camps, or dropped off busses in a small town in the middle of nowhere and left alone.

Currently, a humanitarian crisis is defined as “a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people.” To solve such crises, various aid organizations provide material assistance to those affected by the predicament. In this way, we do not prevent future crises, do not help the people affected by them, but merely keep them alive and suffering. Emergency provision of food, tents, and basic medical assistance may look good in pictures circulated in order to draw more funds for the organizations that thrive on the suffering of the victims, but they do nothing to solve the problem.

Therefore, I think we need to redefine “humanitarian crisis” to include the human part of the crisis even before we consider the material part. The reason these crises are happening is that people do not receive the proper education before they immigrate. They are promised a land of unlimited opportunities and end up in cages, or refugee camps, or dropped off buses in a small town in the middle of nowhere and left alone.

A border should be closed for everyone except those that a country wants to admit after testing that applicants meet the required criteria. If people want to immigrate to a new country to improve their condition, they should first make the necessary preparations: learn the language of the new country, acquire required work skills so they don’t become a burden on the new country’s welfare system, and acquaint themselves with the basic civics of their future home.

The current situation where people are flooding the border is a recipe for disaster. It is already happening, but it will grow much worse! In simple words, it is a suicidal policy. If it continues, we will begin to see migration in the opposite direction where the educated and affluent “relocate” to more sustainable societies. The pouring of migrants into the United States rattles the pillars of democracy. It will not be long before they collapse and America falls from the zenith to the nadir.

Still, as long as this scenario has not materialized, it is possible to avoid it. It takes resolve, but I don’t see what other option this mighty nation has.

Passover From The Point Of View Of Modern Realities, Part 1

560Comment: Let’s look at Passover from the point of view of modern realities.

When the Jews descended into Egypt, there was a flourishing not only for the people of Israel but also for Egypt. And suddenly, this power, this large number of Jews started to frighten the Egyptians.

My Response: It is not about the large number but about Jewish control over Egypt.

Pharaoh was not stupid. He quickly realized that he had a serious force in his hands and he put Jews above all the overseers, commanders, etc. It was then that they built the pyramids and everything, and Egypt became very rich. So, later on, the Pharaoh did not want to let them leave Egypt.

But they quickly realized that they had nothing to do in Egypt, that they could live on their own, and they started to slowly get ready for the journey. And that is when problems arose.

This suits modern realities very well. We saw in the example of European and other countries that when Jews came to a country from places they were expelled from, the country that expelled experienced declines in its economy, culture, etc., and the country they came to rose and flourished.

Of course, this caused great damage to those countries that refused them. We can also see this in the case of Egypt, which has not recovered since then. Egypt, when it was a great culture, built its pyramids and to this day “sells” them.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/12/19

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