Audio Version Of The Blog – 6/29/21
Posted on June 29th, 2021
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Question: I have looked at a lot of literature on governance, but I have not found a single work that includes the scientific foundations of Kabbalah. Maybe it makes sense to take at least the first step?
Answer: Kabbalah is the science of government, but the science of managing the world, society, states, etc. with the help of the positive force, the property of bestowal, the property of complete connection with each other. Therefore, for modern society with more than seven billion people, it cannot become a practical method of management and implementation.
I think that Kabbalah will have to be gradually introduced only in small groups that strive to reach the perfect level of management. They will really achieve the vision of a common system. In this case, they will be able to make the right decisions, verdicts about their behavior, the behavior of these systems, and so on.
But if, at the same time they turned to society, society would not understand them because it cannot implement the laws of the altruistic world, perfect communication, when everyone acts as in a single system, in addition to each other, when everyone does not feel like a single unit individually, but feels like a single link in the whole system and acts only in accordance with the whole system.
I do not know how ants feel in their family, but this is life within society. In the same way, a person no longer has his own life, but the life of all mankind, or at least of his country, or of his collective. Therefore, even if Kabbalah wrote a management manual about this, it would be a guide to managing an ideal team.
Question: Did I understand correctly that Kabbalah, in general, is the science of management?
Answer: Yes. But the science of governing by the positive force of nature, which is hidden from us by our own egoistic being.
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From Kab TV’s “Kabbalah and other sciences” 6/22/21
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My new article on Linkedin “ The Ten Plagues of Covid ”
In the last week or so, it has become clear that we are in the beginning of the fourth wave of Covid-19 in Israel. We thought we had beaten the virus, and so did much of the world, but once again we’re closing down as the number of new cases quickly rises. Even though about 60 percent of Israel’s population is inoculated, we’re still losing to the virus.
As I have warned countless times before, we’re not sickened by the coronavirus; we’re sickened by hubris and conceit. Self-importance and egoism are sure recipes for disaster, and we are proving it every time we see that Covid cases are declining. What’s more, Covid is not a local or a national problem; it is the problem of the entire world, and unless the entire world is included in the solution, we will not get rid of it. Covid-19 will teach us that we’re in this together, for better or worse, dependent on each other. Unless we think about each other’s health, we ourselves will not be well.
In a sense, I’m happy that Covid is here because it teaches us this mutual responsibility. At the same time, I am equally unhappy about our obstinacy and reluctance to learn, as it is costing us lives, millions of lives. I myself lost friends, students, and some of their family members to the virus. No one is excluded from this bug, which is precisely why it is so effective in teaching us mutual responsibility.
Just as the ten plagues in Egypt ushered a new era in the history of the people of Israel, when they pledged to unite “as one man with one heart,” Covid-19 is ushering the world into the exact same state. Its plagues will grow less and less quantitative, and more and more qualitative, meaning leading us directly toward understanding that without pledging to care for one another, we will not survive.
In the desert, after they fled from Egypt, the Israelites did not willingly accept the pledge for unity. They, too, had to deal with their egos. The Talmud writes (Avoda Zarah 2b) that “The Lord had forced the mountain over Israel like a vault, and said unto them: ‘If you accept the Law [of mutual responsibility], very well, but if not, there will it be your grave.’” Today, it seems as though Covid is taking God’s role in forcing us to make the same pledge. I hope we will not be obstinate much longer since the plagues, we already know, will only grow harsher.
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My new article on Linkedin “Hatred Around Every Corner”
Today, Sunday, is the 17th of the Hebrew month of Tammuz. On that day, some 2,000 years ago, the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem. Three weeks later, they reached the Temple and destroyed it, then exiled the remaining Jews from Jerusalem and we lost our sovereignty. But it weren’t the Romans who had conquered us. It was our own hatred that had set us off against each other. The Jewish-turned-Roman historian Flavius Josephus put it very simply: “The sedition destroyed the city, and the Romans destroyed the sedition.”
Israel regained independence 73 years ago, but we did not fortify our sovereignty with unity. In the absence of unity, sedition will destroy the country once again. Wherever you look, there is hatred. Within families, among different factions in the nation, among political parties, hatred sets the tone wherever you look. In fact, hatred is so prominent here that if we had to fight the Romans once again, we would destroy each other instead, just as our ancestors did two millennia ago.
Our nation was founded on unity, and on unity alone. We were declared a nation only when we pledged to love each other as ourselves, to be “as one man with one heart.” Among the first Israelites, who came from all over the Fertile Crescent, there were no other connections other than the pledge to forge unity and mutual responsibility. This was why our nation was so unique.
Two thousand years ago, the process of capitulating to our ego and division culminated in the civil war that ended with the ruin of the Temple. That hatred obliterated our peoplehood and destroyed the very basis of our nation: unity above all. Since the ruin of the Temple, we have not healed the hatred that destroyed it, and as a result, we have not regained the right to be regarded as a nation.
King Solomon stated, “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Prov. 10:12). We are pious when it comes to fulfilling the first part of the verse, but we are equally irreverent when it comes to fulfilling its second part. As long as we let hatred set the tone among us, we will not merit the title “nation” and the country will decline to the point of collapse.
The choice is in our hands. If we choose unity, we will thrive and prosper. If we succumb to our egos and let division, derision, and odium come over us, we will be ousted and persecuted as we have been for the past two millennia.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do we consider some lives to be worth more than others?“
We consider some lives to be worth more than others because we fail to see the general system of our global interdependence and interconnectedness.
We belong to a single system. In essence, we are all one organism. Each of us is like a cell in a single organism, a cell that needs to take care of the well-being of the whole organism. If we will see that humanity is ultimately one organism with different organs and parts, then we will understand that every person is immensely important.
In a live organism, it takes just one cell to become cancerous in order to set off the organism’s demise. Our egoistic nature works in the same way: by nature, we wish to “consume” others, i.e. use others for the sake of personal benefit. Likewise, today we all behave like cancerous cells. This dire situation is being increasingly shown to us in our era: the more we discover our global interdependence and interconnectedness, the more we also see how our egoistic nature does not let us enjoy our tightening connection, but on the contrary, we feel it in increasingly negative and threatening ways.
If we recognize the conflicting tendency of our current development, i.e. that the more connected we become globally, technologically and economically, then the more we suffer from our egos clashing with each other, then we will start realizing that we need to heal in our attitudes to each other—to reject our egoism, consumption and the exploitation of others, and shift to a state where we positively connect to each other above our egoism, developing new altruistic threads in our connections.
By discovering the crisis of our current development and the direction our development needs to undergo in order to progress to a better world, we will then see that life lies in enabling us all to contribute positively to society. If we encourage everyone in society to contribute to society, we will then discover our equality. Then, the life of one person could not be considered as more or less important than the life of another person.
Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
My new article on Linkedin “Brace for New Well-Poisoning Libels”
In the 14th century, a bubonic plague, aka The Black Death, wreaked havoc across Europe in what became the most fatal pandemic in human history, annihilating nearly half of Europe’s population. In those days, people had no scientific knowledge or sanitary conditions to stem the spread of the pestilence, so their only refuge from complete despair was rumors, usually completely fabricated. One such rumor was that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells.
Jews were often the target of false rumors when attempting to explain crises. This time, however, the result was particularly painful: Between 1348-1351, 350 pogroms against Jews were recorded, in which no less than 210 communities were simply exterminated. Even years after the plague had subsided, pogroms related to the well-poisoning libel still took place. In 1370, for example, the libel ignited the Brussels massacre which wiped out the Belgian Jewish community.
The current pandemic, Covid-19, is likely to repeat the pattern. Although Jews, and particularly the Jewish state, Israel, have already been accused of causing it, such libels are still in the margins. Yet, the more the current plague continues, and the more helpless humanity feels, the more people’s eyes will turn to the Jews, and their fingers will point to us as the evildoers.
As then, so now, we will make every reasonable argument to prove that we are not to blame, that we did not cause the pandemic. As then, so now, no one will listen. In that regard, the world has not changed since the Middle Ages. If we think people are more reasonable or civilized today than they were then, we need only look at what happened in Germany less than a century ago to realize that humanity is today what it has always been: Inherently irrational and ever willing to pin the blame on the Jews.
But is humanity wrong? If everyone tells us that we are to blame, and we’re the only ones who think otherwise, then who is right? Because even if we didn’t cause The Black Death or Covid-19, and we didn’t, for sure, perhaps there is some other fault in us that we are unaware of and that the world cannot articulate, and it expresses it through its most convenient pretext. Perhaps this is why the world blames us not only of starting The Black Death and Covid, but of causing all the wars, the HIV virus, every economic and financial crisis that’s ever struck humanity, every violation of human rights, in every country, even where there are no Jews, and in general, of everything that’s wrong with the world.
The problem is that we are unaware of what our own sages teach. If we were more informed, we would realize that they, too, thought that everything that’s wrong with the world is because of the Jews, and that the Jews can and must correct it.
Our sages attributed all our troubles and all the world’s troubles to our lack of unity, and as a result, maintained that our unity, the unity of the Jewish people, is the cure for everything.
For example, the Talmud writes (Yevamot 63), “No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.” Incidentally, “for” means both “for our sake,” to help us, as well as “because.”
Similar to the Talmud, the book Shem MiShmuel writes, “When they [Israel] are as one man with one heart, they are as a fortified wall against the forces of evil.” Rabbi Nathan Sternhertz writes in his book Likutey Halachot [Assorted Rules], which describes how Jews should behave, “‘Gather together and hear, you sons of Jacob,’ precisely ‘Gather together,’ for he revealed to them that the primary element of correction is the advice to gather together, meaning that there will be unity, love, and peace in Israel, that they will gather together to speak to one another of the final purpose. Thus they will be rewarded with completeness of the counsel, for Israel and the Law are all one to the extent of peace and unity in Israel.” Rabbi Simcha Bonim Bonhart of Peshischa wrote similarly in A Broadcasting Voice: “This is the mutual guarantee on which Moses worked so hard before his death, to unite the children of Israel. All of Israel are each other’s guarantors [responsible for one another], meaning that when all are together, they see only good.”
The book Bina Le’Itim explains not only how division hurts us, but also how unity saves us: “The foundation of the wickedness of evil Haman, on which he had built his request of the king to sell the Jews to him … is what he had begun to argue, ‘There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed,’ etc. He cast his filth saying that that nation deserves to be destroyed, for separation rules among them, they are all full of strife and quarrel, and their hearts are far from one another. However, He put the healing before the blow [took preventing measures] … by hastening Israel to unite and adhere to one another, to all be one, as one man, and this is what saved them, as in the verse, ‘Go, gather together all the Jews.’”
And finally, The Book of Zohar explains not only that our disunity causes our troubles, but that it also causes the world’s worst calamities. In the section Tikkuney Zohar [Corrections of The Zohar], Tikkun [correction] no. 30, the book writes, “In such a generation,” when Israel do not correct themselves through unity, “all the destructors among the nations of the world raise their heads and wish primarily to destroy and to kill the children of Israel, as it is written, ‘No calamity comes to the world but for Israel’ (Yevamot 63a). This means, as it is written in the above Tikkunim [corrections], that [Israel] cause poverty, ruin, robbery, killing, and destructions in the whole world.”
There are countless other examples but regrettably, they cannot all fit into one essay. Nevertheless, the picture is clear enough. If our own sages and our own texts tell us that we are responsible for our own fate and for the fate of the world, that we determine what happens to us and to the world through our unity or division, do we not owe it to ourselves and to the world to at least try to follow our sages’ advice? Can we blame Jew-haters of baseless hatred when our own sages speak so similarly? I believe the answer is clear, and the onus is on us.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is lacking in our education system?“
Education is what we receive from our environment.
We receive our education and culture by the example we get from society and our parents. Schools do not provide education, but only trades. Education, which is our inner culture, is determined not by knowledge, but by our correct inner development, when we reach perfection in our attitude to life and to the world.
This is why truly positive education means teaching knowledge about what the general law of nature demands of us all—to become harmoniously connected, and to take care of each other similar to how cells and organs of a human body each operate for the whole body’s benefit.
In our present times, from one day to the next, we discover how we become increasingly interdependent around the world. Society should thus provide examples of how to realize such interdependence in a balanced and positive manner to the younger generation by showing how caring for humanity as a whole is life’s highest value. By doing so, we will reliably educate our generation for living harmoniously in a growingly interdependent world, and then our future generations will truly be able to enjoy their lives.
If we will bring knowledge into the world about the fact that mutual consideration, responsibility and love will save the world, then we will be happy to open ourselves up in order to become positive parts of a whole system, and enjoy the fruits provided by that system. By doing so, we will discover that we are not like cancerous cells in an organism, but like healthy cells in the body of humanity.
Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
My new article on Linkedin “Disasters Will Hunt Jews Until Unity Is Achieved”
In a race against time, emergency workers try to find survivors of a residential building that collapsed days ago in Surfside near Miami, Florida. More than 150 people are still unaccounted for and the death toll rises every day. This tragedy knocks at the door in a neighborhood with a growing Jewish community, a community now in shock and disbelief at the disaster. Finally, the question arises of why it is that Jews are again at the heart of a new blow?
The cause of the collapse is still unknown, but according to the New York Times, almost three years ago an engineer expressed concerns about structural damage to the building that required renovations but which were never implemented. Whatever the reason, there is one undeniable fact: the Jews are at the center of yet another disaster. These are no longer obscure clues and signs but accumulating facts, a chain of events that connect and raise many question marks.
A recent stampede at the religious pilgrimage to Mount Meron in Israel—believed to be the largest single annual Jewish event in the world—left 45 people dead and over 150 wounded. A fatal collapse of a synagogue bleacher in Jerusalem on Shavuot night and other series of events prior to the tragedy in Florida have one common denominator: the Jews.
Using words as arrows to make their point, our sages wrote about the reason for Jewish afflictions: “No calamity comes to the world but for Israel,” (Yevamot, 63a.) The unfounded hatred which was the root cause of the destruction of the First and Second Temples is also characteristic of the Jewish people these days.
The Book of Zohar states that when separation prevails among the people of Israel, “They bring about the existence of poverty, ruin, and robbery, looting, killing, and destructions in the world” (Tikkuney Zohar, No. 30).
The breakage in our relationships as Jews is akin to the building collapse in Florida. When Jews fall into separation and do not lean toward oneness above all differences, then the cracks in their structural basis as a people weaken and their troubles increase, manifesting in different and unexpected ways.
Brotherly love among the Jewish people evokes a positive force with the capacity to neutralize all evil. This power corrects, straightens, settles, and balances reality as a whole.
An excruciating path would be to ignore the warning signs and delay the call for Jewish unity—the force which has been the foundation of the Jewish people since time immemorial. If Jews continue along the path of mutual hatred, they will gnaw away their cohesion until their bedrock is undermined and destroyed. Conversely, it is written in the book Maor VaShemesh, “The prime defense against calamity is love and unity. When there are love, unity, and friendship between each other in Israel, no calamity can come over them.”
Until Jews wake up and reach a common concern for one another, following an educational campaign that will bring Jews closer together and later all the people in the world, many more disasters will continue to befall them. That’s an annoying and infuriating truth. However, there is also a way to reverse the situation: through a real change of attitude toward each other, through unity as the pillar, as the precondition to shake off predicaments and thrive as a people, Jews can escape troubles. As the great Rav Kook wrote, “Since we were ruined by unfounded hatred and the world was ruined with us, we will be rebuilt by unfounded love and the world will be rebuilt with us.” (Orot Kodesh [Sacred Lights]).
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Who was directly responsible for the AIDS/HIV epidemic facing Africa today?“
The spreading of AIDS in Africa is the culpability of the developed countries, which forcefully introduced their culture and values, and by doing so, corrupted the natural culture and the development by which African countries, as well as other countries, should have developed.
European nations committed a great injustice when they attempted to forcefully bring their values into other countries of the world, and therefore separated them from their own traditions, and from their natural evolution and development.
This is why they elicited such conditions in which AIDS, hunger, inequality and dictatorship develop, characteristic of the third world countries today.
This is why I think that by helping countries return to their nature, to their natural development, we can reach a favorable and harmonious development among all nations, countries and humanity as a whole, in a positive and equal manner. It is not that the countries themselves should be equal, but everyone should have an equal opportunity to develop favorably, each nation according to its own nature. This is how we could reach global harmony, and in the process, we will see such illnesses and epidemics as AIDS decrease.
Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Any state can only be corrected by our connection; this is the only means. We again find ourselves in the next wave of the pandemic, which is manifesting and intensifying all over the world. I warned at the very beginning of the coronavirus pandemic that it would not end quickly. Therefore, I believe that vaccinations should not be neglected.
It is necessary to follow the principle “the doctor is given permission to heal” despite all shortcomings we know about medicine as well as its advantages. Medicine cannot be better than the people for whom it is intended. Doctors are not angels, and all shortcomings that exist in medicine are exactly what we need as uncorrected egoists.
If we were better, we would be cured by other methods, with the help of the light. In the meantime, we have to be treated with the same light but clothed in chemicals. Therefore, you need to listen to the doctors.
Take an example from my teacher Rabash. Every week we would visit a doctor: an ophthalmologist, a dermatologist, an otolaryngologist. He meticulously followed their instructions. And these were traditional doctors, not some miracle healers. He approached this issue very simply, materialistically.
I warned in advance that the coronavirus would not disappear so easily, that it would return. Now there is its second or third wave, and you will see how many more such waves there will be. Therefore, it is worth getting vaccinated: the only way we go together both in material and in spiritual form according to the principle “the doctor is given permission to heal.” The very doctor who belongs to the uncorrected medicine is the most suitable for our uncorrected qualities.
Correct your properties into spiritual ones, and material medicine will also change for the better. But for now, we get what we deserve, one matches the other. And this happens in everything, in any life situation. We will become more corrected, and our world will be corrected. The air, water, and natural conditions will improve, volcanoes and typhoons will subside. It all depends on our internal state.
And this should be approached from a spiritual, not from a material, point of view without inventing your own methods of correction and healing.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/21, “Advance by Overcoming”
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