Question: What will help the restoration of the Temple?

Answer: I know only one thing: if the majority of Jews, even not all of them and not completely, aspired to connect and realize that this is the only salvation for them and for humanity, then all mankind would also follow them in this connection; the world would begin to rise spiritually and physically in all respects, and evil would disappear from the face of the Earth between people and around them.

Question: How can we come to such an sensory, heartfelt connection between us?

Answer: Only from the shattering. We are trying to bring people to connect by explaining as much as they can understand. And what they do not understand, they will feel from misfortunes that will still have to manifest between them.

Question: The Second Temple was destroyed because of unfounded hatred between people. This is a very serious condition, which is not easy to come to. Did the Jews feel it for the first time at Mount Sinai after spending many years in Egypt?

Answer: No. They started to feel mutual hatred while in Egypt: accusations, murders. And even earlier, it was revealed between the sons of Jacob: Joseph and his brothers.

Question: So there must be hatred first and then love is revealed?

Answer: Absolutely! Otherwise, you do not know what needs to be corrected. Without the revelation of hatred in all its forms, there can be no correction and no reaching connection up to love.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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My new article on Linkedin “Why Societies Change”

In an essay titled “Critique of Marxism in Light of the New Reality, and a Solution to the Question Regarding the Unification of All the Factions of the Nation,” published in June 1940, while the world was engulfed in the flames of World War II, the great kabbalist and global thinker Baal HaSulam offered this explanation as to why societies change. “The duration of every political phase,” he wrote, “is just the time it takes to unveil its shortcomings and evil. While discovering its faults, it makes way for a new phase, liberated from those flaws. Thus, those impairments, which appear in a situation and destroy it, are the very forces of human evolution, as they raise humanity to a more corrected state.”

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, the process that Baal HaSulam described is called “recognition of evil.” In this process, the faults of one state gradually manifest until they galvanize individuals and nations to change their lives, governments, or whatever it is that has become intolerable in their lives. These days, humanity is going through such a stage on a global scale. The flaws of human society, in all its forms of governance, are manifesting more and more openly, and people are growing increasingly disillusioned with the existing systems.

I don’t think that we are already at the point where matters have become intolerable, but we are moving in that direction.

For now, it seems as though people are still willing to endure the flaws of the existing social and political systems, but hardly anyone still believes that there is any system that is genuinely good for people, since there are no leaders who genuinely have the benefit of the citizens in mind. In other words, people are realizing that no regime can be a good regime as long as the people at the top are not good people.

But governors emerge from the people. If the people aren’t kind to one another, can we expect kindness from the leaders? Governors are simply those who excel in exploiting the system to their benefit; they use it as a level to lift them above the rest of the people. Consequently, in a society of selfish people, the governors are the most selfish; this is why they were able to climb to the top of the heap. Why should we even expect them to have our benefit in mind?

Therefore, to make the forces of human evolution raise humanity to a more corrected state, as Baal HaSulam put it, we must correct the people. If we establish a society of considerate people, its leaders will be the most considerate. If we establish a society that esteems mutual social responsibility, its leaders will be those who best promote mutual responsibility. So, before we complain about our leaders, we should look in the mirror. We may not like what we see, but we will know it is the truth, we will know if we have come to sufficient recognition of evil, and if we are willing to build for ourselves a society whose merits create meritorious leaders.

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My new article on Linkedin “A Lesson from Ben & Jerry’s Old and Foul Flavor“

A few days ago, on July 19, the multinational consumer goods company Unilever, which is also the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, announced that “it is inconsistent with [their] values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).” Although officially, Ben & Jerry’s belongs to Unilever, in truth, the company maintains its own policy when it comes to political issues. According to an essay in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Cohen and Greenfield, the progressive Jews who founded the Vermont based company, “attempted to achieve [political autonomy] by negotiating the creation of an independent and robust board for the post-acquisition subsidiary.” Indeed, to date, Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board of Directors has complete freedom when it comes to political statements, even when these affect the company’s commercial activity, as in this case.

Moreover, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), “The board’s chairwoman, Anuradha Mittal, was furious with Unilever’s response, telling NBC that Unilever was ‘trying to destroy the soul of the company. We want this company to be led by values and not be dictated by the parent company.’” Mittal was not mad at Unilever for banning a part of Israel. On the contrary, according to The Jerusalem Post, “Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board of Directors wanted to boycott Israel in its entirety, but was stopped from doing so by the ice-cream maker’s CEO and the British-based parent company Unilever.”

In other words, Ben & Jerry’s old and foul flavor is “hatred of the Jewish state.” They don’t think that Israel has a right to exist, and they cloak their agenda with a mantle of “social justice.” But this is not about justice; it is a reflection of the objection of many Jews, particularly in the US, to the existence of a Jewish state.

In my view, there are two levels to relate to the company’s declaration. The first level is the superficial one: The contract with Ben & Jerry’s has no item that specifies restrictions of sales in particular parts of the country, for whatever reason. Therefore, this demand is a breach of contract, and the State of Israel should respond resolutely by banning the sales of Ben & Jerry’s products throughout Israel. Instead of the franchise to manufacture and distribute the ice-cream in Israel, the Israeli licensee will sell its own ice-cream or sign a contract with another multinational company. In short, if they go political against Israel, Israel should go political against them.

But the deeper level is the more important one. The fact that two Jews are leading a campaign against Israel is actually natural; it’s a reflection of their aversion from their duty to the world. It will not help them. German Jews held the same views before Hitler came to power, but it didn’t help them whatsoever once the Nazis came to power. Now, too, the anti-Israel agenda will not help American Jews; the local antisemites will deal with them the same as the Nazis did under Hitler.

There is nothing that Jews will not give to the nations of the world in return for some sympathy. They will give up their identity, tradition, history, sovereignty, anything to get the world to like them. But all those “gifts” that the Jews are willing to bestow upon the world increase the division within the Jewish people and intensify the world’s hatred toward us. If we could rise above our differences and unite for just one day, we would see that this is what the world actually wants from us: our own unity, and not any other gifts.

Moreover, if we united, the world would understand why the Jews need their own country: to create a place where they can unite above their rifts and set an example of love that covers all the crimes, as King Solomon wrote (Proverbs 10:12). The reason that some Jews don’t want a sovereign State of Israel to exist, even if it were established in a completely undisputed territory, is that subconsciously, they don’t want the onus of being a role model nation, a trailblazing enterprise that unites people of all cultures, ethnicities, and faiths under an umbrella ideology of unity above all else. This was the ideology that forged the peoplehood of our ancestors, this is the reason why “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the motto that encompasses the whole of the Torah, and this is the onus of the Jews: to set an example by implementing this most sublime creed in existence, the system of uniting complete strangers “as one man with one heart.” Those Jews who deny Israel’s right to exist are trying to avoid endowing the world with this most precious gift.

For more on this topic, refer to the book The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.
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My new article on Linkedin “Why the World Laughs When Jews Cry”

A student from Israel asked me why it feels like whenever someone says something bad about Israel, the whole world joins in chorus. My answer was simple and concise: We are misbehaving toward the world, and this is why the world feels this way about us.

I would like to elaborate on that. We, Jews, must set an example of good relationships among everyone, but first and foremost among ourselves. We need to display bonding, peace, and friendship. The people of Israel are supposed to be responsible for one another. If we do this, the world will respect us. Because we’re not doing it, it treats us with contempt.

Currently, the relationships among the different factions in the Israeli society are horrible, nothing less. Also, we cannot separate what is happening within the Israeli society from how the world treats us, since we are part of the world; we were made of “representatives” from all the nations. Our ancestors came from all the nations of the world and assembled an ideological group that believed in King Solomon’s motto (Prov. 10:12), “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes.” Those early representatives of humanity formed a nation that realized a sublime idea that to this day seems eccentric: peace among all the nations.

Those ancestors fought hard to maintain their unity above the differences and hatred that erupted on occasion; they tried to remain true to their duty to be “a light unto nations,” to set an example of unity. They even coined the motto that virtually every religion and belief system has adopted in one form or another: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Indeed, is there anything higher than that? Although eventually we collapsed into hatred and were dispersed throughout the world, the legacy of unity and the duty of the Jews remain entrenched in humanity’s subconscious.

Just as nations are proud or ashamed of their athletes, who are competing these days in the Olympic Games, and just as people feel connected to great leaders, explorers, novelists, composers, scientists, and other renowned people from their nation, even if they lived many centuries ago, they also feel connected to their representatives among the ancient people of unity, the Jewish people, though on a more subliminal level. This is why when Jews succeed in their duty to unite the “delegates” of the nations, namely the Jews themselves, into a cohesive nation, they get the world’s applause. At the same time, when they fail and fall into disputes and division, they draw the world’s ire toward them.

This onus of the Jews is why the world’s attention will always be given to the Jewish people, why the Jews will always be judged by a stricter standard than the rest of the people, and why humanity pins every misfortune that befalls the world on the Jews. In his book Orot HaKodesh [Lights of Sanctity], Rav Kook, a great spiritual leader and the first Chief Rabbi in the Jewish settlement in Israel, wrote about the duty of the Jews toward the world: “Since we [Jews] 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.”

I hope and pray for our unity, for our sake, but most of all, for the sake of the world.

For more information about the ideas in this post, please read Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is courage?“

Courage means to stand up in spite of the world—even if the world is laughing at you, even if the world does not believe you, and even if the world does not want what you want to give it—and explain to the world with love, patience and high spirits what benefits the world, what brings peace to the world and what benefits humanity’s salvation today. Even though we cannot achieve such a state quickly, and it will be tough to explain it, and even though the response we receive will be a lack of acceptance, censure, a lack of understanding, and rejection—nevertheless we are obligated to bring the knowledge about the general law of nature to the world.

This is not faith, and it does not relate to any of the faiths, whether it be Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Confucianism or Buddhism. This relates to the general law of the universe, which is what the world is based on and the world will need to accept it. This general law of nature states that we are obligated to treat every person according to the principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Nature urges us to do so. We thus need to explain it to the world time and again through as many means and formats as possible.

In essence, treating everyone positively and spreading the wisdom about the need to positively connect is the greatest courage that humanity has. During such a process, we do not turn our mind and our pride against others, but on the contrary, we feel that we serve humanity, that we are beneath everyone, and that we need everyone, and wish the best for them.

That is true courage, and that is how we first and foremost defy our ego and make ourselves servants of the world. Only those who have overcome the ego can be real heroes.

Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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In the News (United Nations): “Humanity is ‘waging a war on nature’, threatening biodiversity loss, climate disruption and escalating pollution, the UN chief said on Friday.

“‘We will all be losers if we don’t achieve peace with the planet’, Secretary-General António Guterres told a webinar ahead of the International Day for Biological Diversity…

“He said one million species are at risk of extinction; ecosystems are disappearing “before our eyes”; deserts are spreading, and wetlands are being lost.

“Every year, 10 million hectares of forests are lost, oceans are overfished and ‘choking with plastic waste’ as the carbon dioxide they absorb is acidifying the seas, bleaching and killing coral reefs, he added. …

“‘We are depleting resources faster than nature can replenish them’, the UN chief continued. …

“’Three-quarters of new and emerging human infectious diseases are zoonotic’, jumping from animals to humans, and against this backdrop, the UN chief said that tackling the current COVID-19 crisis provides an opportunity to recover better.”

Question: What would you say? If we don’t make peace with the planet, then what?

Answer: The planet will spew us out, squeeze us out. It will make us defective, miserable, sickly, and pathogenic.

Question: Can there be an end to the earthly species?

Answer: No. Until we move to another dimension, nothing can happen.

Question: Will only a few of us remain, but we will nonetheless be compelled to conclude an agreement with nature?

Answer: I don’t even know if there will be a few left, but we will remain with such a life that death is better. No one will want to live and there will be no strength to die.

Question: What does it mean to “make an agreement with nature”?

Answer: It is to rise above our egoism. Because it is only our egoism that actually destroys nature. If we were like inanimate, animate, and vegetative nature, then everything would be fine. We would live in a normal ecosystem, we would not violate it.

Question: Because we could not violate it? Do we exist in this law?

Answer: Yes. And now we rise above it and destroy what must exist.

Question: His conclusion: since we are invading the habitats of wild animals, then there are all sorts of epidemics, is it wrong?

Answer: We are invading the habitats of not only wild animals, but also inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature. We have no right to interfere in it! We must be like it on our earthly level.

Question: How would we use it then?

Answer: Only to the extent it is necessary for our existence! Not one iota more!

Question: Does it exist for us to communicate with it this way? Would this raise us above egoism to the level of “man”?

Answer: Yes. We don’t need anything else.

Comment: And all infectious diseases, all troubles, and all illnesses…

My Response: This would never have happened!

Question: Is this a response to the violence?

Answer: Yes, because we trigger them.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/31/21

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The Power of Childish Thinking 

One of the most tenacious myths about how Einstein discovered is that he relied on adopting a naive, simple mode of thinking. This mode authorized Einstein to discount and ignore all the difficult technicalities of the existing literature, whose distracting complexities, we are to suppose, block progress. The way ahead is to adopt the mode of a precocious child asking childish questions. Einstein himself seems to have advanced this myth in part through self-deprecating remarks. Here is how one such remark is related, third-hand, by one of Einstein’s biographers: One of Einstein’s typical remarks was reported to me from Falmouth, Massachusetts by James Franck … 

‘‘When I asked myself,’’ Einstein said to Franck, ‘‘how it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstance. The normal adult never bothers his head about space-time problems. Everything there is to be thought about it, in his opinion, has already been done in early childhood. I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I only began to wonder about space and time when I was already grown up. In consequence I probed deeper into the problem than an ordinary child would have done (John D. Norton, How Einstein Did Not Discover).

This is correct. You don’t have to make yourself ignorant, you have to be naive.

Question: How do you erase knowledge that already exists in you? The knowledge exists and somehow I have to take it and remove it in this moment, as if I don’t know?

Answer: I don’t know anything. Actually! I say this absolutely frankly. I feel empty anew every minute.

Question: Why? You have been studying the science of Kabbalah for 40 years.

Answer: This is such a science that it denies itself. It crosses out everything you knew before so that you can take the next step. But the next step is not after the previous one, but instead of the previous one. They don’t add up together. In the spiritual, everything is built on denial.

Question: So I go and go, I am at some stage, and suddenly it completely disappears?

Answer: I start all over again. It’s fine! In fact, this is most correct. It is like I’m being reborn. Doesn’t the child open his eyes even wider?

I don’t feel tired. I am ready every day, every lesson, every morning to start all over again, to be reborn.

Question: And when does a person feel tired?

Answer: If he doesn’t have the excitement of new desires, new questions, then, of course, he can no longer reveal the child in himself, and then he is already an old man.

Question: Is this moving toward death?

Answer: Yes.

Question: When you say that eternal life is possible, are you talking about these constant updates?

Answer: Yes.

Question: When is constant updating possible, in what circumstances?

Answer: Always. It does not depend on the body. This is a desire, it does not depend on the body.

Question: So you have to start over all the time? Updating constantly?

Answer: Yes. And that’s great!

Question: What would you say to an ordinary person who does not study Kabbalah?

Answer: Nothing. Find yourself a hobby and keep going.

Question: And rejoice at new discoveries all the time?

Answer: Yes. Just like my teacher said about the soccer stadium that this place must be respected, it gives pleasure to many people.

He had never been there, had never seen inside, but he knew that there was a game that 100,000 or 200,000 people were watching at the same time and were enjoying life. Joy comes from the Creator, so he rejoices for them that they receive pleasure from the Creator. They do not curse Him at this time. Therefore, this place must be respected.

Comment: The biographer wrote, “One of the most tenacious myths about how Einstein discovered is that he relied on adopting a naive, simple mode of thinking. …The way ahead is to adopt the mode of a precocious child asking childish questions.”

My Response: A person who feels in any state that this is a state of the question, he does not stop at this, he looks for his own answer to it. And he makes a discovery.

All of this alone consists of questions and answers.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/15/21

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Question: Today, physicists say that all reality is not matter, but information. We live in some kind of world and everything that exists brings us certain information. It is dressed in various garments, that is, in what we see around us. Why did the Creator create everything like this? Is it possible to see any information directly?

Answer: We see in our world that that is impossible. If we want to feel something, then any of our sensations consists of two opposite properties: sensing and what is felt. Therefore, the Creator created us as the opposite of Himself, so that we could feel Him, comprehend, and understand.

Question: The laws of nature do not depend on the observer; they are, as it were, unchangeable. And yet, if we change our internal properties, do we feel the laws of nature differently? Then even they change?

Answer: Of course, they change. What we feel, we feel in ourselves. If we change internally, then we feel that everything around us changes.

Question: The laws do not change regarding my natural egoism, but by changing my work with egoism, can I feel the laws of nature in a different way?

Answer: Absolutely. I kind of go beyond these laws. There is a realization of the true theory of relativity: everything is relative to a person.

Question: Do you mean about the egoist who perceives the world with five senses?

Answer: And above that. Five senses are not enough for us. In them, we feel only our world, and these are animal sensations. But rising above this, we begin to feel the above-egoism properties of bestowal. In them we feel the changing higher state of the world. This is perceived above our animal senses.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 7/2/21

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Question: There is a thin line between habits in our material world when a person simply changes priorities and the state where a person consciously changes his nature and sees the whole world and all people no longer through his egoistic prism but through an altruistic intention and thus attains the spiritual world.

That is, a person still begins the spiritual path from his egoistic attainment of the Creator when he wants to reveal Him for himself. But then, does it become a habit and his second nature to see the world through altruistic intentions?

Answer: Yes. This habit really becomes his second essence, second nature, and that is what he does.

Question: It turns out that he can no longer go back and think egoistically?

Answer: I cannot say that. There are different possibilities. But to be in one nature, then in another, and sometimes fall back into the first nature is also possible.

It all depends on how much he exposes himself to the upper force that holds him like a magnet holds a piece of iron in the air. Iron is suspended in the air by the force of the magnet and is held by it. In the same way, a person can make it so that the highest positive force of nature, which gives him an anti-egoistic potential, will keep him above the earth, above his egoism.

Question: Just as the Creator has no thoughts about Himself, does a person who acquires a second nature also have no thoughts about himself?

Answer: To the extent that he received this force from the Creator.

Question: What does it mean that the Creator has no thoughts about Himself?

Answer: The Creator is nature that is absolutely opposite to our egoistic nature. Since He has no desire to receive, His whole essence is aimed at bestowal. That is how He works.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/25/21

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Question: If a person automatically gets used to reading, say, The Book of Zohar or Psalms, or praying, does this develop him?

Answer: Yes. If he engages in it all the time, then either The Book of Zohar or any other correct sources begin to influence him, and we see how he changes.

This, in principle, is their value. Where else can we receive the upper force, the upper energy, the upper influence on us? We must draw them to us.

The influence of the upper force comes precisely as a result of learning, reading, studying the sources, and most importantly being in a special society, in a special small group—the ten—that can organize a suitable environment for a person when he simply falls under their influence and is ready to change. And even if he is not really ready, they still change him.

Question: Do you recommend reading from the sources in the ten two or three times a day so that it becomes a habit?

Answer: Yes. But that is not everything. After all, the reading of the sources often happens one-on-one: you and the source. And when there is you and the environment around you, that is, not the still, vegetative, and animate, but human, special people who show you the right relationships and demand the same from you, then it turns out that you are pulling yourself up to spiritual levels.

Question: Many people are taught from childhood to pray, to read psalms, and a person automatically reads them because he was told that he will receive some kind of reward for this both in this and in the future world.

And if he is not accustomed to this from childhood, then he begins to ask the question: “Why should I read?” Since he does not feel pleasure in these texts and does not understand them. How can a person develop a habit here? Or does the habit consist of efforts? You once said that making an effort becomes a habit.

Answer: Relatively. It all depends on the society. The most important thing is to create the right environment for any person, for any companies, societies, and people, so that everyone can find the environment in which they can develop correctly.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/25/21

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