Question: Ten days after the New Year, called the days of atonement, Yom Kippur begins, the day of correction. What corrections are taking place during these days from the point of view of the spiritual work of a person who is already advancing?

Answer: A person who is advancing, checks himself during these ten days. He must clearly determine in what he is different from the Creator. This demonstrates his concern to observe the spiritual laws of equivalence with the Creator.

Ten days symbolize ten Sefirot, ten qualities. In each quality, he checks how different he is from the Creator.

Question: Can he check particularly this?

Answer: A person who exists in the spiritual world is obliged to do this. So he does. On the corporeal level, however, this remains as a habitual custom and a person who is not engaged in spiritual work simply asks to have a good year.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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All holidays symbolize special states in the spiritual elevation of a person. If we work as we should, then from year to year, day by day, we climb the spiritual ladder more and more until we reach complete adhesion with the Creator.

The ascent above egoism is called Passover, the exit from Egypt, and the acquiring of the force of bestowal is called the holiday of Shavuot.

Then a person judges himself and sees that he is not capable of giving, which is called the 9th of Av. And then he decides to start his whole life anew with a new relation to the Creator, which is called the New Year, Rosh HaShanah.

And the most important thing is to make a correct calculation of how to enter this new period, this new time. Many times in his life, a person wanted to change his life and, as though, start it all over again. This is a sign of the Day of Judgment, Yom Kippur, one of the days that a person must pass through to achieve equivalence with the Creator.

Yom Kippur comes from the word “atonement” (Kapara); it is when a person asks for forgiveness from the Creator. After all, he tested himself and saw that many times he had the opportunity to correct himself and achieve adhesion with the Creator, but he neglected this and could not overcome his egoism.

A month before Yom Kippur, a person begins to check himself and sees that he is in egoistic desires to get pleasure for himself and does not want to use them to correct himself and get closer to the Creator. And for this he asks for forgiveness, one realizes that at that time he did not have any strength and opportunity to overcome his pride and ask for help. After all, our entire correction consists in asking the Creator for the power of correction.

It turns out that our whole crime is that we did not ask for help, and we should ask for forgiveness for this. “I am sorry I did not ask,” which means, to ask the Creator to forgive us for not turning to Him with a request to correct us.

The Creator created egoism, but man must realize that egoism is the only evil that exists in him. Through the prism of this evil, we look at the whole world and therefore the whole world seems bad to us. And in accordance with this we relate to the Creator because this whole spoiled picture of the world allegedly comes from Him. It turns out that we blame the Creator for making us and this world so bad.

And at this moment, a person does not realize that the Creator gave him egoism and the ability to look through it at the whole world in order to ask the Creator to correct this egoism and replace the evil nature with a good one.

This is the person’s work. The only thing we need to do is to know the evil contained in us and realize that the Creator gave it intentionally so that we would turn to Him and ask Him to replace egoism and the inability to do good deeds, to correct all the evil to good.

After all, there are no good forces in us and there will not be if we do not ask for them from the Creator, and then we will be able to feel and see the whole world through a good desire. Then the world will seem like a real paradise to us.

Therefore, all our work is to reveal our evil, the reason why we see evil around and inside ourselves, and then turn to the Creator to turn this evil into good. This work is done by the Creator and therefore it is called the work of the Creator (Avodat Hashem). And the request for the Creator to do this is called the day of repentance, Yom Kippur.

It turns out that this is not a day of mourning, but a day of joy because we judge ourselves and see that in order to correct our condition, we only need to ask the Creator to turn the evil desire with which He created us into a good desire.

So, we have someone to turn to and what to ask for. And everything depends only on our request. And the whole past, when we were weak and unable to do good deeds, were confused and insignificant slaves of our nature that dominates us in everything, all was deliberately created by the Creator to show us our powerlessness and awaken in us the desire to free ourselves from our egoism and turn it into bestowal.

This is the main meaning of the Day of Judgment, Yom Kippur, when we ask the Creator to take away our evil, egoistic desire and turn it into a good, altruistic desire, into love. And then we will climb up from a deep hole to a high mountain.

Therefore Yom Kippur is the most significant day of the year when we spend all 24 hours thinking about how to ask for forgiveness for our weaknesses, all the evil that we have created in our egoism that was given by the Creator. And since we decide that this evil was created in us by the Creator, we have the opportunity to turn to Him and ask for the power of good instead of this evil. As a result of this request, we will gain more and more forces of good and will rise higher and higher until the very end of correction.

It turns out that each of us and all of us together should do this work not only once a year, on Yom Kippur, according to the calendar, but every day and as much as possible we should turn to the Creator and ask Him to turn our evil inclination into a good inclination. To the extent of our ability to turn to the Creator and demand this correction, we will be able to become like Him and achieve adhesion with Him and perfection, i.e., the end of correction.

This is what you need to think about and try to implement in the next twenty-four hours.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/15/21, “Yom Kippur – The Day of Atonement”

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My new article on Linkedin “80 Years after the Babi Yar Massacre – Our Duty Cannot Be Destroyed”

In September 1941, within just two days, the Nazis murdered 33,771 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kiev in then Nazi-occupied Ukraine. In doing so, they had effectively eliminated the Jewish population in the country’s capital. The Jews did not gather in the ravine of their own volition. On September 19, the Nazis conquered the city and immediately started gathering all the Jews, with the locals eagerly assisting them. Once at the ravine, they were stripped of their clothes, jewels, and documents, then shot and dumped into the valley of death. Heaps of men, women, and children were buried there, and their story was silenced for many years.

The Nazis were the killers, but the thing that astounded many people most was the enthusiasm with which the Ukrainians helped them. Even the Nazis were bewildered by the ruthless hatred of the locals, as I had personally heard from people who lived at the time when the event took place.

Nevertheless, I truly have no grievances, no bitterness or anger toward any nation, however antisemitic. Since I understand where the hatred comes from, I can only point the finger at its source and urge its correction: we ourselves, the Jews.

Since the inception of our nation, we have been an oddity among the peoples. Our ancestors were not blood related or emerged from a single tribe, as is usually the case with the birth of nations. Rather, they were outcasts, pariahs, rebels who did not get along with their own people because they asked too many questions or were too opinionated. In the end, they found a like-minded leader who united them all under a unique ideology, which King Solomon later captured with a single verse: “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Prov. 10:12).

That leader was Abraham, and the ideology he had developed grew into what became a binding law of love of others. The specifics of that law were described in the Torah, and based on the law of love of others, a new nation was born: the “People of Israel.”

The birth of the Israeli nation was no fluke. It came into the world in order to prove that people can unite above all differences, that there can be peace on Earth, and that by rising above our differences and hatred, we develop a new quality: the quality of love of others, to the point that one loves one’s neighbor as oneself.

Another uniqueness that Israel possessed was the fact that in order to become a Jew, you needed only to adhere to the law of loving others. It was an internal bond with others that made you Israel, and adhering to it was Israel’s source of strength. When Israel maintained it, it was untouchable; when it abandoned it, it grew weak and vulnerable, and other nations would conquer and afflict it. But the people of Israel were never entirely eliminated, not even during World War II, since its duty cannot be destroyed.

Once the people of Israel became a nation, they were tasked with setting an example of unity above division. The Torah phrases it with the simple onus to be “a light unto nations” (Isaiah 49:6), a light that illuminates the path out of the ego that is ravaging humanity and destroying the planet.

But we failed the nations and fell into unfounded, deep, and constant hatred of each other, and the world will not forgive us. This is why there is not one nation that is not antisemitic to various extents.

However, not all is lost. On the contrary: As soon as we reestablish our unity, the world will change how it feels about us. You can destroy the Jews, but you cannot destroy the mission of the Jews. Therefore, until we carry out our duty, become the light of the nations by uniting above internal hatred, the world will not accept us or regard our existence in the land of Israel or anywhere else as legitimate. But once we rise above division, we will indeed be “a light unto nations.”

For more information on the topic, refer to my books The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, and Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Twenty Dark Years of the Durban Conference”

Durban is a global port city in South Africa, a city steeped in influences from many countries and immersed in a mixture of different cultures. It is a city of contrasts: modern skyscrapers alongside urban areas surrounded by markets, a promenade adorned with palm trees alongside dark roads.

Despite all the abundance and multicultural atmosphere this city has to offer, the name “Durban” carries with it a bitter connotation for Jews. Particularly, the words “Durban Conference.” Twenty years ago, in September 2001, the first Durban Conference, which was supposed to be an event to combat racism, discrimination and xenophobia, rapidly became a potent fertilizer in the ground of hatred against Jews and Israel in particular.

It is clear that the seeds of antisemitism did not start then, but the forum certainly accelerated and expanded the venomous accusations against Israel as an “apartheid state,” it propeled the deligimitazation of the state of Israel and its subsequent boycott through global movements such as the BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions.)

This is where the new antisemitism began and the hostile treatment of Jews and Israel erupted in full force, again. Zionism also became synonymous with racism, and the Holocaust was portrayed not as an atrocity aimed at destroying European Jewry, but the justification for “Israel’s wrongdoings.”

On September 22, 2021, an event marking the twentieth anniversary of the Durban Conference will be held in New York as part of the annual UN General Assembly, but unfortunately, nothing has changed for the better in the last twenty years. They are the same wolves in sheep’s clothing.

This year, too, when at least 16 countries show support for Israel and are boycotting the event because of its antisemitic stench even more so than in previous conferences—it is not a real sign of progress. I do not believe for a moment that these countries tend to favor the State of Israel or are sympathetic to Jews wherever they are.

You can buy some fake smiles with money, but the world will not turn over and change as a result of it. It is impossible to solve the phenomenon of age-old antisemitism at conferences. It is possible to gather from conference to conference, but other than money and publicity to promote political agendas or to mark that we have done something about it, no real benefit will come out from such events.

The only condition for change is the self-awareness of the people of Israel and a new attitude about our destiny. The Jewish people were founded from a collection of representatives from different peoples, a composition of different elements, equally committed to unity and love of others.

Antisemitism is resentment of us by the nations of the world. They feel Jews hold the secret for a better future but that we are not opening the pipe for that goodness to flow to all the peoples. Subconsciously, the world expects us Jews to connect with each other, to be united and reach a strong feeling of love for others. If we act in this way, we will be a light unto the nations, we will spread light and not darkness, love instead of hatred. Only in this way will we eradicate the hostilities against us.

Our mission is to bring the method of connection to foster unity and mutual consideration. If we dedicate ourselves to this task and connect together over the differences between us, over the elements that separate us, over the ethnicity and partisanship that tear us apart from within, then we will be an exemplary nation for all peoples.

Even the first tiny step towards unity between us will awaken a stronger connecting force, a supreme force that is essential for all of us. Then, the direction will change from bad to good. As it is written, “We are commanded at each generation to strengthen the unity among us so our enemies do not rule over us.” Rabbi Eliyahu Ki Tov, The Book of Consciousness
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It is not always possible for a person to overcome his egoistic desire and rise above it. This means that his inclination for bestowal is still very weak compared to his great will to receive. Therefore, he feels disappointed that he cannot receive the results of his work inside egoism.

According to the program of creation, his soul should have already progressed to the desire of bestowal and instead of being aimed at himself to be aimed at the Creator. Therefore, he is shown that he made a mistake in some part of the spiritual process. He needs to check where this mistake was in order to succeed next time. This next time may be in a few seconds or minutes.

If I do not see success on my spiritual path, then I am not ready for it yet, and I thank the Creator for showing me that I am not yet able to progress directly but only from mistake to mistake. This is how we learned at school: first we wrote, and then we worked on the mistakes made, and gradually we progressed.

The same is true in spiritual advancement, until the very end of correction, we always reveal our mistakes and advance on them. Our entire advancement is based on the fact that we reveal mistakes and learn from them.

It is written: “A thousand times the righteous will fall and rise again.” Only as a result of falling, we reveal our mistake, correct it, and rise to the next state. In the next state, we try to do something, make a mistake, fall, reveal the fall, the mistake, the reason for the failure, and correct our attitude and rise.

This is how it happens every time, therefore it is written: “A thousand times the righteous will fall and rise again.” Do not think that you will ascend the high degrees of the spiritual ladder like you are on an escalator. There will always first be a fall in order for you to understand why you fell and to correct yourself.

Precisely by correcting the falls we are scrutinizing the Reshimot. As in the world of Adam Kadmon when AB and SAG are born from Galgalta.

Why does the Partzuf develop? It is because it feels its weakness and inability to receive light. Therefore, it is impossible to advance without falling. It is the fall that reveals a deeper will to receive hidden in a person, more subtle and deeper qualities, and helps to advance.

This is the same in any profession: first, we reveal the problems and from them we come to the breakage and the correction. There is no choice, the created beings can attain the perfect only from the imperfect. The further we advance, the more imperfections we see in the Creator and at the same time we discover that this is exactly what perfection is if we look at it with corrected eyes.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/21, “Faith Above Reason”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the simplest life advice you can give me?“

The very first and simplest advice are the well-known rules: “That which you hate, do not do to your friend” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: What does “Yom Kippur” mean?

Answer: Yom Kippur is Ki Purim, like the day of Purim. “Kippur” means “atonement,” “Purim” comes from the word “Pur,” which means fate.

Therefore, Yom Kippur reveals all our sins that we must gradually correct. From Yom Kippur to Hanukkah, we correct our bestowing desires in order to be only in bestowal, and from Hanukkah to Purim, we also correct the qualities of reception so that they are aimed toward bestowal. Thus, we come to the holiday of Purim.

There are certain prohibitions on Yom Kippur: people do not drink, do not wear leather clothes, and so on. This means that we find egoistic inclusions in all of our desires, and therefore, we cannot use them.

The five types of prohibitions correspond to the five types of restrictions because our egoistic desire consists of five degrees. Each degree corresponds to food, drink, clothing, and so on.

Question: Why is it forbidden to wear leather clothes on this day?

Answer: Clothes (Levush) means that you have a Kli (vessel), a certain correction, and then you can wear such clothes. However, you discover that all of your desires are egoistic, and therefore, you cannot wear them. There is a prohibition on using uncorrected desires.

In his spiritual advancement, a Kabbalist fulfills these prohibitions, meaning restrictions on his desires, checks himself and acts in this way.

Question: Do we also need to observe this in our world?

Answer: Of course, in our world, this exists as a custom. Otherwise, they would not have been passed down from generation to generation for the people and would exist only among Kabbalists who understand their essence and act in this way. Moreover, Kabbalists do this not on the calendar date of Yom Kippur, but every time they are in such a state.

Question: What does a Kabbalist ask for on this day?

Answer: He asks the Creator to help him to exit the boundaries of his egoism. He has no other requests.

There can be only two types of addresses to the Creator: the first is with gratitude for having received such a special work and the second is with a request for strength to rise even higher to the quality of bestowal.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What should a young adult be reading, seeing or experiencing to spark a strong desire and knowledge to become a world-changer?“

No matter how egoistic we are, we contain several altruistic forces. We can develop these altruistic forces by means of a special targeted influence of culture, education, science and upbringing. That is the essence of what we should prioritize as a society.

We should each receive an explanation about the fact that human society is integral and unified. We need to exist in unity, in mutual love according to the principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is where we should orient our literature, cinema and means of mass information. It is what we should discuss in society, and we should prioritize such influences so that they become of utmost importance to us. By doing so, we will each become valued solely by our contribution to society.

Then, the young generation will definitely become permeated by hearing and seeing wonderful examples of positive contributions to society from all directions. After all, we become obligated by social influence, and this is why we will become obligated to take care of society. As a result, our attitude toward each other will become altruistic and we will reach balance with the general law of nature, the law of love and bestowal, and we will accordingly ascend above materialistic life to spiritual life.

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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Question: There was a movie Groundhog Day where a person wakes up and lives the same day, wakes up and lives the same day, over and over.

A viewer writes: “How can we deal with disappointments in life? Everything is bland; this was not the case before the coronavirus. Everything is the same, the same emotions, the same fears, like Groundhog Day every day. Nothing is new, nothing changes. I just want to go to bed as soon as possible. Sleep, sleep, and dream. What can I do?”

Answer: I understand him. If, for example, we establish a six-month quarantine, then it would be good to take a pill and wake up in six months. But we cannot do this!

Comment: A person gets up and it is the same day for him.

My Response: Yes. And he must understand that it is the same day and that he cannot change anything. And what should be done to change this? How do I get off this carousel?

To do this, he must change himself. And if he starts to change, the world will start to change and there will be no Groundhog Day.

And the cycles of life that we go through are all the same! It seems to us that every day is something new, that every second is new. There is nothing new.

Question: So if your goal is just to live an ordinary life, to have ordinary desires, then Groundhog Day will happen more often?

Answer: Yes. That is what we have been shown. We are becoming more developed but, as it is said: “He who adds knowledge, adds pain.”

Question: So, we live by this knowledge that we accumulate and now even that is insipid? We do not need it anymore?

Answer: Our knowledge only leads us to a dead end. It shows us how powerless we are against the most important thing: to change something in our lives.

And now we see that the world is entering such a loop again. There was a little bit of democracy, some freedoms, and now we are again entering into a noose that will crush us and tighten ominously around our throats.

Question: Give us some practical advice: How should a person get up in the morning? What should he tell himself, what steps should he take?

Answer: We are expecting positive changes to take place outside. There will be none! We must realize that there can be changes for the better only if we change from inside. That is when we will start depicting our world the way we want it to be! That is what we need to do!

Question: In the meantime, the world is depicted by our nature, our egoism?

Answer: Yes. Our ego has finished its development. It shows you the whole world you exist in. This is what it can give you. And as a result, it will now pressure you, pressure you so much that you will not be able to exist in this world. So you will feel bad, sick, afraid, rough, uncomfortable; in general, anything is possible.

And this is just so that you understand that there are no external changes any more. We have gone through all the stages of our egoistic development, we have reached a state where what can happen next is just to kill each other. That is all, nothing else.

We have driven ourselves into a dead end with our previous immense selfishness. And now we want nothing at all. The new generation doesn’t want anything. We thought that they would be more developed, more driven, but they, on the contrary, do not want anything. And this is true.

And we would be the same in their place. And in some ways, we understand them.

It is all good. And what is the use of demanding, squeezing something out of this world again and again. It cannot give you anything else; there is nothing else in it.

Question: What should I say to my egoism if I have already realized that it was my egoism that painted the whole picture for me?

Answer: That it is right, that it has done its job, it has led you to a state where you must understand, while you are completely disappointed, that you can no longer exist in such a paradigm. You cannot!

What to do? Correct yourself, and the world will be corrected. This is a completely different technique: correcting the world by changing yourself.

It is not easy, but this is a good moment in history when we really need to change the source of our development, the system, the methodology of our development. When our development depends not on how we break the surrounding nature, but on how we change ourselves. And as a result, the world will change.

Changing myself means changing my evil attitude toward everything around me, my consumerist, egoistic attitude into a kind, altruistic one. And then I will begin to see the world differently. I will begin to see another control system through it.

I will merge with this world, I will comprehend its eternity, infinity, and perfection, which is something that I do not see now because I look with my limited egoistic eyes.

This is what we must do.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/11/21

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Prophets, Joshua, 11:23: And Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested from war.

The intention for the sake of the Creator, for the sake of bestowal and love covered all the desires, the whole land (Eretz, land is from the word “Ratzon,” desire). And everything calmed down for a while because the whole land had not yet been conquered. And then there was a war again because everything is revealed gradually, at certain egoistic levels.

Question: It is said that the land was distributed “according to their divisions by their tribes.” What is the origin of the division of the land, the egoistic desire, to the tribes of Israel? What is the principle of division?

Answer: The fact is that egoism consists of four levels of Aviut (depth of desire). In spiritual work a desire works on three lines. Therefore, 4 levels multiplied by 3 lines gives the number 12. Accordingly, people were divided into 12 tribes.

Each tribe has a more or less egoistic part according to that tribe.

Question: What kind of tribe should it be so that it settles on the most egoistic land?

Answer: It is the royal tribe. The strongest tribe represents the greatest egoism. This means that you have the ego in front of you divided according to its levels into 12 parts. Each of these levels is assigned a certain property. Therefore, each tribe takes its place on the ground and develops it. It was clear to the masses that entered the borders of Israel how they should divide the land.

Question: It is said: “And the land rested from war.” What does it mean?

Answer: This means that each desire realized what kind of inner work would help so that it can be directed to the Creator.

There were no problems in dividing these desires since in such a state a person clearly understands what desires, inclinations, and intentions he has.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/2/21

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