Audio Version Of The Blog – 9/5/22
Posted on September 5th, 2022
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “50th Anniversary of the Massacre in the Munich Olympics”
Fifty years ago today, September 5, eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team and took nine more as hostages. After some negotiations came a failed rescue attempt, during which the terrorists killed all nine hostages. Today, the German government will hold a ceremony in their memory in the presence of the president of Israel. During the half century that has passed, the Munich Olympics Massacre has come to symbolize the evil of terrorism against innocent people. Yet, as we can see, terrorists and terrorism have not been curbed since. On the contrary, they have only grown because of our lack of resolve.
I remember the tragedy. It was not something that came out of the blue. What did surprise me, however, was Israel’s indecision. In my opinion, the only way to deal with terrorists is to give them the same treatment that they strive to give us: annihilation.
In the case of the Munich terrorists, five were killed during the botched raid, and three were arrested after they killed the hostages. A month later, all three were released in a hostage exchange following the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615.
As I see it, the whole concept of chasing perpetrators after they have committed their crime is flawed. Israel should not be chasing individual terrorists; it should eliminate any terrorist organizations in their entirety. The same logic that had made the US crush Osama bin Laden’s organization, and finally he himself, should apply to the treatment of any organization that seeks to achieve political goals by slaying innocent civilians, i.e., by terror.
However, Israel will not treat terrorists or terrorist organizations the same as America does. Israelis simply feel they have no justification to do so. It is not a conscious feeling; we do not feel that we are criminals, but there is a tenacious hidden devil that whispers in our ears that we are bad, unworthy, that we deserve the troubles that befall us.
This feeling is nothing new. It has been with us for thousands of years, and will continue to be with us until we understand that we need to behave differently, why we feel this way to begin with, and what we need to do about it.
Like I said, from the operational perspective, we should eliminate anyone who wishes to eliminate us. However, acting only on this level will not achieve lasting results. The most important, and the most difficult work we must do is among ourselves: to deepen our unity and solidarity.
Just as fifty years ago, terrorism is wreaking havoc in our society, sowing fear, and exposing our internal weakness. Just as then, so now, it would not succeed were it not for our division. If we were united, not only would terrorist acts against Israel fail, there would be no attempts.
We are bringing hatred on ourselves by hating one another. No other nation must abide by the law of unity like the Israeli nation. No other country depends on its internal strength as much as Israel does. No other people became a nation by uniting their hearts as if they have one heart, and no other nation has been charged with being a model of unity for all of humanity.
Just as we subconsciously feel guilty for not being a model of unity, and therefore “deserve punishment,” resulting in lack of resolve against our enemies, other nations feel our debt to them. They blame us for every woe and tragedy that befalls them, but underneath their accusations lies one charge against the Jews: You are spreading division instead of unity.
This is why only if we bond together and become united will we defeat our enemies. We will not win through weapons but through closeness of hearts among us, which will restore the essence of our peoplehood to its historic role in the family of nations.*
*For more on this topic, 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 The Times of Israel: “After 125 Years, We Still Do Not Understand Zionism”
This week in Basel, Switzerland, Israel is commemorating the 125th anniversary of the 1st Zionist Congress. At the conclusion of that congress, Theodor Herzl, who organized the conference and was the driving force behind the Zionist movement in its early years, wrote in his diary: “Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word … it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish State.” The purpose of this week’s event is to both celebrate that seminal conference, and just as importantly, to discuss contemporary Zionism, its vision, or lack thereof, and its challenges and pitfalls going forward.
Indeed, the Jewish state is well founded. Israel is a strong and solid country, and it seems like even humanity has largely come to accept the existence of a Jewish state. Now I hope that we are correcting the world and that we will not vanish but keep on moving forward.
However, in order to advance, the State of Israel must go beyond securing its survival. It must come to a state where it agrees with our sages, who said that “Love your neighbor as yourself” is our all-encompassing law, and that this should be the basis for the existence of all the nations.
Despite Herzl’s initial assimilationist approach, by the time he conceived the idea of establishing a Jewish state, it seems like he had completely abandoned the idea of amalgamation among the nations. In fact, he concludes his book, The Jewish State, with words that imply that he even embraced our sages’ legacy that the Jews must serve as a model nation. In his words, “The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.”
There will certainly be challenges ahead. Our argumentative and opinionated character will pit us against each other, but we will learn how to funnel it toward constructive routes. It will take time, but we will learn how to forge unions while embracing contradictions of opinions and without suppressing ideological minorities. We will learn it not because we want to, but because this is our duty to the world, the wisdom we must project to all of humanity, and the only modus operandi that will create true and lasting world peace, once it is implemented.
Herzl’s words were correct. To the extent that we are close to one another within the people of Israel, we will bring the nations of the world closer to each other. The reason there are war and conflicts in the world today is that there are war and conflicts among us, Jews, and particularly the Jews in Israel. These are not my words; these are the words of our sages throughout the generations, and the words of many thinkers who were considered antisemitic for saying these very words.
Herzl, in that sense, was a special human being. He was a channel through which the awareness that Jews must have their own state came to the world. At the end of his book, as we saw, he also connected our return to the physical land to our spiritual calling, our duty to be a model of unity and solidarity, but this we have yet to accomplish. We must explain this first to ourselves, then begin to implement it among us, and then explain this process to the world. If we are sincere, the world will endorse our efforts with all its might. If we remain divided and derisive toward each other, the world will scathe us and deny us the country.
There are voices that say that we have lost our way and we need another Herzl. I do not think we need another Herzl; I think we need many people vocally supporting the right kind of Zionism, the Zionism of connection among Jews as an example for the world. We need many people to understand the process, embrace it, and act on it, for our sake, and for the sake of humankind.
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*Read these books for more information on the obligation of the Jewish people to be a model nation: 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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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Who We Are without Our History”
September 1st is the beginning of the school year in Israel. Beginning this year, Jewish Israeli students will not learn about the history of the Jewish people during the period of the Second Temple, its destruction, the Great Revolt of Judaea, the Cyrus Declaration, the Hasmonean Revolt, and other key events in the history of our people. To give you some perspective, it is as if American children were not taught about the Civil War, what the war was about and how it ended. How would they understand what is happening in America today without learning about the Civil War? What kind of American citizens would they be?
History lessons have been given less and less time in students’ curricula for decades. In the early 2000s, Israeli students still had nine hours of history lessons weekly. Beginning September, they will have five.
A person without a past, without a history, is not a person, just as a nation without a history is not a nation. Our history is an essential part of who we are. It defines our principles and our personality; it is everything! I cannot understand how we can determine who we are if we do not know about the history of our people.
History is not only my family tree, or the history of my nation, or creed. It begins with the creation of the universe, the emergence of our solar system and Planet Earth within it, the beginning of life on Earth, the evolution of the species, the emergence of humans, and the evolution of human civilization to this day. How can we determine our direction for the future if we do not know our past? It seems to me that whoever wishes to cancel our history must be planning some sort of revolution. I see no other motivation.
The history of the ancient world, including what happened during the period of the Second Temple, the Roman Empire, Greek Empire, and other key processes and events in the history of humanity and the history of the Jews, is the foundation of our civilization, and the foundation of our people. I know that I learned it because I wanted to know about man on Earth, and it taught me a great deal. For example, how will we correct past mistakes if we do not know about them? In order to know our place in the world, we have to know where we came from, why, and what is expected of us in the future.
Besides general history, which begins, as I said, with the creation of the universe, and ends with today’s civilization, we must also know the history of our own people. If teaching about the destruction of the Second Temple and that entire period has already been eliminated, tomorrow, teaching about the exodus from Egypt might also be eliminated. And if these are erased, then what is left of our legacy?
I think this is a terrible mistake. If you erase one’s past, you have erased one’s present, and you have denied one the ability to plan the future correctly. Without continuity, without a historic perspective, it is impossible to build a future. I do not see any developed country doing this.
Perhaps the teaching methods should change; perhaps they should be more engaging, modernized, but one way or the other, without our past, we cannot understand our present or know how to proceed toward the future.
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It is seemingly perplexing, for it speaks of the time before the worlds were created. Thus, which reality exists here, that the upper light should fill?
The thing is that all the worlds and the souls that exist and that are destined to be created with all their incidents until the end of their correction are all included in Ein Sof in their full measure and glory. (Baal HaSulam, Study of the Ten Sefirot, Chapter 1, Part 1, Restriction and Line)
This is about the fact that the upper light, which fills the entire reality, carries absolutely all the information about everything that has been, is, and will be. This gradually manifests before us, and we call it our world.
At the very beginning of creation, everything was flooded with one simple light, i.e., the emanation of the Creator’s complete love for future creations.
In other words, from the side of the Creator there is a thought of creation and absolutely everything is included into it up to the final state of each person.
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From KabTV’s The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES) 8/14/22
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Question: As a rule, in order to exist, a person needs a job. With the money earned, he can eat, buy clothes and shoes, pay for the Internet, and so on. Therefore he cannot imagine himself without a job.
The main fear of a person is to lose his job. When they lose it, many are even ready to commit suicide because they are so dependent on the corporeal part. What will replace it? Who will make up for it? Who will give a person the necessary confidence in life?
Answer: Only a society created on the basis of integral education will. We create these communities. We can teach people through the Internet, through virtual communication, and through television. We have all the opportunities for this. Just give us a world channel and we are ready to conduct all this even today.
We will be able to explain to people where nature directs us and that spiritual work is not some whim, not mine, yours, or someone else’s. This is a law of nature. We see how scientists are gradually beginning to reveal the same thing. That is, we have something to rely on. There are great, wonderful prospects.
Therefore I hope for a bright future and not for a terrible solution to problems that will still lead to the same result but with a lot of blood.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. If You Lost Your Job” 13/3/14
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Question: Why is nighttime the most productive time for mental activity? In principle, Kabbalists always studied at night when the concentration of thoughts is much clearer.
Answer: Firstly, it is physiologically conditioned because a person feels that during that time he has nothing else to do and he can concentrate on some work while everyone else is asleep.
Secondly, at that time, not many stimulating centers are activated in him, and therefore he can more easily concentrate on one thing.
Thirdly, if we are talking about spiritual work, then this is the time when you really need to connect to the spiritual root, root to branch or branch to root. At that time, new desires are created in which a person will continue to acquire an attainment.
Such work begins from midnight onward. Therefore Kabbalah encourages people to get up at twelve o’clock at night and start studying. Twelve at night, midnight, is not half of our night, but a conditional night. If you break the whole night from sunset to the appearance of the first ray of light into twelve parts, then the middle part, the sixth, conditional hour, will be midnight.
The night hour can be forty minutes, fifty minutes, or an hour and twenty minutes. We use mechanical clocks, but in general, in nature, clocks are not mechanical but rather solar and lunar. Therefore the hours are conditional.
Our body works the same way according to its internal conditional clock. The human body works completely differently during sleep in winter and summer. All this is taken into account in Kabbalah. That is, night and midnight are purely astronomical values and not mechanical according to the clock, which ticks no matter where and how.
Comment: But there are different regions.
My Response: Man is connected with nature; he is an integral part of it and cannot be separated from it.
And the regions are indeed different. Therefore there is a problem of how to study. But it is believed that it is still better for us to study together. This is most important.
Baal HaSulam writes that joint study, joint appeal, and joint actions override all other parameters.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Everything Happens at Night” 3/5/13
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Question: If my wife is a part of me, is it possible to judge a friend by his wife?
Answer: It depends on the couple. If you and your wife have lived a long time together, but you are an ordinary earthly couple, then this is immediately felt. If you are a spiritual couple, it is also felt. It is even felt if you are at different degrees.
A spiritual couple is two people who feel a mutual aspiration to one another and to the goal, who feel each other and see themselves united in the goal with each other, with the rest of the world, and with the Creator.
In principle, people who live together for a long time feel each other without words, understand each other without words, and, as they say, live in perfect harmony. It is natural. And on a spiritual level there is an even greater closeness. It is part of telepathy, of the feeling of others.
Comment: You always say that a man should be married because through his other half, so to say, he speaks with the Creator. But there are completely opposite, conflicting couples. You look at them and it seems that this single whole consists of the two of them.
My Response: In our time, a couple is not at all what it used to be when people took care of each other, when they had the same feelings, the same thoughts, and the same goals, when they were engaged in a common household, and so on. They had joint standard sensations.
Today this is practically non-existent. Everyone does their own thing; in the morning they run away, in the evening they run back to the same apartment for a few hours of sleep, and then run away again. It is the kind of slavery where there is no place for anything shared.
This is good because they have become so egoistic that it would be difficult for them to live with each other for a long time, but only for a short time if they go somewhere on vacation where there is nothing in common and they do something external. If they took care of their household and were free a couple of days a week, then it would be a terrible state.
That is why those people who are unemployed today are so unhappy. This is a cause for very big conflicts.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Spiritual Couple” 3/24/13
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Question: If we open the curtain and remove all the tinsel that people are attracted to, if we completely take away everything that they chase all their lives, then what is left in their lives? People need some goal, don’t they?
Answer: Then you would have to clean out this entire world and leave only the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and humans. You need to let this person live in a calm way, sustaining existence in his body while directing everything else to the connection between people so he would start sensing the upper world in this connection, the true nature, true forces.
Once he enters the sensation of the upper world, he will lose the sensation of the lower layers: the inanimate, vegetative, and animate. This world, this cosmos. will disappear for him since all of this exists only in his still immature consciousness.
A person will rise to the level of forces. It is the only thing that exists rather than what is depicted in the form of some images: here is a wall, here is a table, and so forth. He will see that all this does not exist because it does not exist in the world of forces.
These are all configurations of forces in relation to my animal senses. When I rise to the level of other senses, the senses of forces, then all of these will disappear. This is why the word “Olam” (world) comes from the word “Neelam (disappearing).”
Overall, this is what we have to do. Why should we vegetate at this level when we already can rise to the next one? After all, there is nothing worse than this world! Why would we stay?
When you stay here beyond the time needed for your maturation and ascent, then you begin to live through dreadful times. We become an overripe fruit, like a fetus that exceeds its term in the mother’s womb. This is very dangerous for us.
Now we will start experiencing such forces—just hold on! They will be pressing on us in order to push us out, to birth us at the next level. We have to help them ourselves!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How Сonsciousness Сhanges from Kabbalah” 3/8/13
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Preparation to the Lesson
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Lesson on the Topic “I to My Beloved and My Beloved to Me”
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Lesson on the Topic “The Importance of Dissemination”
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