Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Cajoling Jew-Haters Does Not Abate Antisemitism”

Earlier this week, I wrote about the new report by the policy planning think tank Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) that revealed the depth of antisemitism on the Left and how dangerous it is. In that post, I intentionally left out the most troubling part of the report, which it defined as “Jewish communal disunity.” Our worst enemy is not this or that person who hates Jews; our worst enemy is our own hatred for each other.

According to the report, much of the Jewish establishment urged the Biden administration to make ‎‎the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism a national priority, in line with most western countries and the official policy of the UN. However, while this was happening, “key progressive Jewish ‎groups lobbied the administration against its adoption.” Moreover, “Jewish anti-Zionists play ‎increasingly prominent roles in left-wing policy and discourse arenas.”

During the Spanish Inquisition, our worst detractors and persecutors were former Jews. In the 1930s, there were German Jews and Jewish organizations that joined the Third Reich and fully endorsed its racist ideology and policy against Jews. There have always been Jews who joined Jew-haters, thinking that by doing so, they will save their skins. It has always made things worse for the Jews, much worse.

In fact, the majority of arguments that antisemites use against Jews come to them from self-hating Jews. They provide Jew-haters with ammunition in the form of arguments against Jews, advise them how to use it against Jews effectively, and chant along with them their venomous slogans. Self-hating Jews portray Jew-haters as victims in order to justify their antisemitism and their violence against Jews.

Hoping to win the hearts of our enemies, antisemitic Jews become more sinister and malicious toward Jews than any non-Jew antisemite could ever be. Gentile antisemites feel a visceral anger toward us. Jewish antisemites make hating Jews an ideological issue, and ideologies are those responsible for genocides, not gut hatred.

I can understand the hatred of some Jews for their own people. It is not easy being born into a group that is always held responsible for everything that is wrong with the world. However, joining the ranks of the detractors does not relieve us from our duty. On the contrary, it only deepens the haters’ loathing and makes them more aggressive.

The only cure to Jew-hatred is for Jews to care for one another. The gut feeling of antisemites that the Jews are responsible for the problems in the world is correct, but self-hatred among Jews does not save the haters, it exacerbates the hatred of non-Jews. The “fault” of the Jews is not that they are harming the world on purpose, but that they are divided, contrary to their mission—to be a model of unity.

There is a reason why our Hebrew ancestors conceived such sublime notions as mutual responsibility, charity, mercy, and loving others as ourselves. They not only envisioned these ideas, they also tried to live them out. When they succeeded, our nation thrived; when they failed, our nation suffered.

Possibly the worst antisemite in American history, Henry Ford, inserted many phrases in his antisemitic compilation, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, which seem to contradict his anti-Jewish narrative. Among them is this intriguing statement: ‎“Modern reformers, who are constructing model social systems, … would do ‎well to look into the social system under which the early Jews were organized.”

We, too, must return to our roots, to the ideology that had fashioned us into a nation. We must strive to love each other above all our differences and all the hatred that may surface between us. Only when we unite are we a model nation. Therefore, only when we unite does the world embrace us.

Any division among us, for whatever reason, aggravates antisemitism because division among us contradicts the calling and mission of our people. The gut feeling that antisemites feel will change from hate to love no sooner than when we rise above our division and unite despite our mutual abhorrence.

—

For more on antisemitism and its history, read my books, New Antisemitism: Mutation of a Long-lived Hatred, and The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism.
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Question: Your teacher Rabash wrote that one should pray to the Creator to help him go above reason. And this work should be in joy, as if he had already been awarded spiritual knowledge.

How can you ask for such a thing? What should we do with regular requests that automatically arise within us?

Answer: If a person aims himself toward connecting with others, to love others, if he turns to the Creator in order to rise above his egoistic nature, he gradually succeeds.

Comment: But it is against our nature.

My Response: Yes. That is why I said gradually succeeds.

Question: Your teacher also wrote that man’s sin is not asking the Creator for help. Had he asked, he would certainly have received it.

It turns out that the only sin is not in doing some unworthy actions, but in not asking the Creator for help.

Answer: Yes. “Why didn’t you ask?”

Question: Isn’t it considered a sin if you have done something against humanity?

Answer: You should have asked not to do such actions or have such thoughts or motives.

Question: So if something has already been done, it is not a sin?

Answer: There is an opportunity to correct everything.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 9/25/22

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Question: A huge number of people have chosen to resist changes in themselves for centuries. Mostly, this is done by restrictions and isolation as in some types of yoga, self-isolation of countries, etc.

What happens to a person or people who limit or isolate themselves? Is this also a change?

Answer: It is a certain kind of change in worldview. But at the same time, a person must understand what state he is in. If he has fixed several of his coordinates, then accordingly, the whole world will be fixed in him in this way and he will no longer feel himself in a moving, changing world.

Question: Is that good or bad?

Answer: This is a question of relativity. Do I want to live in a world that moves according to some laws of my own or do I want to make changes to these laws? Do I wish, if I can, to stop the movement of the world, to stop myself relative to the world? That is, there are many variants here; however, all of them do not yet rise above the level of philosophy.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/23/22

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Question: On one hand there are a huge number of different prayers: for certain days of the year, certain seasons, and holidays. On the other hand, Kabbalah says that you should ask only one thing, for the Creator to give you His own property, the property of bestowal. Why is there so much writing about this?

Answer: In principle, we do not need anything else, only to master the properties that the Creator possesses.

Comment: So, there would be one line: “I ask You to give me the property of bestowal and love,” and that is it.

My Response: Indeed. But in order for a person to understand what he is really asking for, that he is in this prayer, he needs a lot of words.

Therefore, all thick books with prayers are designed to properly set a person up for a request.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 9/25/22

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Comment: We know that empathy is the ability to feel the world of another as our own. We are literally capable of feeling someone else’s pain. Psychologists claim that if we experience empathic pain for a long time, we often become emotionally exhausted.

This happens to firefighters, those who work in emergency services, etc. They say through empathy we come to feel the pain of someone else. However, we also feel the pain of someone else through compassion, but in that case, we can handle it. That is because compassion comes with love. That’s the whole difference between the two.

My Response: Correct.

Comment: The official definition of empathy is the ability to identify with the emotions of another, but compassion is defined as sympathy for the suffering of another.

My Response: It is like stepping into the world of another and feeling his experience.

Question: How can we facilitate this within ourselves? As I understand if that feeling was fostered, we would live as though in a different world.

Answer: Yes, we would nurture it. I think that it is possible. We are just not involved in this process. Generally, people at the age of 13 – 14 can fully resonate with another person’s suffering. And they would then need to be further educated on it.

Comment: That, of course, would drastically change the world.

My Response: Of course, no doubt about it.

Question: So, is it possible to nurture compassion in a person?

Answer: The understanding of compassion for others can be taught so a person may understand how to handle it. So much so that through this compassion for another, he may share another’s suffering by taking it partially upon himself and in this way neutralize their suffering.

The fact that you neutralize it by engaging with him, sympathizing, and being compassionate, you gradually break up his suffering into a number of smaller parts and by doing so, bring him relief. Similarly, you can bring the whole world into balance and to an inner-state-of-being you can call blissfulness.

Question: So, shared compassion among all the people on earth will lead to a state of blissfulness in the world?

Answer: Yes. That’s exactly what we have to achieve in our connection. Otherwise, we have some very serious problems ahead of us. This is because the ego continues to grow and the upper light is revealed in relation to the ego even more. Meaning, we are going to feel greater pressure in relation to our ego such that if we don’t find a way to unite and share all of that among ourselves, we won’t be able to tolerate it.

Question: Is compassion essentially the basis of what you mention all the time: unity, connection, positive thoughts, and good connections?

Answer: Yes. Practically speaking, it’s not even compassion. It is the division of all the huge suffering, the opposites of a huge desire and a huge light that should fill this desire, and the absence of an intention “not for yourself” that allows you to fill the desire with light.

Question: So it can only be filled if my intention is for the sake of others?

Answer: Yes. This is why we need this balance here. All this can only be realized if we learn to be compassionate, to divide the difference between absolute fulfillment and absolute emptiness amongst every person.

Obviously, nobody will be worse off in this case. But if we want to divide it this way, the difference itself will disappear. That is the whole point of this remarkable quality of unification.

Question: And at this point, is it correct to say that the state of blissfulness will come?

Answer: Yes. Then this feeling of the contradiction, impossibility, and an inner cry turns into a quenching, into something beyond corporeal, into pleasure. At that point, there is no difference between great pain and great pleasure. There they connect.

Question: And what does the pain become in this case?

Answer: Pleasure, because you have balanced them out.

Question: That is very elevated.

Answer: That’s how it works at a higher level.

Question: Is the pain given to us to turn it into pleasure?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: And the greatest pain, as a result, turns out to be the greatest pleasure?

Answer: Yes. If you know how to balance these opposites, you get pleasure.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/6/22

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Question: Does a person exist in a kind of suspended state because there are no defined points of support for him?

Answer: It depends on which point of support he is looking for. The point of support can only be the center of the universe or at least the center of the galaxy. We need to find a point to lean on, as Archimedes said.

Question: Can we call it the point of the center of reality or the point of truth? I am just trying to find something for a person to lean on.

Answer: This is the point of equilibrium when everything is calm, everything is in order, and everything is balanced.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/23/22

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Should one try to strengthen or eliminate one’s ego?”

We first need to understand what our ego is, that it is our innate desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature. Since it is given to us by nature, we should not eliminate it, but we should rather invert it so that instead of destroying our relations by each of us trying to step on each other, we instead learn how to enjoy by serving each other.

Our ego naturally makes us wish to suppress others, to position them in ways that we derive self-benefit from them and that we control them. We can thus also do the opposite—to use this lever in order to serve and fulfill them.

Nature gives us a key example on how we can enjoy by serving others: a mother toward her children. A mother is willing to work around the clock to serve her children in order to see them grow up happily. However, if we share no familial relations, then we have no such relationships with each other. We are not connected to others in such ways, so other people detach from our cost-benefit calculation.

We thus need to bring ourselves to a state where we feel that humanity is our family. We then have to relate to everyone similarly to how we relate to our families. In such a way, we will gradually be able to come closer to understanding why nature created an ego in us and how we should work on ourselves in order to invert it from a negative into a positive form.

It might seem far fetched because most people cannot even deal with the weight of their own problems in their personal and family lives, so how are we expected to deal with the problems of the whole world? Yet the moment we start relating to humanity as to one family, we will suddenly feel ourselves gain a new strength, which will fill us with understanding and the sensation of how to conduct ourselves in ways where we will get along with each other optimally. It is as if our intellect and emotion will then suddenly work in ways that are mistake free.

Such an inversion in consciousness takes place because we invert the force that divides “mine” from “others,” and then everyone and everything appears as belonging to oneself, as a single system. Moreover, we gain a clear perception and sensation of the higher force of nature that drives the system, a form of love, bestowal and connection, and balance ourselves with the trajectory of that very force.

Based on the video “Should One Try to Strengthen or Eliminate One’s Ego?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Ushpizin David – Sefirat Malchut”

Selected Highlights

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