Audio Version Of The Blog – 4/24/23
Posted on April 24th, 2023
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Are Some Noteworthy Quotes About Education?”
“Teach a child according to the child’s way.” – Proverbs 22:6.
There is also a noteworthy quote by Swiss teacher and publicist Adolphe Ferrière that explains how we fail to follow this principle, i.e.
“And they created the school as the devil commanded.
The child loves nature, so he was locked in four walls.
He can not sit without moving, so he was forced into immobility.
He likes to work with his hands, and he began to teach theories and ideas.
He likes to talk – he was told to remain silent.
He seeks to understand – he was commanded to learn by heart.
He would like to explore and search for knowledge himself, but he was given them in ready form.
And then the children learned what they would never have learned in other conditions. They learned to lie and pretend.”
This quote dates back to the beginning of the previous century, but it is just as accurate today. It shows how children have natures to be like free birds, but we place them into cages.
Why? It is simply easier and clearer for us to coercively make children stay within our four corners. And by doing so, we rob them of their soul’s, mind’s and heart’s free development, and even disrupt their bodily development.
The principle “teach a child according to the child’s way” means that children should be raised in ways that let them freely develop. In practice, it means that they should listen to adults, but adults should adjust themselves to be as interesting and as relevant as possible to the children. Also, children need a lot of time outdoors with their friends, and to be simultaneously with their friends and their teachers. That is, they should engage in several activities that involve creating, inventing and fixing things together, as well as in ongoing discussions with their peers and with adults where they need to debate certain topics and reach conclusions.
Such an approach develops children in the natural course of their activities. It liberates them and gives them the freedom to think and to develop new ideas. We have yet to see an educational system that develops children to their fullest potential in such a way. Instead, we pack them into cubes that constrain their thinking and optimal development.
In order to upgrade education to “teach a child according to the child’s way,” we need different teachers, or more specifically, teachers themselves need to initially undergo a different course of education over several years, and only then will they accordingly become ready to cater to children. We will then start seeing completely different results to the current ones.
I think that the move to this kind of education will come when we become completely disillusioned with the ways we currently raise children, when we see that our current systems serve to create a world of increasing depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness, and other problematic phenomena across the board on personal, social, economic and ecological scales.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Israel – a country under an anxiety attack”
Following the wave of terror attacks, the ongoing demonstrations against (and for) the judicial reform, and the barrage of interviews in the media warning that Israel is on a precipice, there has been a sharp increase in calls to emergency centers reporting states of anxiety. People are worried about their future and the future of their children. Gradually, we are discovering that the haven we sought to build in the State of Israel is no longer safe. It is time we realize that we will not feel safe anywhere. We will be surrounded by hatred until we realize that the key to stability and security is not our economy or our military, but our unity.
Just as it was during the exile, when we were constantly surrounded by hostile neighbors, the countries of the world will do the same to our country. As former director of the Anti-Defamation League Abraham Foxman said, Israel is indeed “the Jew among the nations.”
Israel is one of the most advanced countries in the world. A world leader in high-technology, cybersecurity, a military industry and an army that are the envy of many of the most developed countries on the planet, an economy that is strong, solid, and continuing to develop, and an abundant supply of natural gas, Israelis should have felt safe and confident, even complacent. Yet, none of these advantages will provide us any confidence as long as we are weak inside. We will be defeated internally and externally not for lack of power, but for lack of ability or will to defend ourselves due to inner division. Our worst enemy, therefore, is not Iran or any of its proxies; it is our own division, our hatred of each other.
We can never hope to eliminate the differences between us. Our ancestors came from different tribes and nations, and the cultural differences between them broke the nation over and over again until we were dispersed throughout the world two millennia ago. Since then, the differences between us have only grown and deepened. Currently, the abyss between some of the factions and sectors in Israel is so deep that they literally regard themselves as members of different nations, and even state this explicitly.
However, just as the differences between us did not matter to the Romans 2,000 years ago, or to the Nazis and their accomplices eighty years ago, and they slaughtered us indiscriminately, today these differences do not matter to the rest of the world. Humanity regards us as one nation, so until we begin to behave as such, humanity will punish us collectively, irrespective of our political views, religious orthodoxy, cultural background, or any other distinguishing criterion.
But why does humanity hate us? Every country has its own professed reason for resenting the State of Israel and its Jewish residents. However, the root cause behind all those grievances, and the fuel that feeds the fire, is our own disunity.
We are like no other nation; we are dependent on ourselves, on our unity since this is exactly what the world wants to see from us. We did not win our independence only by war. Before the war broke out, the world explicitly expressed its consent to the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel. We were given a chance to carry out our historic role of being a model nation. If we do not live up to the task, the world will revoke our right to live here and banish us from Israel to who knows where. In fact, our international status is so poor that already, if the vote on the establishment of the State of Israel were to take place today, it is clear that we would not get two thirds of the votes, which was the minimum required in November 1947 to confirm our statehood. The truth is that we would be lucky to get one.
Yet, as I said, we are dependent on ourselves. If we become a model nation, whose members agree on nothing, yet maintain, and even solidify their unity above the chasms in their views, lifestyles, and cultures, we will win the world’s respect and affirmation. If we succumb to hatred, the world will intensify its pressure on us, we will become increasingly isolated, the country will disintegrate, and who knows what will become of us.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “2,000 Years of Hatred with No Sign of Relief”
Yesterday was Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II. Today, April 19, is the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the longest and most intense rebellion of Jews against their oppressors. The heroic, yet hopeless resistance was crushed, but became a symbol of the resilience of human spirit. The Holocaust itself, however, highlights the question of the persistence of antisemitism, and why its ferocity and deadliness has not subsided throughout the centuries.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman general Titus destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and exiled its remaining Jews to Rome. The Roman emperor Hadrian changed the name Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, a city dedicated to Jupiter, and when the Jews revolted against him, he brutally crushed the revolt. To erase the connection of Jews to their land, he changed the name of Judea to Syria Palestina.
Since then, every year, Jews commemorate the fall of the Temple. Likewise, since the Holocaust, every year, we commemorate the slaughter of European Jewry almost in its entirety. In between the cataclysms, we were expelled from Spain, murdered in Ukraine, driven out of England, and basically persecuted everywhere we lived, and in every generation. Why has there been no relief from Jew-hatred?
There has not been a relief, there is no relief, and there will be no relief from antisemitism until we acknowledge that the root of the hatred, its wellspring, is not with the nations of the world, but with ourselves. We are creating and swelling their hatred toward us through our own hatred of each other.
History proves that before every major cataclysm that befell the Jews came an extended period of growing division and internal enmity among the Jews themselves. When their inner hatred climaxes, so does the brutality and violence that their persecutors inflict on them.
Nothing about our nation resembles the making or the history of any other nation. The whole world sees us as different, and the only ones who cannot accept this are we, ourselves. Nevertheless, we are indeed different, and until we understand in what way and what for, we will not uproot the hatred toward us.
Abraham, the father of our nation, was not born Jewish, or even a Hebrew, as he is the one who engendered the nation. Likewise, many of our nation’s greatest were either converts to Judaism or the children of converts.
In fact, despite centuries of communal life, we were not regarded as a nation until we stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai and pledged to unite “as one man with one heart.” Immediately after, we were told that our nationhood, forged through unity, was not for our own sake, but for the sake of the nations, to be a light to the nations, a model nation that will prove that unity and peace among nations are possible, even when they seem locked in conflict.
Since then, division among us and the nations’ hatred toward us have been linked. When we are separated, we betray our duty to the world. As a result, the world resents us and blames us for its woes.
It makes no difference that we do not understand why humanity hates us, or that humanity does not understand its grudge against the Jews. As long as we are disunited, every nation in every generation will find its contemporary pretext to vent its hatred, which is ever fermenting in their hearts. We should not be misled by momentary pretexts; underneath them lies the same old anger at the Jews for not being a model nation, a show of unity and peace despite coming from different nations.
We have experienced 2,000 years of hatred with no sign of relief because we have not uprooted division from our midst. If we want to prevent the next cataclysm from unfolding, the only thing we can and need to do is reunite among us and become the model nation that the world expects to see.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “How can I cope with the general dissatisfaction I feel about my life?”
Thousands of years of human progress, and what do we get?
We can get any material thing we want, but remain dissatisfied.
In any case, we play the game and chase transient pleasures. What else can we do?
We look at each other and thoughtlessly follow the current trend. We think that if we act like everyone else, we’ll feel good. So we select our goals from a smorgasbord of material forms of food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge. We pursue them, hoping to escape the emptiness.
We keep ourselves busy so that the base question about our existence—”What is the meaning of life?”—doesn’t appear in the cracks of our self-centered hearts.
Sooner or later, however, the deepest question about the purpose of our existence will awaken to distract us from our rat race.
But what is the real distraction?
We actually built our whole lives on the real distraction—distracting ourselves from what is most important. That is what we will come to understand.
As long as we close our eyes to avoid truly seeing, we can run along with the crowd. But eventually, exhaustion sets in. We start feeling the meaninglessness, emptiness and dissatisfaction of trying to keep up with the ever-accelerating pace of the materialistic treadmill.
Welcome to the new desire that is evolving within humanity: the desire for life’s ultimate meaning and purpose.
The time has come when we need to wake up from our dreams of pursing self-interest at any expense. As we have taught ourselves to succeed and find our place in our materialistic world, we need to start learning about the new desire emerging in us: what exactly it is, why it is emerging today, where it comes from, and most importantly, how we can guide it to its fulfillment.
In the wisdom of Kabbalah, this desire to discover the meaning of life is called “the point in the heart.” The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method that was made specifically for fulfilling this desire.
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Is there any hope that today’s people of Israel will be able to escape from the division in society like they once managed to escape from Pharaoh and exit Egypt?
Unfortunately, there is no basis for this yet. After all, when we left Egypt, we felt that we belonged to the same nation and opposed a common enemy, the Pharaoh, that is, the egoistic inclination that separates us.
When we left Egypt, we had already achieved some recognition of evil, but today this is not the case. Today we see evil only in those who oppose us; the left sees evil in the right, and the right in the left, and that is it. We do not notice our true enemy—our own egoism. Therefore, we are still far from exiting Egypt, and there is still a long way to the recognition of the evil of our egoism.
It depends on the education and preparation of everyone, and we see how difficult it is to accept this. Egoism is so deeply embedded in us and has grown so widely that it is difficult to understand where it begins and where it ends.
Unfortunately, we do not try to move to correction in a good way by ourselves, but we advance only because the Creator pushes us forward. Therefore, it is difficult to say what other trials we will have to go through until we reach the final redemption.
“Egypt” today is a common mutual hatred between everyone. Whichever way you look at a person, all his relationships with the surrounding society are permeated with hatred. Egoism is our Pharaoh, as it has always been. We will be able to exit Egypt only when we erase brotherly hatred from ourselves and replace it with brotherly love and connection.
People should learn how to treat each other with love, no matter how contrary it is to today’s reality. The revelation of evil must precede the revelation of good, but in the end we will implement the program of creation.
The exodus from Egypt is an exit from mutual hatred, mutual rejection, and the common evil that has poisoned Israeli society. It is the people of Israel who are in Egypt, not the nations of the world who have everything in order.
Unfortunately, the people of Israel are experiencing such a manifestation of evil that does not yet lead to a solution and does not allow them to recognize the evil contained in mutual hatred. Everyone is still only trying to prove to others that they are right. Therefore, nothing good will come from it, and we will continue to fall.
The army, the police, and all circles of Israeli society are already involved in this two-sided conflict. Such an attitude is completely unbecoming to the people of Israel and has led to disastrous consequences in the past.
The problem is that no one wants to be cured of this disease. Everyone thinks that the solution is that his opinion should prevail because egoism always requires: “I will rule!”
However, we must continue to disseminate the method of connection and hope that the Creator will save us from all troubles, and from this division too.
The Creator cannot open our hearts in order to enter them. We have to open our hearts ourselves by working from below, and then the Creator will enter them from above and fill them. Our hearts are opened by the fact that we try to come closer to each other and pray to the Creator for help. We must know the essence and purpose of the people of Israel.
I wish the people of Israel greater wisdom and greater understanding, a greater sense that we are a very small nation surrounded by other nations who want to destroy us. We can be saved only on condition that we understand how this can be done, and we end from this moment onward all wars between us in order to live by the rule: “They helped everyone his friend!”
The people of Israel must live by such a law, and then we will end all these quarrels and come to the final redemption.
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From the Writers Meeting – Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman 4/4/23
Related Material:
A War Between Good And Evil
Israel: Hope For A New Life
The Place Of The Jewish People In The Land Of Israel, According To The Law Of Nature
Comment: It happens that when you say something, it touches a person so deeply that he can simply melt away from impressions. A few moments pass and it loses its importance for him. He knows perfectly well that this state will go away, it is impossible to hold it for a long time.
My Response: A person receives this state from me because he cannot connect to it on his own. It entered him for a while, left some kind of trace, and disappeared. He does not live in it permanently. But it should stay forever and other impressions would be layered over it.
Comment: But he wants it to work inside of him.
My Response: Humanity has only one solution—to seriously work on uniting with each other. You cannot do anything about it, there is nothing else.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Incredible!” 12/1/12
Related Material:
Humanity Is One Integral, Interconnected Organism
Correction Lies In Unity
“Will Humanity Ever Be United?” (Quora)
Question: In principle, it is not personal growth that is important to you but precisely common growth, right?
Answer: Why do I need personal growth?
Must a person who wants to do good, and Kabbalah is in principle a tool for this, necessarily climb to the very top and throw cakes from there?!
If I can lead people to the idea of unity at my level especially in conditions of crisis, suffering, the threat of famine and world war, where can be a field more fertile for bestowal and love? Only here! Only at this level! I do not have to go up to do that.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Who Сontrols Laitman?” 12/27/12
Related Material:
In One Boat with All of Humanity
Antagonism Toward Kabbalah
Is Kabbalah Really that Simple?
Instead of maintaining connection between us and filling each other, we, with our egoistic properties, want all the needs of others, their desires and empty spaces, to be ours. We try to fill them and as a result remain empty and unhappy.
But why should I envy because I cannot fulfill myself anyway! “Others have it, and I should have it.” I begin to work seriously, I earn, I fulfill the desires adopted from others and do not experience any pleasure because they are not mine; they should not be realized in me, but in them!
And what is the result? I worked out too much, spent my life on it, tried to fill other people’s desires in myself, and I die with nothing, even more empty, many, many times emptier.
This is our life. Instead of acting to the contrary, to be filled with the fact that you feel the desires of others and you exist in order to connect with them.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Use Other People” 12/30/12
Related Material:
The Spiritual World Is Felt Through The Desires Of Others
Filling The Desires Of Others As If They Were My Own
Enrich Yourself Through The Desires Of Others
Comment: There are students who leave us but somehow remain connected to us.
My Response: Those people are trying to adapt their studies of Kabbalah to our world. They cannot tear themselves away from us because they want to use the egoistic world for their corporeal ascent.
For example, someone insists that I explain Kabbalah to academics and politicians because he wants to look wise in the eyes of the whole world, he wants to be proud of his association with Kabbalah.
And I do not need it at all because there is nothing great in the greatest of this world. Therefore, he begins to complain about why I don’t explain Kabbalah to important people and don’t go and bow to them.
Why do I need it? I need students who will implement Kabbalah within them, within themselves, and by doing so correct the world! And I am not going to engage in such “marketing.”
In general, I am not interested in people who cannot pass spiritual laws through themselves. According to the definition of Kabbalah, they are considered animals, that is, they are content with the animate level.
I do not neglect them, but simply sort them according to the line of desires. Desires for this world prevail in them, and I need people with desires for the upper world. Suppose you were given a desire for the higher world, and you began to apply them in the direction of our world. Then stay with them! Nothing can be done.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What to Expect from Kabbalah?” 12/28/12
Related Material:
Who Is Closer To The Teacher?
Teacher And Students
The Connection Between Teacher And Student
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