Hanukkah is a special holiday, which means that the created being ascends from Malchut to the level of Bina. That is, it makes a restriction on its desire to enjoy for its own sake and is corrected by the upper light, and acquires the intention for the sake of bestowal. Bestowal for the sake of bestowal is the level of Bina.

Hanukkah is a celebration of the victory over the “Greeks. “Greek” is the name of the force that pulls a person into knowledge and not above it. This force appears precisely when a person who strives to approach the Creator already acquires some properties of bestowal, that is, he wants to reach the level of Bina.

The person put a lot of effort into his or her correction, invested in the group, in the ten, in the studies, and started to feel what bestowal is. And it is at this time that forces opposite to bestowal awaken in one: forces of separation that pull a person back into egoism.

It is written about this: “The Greeks attacked me.” Egoistic desires awaken inside me, and I must declare an internal war on them and fight the thoughts that one should not go by faith above reason to bestowal and connection. They persuade me to remain in this world, to settle as much as possible in it and enjoy it.

This is the approach of the “Greeks” as opposed to the approach of the Maccabees who call to rise to bestowal to the Creator. There is a war going on in a person between these two opinions. On one hand, I want to reveal the Creator and my soul. But on the other hand, life draws me in, urging me to enjoy its pleasures and not to dream of spirituality.

It is this war that Hanukkah symbolizes, and it takes place in darkness. A person feels that he has fallen under the power of the Greeks, that is, under the complete power of the desire to enjoy, and one has no chance of defeating it. This is how one was created by the Creator.

And then a person seeks inside himself at least some kind of connection with the Creator and finds one thread, grabs it, and prays for salvation. And when the Creator unites with a person and begins to pull him out of his egoism, He seems to light a candle for him. In this way, a person is gradually going out from darkness to light.

He lights a tiny candle of one’s connection with the Creator, and it cannot be smaller. But since the candle lit by the person is connected with the Creator and the Creator is eternal, this candle burns and burns, and the oil in it is not burning out. This is how a person exits one’s egoistic intention and reaches intention to bestow, Hanukkah, the level of Bina, bestowal for the sake of bestowal.

The virtual convention “Uniting Above Reason” at which we attained the previously unattained connection with the Creator just ended. Let us keep this connection and try not to extinguish it. Then we will begin to feel how inside this tiny connection, this thin candle, we are kindling an ever stronger fire until we reach reception for the sake of bestowal until the end of correction.

Hanukkah is only the middle of the path. Let us feel that we are halfway there, and that we just need to preserve the connection that we have reached at the convention and develop it more and more.

We must not stop. Stopping means death! Just continue all the time. We have reached the parking place, and we need to reconstruct ourselves in a new way in order to attack our egoism with renewed vigor and achieve even greater unity.

Everyone should feel that he has the strength to rise above his egoism. And now we can begin to unite on top of our egoism and the egoism of our friends, cover all crimes, both mine and his with love, and build a connection.

Let us begin to implement this law: “Love will cover all crimes.” This is our work after the convention. Good luck!
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/20, “Hanukkah”

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Medium published my new article “Legal Drugs — The Convenient Way to Cull People”

On November 3, Oregonians decided on something more than their choice for the president of the United States; they chose to decriminalize personal use of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone and other hard drugs. “Today’s victory is a landmark declaration that the time has come to stop criminalizing people for drug use,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which led the initiative. According AP News, “The Oregon Academy of Family Physicians,” who support the measure, said that “One in 11 Oregonians is addicted to drugs.” We’re not talking about recreational, occasional use of marijuana; we are talking about addiction to hard drugs, the kinds that make you commit crimes just in order to get another dose, and to do it every day. One out of eleven people in Oregon are in that state.

As I see it, the authorities don’t want these people clean; they want them dead. And until they die, they want to keep them from harming other people, so they will allow them to get their daily dose until they stone themselves away. Sooner, rather than later, the state will realize that it’s best to open distribution centers just like today’s soup kitchens, dispense each one their daily dose, and send them back happy and off the streets, away from the (dwindling) regular population.

The Oregon decision also states that “Instead of going to trial and facing possible jail time, a person would have the option of paying a $100 fine or attending new ‘addiction recovery centers’ funded by millions of dollars of tax revenue from Oregon’s legalized, regulated marijuana industry.” However, I don’t think anyone is taking this part of the decision seriously, for two reasons: 1. If drug addicts had $100 they would buy drugs with them, not pay fines. 2. No one truly recovers from drug addiction. And because of it, the authorities are trying to keep them quiet until they wither away.

I can understand why the state would want to put out drug addicts. From the perspective of the authorities, the world is already grossly overpopulated, so tacit culling is the most reasonable solution. If we don’t see a reason for having that many people in the world, then we should find a (preferably) humane way of shrinking the population.

But there is a reason why we are here. Humanity is becoming more crowded precisely because we are meant to connect, not to stay apart in our own little slots. Our unwillingness to connect is why we suffer, since reality is forcing us to be in constant contact with people, while our antagonism toward people grows relentlessly. When the chasm between our growing narcissism and compulsory connection to people becomes unbearable, we seek refuge. Some find it in violence, others in various forms of escapism, including substance abuse, and most everyone finds it in depression.

There is only one solution to this mess: education toward connection. There is a reason why so many people, with such different views and attitudes to life, exist in the world. If we look at the world from a bird’s eye view, we will find that what we experience as dissonance is actually diversity. From a higher perspective, the contradictions on the ground create a beautiful, rich embroidery of colors and streams that weave together to become the fabric of life. Imagine oceans without land, mountains without valleys, forests without deserts, males without females, life without death, summer without winter or fall without spring. Everything we know about life comes from distinguishing one thing from its opposite. Life is not one state; it is the flow between them, from one extreme to the other.

If we were aware of it, and if we knew that this diversity is here for us to enjoy, we would be grateful for the things that irritate us because they are different from us. In fact, we wouldn’t feel them as irritation but as life’s pulse, telling us when it’s time to stream on to the next phase. Our struggle with life would be over and we would not need to run away from it. We would realize what is our purpose in being here — to grasp life in all its depth and richness — and we would never want to get away.

There is no solution to substance abuse except to show people that they are here in order to connect with one another in gratitude, and especially toward those who are different from us since we and they together make the stream of life flow. Alone, each of us is nothing. Together, we are life.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What It Takes to Make Peace with Iran”

With the flurry of normalization agreements that Israel has reached over the last few months, you’d think that we are nearing the end of the Middle-East conflict. I wish it were that easy. These agreements, as great as they are, are mainly business arrangements that appear lucrative to both sides. As long as they yield profit, “peace” will remain. But if they stop doing so, the relations will cool off again. Either way, no real gain (other than economic) has been made by the recent agreements, and no real loss will occur if they are gone. What really counts is our relationships with those who have declared war on us. However, they count not because of what peace with them means for the region, but because of what it means about us, the Israeli people living in Israel.

It is clear that the normalization agreements with Arab countries that have no active conflict with Israel focus on the economic benefits that both sides gain from them. In that sense, I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s dealing with these countries is brilliant. However, things get complicated when concerning peace with countries such as Iran, where the motivation is religious.

First, Iranians are very clever people. From our perspective, we are not in conflict with Iran more than we are with any other country. I understand that they need to show their power and want to position themselves as the spearhead of the resistance to the existence of the State of Israel, but in the end, this struggle only drains their strength and doesn’t help them.

However, although we do not consider them enemies, peace with them depends on us and not on them. Wherever there is a conflict, with Israel or not with Israel, resolving it depends on Israel, and for one and only reason: Nations are fighting against us, and against each other, because we are fighting among ourselves. Israel is the barometer of the world. When we fight among each other, it incites and intensifies wars all over the world, and the nations hate us for it, even when those wars look as if they are unrelated to us.

We may not see the connection, and the whole notion may seem bizarre to us, but if you look at the history of the world, you’ll notice that Israel and the Jews are always blamed for wars. Many historians have already noticed it and decry the nations’ relentless tendency to make Israel the perpetual scapegoat. However, you cannot refute the scapegoat argument when people’s anger with Israel is genuine and comes from their gut feeling. Many people who hate Israel have never been to Israel, don’t know where it is, never spoke to an Israeli person, never met a Jew, and can’t even explain why they think their troubles are Israel’s fault. But what can you do if they feel this way? You can’t reason with hatred; reason and feelings work on two parallel planes and the feeling always prevails.

When Israel unite among themselves, it projects calm throughout the world and conflicts the world over subside. This is why The Book of Zohar writes (Toldot, 171), “When the good inclination [people’s kindness] prevails, his enemies, too, make peace with him.” Even more explicitly, in the portion Aharei Mot, The Zohar writes, “‘How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to also sit together.’ These are the friends as they sit together and are not separated from each other. At first, they seem like people at war, wishing to kill one another … then they return to being in brotherly love. …And you, the friends who are here, as you were in fondness and love before, henceforth you will also not part from one another … and by your merit, there will be peace in the world.”

In other words, we cannot complain that Iran hates us. All we need to do is watch the news and acknowledge that Iranians don’t hate us as much as we hate each other. Everyone is looking at us, and we are projecting intense internal odium. If we projected unity and solidarity, it would instantly reflect in the world. Once again, we should sink into our hearts that Iran, and any other enemy for that matter, doesn’t hate us for any other reason than our hatred for each other.

Internal peace is therefore the only peace we need to make. If we achieve it, all other agreements will come naturally and effortlessly. If we radiate internal unity, we will unite the world.
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Question: Can you feel your students by teaching them virtually? After all, there are millions of people in front of you. You don’t even know their names. You don’t know what they look like. What exactly do you feel?

Answer: It doesn’t matter. How does it happen in a large audience? Let’s say I am teaching at a university where there are several thousand students sitting in a huge hall. If I’m in front of them on the screen, how is this worse? I believe that modern technological innovations do not interfere at all. It all depends on what we fill our channels with.

Comment: Still, I am still trying to understand what it means to feel a huge number of people, even the whole of humanity? For example, my body is made up of billions of cells, but I don’t feel every cell.

My Response: The body knows how to manage itself; it has all of this under control.

Question: However, can a person only feel a few close people or the states that they are going through?

Answer: No. If we aspire to implement one common theme and want to come to one mutual conclusion, then I can have a very clear, close contact with all the people in the audience. There are no problems here. Everything depends only on how much we understand and accept our one common goal.

Question: Let’s say, sometimes I feel that I have something going on with my liver or stomach or lungs. Can you feel, in the same way, that something happened to the students in Latin America, let’s say, somewhere in Chile? Do you feel them in this way?

Answer: That way also, but it’s not just that. Through our connection, we can support each other, motivate, take care of, and carry each other within us. In general, we can make the connection more dynamic.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/7/20

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Question: Failure to comply with moral norms does not entail corporeal punishment, and a person decides for himself whether to follow them or not. Do you think it is necessary to introduce a system of punishments and rewards regarding their implementation?

Answer: I consider it necessary to raise a person to the level where he sees that the implementation of moral standards itself leads one to receive reward or punishment from nature, directly, on the spot.

Question: But since it has not yet happened, is it possible to introduce punishments in the form of a state law?

Answer: Probably you could. But this is not right. This is a policy by the whip. Suppose, you did not give up your seat on public transport to a woman, then a thousand dollars disappears from your account. And if it were a pregnant woman, then ten thousand dollars.

Question: Is it possible to teach a person to comply with norms in this way?

Answer: It is. But it will not correct a person.

Question: What will correct him?

Answer: Only if he consciously, not from fear, realizes that by doing so he is approaching a common force, a common soul.

The method by the whip helps only in the beginning, in order to draw attention to these laws, but not further on.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/9/20

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Question: Multiculturalism is a concept that recognizes that all cultures are equal and have the same right to exist. Do you agree with this statement?

Answer: It depends on which cultures and what they lead us to. I do not believe in pretty words. “Multi” does not exist in nature at all. There is only one upper force in nature. If we want to be like it, then we come to a good denominator. If not, then we come to the bad.

Comment: But there is such a variety in nature!

My Response: This variety only exists in human nature in which the strong always win. If we want to rise above our nature so as not to devour each other, then we need for the kind to win, not the strong. Only then will we be able to survive.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/16/20

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Question: What happens when the Creator is revealed with respect to the mind and feelings? Do I fully justify Him or not?

Answer: Naturally you justify the Creator. But the fact is that the revelation happens over the concealment, which does not go anywhere.

Let’s say I reveal something in the actions of the Creator with respect to myself. He appears to me as good who does good, and leads me to the goal. And then this gets hidden from me, and as I enter the concealment, I have to try my best to act as if I am in revelation.

In other words, concealment does not isolate me from the Creator but, on the contrary, makes it possible for me to act as if I am in revelation.

Question: Can I say that I myself conceal the Creator?

Answer: Naturally. My egoism hides Him from me. In the state of revelation, I do not associate myself with my ego and I conceal it from the Creator.

Question: So in double and single concealment, the Creator hides Himself from my egoism?

Answer: There are many different nuances: either the Creator hides Himself from me or hides me from myself.

The fact is that any state consists of four degrees, and we must on each of them establish ourselves as if we are in maximum revelation. Whatever states I go through, I must try to treat everything that happens to me as if I am in full revelation so that no darkness, no concealment, will lower me.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/14/19

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic of “A Time of Contraction and A Time of Expansion”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 3, Item 2″    

Lesson on the Topic of “The Law of Love in the System of Adam HaRishon”

Selected Highlights   

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Medium published my new article “What to Expect for the New Year 2021”

We are about to finish an atypical year and humanity wonders what lies in store for the next. 2021 will be a year in which we will all feel, understand, and accept the fact that the purpose of our experience so far has been to rearrange humanity in a more positive way. The challenges we have faced worked in our favor to help us scrutinize how they advanced us to a new stage of development, a new degree of human existence.

2020 was characterized by polarization, economic crisis, natural disasters, and a global pandemic that induced a worldwide shut down. The virus came to organize us, shake us up, and fix the imbalances in society, in our human relations, and with our planet.

This is the way nature deals with us. Covid-19 is not a random virus. Behind it stands a natural system that kicked into action after we destroyed a large part of the planet. It’s as if nature said, “Enough is enough. You are destroying the world. — You have pumped the earth dry and littered the oceans, polluted the air, and made garbage heaps of the land. You have depleted Earth’s resources. Now start rebuilding the world.”

How long will we fail to realize that nature will not calm down until we do our part? We seem to be starting to recognize our guilt here and there, beginning to grasp what is really going on. If it weren’t for the media, which is constantly misleading, humanity might have long ago grasped its responsibility.

And as harsh as it may seem, the natural system has spoken to us quite gently, not nearly as harshly as with other plagues in history. It has given us time to understand what nature requires. But if we do not heed the warning and change our course toward balance, we can naturally expect a stronger reaction in the coming year.

Is the pandemic over with the advent of new vaccines? We are moving on to the next stage in human development so there will obviously be some change. Will the change be in the direction of relief for us? That is hard to determine because usually the blows of nature move from lightest to heaviest until the necessary adjustments are made. For instance, if you ask a child to perform a task and he does not do it, you probably would speak to him in a firmer tone the next time. If that did not help, you would have to toughen up your positions and present him with even stricter terms and conditions.

It is not written in the stars how the coming year will look, not even regarding vaccines. In truth, the future is up to us. It depends on how much we will try to understand what nature is telling us. The message is clear. It’s plain to see that our industry is not suitable for the new world because it is centered on the production of unnecessary things that destroy the environment. It’s clear that the current education system does not harmonize with the laws of nature because we educate ourselves to compete with one another and create division.

Therefore, the main task for the new year should be to establish an integral world, to enter into a life of human partnership, one for the other and with the whole of nature.

Humanity will have to make changes, recalculate what is really important and what is not. We must get rid of everything that is not indispensable, understand that we will have to close about 80% of our stores and businesses. Of course, there is no way that people will agree with such drastic changes without understanding where they lead and for what purpose — namely, to a more balanced world.

Meanwhile, people are finishing the current year worrying about how to make ends meet, concerned about rampant unemployment, questioning how to build a human society when so much uncertainty and social unrest exist. We should ask ourselves how to adopt a new way of thinking that takes everyone into account so all can look forward to the future with hope.

I think that 2021 will be a year of transition. Although the full transition we need will take a few years, at least we will start to understand the future conditions we need to reach. We must not create things that are not essential. We must put great emphasis on human education, on educating ourselves to aim at moving closer to each other in mutual solidarity.

If we unite, we will understand that all good is before us. We have it within our power to reach this consciousness. Everything depends on how willing we are to open our eyes, to open our minds and understand what nature (the Hebrew words for “God” and “nature” in Gematria have the same numerical value) is doing with us. Through improved connections between us we will reveal the supreme force that governs everything in reality to attain wholeness and complete fulfillment. This is the positive future that awaits us if we only think and act toward unification.
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