The Times of Israel published my new article “How did New York become a battleground for Jews?”

“Why are Jews being assaulted in a way they were assaulted in pre-Nazi Germany,” asks former NY State Assemblyman, Dov Hiking in a heartfelt tweet to NYC Mayor, Bill de Blasio, urging him to address the “out of control anti-Semitism in NY.” He added, “enough is enough.” In fact, three extremely violent attacks on Orthodox men in Brooklyn in less than a week speaks volumes about a vicious pattern of hate crimes being tracked by the police: 145 cases this year—mostly anti-Semitic incidents—nearly double the number reported in 2018. This demands an urgent address, and first of all by us, Jews. What do haters want from us? Are we really willing to accept this as the new norm? We are going to need some strong glue to make our fractured Jewish collective whole again, not only to prevail over the hatred, but even in order to survive.

The victims of this vicious spike in hate crimes have been people easily identifiable as Jews living in traditional Jewish neighborhoods, but history has shown us that hatred does not distinguish between religious denominations or residential areas. Jews around the world are being targeted and attacked only because they are Jews, so no one should feel exempt. Therefore, we must respond as one unified people.

So why is it that this alarming situation is no big deal to many Jews then? When an attack on one isn’t felt as an attack on all, it exemplifies how deeply divided we are as a Jewish people. The lack of empathy and identification as one people is the cause of hatred against us. Our dissociated separation weakens our very foundation as a people, making us easy prey.

In the most recent attack against Jews in New York, a Hasidic man was beaten in the face with a belt in front of a synagogue in Brooklyn. Authorities are also investigating two other similar cases in the last few days. In Crown Heights, according to the NYPD, an assailant bashed a rabbi in the face with a heavy paving stone, breaking his nose and knocking out some teeth. In another incident in the same neighborhood, an Orthodox Jewish man suffered an eye injury after being attacked with ice by a group of aggressors.

If we consider that typically only a small percentage of crimes are ever reported, yet those already counted reveal a startling increase in the numbers of hate crimes. In other words, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Many in the Jewish community have stopped referring to these as “random cases,” now referring to them as “mainstream anti-Semitism.” Just how much Jewish blood must be spilled before we react?

What Do Haters Want from Us?

Throughout history, the hatred of the nations toward the Jews has risen and has fallen. Therefore, many have researched the phenomenon of anti-Semitism, although no one has identified its fundamental cause and how to eliminate it. And its quick intensification today once again testifies to the fact that the antidote to anti-Semitism is still not being applied.

Only the wisdom of Kabbalah explains the core reason for anti-Semitism and its fluctuation throughout history. Kabbalah states that curbing anti-Semitic sentiments is solely dependent upon the Jewish people: To the extent that the Jews come closer to their spiritual root—as a united people (under the dictum “love your friend as yourself”) who radiate a shining example of unity to the world (as “a light unto nations”)—anti-Semitism lessens. This is true because when Jews become unified as one, a magnetic positive field is created covering the entire world. Conversely, the more distant Jews become from their root, anti-Semitism rises, forcing us to unite through the mounting pressure of anti-Semitism—ranging from frequent violent attacks to extreme existential threats like was seen in pogroms and the Holocaust.

The Glue That Binds Us Together Against Anti-Semitism

At this point, you might be asking: how we can possibly reverse our current separation and repulsion since it’s known that we are intrinsically the most opinionated of all people? There is a popular saying: “two Jews, three opinions.” Aware of our nature as a people, from the beginning our sages already established the method to deal with the challenge of rising above our inevitable disagreements.

The book Likutey Etzot (Assorted Counsels) specifies how we should relate to those with whom we disagree:

“The essence of peace is to connect two opposites. Hence, do not be alarmed if you see a person whose view is the complete opposite of yours and you think that you will never be able to make peace with him. Also, when you see two people who are completely opposite to one another, do not say that it is impossible to make peace between them. On the contrary, the essence of peace is to try to make peace above two opposites.”

Indeed, only if we contribute our uniqueness to humanity, will our unity grow and our sense of confidence and happiness increase. Our lives are meaningful only when we contribute to society. With this mindset of uniting above our differences and in order to contribute our skills to the creation of a vibrant humanity from which all profit, everyone will find fulfillment and purpose in their lives and in all their actions. This is the juncture at which aggressions will cease and balance will be reestablished in society.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are the Amazon fires a problem for the entire Earth?“

We need to see the whole of nature as an integral system. That is, there is a current focus on the Amazon fires, but there is an entanglement of environmental problems including ocean and air pollution, ozone depletion, outbreaks of natural disasters from volcanic eruptions through to earthquakes and hurricanes, not mentioning many others, and they are all influenced by the person, who according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, is a small world.

Therefore, when we reach states where we become internally organized, i.e., when our attitudes to each other become balanced and positive, then we will also experience positive phenomena from the outside, i.e. from nature.

We do not cause environmental problems with our hands. We cause them with our lack of inner correction. By letting our divisive egoistic drives cause us to harm each other, we invite upon us a negative response from nature. Also, the more we develop without correcting our attitudes to each other, the more we will draw to ourselves increasingly severe reactions from nature.

The time has come for us to reach connection among all people as in an integral system. We witness mammoth-scale problems in nature, and we’re unaware of how we cause such phenomena from the point of our attitudes to each other.

Many people, world leaders among them, think that by implementing actions toward nature, like cleaning garbage from the oceans, lessening air pollution or reducing the use of fossil fuels, we will have some kind of positive impact on nature. However, it’s not the case. Politicians especially only use such pleasant rhetoric for the purpose of their own self-promotion.

Nothing we do outside of changing our attitudes to each other will help us. Moreover, the more efforts we apply to fix things externally without undergoing an inner change, the more harm we will bring about. Why? It is because the world would continue developing by not dealing with the cause of all these problems: that we need to correct ourselves by upgrading our attitudes to each other—from egoistic to altruistic, divided to connected, and self-centered benefit to benefiting the whole of humanity. By doing so, we will see a positive response back to us from nature.

The inner change of our attitudes to each other is what nature demands of us. Note that according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, “Nature” and “God” are synonymous (they share the same number in Gematria—the Kabbalistic number system). We need to become integral in our awareness, to understand the system we’re in, the need to resemble the system of nature, and adapt ourselves to it.

Through our adaptation to nature, nature would calm down and become balanced.

Complementarity and wholeness would abound on all of nature’s levels—still, vegetative, animate and human—and we would experience harmony and perfection as a result.

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How to Feel the Creator

Kabbalah offers the following to a person: If you want to feel the upper force, you must enter into a group of like-minded people and begin to dissolve inside it. By preferring the opinions and desires of the collective to your own, no matter what they are, by clearly changing your opinions and desires to theirs, you will begin to feel how you are getting “outside yourself.” At the same time, it is clear to you that you enter into others, but you cannot act otherwise. You have to get outside and get into something.

Exiting oneself is the first stage of attaining the Creator. It is called the restriction of egoism. I must restrict myself in order to begin to feel others instead of myself.

To the extent that I do this, I begin to feel a completely different world, different connections between people and objects. I feel the existence of the general force of bestowal and love that connects them together.

I begin to feel all people as puppets who are absolutely clearly operated by the upper force in relation to me, and this is how I myself am also operated in relation to myself, to them, and to the upper force.

All this continues until in exactly in such a way—in small steps, with my own  realization—I accumulate sensations and knowledge about this upper force, which permeates me, connects me with others, and enables me to act outside of myself for the sake of this group of people or even this general power, the Creator, that is manifested in them. This is how I progress and study this phenomenon.

This feeling is called “the upper world.” The power of bestowal and love that exists, governs, and holds all this, including myself, is called “the Creator.”
[249980]
From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/10/18

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New Life 1141 – Education For Peace
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Shalom, the word for “peace” in Hebrew, derives from the Hebrew word for perfection, “Shlemut.” The way to achieve perfection in life is through peace, i.e. through the reconciliation of opposites. Reconciliation happens through the transcendence above opinions without discussing who is right; two give birth to a new, third thing. Education for peace is education for transcending the egoistic nature by inviting, drawing a positive force from nature. The method for doing this is group work with special exercises.
[250202]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1141 – Education For Peace,” 7/23/19

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Lesson on the Topic “Turning to the Creator” (Preparation for Convention in Moldova)

Preparation for Convention

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I go to work, care for my family, think about crossing the street safely, but at the same time I want to feel how each situation is sent to me by the Creator at every moment.
This means not thinking about myself because I think that the Creator does everything, and not that I arrange anything myself.

If I don’t think of myself, I can think of the Creator. There cannot be two masters in the world: it’s either me or Him. I worry not about myself, but only about how not to disconnect from the thought that the Creator shapes me at every moment, realizing the purpose of creation.

I should sense myself in prayer where I ask nothing for myself but only for the ten. If I pray for the good of the ten, for the unity of friends so they become like the Creator and He is revealed in them, then I am called an emissary of the society and I reach genuine prayer.

We must ask the Creator for strength to ascend to the spiritual world. Not the strength to do so on our own, but for the Creator to arrange it Himself.
We raise a prayer together, from our connection, from the feeling of helplessness, for what we desire but cannot achieve.
We ask the Creator to correct us and shape us in likeness to Himself.

Prayer is when we, as a ten, raise a request to the Creator that is heard in the ten’s Keter from its Malchut. The Creator, who is in the ten’s Keter, hears this plea, feels this deficiency. We thus awaken the Upper Force.
The answer to our prayer is received from above: the Upper Light that awakens us.

When we awaken the power of the Creator, the force of unity and bestowal, it is victorious. We perceive all the “enemies” that work against us as the Creator’s forces, which He sends against us in order for us to rise above them and become wiser and stronger.
#Wisdom

– What guarantee do we have that unity, based on Kabbalah’s method, will not turn into a negative force as it did with Nazism or fascism?
– In Kabbalah this cannot happen because this method is based on every person and the whole group working together to annul egoism.

When we achieve success, we do not sense pride or that we are better than others; on the contrary, we understand that we have to serve them. The method of #Kabbalah is completely opposite to Nazism and will never result in feelings of pride or superiority.
#Wisdom
From Twitter, 9/4/19

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The wisdom of Kabbalah differs from simple popular blind faith in that it speaks of working during descents, distancing and rejections from the Creator through all kinds of events in our life. We seem to be ready to say that “There is none else besides Him.” After all, it is right and good that there is just one force that creates everything and controls everything. However, we forget about this as soon as we feel rejection from this force, when we receive all kinds of problems that are supposedly unfair.

In addition, it turns out that they were planned by the Creator for each of us in advance, even from the beginning of creation, because everything is predetermined until the end of correction. Therefore, our life is a film that we need to add 620 times more to through our efforts and precisely during the time of distancing.

The main work is during the descent. The Creator burdens our path by sending all sorts of troubles, problems, and concealments, placing barriers before us. But we know how to overcome all this, and not for the sake of winning like heroes jumping over all the obstacles. Overcoming means relating all the disturbances and burdening of the heart to the Creator and not asking to cancel them. Disturbances are those degrees that we must climb.

Every time a desire to receive grows, a problem appears as an invitation from the Creator to ascend and determine His uniqueness on the higher degree. Therefore, we live from problem to problem, from disappointment to disappointment, from fear to awe. But it is in this that we must see the benevolence of the Creator, who does not leave us, moving us forward.

This happens to all the people of Israel in general and to every single person advancing to one’s completely corrected state. It is during the descents that we have the opportunity to ask the Creator for help. It turns out that descents are states when the Creator invites a person to come closer precisely through overcoming confusions and disturbances intended to separate us from the Creator. If despite all the disturbances we declare that they come from the Creator in order for us to ask Him for help to rise above the disturbances toward even greater adhesion, then the disturbances turn into means for connection, into this glue with which we adhere to the Creator.

It turns out that disturbances were help, leading to a request in response to which a person received from the Creator the force of bestowal, faith above reason, above disturbances. Thus, one advanced. Therefore, our work consists of being joyful for the disturbances as an opportunity to ask the Creator to bring us closer to Him.¹
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/19, “There is None Else Besides Him”
¹ Minute 2:10

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 9/4/19

Bullying in the classroom begins outside the school walls.

As the school year opened, the sore wound of the bullying phenomenon opened along with it. Yes, it happens everywhere and many children live in social isolation and suffer from bullying and insults for months or years. They will carry the internal scars with them for many years into their future. Parents, if they even know what is going on, are helpless in the face of a system that often silences the issue in order to maintain a good reputation.

It is true that bullying has always existed, even when I was a child, but in our day and age, the phenomenon has become extremely worrying. The endless harassment breaks through the classroom walls and haunts the bullied child all the way from classroom to his mobile device, so there is nowhere to escape and find some peace and comfort.

It typically starts from a single child, the leader of the attack; a child who likes to control everyone and who is considered popular among his peers. Why is he doing this? Because he enjoys the satisfaction of being above someone else, so he degrades another child and organizes the whole class against him. However, that child is following his own internal urges as well as the examples he is absorbing from all directions, whether it’s reality shows, YouTube videos, or the adults he is looking up to.

Since our lives have become so filled with power games of pride and control, we shouldn’t wonder why kids are behaving the same way nowadays. We did not form a good enough environment for them, we did not pay enough attention, or provide the right education so as to nurture healthy, positive connections between them, and now the bitter results are coming back to bite us – mainly in the form of bullying.

So how can we deal with all this bullying? First of all, talk to the leader and explain what a terrible injustice he is doing to others and to himself. Equally important is to talk to those who follow the leader so that they do stop give power and fuel to the “leader.” We have to organize the power of many to counter the power of that leader. Why? Because young children instinctively understand what is “good for me or bad for me,” and a child who tries to initiate an attack and sees that it is not going well or even working to his detriment, will stop trying of his own accord.

With older children you can chat. You can show them how they, too, could remain on their own if they continue down this road of bullying. So if they have a desire to attract others around them, they should be positive leaders that everyone wants to follow and imitate.

But instead of finding ourselves looking for ways to combat bullying at school, it’s much better to treat the disease at the root before it spreads by building a healthy social environment for children from an early age. To make positive social relationships the center of attention in our educational programs, rather than individualistic success. And the sooner we do it, the less bullying we will see.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Will the Amazon fires have a significant effect on climate change?“

The Amazon fires won’t have a significant effect on climate change. In order to understand whether nature will act toward us positively or negatively heading into the future, we need to understand how we influence nature, and how nature reacts to our influence.

Contrary to the opinion that we influence nature through our external actions on nature itself, such as the waste and pollution we inflict upon our environment, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, such actions are not the ones that lead to all kinds of natural disasters and crises.

What leads to natural disasters and crises is solely at the human level, in our connections. At the level of our thoughts, attitudes and behaviors toward each other, we cause ripples throughout human society and nature, and nature reacts to us according to how we relate to each other.

If we relate positively to each other, aiming to positively connect with each other, then we will experience positive reactions from nature. If we relate negatively to each other, aiming to harm and exploit each other for personal benefit, then we will experience negative reactions from nature. This is what we currently experience.

Nature is organized according to four levels: still, vegetative, animate and human.

If we delay our correction in establishing positive connections among us, starting from not harming each other to endlessly improving our connections, then we will experience more and more negative effects upon us from nature.

For instance:

• If we fail to correct our relations at the still level, which for the time being can be interpreted as not working on the hatred toward others that surfaces in us, there will be disruptions in nature at the still level, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
• Likewise, if we fail to correct our relations at the vegetative level, which can be interpreted as failing to stop ourselves from harming others, then there will be problems at the vegetative level, such as fires.
• If we fail to correct ourselves at the animal level, i.e. allowing ourselves to slip into wars and conflicts, then we will find problems on the animal level, such as extinctions of certain species, as well as the resurfacing of past diseases and new diseases.
• Nature’s positive or negative reaction to us in the future depends on how much we activate our human ability, i.e., our ability to connect to each other above our divisive egoistic drives.

Accordingly, when we see the complete system of a person as a small world and the world as our encasing environment, then we will see the level of integration that we humans need to have with the world: that our attitudes to each other need to undergo an upgrade: to become considerate and positively connected as a replacement for the currently antagonistic egoism that’s growing within us and increasingly dividing us.

Then, according to the integration of the still, vegetative, animate and human levels within us, between us, with the environment and with nature’s complete system that envelops us, we will experience either harmony if we realize positive human connections, or crises and blows if we don’t.

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