Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How are Jewish people able to obtain such high positions in government, media, academia and Hollywood given the anti-Semitism they have faced?“

Anti-Semitism actually helps Jews succeed in many areas of life since it pressures them to outsmart, outwork and outcompete others.

In addition, Jews experience disproportionate success because in addition to their corporeal root in this world, they embody a spiritual root. The spiritual root of the Jewish people comes from their ancestors becoming Jews in ancient Babylon some 4,000 years ago. Abraham gathered Babylonians from all walks of life according to a spiritual idea, to rise above people’s divisive drives of that time and reach “love your neighbor as yourself.” The attainment of this state is what made this gathering of all kinds of different people “Jewish” to being with (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]).

Therefore, due to once experiencing a spiritual state of unity, that special connection with the spiritual force of nature remains latent within the Jews till today. Jews themselves don’t know that they possess such a force, but they do, and this additional force is the reason for their disproportionate success in many fields. Especially in areas involving innovation and invention, the Jews are particularly sharp, which stems precisely from their inner connection to nature’s hidden unifying force.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does it mean to be Jewish in the 21st century?“

There is indeed a lot of confusion regarding what it means to be Jewish, where Jews come from, and what is the true identity of the Jewish people. Most Jews themselves would be unable to tell you where they originated, why Arabs are also considered as Semites, and why there are Jews in such places as India, Pakistan and Africa.

Today, it’s customary that if your mother is Jewish, then you’re Jewish. However, this wasn’t always the case. At one time in history, Jewishness was passed down through the father.

In our world, Jews are considered to be a group of people who went into exile 2,000 years ago from ancient Babylon. Due to the dispersion of the Jewish people around the world, they have no culture, language, country or center of their own. Moreover, if you say that the Jews’ country is Israel, then note that the State of Israel has only been around for the last 70 years, and many Jews also disagree with Israel being their country. Therefore, if you ask both Jews and non-Jews who Jews are, you will hear no two same opinions.

The Jewish people are a strange phenomenon in humanity. They are like a stone in humanity’s shoe, something that increasingly presses for a solution. Also, the topic of Jewish identity is never raised in a serious widespread manner because it would awaken many problems among the Jews living in different countries and cultures. Therefore, it is a global-scale problem, and raising it means to ignite a massive flame around the world. Arabs everywhere would immediately leap onto the opportunity to deal with it, disagreeing with the definitions of Jews being the sons of Abraham. They also disagree with Jews and Muslims being brothers, as is written in the Torah, which describes Jews and Arabs coming from a single father. Another problem is that there are many conflicts in definitions of Jews in Christianity, and therefore, it also isn’t raised from that perspective.

The general atmosphere surrounding such a question is: Why raise the question about Jewish identity if it would create many more problems than we already experience in our world? So people from all nations, religions and cultures, including Jews themselves, generally don’t touch it. Specifically in our time, it is best not to awaken such a question.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What’s the difference between being anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, and how do you know which is which?“

Today, many American and European Jews are anti-Israeli. Moreover, today many Jews themselves, including those in Israel, are anti-Semites in how they relate to other Jewish groups scornfully.

“Anti” in and of itself is a Jewish characteristic. Why? It’s because the root of this people is spiritual: “spiritual” meaning that the Jews are a people founded on the spiritual idea of “love your friend as yourself,” and thus being Jewish means seeking unity (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]).

The spiritual unity of the Jews is one where they united among each other and with the single force of nature that governs everyone and everything. Therefore, whoever wishes to identify with that force is considered “Jewish,” and whoever doesn’t have that approach or whoever hasn’t received such an upbringing is against it.

Therefore, every Jew, to the extent of his lack of knowledge of what is true Jewishness—which isn’t religion, but a search for unification—is both anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli.

In relation to anti-Zionism, see my answer to this question: Are anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism the same? How are they similar?

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The world can be corrected only through unification of the nation of Israel, from which the quality of unity will spread to the whole world. The world is needing this more and more—and therefore anti-Semitism is growing. Unity is the Torah of Israel. Redemption is exit from egoism, hatred into love.

The condition of being liberated from our nature, egoism, the only evil in the world, exit from exile inside it, is for us to reveal its evil precisely in it—revelation of evil.
Jews cannot escape their mission—just as they came out of egoism on their own in the past, they returned to it in oder to pull out all the nations!

The world today is going through realization of humanity’s egoism (Pharaoh’s rule) as harmful to all the nations. The aim of the existence of the state and people of Israel must be revealed in order to reveal Kabbalah as the only method of the world’s correction. This is why the BB [Bnei Baruch] organization exists!

The quality of nature, egoism, called Pharaoh, must itself recognize the need for its own change to the opposite quality—altruism, called the Creator. Gradual transformation of reception into bestowal is called performing a commandment.
This understanding must be revealed in the whole world!

Pharaoh—egoism himself opens up the exit from him—Egypt, from slavery of existence in egoism. Our egoistic nature must become convinced of its own evil, harm—and of the need to acquire the quality of the Creator that’s opposite to it.
That is the extent to which we need to disseminate the essence and goal of Kabbalah!

Baal HaSulam, “Messiah’s Horn”: the condition for the world’s redemption from the evil of egoism is the nations’ recognition of “Torah” as the method of unity—”And the earth will be filled by the knowledge.” Likewise, exodus from Egypt—egoism happened because “Pharaoh—egoism recognized the Creator and correction”—and allowed exit from itself.
From Twitter, 7/28/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can you be anti-Semitic if you don’t know what Jews are?“

Yes. I can be an anti-Semite even if I don’t know what a Jew is, because I feel, without any intellectual grasp of what I feel, but I simply feel that my happiness, the world’s peace and my advancement in life depend on the Jews. I feel that this small nation of 15 or so million people runs and manipulates the world, squeezing out its juices and energies, preventing human society from enjoying a good life. That is a subconscious sensation of every person in the world. Also, if one doesn’t feel that way, then it can awaken very quickly, since it lies latent within every person.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are we currently witnessing a resurgence of anti-Semitism?“

Yes. We see that throughout history, there are periods where the hatred of the nations of the world toward the Jews rises and falls. Moreover, such hatred is distinct to Jews, and not to Arabs or other nations, and you could say that Jewish-directed hatred specifically has risen and fallen multiple times over 1,000s of years. Therefore, many have researched anti-Semitism but no one knows its causal foundation and how to solve it, and so it remains a problem.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains the reason for anti-Semitism and why it rises and falls throughout history. According to Kabbalah, anti-Semitism depends solely on the Jewish people: To the extent that the Jews come closer to their spiritual root—a united people (“love your friend as yourself”) who shine an example of unity to the world (“a light unto nations”)—anti-Semitism lessens. Likewise, the more distant the Jews become from their root, anti-Semitism rises, reaching the genocidal extremes we have seen in the Holocaust and the pogroms.

Anti-Semitism depends on whether the Jews attain their spiritual root: to unite “as one man with one heart” and reveal that sublime connection to the world. The nations of the world sense that the Jews have a certain foundation, which the Jews are keeping away from them, and that this foundation holds the key for all nations’ happiness and prosperity. Thus, the nations of the world subconsciously hold a demand toward the Jewish people, that the Jews bring the abundance and truth that is locked away from them. The nations of the world think that the Jews know that they hold this key, but Jews themselves are completely unaware of it.

Therefore, in our era, the wisdom of Kabbalah carries an obligation to explain the role of the Jewish people, since a future of happiness and prosperity or a future of suffering and despair for everybody—Jews and non-Jews alike—rests in the hands of the Jews uniting and passing unity to the world.

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A nation is a group of people united by an instinctive sense of community and striving for connection, as those born from the same parents. #Jews have no such feeling! Instead, there is a feeling of “brothers in misfortune” from the hatred toward them. Striving toward connection vanquishes hatred…

There is a blood connection between people, familial—corporeal. And there is a spiritual link between the souls. It is born in the connection between people for the sake of revealing the Creator. When it’s broken, people become strangers. They can be united only by the common hatred—#Antisemitism

Abraham revealed the Creator at the age of 40, and called upon all Babylon with it. Hundreds of thousands joined him and were called the “House of Abraham.” This is the beginning of a nation that knew the Creator. (Rambam. Yad Hasaka. Ilkhot Avoda Zarah, p1, 7-16)
This is how the #Jewish nation was formed.

All our attempts to change the world for the better (replacing our food, energy, technologies, finances…) will fail. The world will continue plunging downwards, until after many failures and much suffering, we will realize that it’s not the world around us that we must change, but only our relationships—and we set out to re-educate ourselves.
From Twitter, 7/25/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can you be anti-Semitic if you don’t know what Jews are?“

Yes. I can be an anti-Semite even if I don’t know what a Jew is, because I feel, without any intellectual grasp of what I feel, but I simply feel that my happiness, the world’s peace and my advancement in life depend on the Jews. I feel that this small nation of 15 or so million people runs and manipulates the world, squeezing out its juices and energies, preventing human society from enjoying a good life. That is a subconscious sensation of every person in the world. Also, if one doesn’t feel that way, then it can awaken very quickly, since it lies latent within every person.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is there so much anti-Semitism on the Internet such as in YouTube comment sections and social media?“

I don’t think that there is a particularly unique role of the Internet in relation to the rise of anti-Semitism. It is simply a platform for people to express whatever they feel, and they can write as much as they want there. However, anti-Semitic comments on this electronic medium are merely an expression of anti-Semitic sentiment that has been around for generations, regardless of the Internet.

Anti-Semitism is a natural phenomenon depending solely on the Jews. The world is under nature’s governance, and Jews hold the potential to be above nature in their ability to bring themselves and the whole of humanity closer to the revelation of the upper force.

What does it mean that the Jews have the ability to be “above nature”? It means that the Jews became known as “Jews” through the spiritual unity (“love your friend as yourself”) they discovered under Abraham’s guidance in ancient Babylon (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]). Such unity is considered as above nature, because

• Human nature is a desire to enjoy for self-benefit alone.
• Unity with and love for others is foreign to human nature, and thus
• Achieving unity among people requires a special revelation—of the upper force, a connecting force of
  love and bestowal—in order to rise above our nature to the second, spiritual nature.

The Jews lost contact with this spiritual nature about 2,000 years ago when they went into exile and dispersed around the world. However, the fact that the Jews once attained spiritual unity remains latent within them, and as the need for such unity starts becoming sensed on a global scale—with a lot of problems revealing worldwide that have no comprehensive solution but in rising to a higher, spiritual level—then there is an increasing demand on the Jewish people by the nations of the world, who subconsciously expect a solution to their problems from the Jews. Thus, anti-Semitism rises in order to pressure Jews around the world to wake up to their role.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism the same? How are they similar?“

Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are definitely connected. Anti-Zionism only started being felt toward the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century with the First and Second Aliyah. Arabs were against the return of the Jews. The Jews who wanted to return to Israel were met with Arab opposition. The Arabs even waged war against the Jews who came to settle in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberius, and other nearby places.

Also, anti-Zionism is a result of the Turkish and British rule over Palestine. They used divide-and-conquer tactics to complicate relations between Jews and Arabs, cunningly positioning them against each other in order to establish their governance over them.

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