My new article on Linkedin “Is This Awful Summer the Best Summer of the Rest of Our Lives?”

I am not afraid of the pandemic; I am afraid that nature has started to relate to us the way we relate to it. It seems as though chaos has taken over the world. Natural disasters of unprecedented magnitude are occurring in multiple places simultaneously: unheard-of floods in some places, unparalleled fires in other places, sometimes a few hundred miles apart, and scorching heat in still other places. At the same time, the coronavirus is spreading once again with the Delta variant, and threatens to hamper humanity’s efforts to recover from the pestilence, while international relations are growing increasingly tense and volatile. But worst of all is the trend: it’s negative. Things are not only bad, but quickly worsening. If this trend continues, this awful summer will be the best summer of the rest of our lives.

We need to think things over. It makes no sense that so many crises are happening all over the world at the same time, that a virus is spreading around the world and disrupts the lives of every person in humanity, and all of these are unrelated incidents.

Perhaps you can blame climate change for natural disasters, but you cannot blame it for countries threatening to destroy one another. There is a deeper cause to our woes, and we can find it only in ourselves. When we analyze all the crises, we find that the one common element in all of them is man. If we are the common element, then the reason for the crises is within us.

More precisely, the reason for the crises is how we relate to nature and to one another. Nature is a perfect system. It maintains a dynamic balance we call homeostasis. Contrary to nature’s balance, we seek only to take and overtake. We have forced our winner-take-all attitude on a system that operates in a manner that guarantees everyone’s sustenance and well-being. We injected hatred, violence, and meanness into a system that contained none of it before. Now it seems as though that system is paying us back in our own coin: the currency of hatred.

If we wish to avoid unimaginable catastrophes, we must abandon the currency we’ve used so far and adopt nature’s currency of mutual responsibility and consideration. We have to start respecting each other’s right to lead healthy and safe lives, without trying to subjugate them, but for this, we must feel that we are all parts of one, global system.

Our sages knew all this thousands of years ago, and talked about this with anyone who wished to listen. The Jerusalem Talmud, for example, offers a beautiful allegory about our connectedness: “If the writing warns about habitual mistreatment, vengeance and bearing a grudge should be forbidden also toward those who are not from among your nation. Also, how is it possible for one to forgive an affront? [Suppose] one is cutting meat, and the knife descends into his hand; would he consider avenging his hand and cutting his other hand for cutting the first? So is this matter … the rule is that one does not take revenge against one’s neighbor, for it is as though he is taking revenge against his own body” (Nedarim 9:4).

We really haven’t any time to waste. Nature is clearly signaling that it is losing patience. If it erupts in all its wrath, Covid will be the least of our worries. Therefore, to save ourselves, we must start treating each other, and all of nature, as we would like others to treat us.
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Only good forces come to us from above, but if we are not ready to receive them, we feel them as blows. This is the case with the coronavirus. If we were ready to accept this force, which eventually came to us in the form of a pandemic, if we united to become internally closer to each other in the face of danger, it would not have manifested itself.

Look how animals unite against a common disaster. When they run together, fleeing from a flood or a forest fire, they no longer attack each other. They feel that they must save their lives, and their predatory instinct is suppressed by the instinct of self-preservation.

We are now in the same situation. The blows that we feel from nature or the Creator, the upper force, should push us to correct conclusions about how to get rid of them.

We need to see how animals behave, when fleeing from danger, they do not attack each other. The predator’s instinct disappears and only the instinct for the struggle for life remains. If we took an example from the animate level, we would have defeated the pandemic and correctly and successfully gotten out of this state.

But the problem is that we are not at the animal level. We are spoiled animals because we have human egoism, which poisons everything.

Therefore, we cannot even think in the direction of connection, unity, and closeness in order to escape from the pandemic. Even in the context of a global pandemic, governments and individuals are trying to make profits and cash-in on each other because they believe this will bring them wealth and success.

Thus, they make the trouble twice as bad, incur double the problems. Instead of being together with others and thus softening the force of Gevura, they multiply the power of evil. Therefore, we will have to learn through suffering.

The pandemic does not come to make people sick or kill them, but to teach us how to behave toward each other. But for now, we see that we are not learning, but we are going the opposite direction, that is, the path of suffering. Every country thinks that it can succeed and win at the expense of other countries and nations. And this is the mistake.

However, gradually, under these blows, we will descend to simple survival like on the animal level, and then we will begin to see that it is worth helping each other and not hurting others when you are running from a common disaster together.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/21, “The Ruin as an Opportunity for Correction”

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My new article on Linkedin “Humanity’s Next Level of Development”

A strong burst of accelerated human development pulsates through the world over a certain period of time. Such a pulse occurred in the Middle Ages and culminated in the era of the Industrial Revolution touching off breakthroughs in all areas—in science and technology, in culture and education, in society and philosophy. Unusual leaps in spiritual development also occur in the same manner.

Accelerated development is the result of a force that underlies society and all creation: the force of desire. Human desire constantly expands and, as a result of it, there is an endless quest for new ways to fulfill our intensifying yearning. The power of desire acts in individuals and in society in general in the form of self-centeredness, that is, in an egoistic, selfish intention for our own pleasure, including those achieved at the expense of the good of others.

But all the developments of the world point in one direction: to prepare mankind for a spiritual connection of perfect reciprocity, both between human beings, and between all the elements of nature and the supreme power. So even when we ostensibly develop selfish human systems, we inadvertently prepare the infrastructure for beautiful and corrected future connections.

Take the development of the internet as an example. Social media has become a hotbed of vitriolic discourse between people, with hatred often on open display which is completely the opposite to creating good interconnection. However, the current set up could serve as a perfect preparation for social media to carry positive messages of harmonious human connection.

Today the impetus towards more communication between all the inhabitants of the world is evident through two main epicenters: Covid-19 and immigration. The Covid plague is drawing us closer together through unmistakable and inextricable global ties around the world. The disease appears in one place and it immediately spreads everywhere with incredible speed.

Mass migration is another phenomenon that can no longer be stopped. Although prime ministers resist because the situation is spinning out of control, humanity has already permeated beyond the political boundaries formerly set. Immigrants have discovered that their opportunities are improved in more permissive and tolerant environments, and this has fostered the incentive for massive migratory movements. The phenomenon will intensify until we see representatives from different peoples in every country, societies worldwide will become increasingly diverse and complex at the same time.

In fact, we see that human interventions in society such as the one that we have just described, impact us like a head-on collision: countries are destroyed, cultures collapse, violence increases. So, the puzzling question emerges: How can difficult and complex processes lead to ideal connections?

The processes themselves are neither beautiful nor pleasant, but the beauty of them is that they lead to truth, to the opening of eyes, to the recognition of what exactly is broken and needs to be fixed. On one hand, this means that our total interdependence is exposed, and on the other hand, the revelation of this interdependence only comes about through negative events. Thus, one fact will gradually settle for us: our interdependence is inescapable and the negative connections between us are the only source of all trouble in the world, they are the only thing we must correct.

What next? Mankind will have to realize the full potential of its force of desire, to use all its resources to strengthen the bonds between us until we transcend the material sphere to an internal unity through which the thought of nature and the good and benevolent force behind it will be revealed.
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My new article on Linkedin “Setting Higher Goals for Our Children This Summer”

After a disruptive school year caused by Covid restrictions the long-awaited summer break is here. In order to reintroduce some kind of learning framework to children this summer, an overwhelming majority of large school districts in America are providing summer school programs. If implemented correctly, it is the right move. Excessive free time is a recipe for disaster.

Around 97 of 100 districts across the U.S. are offering summer school programming, in-person, virtually, or a combination of both. The plans include recreational trips, outdoor activities, and artistic programs according to monitoring educational organizations. After the challenging circumstances imposed by the pandemic, these measures could be an example for other societies around the world.

Children should not feel that they have so much free time that they have no idea what to do with themselves and hours seem to stretch endlessly. They need to have their time organized so that they will be happy with the built-in agenda, and understand that the expected plans are exactly what they want and need. Otherwise we spoil them.

There is nothing worse for them than free time with a huge void wasted lying on the couch, staring at the screen, or wandering around in the street. Children are not used to having free time and filling it themselves, so giving them “freedom” is like teaching them not to do anything. Children have desires and thoughts, all kinds of natural impulses, and we sort of tell them, “Do nothing with your drive or aspirations. What are they good for? What benefit will you get from them?”

There is of course time to rest, but it is not advisable to lie on your back for hours or walk around aimlessly. Playing football or dancing after studying geography for example, can be a break. Anything that is different from the intense action that preceded it is called resting.

If children are left without studies and without other activities, the impulses that are naturally vibrant in them can lead them to bad places. Parents should be greatly concerned about their children having unlimited freedom and should contemplate ways to fill their time constructively in order to further their development.

Firstly, a clear goal should be established: What do the parents want the children to achieve with their free time so they can provide enriching activities accordingly. In my opinion, the most important goal is to build the children into integral human beings, to develop a person who knows how to communicate properly with others, how to manage complex situations, how to create beautiful relationships with others, and who achieves in-depth understanding on the multiple levels in nature: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human.

With the goal of elevating the child to a higher scale of merit as a human being—one with values, sensitivity, and consideration of others—the activities programmed for our children must have nurturing content that develops their thoughts and expands their feelings. At the end of the activity, it is valuable to promote a discussion for them to share their experiences with each other.

We should consider bringing children to the theater, to the symphony, to various museums. As a child, I lived in a city in Belarus that had a large building specifically designed for children. In the summer, I sat in a photo lab and developed pictures in a darkroom. In the winter, we went skiing together. These are only examples of some activities that could be implemented according to the conditions of each society.

Today, the schools we enroll our children in and entrust their education and a significant part of their upbringing have largely become breeding grounds for crime, violence, promiscuity, bullying, and drug dealing. Everything except what we would wish for our offspring.

A summer break where time is properly managed by parents can heal some of the hardships of the past year, but the real test of educating our children will be in the next school year. The education system, with just a few of its deficiencies touched upon, was founded about one hundred and fifty years ago. We need to think carefully about whether it is suitable for today’s world.

Let’s thoroughly examine and scrutinize what we are doing with the institution called “school” and the education we provide for our children. The scrutiny should include the appropriate plans for how to spend the next summer break. As adults, thinking about the future of our kids’ education might be a good idea on how to spend our free time this summer.
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My new article on Linkedin “Headed for Another Masked Summer?”

The summer vacation has barely begun, and we are already seeing signs that it might soon end, or at least the fun part about it. Covid-19 is returning to Israel in a big way and threatens to do this summer what it did last summer, keep us at home, or at least at a distance from each other. It seems as though nature has no mercy on the children, who only want to enjoy the summer—their brief break from a traumatizing school year riddled with corona lockdowns.

But then, why should nature have mercy on children if we, their parents, don’t? That is, through our own misconduct, we are bringing on them the lockdown that we could prevent if we only conducted ourselves more responsibly. If we were better parents, we’d do what we have to do, both regarding ourselves and regarding our children.

And what we have to do is reorganize our relationships. Otherwise, we will not be able to cope with Covid, and certainly not with the upcoming viruses that are already standing in line to plague us, and which are bound to be more troublesome than the current pestilence.

Until we learn that we must rearrange our relationships from competitive to supportive and from callous to caring, nothing good will happen. We must understand that our only cure from the virus is by healing our hearts from negative thoughts about others, developing positive ones, and connecting with the very same people we currently repel.

To connect means to understand and feel that I am dependent on others. I may live in my physical body, but the heart of this body is in someone else, not in me. And not only is it in someone else, but in everybody else besides me. In other words, each and every one of us is entirely dependent on everyone else. We don’t determine our fates, and we don’t determine our present. In fact, we don’t determine anything; our interconnections determine everything, and we only follow the dictates of this network, consciously or not.

Even if we cannot feel this right now, we should at least understand that this is so and realize that if that’s the case, then “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not some lofty motto that no one takes seriously, but our only hope of changing our lives, of shifting them toward a positive direction.

We can ignore it and continue treading the path of meanness we have nurtured so fervently for so many decades, but it won’t be long before life forces us through pain to rethink our route.

The virus isn’t our enemy; it is showing us the truth of our interdependence. Had we acted on this truth, we would not have had a pandemic whatsoever. Our social responsibility would have made us separate ourselves once we got sick until we got better, and the virus would not have spread. This, by the way, is what sick bats do in order not to infect other members of their cloud (a colony of bats). If we had their sense of responsibility, we wouldn’t be talking about the Covid-19 pandemic, certainly not two years down the line.

Because we are utterly dependent on each other, we influence each other. This is why it is so important that we monitor our feelings toward others and try to cultivate positive ones. By doing so, we will influence others, who will influence still others, even without speaking about it. Before long, that positive wave will come back to us and to our children.

We determine each other’s fate, so let’s be responsible. Let’s draw the obvious conclusion that “Love your neighbor as yourself” is our only viable option for the future. We have tried everything else and look where we are: on the verge of another masked summer. Now that it’s getting to our children, we should stop taking risks. I hope we will learn and implement this lesson that nature is trying desperately to teach us before it resorts to harsher means.
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A poll conducted after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict showed that Jews in the USA are against Israel. They think that approval of the ultra-left will save them from pogroms, as was the case when Nazis first came to power in Germany. 100 years later, history is repeating itself!

@WHODirector-General @DrTedros: “The mortality rate is rising again. The #Delta variant is rampant in the world. The #pandemic is not over anywhere. It will take collective action to defeat it.”

My Comment: Nature will bring us, against our will, to the need to unite in order to survive, if we don’t wish to unite on our own! #COVID19

Everything depends only on our aspiration to be united, “Love your neighbor as yourself”
This is the mission of the Israeli #government!
Otherwise we will bring ourselves to exile again.
It says so in all our sources.
This should be the directive for our government!

We have to realize that this land will belong to us only on the condition that we correspond to it, that we strive to be the nation of #Israel, similar to the Creator in the quality of bestowal and love.
Otherwise we will bring ourselves to exile again.

Up to 34% #Jews in the USA think that #Israel is an #apartheid state! Just like in Nazi Germany, they will have to learn the truth through their personal experience…
From Twitter, 7/13/21

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My new article on Linkedin “Living with Covid”

To me, the news of experts realizing that Covid-19 isn’t going anywhere is good news. From the very beginning, I said that even if there is a vaccine or a drug that cures Covid, the virus will mutate or another bug will come along and render our efforts futile. As I have said probably hundreds of times since the beginning of the outbreak, trying to outsmart nature with technology will not work. We are products of nature, so trying to outsmart our producer is, to put it mildly, unwise.

Personally, I am happy that this is the way nature is directing us. I am not at all happy that people are suffering, but they are not suffering because of nature, but because humanity is obstinate and insists on going where nature isn’t going. When you bump your head against the wall of reality, you’re bound to get a major headache. In the case of humanity, this headache manifests in millions of needless fatalities and countless people suffering from long lasting symptoms because of our mulishness.

Like it or not, Covid is telling us to slow down. The technological rat-race we’ve been on has nearly devastated humanity, and we need to calm down and bring it under control. People need to stop fighting and start talking about what really matters: our relationships.

Since we cannot communicate with each other positively in the physical realm, nature has shifted us to the virtual one. If we learn to communicate positively in that realm, we will see Covid easing its grip and letting us communicate with each other physically, too.

Nature is using Covid to teach us that our real immune system is not in our bodies but in our hearts, in how we relate to one another and how we feel about each other. Since we are all connected, one person’s ill-will percolates to everyone else, and our negative emotions spread like viruses and sicken us. Positive emotions percolate and spread, as well, but those are desperately scarce, hence the pitiful state of humanity.

The vaccines are helpful in keeping the pandemic at bay, but as long as we avoid making the necessary changes in our relations, the virus will keep returning in various forms and intensities until we realize that we need a more fundamental change than just a new vaccine. Covid is not a strain of flu. The way to remove it is not physical, but emotional. Only when we comprehend this, we will be able to heal ourselves, after we heal our malignant relationships. Then, we won’t have to go on living with Covid.
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Comment: I recently saw a photograph of a prescription given to an elderly woman by a doctor on the Internet. For the past year, she has maintained a distance of six feet from others, even with family members, as recommended. She got vaccinated and still continued to follow these rules. She did not even come close to her beloved granddaughter who was born sickly, and whom she had cared for. It was very difficult for her, but she was more afraid for her loved ones, not for herself.

This woman began to get very sick. They were preparing to say goodbye to her. Medicine did not help, nothing helped, and then the doctor in despair wrote her a prescription: “You are allowed to hug your granddaughter.” She hugged her and began to recover.

My Response: Naturally. That person deprived herself of powerful sensations. It is impossible to live like this. She was already killing herself with this relationship with others.

Question: What is a hug? What is this revitalization?

Answer: This is a great power. If a person is deprived of the feeling of love, even animals—we know this from animals; they perceive it very clearly—it turns their whole life upside down. Nothing can be done, we must love each other.

Comment: In general, this woman could communicate with her granddaughter at a distance, but this was not enough for her. She needed just physical contact—to hug her granddaughter.

My Response: Of course. Nothing else.

Question: Now that we have been separated like this, and then suddenly, perhaps, we will be brought together, we will be able to understand what love is after all. We will understand that if we are deprived of it, this is not life. Was that why we were separated so that we would approach this embrace differently?

Answer: Yes. I agree. The distance was created for us on purpose so that we would have a real craving for each other.
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From KabTV’s: “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/1/21

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My new article on Linkedin “Human Relations in the Age of Lockdowns”

A response to one of my recent posts said that on the one hand, I say that Covid-19 has come in order to make us stay at home and disconnect from one another. On the other hand, I say that it came to teach us how to be close to nature. But since human nature is to connect with others, as we are social beings, there is an apparent contradiction here since you cannot connect if you are locked down at home.

A line in a piece of Jewish poetry called “Go My Beloved,” reads, “The end of the work is in the preliminary thought.” It means that when you do something, you must think of the final outcome that you want to achieve before you begin to work on achieving it. Otherwise, you are certain to go the wrong way.

The same goes for Covid and how humanity should deal with it. It is very true that humans are social beings. Moreover, the whole purpose of humanity is to connect in a way that benefits both individuals and human society. But to achieve this goal, we need to know how to connect in a way that yields these benefits. If we connect incorrectly, we are harming ourselves, human society, and our entire planet.

Currently, there is no question that we are connecting incorrectly. A quick scan of human relations around the world reveals a frightening picture of enmity, abuse, rampant killing and murders between countries and within countries, financial exploitation, a military arms race, ambitions to obtain nuclear weapons, race related social tensions, depression, oppression, aggression, and every imaginable form of malice. Human society is rife with inhumanity.

Until now, nature has let us “sort things out for ourselves,” so to speak. But over the past several decades, it has become clear that we are either unwilling or unable to change, and in our efforts to destroy one another, we will destroy our home planet.

So, what do parents do when their children don’t stop fighting and can’t work things out by themselves? They send them to their separate rooms. Clearly, the parents would like nothing more than to see their beloved children get along and become best friends. But if all their efforts to make peace between their children fail, they have to stop the fighting by separating the children altogether. Afterwards, when the fighting has stopped, the parents and the children can calmly examine their relations and start connecting more positively. Yet, even when they are permitted to connect, the children must always remember that they can be sent back to their rooms if they misbehave once more.

Nature is dealing with us much like those parents. It no longer settles for “punishing” us locally, through natural disasters or other local crises. It has sent us a global blow that has shut down humanity’s hostile operations toward others and toward nature. Just like those loving parents from the example, the idea is not to disconnect us from each other altogether. On the contrary, the idea is to allow us to learn how to connect to one another positively, one step at a time.

As soon as we begin to want to connect positively, nature will respond positively. It does not operate like a person, but more like a machine that responds to certain stimuli. Anything that operates similar to it arouses nature’s positive response, and anything that operates contrary to it arouses a negative response.

Since nature functions as a harmonious and balanced system, as I wrote in my previous post, if we build a balanced and harmonious human society, nature will not impose any restrictions or limitations on us. But if we insist on bullying each other, well, nature is a bigger bully than any of us. I hope for all of us that we will learn nature’s lessons sooner rather than after it demonstrates its strength.
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My new article on Linkedin “Here Comes the Delta Wave”

For anyone who thought that Covid-19 left us along with the year 2020, the new strain, called Delta, has news: Covid isn’t going anywhere. As I have been saying since the beginning of the outbreak (check my posts from a year and a half ago), the coronavirus isn’t yet another bug; it is ushering in a new era, and it will change every aspect of our lives. The faster we learn the characteristics of this new era, the sooner we will be rid of the virus. So far, we have been reluctant students, so the virus keeps coming back, hence the Delta strain.

We have already been forced to change many things in our lives. We no longer fly frantically from place to place (perhaps except during holidays), and many more of us want to work more from home, or only from home. Nevertheless, these are only superficial changes. The real change has to take place within!

That change should be a complete overhaul of our relationships. Until today, we’ve treated humanity as if it were separate from nature. The virus shows us that we are subject to the same laws as the rest of creation. When we don’t follow them, we impact the system negatively, and when the system becomes dysfunctional, because of our negativity, we suffer the consequences.

Our relationships are subject to the same laws as the rest of reality. In all of reality, there is balance and harmony. This is what allows systems to become stable and sustainable. Day and night are harmonious and balance each other out. The same goes for birth and death, the seasons of the year, and depletion and rejuvenation; everything is cyclic, harmonious, and balanced.

The only thing that is not cyclic, balanced, or harmonious is human relations. Until now, we have engaged in constant struggles that seek to harm, ridicule, humiliate, and patronize others. This was not a struggle for survival, as with the rest of nature. It was a war that strove to achieve absolute power, and degrade and abuse everyone else.

This is why I am thankful to Covid. For all the pain it has wrought on us, it has saved us from much greater harm we would have caused ourselves had it not arrived.

That said, we can make things that much better if we choose to follow nature’s dictate instead of being forced into it.

If we let our ill-will toward each other keep contaminating our relationships, we will suffer worsening consequences. But if we change our approach toward each other, not only will we feel better with each other, but nature, too, will treat us well, as we will be as balanced and harmonious as nature itself, and for the first time, a positive element in our world.
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