Dear Friends!
As a result of the attempt of the interested parties to tarnish the name of the association Bnei Baruch – Kabbalah La’am and to label it with untrue facts, we consider it necessary to clarify that we will persist and continue the mass dissemination of the value of unification. We will do everything to avoid unnecessary conflicts, but the main thing is to continue to openly demonstrate, despite all the defamation and slander, that the principle of uniting people over all differences is a solution to any problem and any crisis.
From the great Kabbalist Baal Shem Tov, through Ramchal, Rambam, and Rav Kook to Baal HaSulam, during the lifetime of all generations, Kabbalah faced resistance and Kabbalists faced persecutions. Naturally, opponents of Kabbalah La’am, the world’s largest non-profit association for the study of Kabbalah, also appear.
Over the past 22 years, none of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of students in Israel and throughout the world, cannot claim that someone has inflicted on him deliberate harm or has shown him deliberate disrespect. At the same time, it is clear that among hundreds of thousands there are also those whose expectations we did not meet.
As a pluralistic association Kabbalah La’am is open to everyone, and everyone has full freedom to choose the framework of their spiritual pursuits. We stand for a life full of meaning and joy, based on love for one’s neighbor. This is the essence of our studies and activities. Any other version that the interested party is trying to spread is wrong and false. We will not play into the hands of disunity and disinformation.
In recent days, social networks are spreading a promotion of the program that will soon be shown by the broadcasting corporation “Kaan,” a video full of defamation and slander of the association. We deemed it necessary to share with you our official position and clarify the facts that we will pass on to the media and all comers.
Statement: Kabbalah La’am is trying to get into politics.
Truth: The goals of the non-profit association “Kabbalah La’am” are to study and disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah. Our goal is to spread the value of unity based on the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself,” which is the supreme principle of Kabbalah.
The Kabbalah La’am association has never participated in political actions. Tens of thousands of our students are professionally employed in various fields, and in the nature of their activities, many of them promote a variety of initiatives and ideas. Being in constant search of ways to raise positive values of unity in the people of Israel, some of our students put forward an initiative to use a political platform for a wider coverage. This initiative was implemented in two cases:
- In 2013, several students, residents of the city of Petah Tikva, created a list to run for the City Council and promote the idea of unification and mutual guarantee in the city. To this end, they established the association “Be-yahad le-ma’an Petah-Tikva 2013.” About 12,000 people voted for this list, and it became a faction with four mandates.
- In 2014, several students offered to promote the idea of unity of the people by joining the ruling party. They initiated the accession process and attracted thousands of people to the Likud party.
Accusation: Kabbalah La’am uses libel suits to suppress criticism.
Truth: Freedom of speech is part of the core values within the framework of the Kabbalah La’am association. We respect any creative criticism, but we resolutely reject any false and tendentious statements that are malicious in nature and are aimed at destroying the association. Evil and lying statements are among the main factors of dissociation and hatred. Promoting unity and love, we are not ready to allow anyone to undermine the ramified and beneficial activities of Kabbalah La’am, discrediting and defaming its good name. The very wisdom of Kabbalah obliges us to answer. The name “Kabbalah La’am” is a respected brand created over the years by hard work and it is enjoying great sympathy in the broader Israeli society. It is important to emphasize that in all cases when we decided to apply to the court to protect our good name, the defendants were obliged to apologize to us publicly and to remove offensive publications.
Accusation: Kabbalah La’am controls the actions of its students. It is also alleged that among other things, illegal or immoral acts occur that lead to personal problems, separation from the family, discrimination against women, use of pills, and other malicious inventions, such as ignoring a suicide case.
Truth:
- Kabbalah La’am is a pluralistic organization that accepts everyone who wants to study the wisdom of Kabbalah. It is administered exclusively in the spirit of the Kabbalistic sources that teach us how to build relationships based on compassion, care, and love between the person and others, in the family, and so on. Nobody interferes in any way with the personal lives of millions of our supporters and dictates to no one how to live and how to behave in life. Our house is open and we act with directness and transparency. All lessons and activities are filmed and broadcast to the general public, and everyone is invited to evaluate and decide what form of studying and degree of involvement suits him.
- All activities of the association are controlled by the accounting firm, as well as government departments such as the Registrar of non-profit associations, tax authorities, and so on, who have repeatedly checked our association and decided that its activities are conducted in accordance with the rules of proper, accountable administration. It is important to note that paragraph 46 has been approved for our association, which is granted only to those associations that operate with full transparency under strict supervision by the Registrar and the tax authorities.
- It is enough to visit one of our meetings or one of the events to see how important women are for us. Women make up about 60% of the students who study in Kabbalah La’am, and they are equal to men in everything!
- Dr. Michael Laitman was previously involved in counseling and treatment with alternative medicine. In the framework of this activity, patients from all over Israel and the world visited him. The granules that were used as part of this therapy are homeopathic dragees, widely used in the field of alternative medicine.
- You can think of many more stories, but every sane person understands that if they contained at least a grain of truth, they would have long been in the media and the courts.
It is important and relevant to emphasize that following the deceptive and defamatory reportage, we filed a libel suit against journalist Gur Megido and the public broadcaster Kaan. Since then, in order to get out of the legal difficulties that he is facing, Gur Megido devoted much of his time to setting up an “investigation” of the activities of our association, allocating hundreds of thousands of shekels of taxpayers’ funds for this.
The result of this more than six-month long “investigation” is a set of fictions and false libel, partly already disproved in court. They are submitted by interested “presenters,” who for years have been doing their best to harm the association and publicly tarnish it. Some of the characters appearing in the report were removed from the association’s activities because of their unacceptable and non-normative behavior, which in some cases was even a criminal offense. According to the principles of Kabbalah, we consider it our duty to appeal in the court to make the truth public. We will continue to act in the same way in the future, including the case with this report.
Kabbalah teaches us that the path to general correction includes two opposites, the negative and the positive. Therefore, we are glad that our spiritual progress is also manifested in the resistance to Kabbalah, which the greatest Kabbalists encountered throughout history. Let’s hope that we will be able to use this resistance in order to further strengthen the spread of the wisdom of Kabbalah in Israel and in the world.
At the same time, as an organization that proclaims a “one family” as its main value, we regret that we are compelled to participate in such conflicts.
We will be glad to receive feedback from all our friends and together we will continue our work with openness and transparency, moving along the chosen path with an open heart and a head held high.
Kabbalah La’am
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Question: What impact does ignorance about the program of creation and reluctance to know it have on world history?
