Question: What is the method of teaching Kabbalah to children?

Answer: It is very easy to explain any phenomenon to a child. It only seems difficult to us; however, that is not so.

It is written that the one teaching a child is as if writing on a blank sheet of paper, whereas we, grown-ups, must write on paper we ourselves have doodled on. First we must neutralize our thoughts, desires, prejudices, and preconceptions, erase many things within, and only after we can try writing something. But experience shows that it is easy working with children.

I have seen this in my son’s example. When I began studying with Rabash, I would repeat the material we read during the lesson at home. My seven year-old son would sit next to me, and I would recite the text back to him in order to better take in the material. I saw that he perceived and remembered it better than I did. I asked him questions, and he answered correctly.

Then I understood that the more pure the person, even still a child, the more naturally he perceives Kabbalah. This is because in reality, it is a science of nature, and we see this on the children. I am jealous of how naturally they all perceive it!

Many things register in them simply through repetition, without having to sense them, because their sensory mechanism has not yet been developed. The sensation will come at a later time, during the time of the eruption of hormones. But by then, they will already be filled with different laws and formulas. So once their hormones will start working and desires will begin to surge, they will know how to regulate them.
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From Lesson 6, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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We are developing the method of correction during our daily lessons. We build it from the primary sources and their explanations, from questions and answers. We are creating an educational system within the same framework.

A special channel of dissemination of Kabbalah for the entire world opens here. After all, education is every parent’s headache or, actually, a heartache. Everyone is concerned about their children in every part of the world, North and South America, Asia, Africa, Russia and Europe, China and Japan. The problem of education is awakening everywhere to various extents.

This is why the world is ready to listen to our developments in this area. We are communicating with UNESCO, the top organization responsible for education around the world. We were very well received, and our representatives have already participated in two events in New York and Moscow.

We have discovered that the world is aching to solve this problem, but no one has the solution. UNESCO has high expectations for us, and they are inspired with the quantity of our materials regarding this topic. It is true that today, our materials are breaking all boundaries. Every week we produce 50-100 pages of new text. At the same time, we are working on a new book which will be published under the aegis of UNESCO. Several more large projects are waiting in line.

There is no doubt that if we manage to create one “good” generation, in their turn, they will know how to raise their children. For this reason, the entire problem is in figuring out a way to form one generation that will receive an education instead of plain knowledge, which will give us the ability to turn the children into human beings in the  full sense of this word.

They will know the reason and purpose of their existence, how they can connect with one another, why they begin with the breaking, and why they need to correct themselves. Briefly speaking, they will know how to have a proper attitude toward the world.

Next, we are realizing educational programs with the group of our children. We correct it and find many new approaches along the way. For example, we have discovered that children teach one another very well. For instance, the fourteen-year-old teaches the ten-year-old.

This is because the younger ones see the older ones as role models, and they want to be like them, while the older ones are proud of their role. In the end, the age difference creates a great bond. Overall, children growing up according to the new method become completely different.

Essentially, the entirety of Kabbalah is a science of education; we use it to educate ourselves. However, this becomes very evident among children. It is no mistake that they happen to be growing up in our arms from their infancy. The matter depends on us because they are already prepared to receive the spiritual method of education from us.

The Study of the Ten Sefirot explains the growth of the spiritual person within us. We can raise a child according to the same principles as we take him through the years (degrees) toward maturity, not just the physical one, but the spiritual one. This is the method we are trying to develop, build, and realize.

This summer, we are planning to open a two-week summer camp for children around the world. The program will be broadcast over the Internet so that every child can connect to the common activities since this will be happening over the summer vacation. We will try to support the children’s unity in the future as well so that they will eventually grow into the new, international, virtual as well as physical group.
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From Lesson 6, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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Question: My three year old daughter watches your lessons together with me. Is this material enough for her, or does she need other content?

Answer: I am hearing many similar questions here, and it surprises me a lot. What do you expect of such young children? Who told you that you should drag a three-year-old girl to the lesson? Where have you seen this? Why are you not learning from what we do with our children?

We do not do this. See what we do, and do the same. We gradually let children older than six listen to certain things and sing together with us.
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From Lesson 7, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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Question: Hundreds and thousands of American children are practically left to themselves, and multiple social services that are supposed to handle them fail completely. Are there any books on this issue that we can offer them?

Answer: So far, there are not, but we are working on them. I hope that in three to six months, you will start receiving a series of books containing the method of raising children of different ages: how to form groups, conduct discussions, influence their development, and build a connection between them.

Besides, you don’t have to wait for our materials; you should join us and together with us participate in the process of writing such books! A person who isn’t engaged in spreading the wisdom has no chance to advance spiritually. How can one channel the Light if there is no yearning to pass it on to others?

Take the American Education Center as an example; participate in dissemination or we won’t succeed and will keep developing very slowly. We need the force, a lot of it! We really need your help!
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From Lesson 6, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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Question: Should we begin the Kabbalistic education with our children, to make them an example for the outside world, or are we ready to address the outside world, and the only question is how to go about it?

Answer: Parents must educate their children, this is designed by nature. Therefore, if, as a parent, I understand that the best gift I can give my child is the connection with the Light, the Creator, the force that can protect him and raise him to the highest possible level, the force that accompanies him or her in this world and the next, I will certainly want to give my child this support, this shield.

I want for my child to be brought up by the Light and not just some school teacher. First and foremost, I want to give him or her a spiritual education, and in addition to that he can study in a school or a university. I don’t care as much whether he becomes a blue-collar worker or a professor; what I do care about is the spiritual baggage he ends his life with, whether he’ll be happy in this life, whether he’ll know what his life is for.

Therefore, a spiritual education is immeasurably more important than a material one, which changes direction every few years. These days, when a person concludes his education, he is forced to begin anew almost right away. The world is on the threshold of the informational revolution.

Should we first educate our kids and disseminate the system of spiritual education with their help, or should we cultivate spiritual education in the world directly? We must propagate spiritual education now, without delay. A lot of time will go by before our children grow up and we will be able to present them to the world. We are already preparing materials on the spiritual education method, without any connection to our kids, and disseminating them in the world in all languages through various non-commercial organizations.

We’re bringing up our children, and we will be glad to see children from other countries join us virtually as well as participate in the summer camps we will be organizing. We need to see the result of the Kabbalistic education on our children.

We already see it, but it’s not enough to address the world and show everyone what’s happening here. If in two to three years from now we can show five-six year old kids reasoning correctly, eleven-twelve year olds with mature personalities who understand what’s happening in the world, and fifteen-sixteen year olds finishing universities, then we’ll have something to show the world.
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From Lesson 6, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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Kabbalah for the Nation Introductory Lecture Series, “Spiritual Feeling”
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Question: Are children born with the point in the heart, filled with absolute love?

Answer: No, there are no people born with the point in the heart, full of love of others. On the contrary, a child is born with a ruined point in the heart. It is precisely this black point that we refer to as the “point in the heart.” He needs to develop, expand, correct, and fulfill it through connecting with others.

There are children born with the point in the heart, and there are those whose point in this incarnation has not yet “emerged” and they do not yet feel the question about the meaning of life.

Question: Do small children have contact with the Creator, and do we need to create conditions for the development of their spirituality from their early months of life?

Answer: We begin to work with children after they turn three. Until that age, they do not perceive anything but their animate state.

We need to form the proper attitude towards others in children. They do not understand what others are until the age of three. But at the age of three they develop initial “social relations” with other children, they already play together. This is why it is possible to start working with them.
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From Lesson 7, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

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Question: Even though our world is an imaginary reality, Kabbalists treat it very seriously. Why is that?

Answer: It’s because we grow and act while being inside of it. Even though this reality is definitely imaginary, you have to take it seriously and arrange things in it as if it really exists.

Imagine that you joined a group of children and are playing with them as seriously as possible, making the game real the way they do. The little ones are running around, trying to put something together and arguing over toys, but to them—this is life. And you participate in their life, helping them put its parts together so they would grow quickly and correctly in this “sand-box.”

This requires a serious attitude. It takes great efforts to raise a child in this world, and a person must treat himself in exactly the same way. This is how he should treat the spiritual child that is growing inside of him. You cannot make any compromises in this regard: I take care of myself, my family, children, and parents, and all the material needs. And even though all of this is obviously an illusion, that doesn’t matter.

The pictures of the material world are depicted in my brain by the egoistic desire and I cannot correct that desire because it is on the still level. Even the great Kabbalist Rabbi Shimon had to eat, drink, make a living, and take care of his students. Do you really think they were floating up in the clouds, not worrying about their families and about putting bread on the table?

This world is part of my growth, “including toothaches,” as Rabash used to say. The only difference is that I must aspire upwards over and over again, toward bestowal, toward the spiritual world. Kabbalists have a different problem: How to remain serious inside of this children’s sand-box. And they are obligated to do that. That is why they have such a responsible attitude to upbringing and other areas in the material world. A person has to provide for all of his vital needs.

Corporeality disappears from our sensations only at the end of correction when there is no more need for this game of the imagination.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/11, Writings of Rabash

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Kabbalah for the Nation Introductory Lecture Series, “Going Out From Egypt”
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You cannot turn to the masses with our spiritual message. It is completely not intended for them. On the contrary, they do not have to connect to it because otherwise you will already seem “corrupted” to them. Your goal is opposite to the masses. It is written about this, “The opinion of the Torah is contrary to the opinion of the layman.”

By now we have done enough to disseminate the science of Kabbalah to those with a point in the heart all over the whole world and in different languages. Whoever has a point in the heart will always be able to find us.

Now our problem is to educate humanity as a whole. This is the beginning of the general correction. Until now we have disseminated Kabbalah to the people called “Israel” in order to gather them from the whole world. But now the time has come to do what Baal HaSulam writes in the article “Messiah’s Horn”: to disseminate the science of Kabbalah to the nations. And at the first stage, that means doing so without mentioning the world Kabbalah.

We have to bring people to a new understanding and sensation which will enable them, on the next stage, to agree with what the science of Kabbalah says about this. Let them get a bit wiser. The Rambam says that the essence has to be revealed gradually to the “women, children, and slaves.” And we are acting according to what this great Kabbalist wrote.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/11, “The Freedom”

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