Question: What values did the people of Israel have before the descent to Egypt, at the time that they were there, and after the departure from Egypt? Did the people undergo some kind of change or process?

Answer: Yes, they descended into Egypt already with an intention in order to bestow, like the patriarchs.

The entry into Egypt is compulsory in every spiritual level since the person corrects only what is within him. So, first, he feels the problem; his discovery is called being in Egypt or the awakening of Egypt in the person. The exile signifies that all desires and thoughts are egoistic, and he feels this. If you were to tell someone today that he is an egoist and is found in Egypt, no one would understand this.

The inner feeling of Egypt is a feeling that I am in exile. If I am just an egoist, I know it and am even proud of benefiting at the expense of others. This is not called Egypt. Egypt, as exile, represents my wanting to be freed from the property of reception for myself and to rise to the property of bestowal. Yet, I am not able. The feeling of exile is born from a lack of correlation between what is desired and what is.

This is a very high state and very complicated. Feeling yourself in the Egyptian exile is not easy; it is a spiritual degree. If a person wants to attain spirituality, he comes to a group, learns, and connects with friends in order to pass together from hatred to love. They, then, suddenly feel themselves in exile because their egoistic desire dominates over them.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder” 3/4/13

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The Midrash, “The Book of Jethro”: When Jethro approached the camp of the sons of Israel, he wrote a letter to Moses saying: “Your father-in-law Jethro has come. Please come and meet me. If you don’t come out for my sake, please do it for your wife Zipporah; if not for her, do it for her two sons.” Jethro tied the letter to an arrow and shot it to the Cloud of Glory. The Cloud usually rejected everything, but it let this message through because of Moses.

This passage talks about an internal state of a person. There is no connection between the property of “Jethro” and the property of “Moses.” Moses detached himself from Jethro, and that’s why Jethro says, ”We have a chance to establish a connection between us; if not between you and me, then between you and Zipporah, if not with Zipporah, then with her two sons.” He is looking for a way to make a connection. “Sending an arrow to the Cloud of Glory” means that Moses stays at the next (higher) level and that it’s impossible to reach him.

When in spirituality they say that “somebody sends a message (or an envoy or an intermediary) to another because it’s not possible to directly approach him,” it means that two properties (receiving and bestowal) are incompatible and do not understand each other. Jethro is a property of receiving (egoism), whereas Moses represents a property of bestowal. These two properties are incompatible within one person, so there must be an “adapter” that connects them together. The only thing that the property named “Jethro” is capable of is to raise its desires and “send a message to the Cloud of Glory,” meaning to the property of Moses that he is otherwise incapable of approaching and understanding.

The separation that exists between Moses and Jethro is essential and indispensable. At this point, together they begin creating a connection. It is the time when egoistic properties start manifesting in the people of Israel. The people of Israel exited Egypt without correcting these properties; they simply contracted these qualities without implementing them.

This is the time when these qualities gradually begin to correct; Jethro is a manifestation of the same egoistic properties, but now they have a desire to attain the level of Moses. This level is already “seeded” in Jethro, since Moses spent 40 years together with Jethro (the distance from Malchut to Bina) laying this point in him. This point is “the arrow” that Jethro sends to Moses. Naturally, Moses turns his way and faces him since no man is capable of rejecting it since he realizes how essential it is for him.

Moses tells Jethro everything that happened to him. Jethro starts to feel what he is talking about and blesses the Creator for everything He did to Israel. These two properties within one person start sensing each other and get incorporated into each other. Before anything else, Moses has to do the work at the level of Bina, and then continue using his inferior (lower) qualities (so called “people,”) meaning that spiritual work is always done at the thinnest plane first and only afterwards coarser desires are added to it.

Moses transfers the Torah to Jethro to the degree that the Torah enters egoism and starts working inside it. After Jethro receives the Torah, he in his turn explains to Moses how to work with egoism.

The distance between Malchut and Bina are 40 steps (or 40 years.) Jethro is Malchut that rises to the level of Bina and attaches to it. Moses then includes himself into Jethro and starts working in him, which is Bina that descends to Malchut.

Moses handed the Torah to Jethro in an allegorical form; he partially encompassed the steps that were already covered by Moses and by the people, meaning the qualities that had already been corrected. Then, Jethro tells Moses how to work with egoism meaning Malchut that rises to Bina creates the system that works with egoism. Since the upper level (Bina) has to incorporate egoism in order to figure out how to work with it and create a system of gradual correction of “egoism within egoism.” That’s why Jethro and Moses have to be included into each other instead of staying apart.

After Moses transfers the Torah to Jethro in the form that he needs the most in order to return to his people and correct their inferior desires (Jethro is a transitional step to lower desires that stand for “his people”), Moses receives from Jethro a system that works with egoism. He starts realizing the ways to break it into dozens and hundreds of thousands of pieces and learns how to work with the thickness (Aviut) of desires, meaning with something that is missing from Bina because of its transparency. When Aviut approaches Bina, there appears a necessity to initiate a hierarchical system. This is how the system is built, although it is not quite typical for Israel.

Israel is a property of Bina, a quality of bestowal. However, the people of Israel exited Egypt having absorbed egoism in its entirety. At this point, they began “arranging” egoism and realizing how to work with it step by step. Due to Jethro, the people of Israel acquired a chance to accept the system that addresses egoism.
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From KabTV’s “Mysteries of the Eternal Book,” 3/11/13

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Question: How can we work with the next degree correctly? What is this next degree? How can we approach it, find it, see it, discover it? What is the difference between the degree itself and what is discovered in it?

Answer: Our world is the feeling of our egoistic division, of mutual repulsion. We comprehend everything in this state of mutual distancing: from one another, from the still, vegetative, and animate nature. And this state is called “our world.” In other words, since we draw everything towards us in an egoistic manner for the sake of personal pleasure, we separate the one spiritual Light into negligible portions and comprehend these as objects of the still, the vegetative, the animate, and the human nature of our world.

And on the contrary, if we begin to connect these objects together and relate to them as to a single whole, then we begin to feel the next degree, the upper world.

The group has been given to us so that we can find how to comprehend the space that surrounds us in another, correct form. Ultimately it follows that when we connect with each other, trying to unite emotionally, imagining the integration of our desires and thoughts, as one heart and as one mind, then we portray the spiritual world before us, and yearn for it. In the same manner, a child desires to be an adult.

Through this desire we summon upon ourselves the upper Light (Ohr Makif), which corrects the ego that separates us and in this manner forms the next degree, the connection between us, the AHP of the upper degree.

Thus we connect to the upper level, only through mutual cooperation between us. And then we begin to feel the field, the energy, the wave, that streams between us.

Problems between us will grow more and more, forces of repulsion will be discovered more and more, while we need the opposite: To rise above them and to connect ourselves all the time until the negative and rejecting forces of opposition, on the one hand, and the forces of our mutual connection, on the other hand, will attain the position of our first spiritual degree. And then it will be discovered in the middle line.

Thus, the spiritual world will be discovered through the connection between us provided that we rise above the repulsive forces, working patiently and steadily on the connection until we rise to the position of the first spiritual degree.

These accumulated degrees, when we tirelessly try to connect despite the incessant problems between us in a group, are simultaneously the internal development of the embryo through which we need to pass. And then we are born.

What do they say when a newborn arrives in the world? “Congratulations!”
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From the Meal before the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13

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The wisdom of Kabbalah says that all of nature is a desire for pleasure, a desire to receive fulfillment. This desire developed over billions of years from the still, to the vegetative, to the animate, to the level of the speaking. In the course of development, a person passes through the same stages of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

Throughout all these stages, humanity passed from one stage to another, from one area to another. Life was created somewhere in Africa and from there wandered somewhere in the east, and after that moved to Europe…

And today, we have reached a particularly unique stage. Now Europe is found at the center of the world, and according to its mixture and integration, it has become a kind of modern Babylon. It sets the tone for the world: culturally, scientifically, and technologically. Despite the fact that America seems separate from Europe, it is in fact the same civilization. Thus, we need to speak about Europe as the center of the world. In a general way, what happens in Europe influences the entire world.

There was a time when humanity spread from ancient Babylon over the face of the earth. It existed there as a community of an immense number of different tribes who were united by a common area by means of a relatively common culture and level of existence. Today, the same thing is happening in Europe.

This is a huge number of people, a nation, if it is possible to say this, which is composed of a large number of tribes, peoples, and nations who as a whole are united by a particular culture, uniform level, comprehension of the world and mentality. Even though they are different from each other, they have, generally, the same common pattern. And this pattern has gradually spread throughout the world.

Europe is the origin and the spirit of modern existence. But it is itself passing through very painful changes, for our whole world is changing, and not only in a technological sense, but also because the desires found at the base of our system have changed lately in a particular, qualitatively acute form.

Throughout millennia, humanity was developing in a simple way through increasing desire. People wanted more: to earn more, to get more, to expand more, to enjoy. They simply wanted to fulfill these desires. In general, they developed quantitatively and, practically, very little qualitatively.

But today a very complicated transition is taking place towards new desires. We have gradually drifted from the traditional direction of development that leads to wealth, fame, power, and knowledge. Humanity no longer searches for these things that formerly interested and fulfilled it. Today it is passing through a passive, “amorphous” existence, because it is found in a transitional stage.

In our spiritual changes, sometimes we are found in great ascent and after that find ourselves in descent, indifference and even despair. And so we cannot do anything, we don’t want anything. And after that again something “explodes” from within, and again we are drawn in some kind of direction, and again we are filled with energy. With us these states transform very rapidly, and in humanity, in its development, they change very slowly.

And today we are passing through that stage. We have been found in it for quite some time: It is expressed in nihilism, denial, apathy; it originated in the years after the Second World War, in the fifties and the sixties. From that time, these phenomena received new forms: an increase in the number of divorces, people not wanting to establish families or to give birth to children, wanting to be alone, and abandoning their parents. There is no sense of a community that once provided for the family, a group of people who were connected by a feeling of family. This also is lost.

As a result of this, a person is found in a state of confusion. And this is felt in particular in Europe as the most developed part of humanity.

But in a fundamental manner, this process is only a transition to a state in which we search for meaning. People have lost pleasure, lost desires, lost the urge for the former fulfillments. There is nothing to do here. There is simply no urge! It is difficult to compel people.

You yourselves at work, at home, at various events, probably meet people like this: a little disappointed, empty, and indifferent. Various communications media, advertisements, try to arouse them all the time for something: sports, soccer, shopping, and so forth. All this looks exciting, but in fact it is not. A person is attracted to this only because he needs to fill himself with something.

Moreover, this process in Europe has added to other processes. You see, in principle, the unified force of the Light influences all of us. To the same degree it influences the mental and moral level, all the levels. And as a result of this, we feel a collective descent.

However, the crisis has influenced not only the family, education, and culture. The most important thing for us at the moment is the economic, financial crisis. You see, the economy, finances, have always connected people. If people were not dependent upon each other economically with the need to earn money in order to exist, they would not have organized into cities, peoples, nations, and all kinds of associations; they would not have had the incentive to do so.

What, in principle, stimulates connection between us? We need to make a living, to exist, to enjoy, and to develop in a shared form. And when there is a crisis, the financial, economic gap between us already becomes a basic, fundamental separation, and it represents the most significant transition to the next stage.

And here, the role of Europe is very important: Europe is found at the focal point of events today and can show the whole world the right approach to a solution to problems, with which, sooner or later, everyone will need to contend.
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From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 1

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Question: Why does the Passover Haggadah gladly tell about the plagues of Egypt?

Answer: First, while a person is under the control of his ego, it seems as if these plagues are performed on him because he does not separate himself from his egoism. But then, having exited his ego, he feels these blows as happening to another body, some past state, which does not belong to him, but to his egoism.

After all, he has already separated from his ego, and that is why these plagues are sweetened. This sweetness causes a special joy in a person.

The exodus from Egypt takes place on each new degree. Whenever egoism is revealed, it is necessary to overcome it, to run away from it, to rise above it, and then correct it to bestowal, so that the angel of death turns into the angel of life, the good angel. It is like a mini-exodus from Egypt on each next level, in “every generation” because in this way we ascend the steps.

The more our egoism grows and we rise above it, correct it, and pull it up to our degree, the further it helps us grow. We connect with each other more strongly as a people and thus affect the world, passing the methodology and then the force that allows rising above egoism, uniting, and revealing the spiritual world.

However, only the upper force is able to pull us out of our egoism, not we ourselves. Because we connect, we give the Light an opportunity to affect our connection and realize it. After all, we cannot unite on our own; we are able only to ask and apply efforts, which the upper Light influences and realizes this state. Then we feel within our newly formed bond, the exit.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Today’s Egypt, which keeps the people of Israel in exile, and Pharaoh, which doesn’t allow us to get out of slavery, are our ego and the egoistic relationships between us. It is what does not allow us to become a people free from egoism and to feel the next degree both in a spiritual and in a material sense. That is why we cannot eliminate the external threat and hatred towards us from other nations. All this is because of the inner egoism that rules over us instead of the property of bestowal and mutual love.

Once, we seemingly managed to get out of this slavery, to mark the future when we would be able also to get out of our inner Egypt, from slavery to freedom. Today we are slaves because we are dependent on the entire world and on our egoism that governs us from all sides. We need just to realize that we are in a terrible and dangerous situation.

The most important is to feel that we have a duty for ourselves, for the whole world, and the Creator and we must realize the goal. This mission is entrusted to the people of Israel because we have received the method of correction and connection and are obliged to implement it.

Having gathered today at the festive table, let’s discuss these questions, and this is called the preparation for the exodus from Egypt. To get out of Egypt, a person prepares himself for “400 years,” that is, he goes through four full stages of egoism. At the beginning he has to experience as if egoism advances him and brings him advantage, what is called the “seven years of satiation.” And later there will come “seven years of hunger” and the Plagues of Egypt. Then, he has no choice but to flee.

It is important to move from the material perception of these events to spirituality and to hold the Passover meal in that spirit.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: During the Seder meal different generations gather at the table, and the elder is obligated to tell his son about the Exodus from Egypt. What is the message that this story conveys to the new generation that can also be seen simply as an historical event?

Answer: We all come out of Egypt together: young and old, women, children, men, and the elderly together with all the cattle, which means with desires that are on lower levels compared to man. They take from Egypt the gold and silver vessels, which refers to different desires, all the egoistic desires, that can be raised above our ego and can be turned into bestowal instead of receiving. This is called the “Exodus from Egypt.”

This is why we have to connect, to sit at one table and to talk about this, thus emphasizing how important it is for us to be focused in one direction: freedom from our nature.

Question: What does the Afikomen (a piece of hidden unleavened bread) that we search for according to the custom during the festive meal symbolize, and why is it the children who look for it?

Answer: The Afikomen symbolizes our readiness to come out of our ego with all our might. It is the children who look for it because they embody the weakest forces of all the “generations” in a person. They are the smallest, undeveloped desires that lead a person forward.

The older the generation, the more knowledge it has; and the younger the generation, the more energetic it is. The meal of the Seder symbolizes the connection between the generations, when everyone gathers and we all come out of Egypt, the whole family. There is a certain division of labor in this family and the younger generation’s role is to pull forward in the direction that the older generation is showing it.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: Why did Moses need to spend forty years with Jethro, the priest of Midian? What does this mean in the spiritual sense?

Answer: Jethro, as well as Abraham’s father Terah, was a priest, an expert in all the religions and idols, which is to say, a servant of his ego. In particular, if Terah had listened to his son Abraham, then they would have worked together and they could have begun the correction of the world. But this was impossible without the Egyptian exile, the exodus, and the reception of the Torah because a person needs to immerse completely into the ego. Therefore Terah was against Abraham, and Abraham was forced to flee from him, away from Babylon.

Moses, like Abraham, is a completely different level: He already was in the ego, passed through all of this stage and left Egypt. The forty years that he spent with Jethro, as it were, their mutual union, a connection through the Jethro’s daughter Zipporah, Jethro’s ego, who gave birth to children, meaning the next level. This is all the combination of the egoistic Jethro and the altruistic Moses within a person.

Moses passes through a process that toughens him from a stage with the ego in order to return again to Egypt, into the depths of the ego. Thus, only Jethro could teach Moses and the people of Israel how to work with that ego that was beginning to be discovered. Therefore the weekly Torah reading called “Jethro” begins from after the exodus from Egypt, when it’s necessary to begin to correct the Egyptians, the entire ego of the person, and Jethro takes his daughter Zipporah, her and Moses’ children, Jethro’s grandsons, and comes to Moses.

In other words, the time comes when these characteristics begin to rise within a person and show how to proceed. For now the entire ego that departed from Egypt (the vessels that were taken out of Egypt), slowly, gradually begin to rise within the people, and that means that Moses needs to judge the people.

To judge means to explain where the characteristics of bestowal are, where the characteristics of reception are, with what perspective it’s necessary to act and join above ourselves in order to discover our connection to the next level, the Creator. That is, the right mutual cooperation is required here. But where is this hierarchy in this egoism?

The characteristic of bestowal is about to expand: expansiveness of soul, an open heart. It’s dispersed over the surface of the area like water. And the ego works continually in a vertical manner. And these two parameters are as if not integrated together.

Therefore Jethro says to Moses: “You need to construct another system, in the form of a pyramid, to divide your whole ego into parts, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. You need to return to the state when you entered Egypt, twelve brothers. Thus you also exit there, the same twelve tribes, like twelve streams, lines. But in every one of them you need to calibrate yourselves according to the egoistic levels. Therefore for every level there must be its own hierarchy: its own laws, managers, and subordinates. You now work not just in order to bestow and to love, you work with the ego that is needed on that level with a quality that is possible to correct.

If Moses hadn’t gone through this school with Jethro, if he hadn’t connected with the ego and hadn’t begun working with it a little, then when he returned to Egypt, he wouldn’t have been able to stand against Pharaoh, he would have had no contact with him. For before then, Moses simply fled from Pharaoh after a confrontation with him.

And now he returns to Egypt, that is, he turns again to his ego and says to Pharaoh: “I need to take my people (the characteristics of bestowal) away from you.” In addition, he takes from him the huge ego that must later be corrected over the course of forty years in the wilderness. But he could not do this if the characteristic of bestowal in a person had not been connected in the beginning with the egoistic system called Jethro.

And Jethro takes from Moses the method of working with the ego and returns to his people in order to teach it to them. We see how a constant mutual connection of the two characteristics takes place within a person. And this is the system of correction.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/11/13

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Question: The night of the Passover Seder is a special night for the people of Israel. It is thought that on this night this people was born and began its new way. So really, in what way is this night of the exodus from Egypt so unique?

Answer: The person begins to feel that he is found in the Egyptian exile, in slavery to his ego, which is called Pharaoh, and that it is necessary to depart from under its dominance, to flee; yet he cannot do this. He begins to scream internally, he is no longer prepared to endure a life like this. He invests effort in regard to the group, the environment, the teacher, and the books. He really feels that he is in prison, in darkness.

Gradually he sinks into a state that is called the “darkness of Egypt,” the night of the exodus from Egypt. This night is absolute darkness; no hope is left for him, no chance in life. He doesn’t feel that he is prepared to continue to live within his ego, since he hates everyone, and he is unable to relate well to anyone.

He strives to love the friends, to love the other as himself, but he sees the opposite, he becomes worse and worse. The Pharaoh in him, his ego, becomes stronger and more brutal. So in the end, the person is broken, for he sees that he has no chance of leaving this servitude.

He passes through very difficult inner states, which ultimately are amassed together: all of his attempts to flee from his ego, to rise above it, all the victories of the ego that show a person how strongly this Pharaoh is holding him from within. He really finds himself in the middle of the struggle of two forces: On the one hand, the person pushes since he yearns to go free, and on the other hand, the ego hangs on to his legs not letting him flee.

Ultimately, these two forces reach the peak of the struggle between them, and the person finds himself between them, feels absolute darkness. This state is called the night of exodus, the darkness of Egypt. And so suddenly he hears a call from within this darkness: “You must leave! You are ready to do this! You can get up and flee from your ego, here and now, at midnight, that is, from the darkest state. Don’t take anything with you to the new state, except those things that you really need for bestowal, the attainment of unity, the connection, the love”.

In this case the person is ready to leave and flee from his ego, wants to rise above it. This is called his spiritual birth.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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