The Times of Israel published my new article “Don’t Overlook the Message of the 9th of Av”

This Wednesday, July 29, will be the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av. On that day, both Temples were ruined and the Jews were exiled from their land. On the first exile, they were deported to Babylon, from which they returned after 70 years with the blessing of the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, and a letter granting them imperial support in resettling the land and rebuilding the Temple.

The period of the 2nd Temple is more complicated than the first. In the midst of it, Jews began to fight among themselves as Hellenized Jews tried to root out traditional Judaism and install the Greek culture and mythology, and the Maccabees fought against them, striving to oust Hellenism and restore authenticity to Judaism. In that period, Jews lost control over the Temple but regained it after the Maccabees won the war. But finally, the internal battles and hatred among belligerent Jewish factions destroyed the country, ravaged Jerusalem, and demolished the Temple. Subsequently, the Jews were exiled for two thousand years.

Although historians attribute both exiles to external conquerors, ancient Jewish texts attribute very little influence to external factors, if any. Instead, they pin the troubles of the Jewish people on their own disunity.

As Though We’ve Never Learned

The Jewish people gained their nationhood when they united “as one man with one heart” at the foot of Mt. Sinai. According to Jewish ancient writings, the Hebrews who came out of Egypt were told that if they united, they would be declared a nation. If they did not, the mountain would cover them like a vault and would become their tombstone. The Jews, according to the sources, united and became the Jewish nation, or Israelites. But at that time, they were also tasked with being “a light unto nations,” namely to set an example of unity to the rest of the nations.

That demand that Jews would be role models of unity has since become the kernel of all Jewish hatred, both emanating from other nations, as well as from Jews who resented the idea of unity and wanted to pursue their individualistic (later to become Hellenistic) agendas. Two thousand years ago, the hatred within the Jewish people became so fierce that they locked themselves inside their capital, Jerusalem (with the Roman legion camped outside the walls), slaughtered one another, burned each other’s food reservoirs, and made General Titus’ work much easier when he finally decided to conquer the city and destroy the Temple.

The hatred of the Jews for one another was so evident and abominable that it denied the triumphant Titus the thrill of victory. When Queen Helena offered him a victory wreath after he took Jerusalem, Titus declined saying that there was no merit in vanquishing a people deserted by their own God.

The day when the Romans marched into the Temple and sealed the Jewish defeat was to become a day of mourning since then. But we should not mourn the destruction of the walls or the breaking of the altar. We should instead mourn the ruin of our unity, our brotherly love, the abandonment of our task to unite as one man with one heart and be a role model for the nations.

When Hitler explained in Mein Kampf why he hates Jews, he expounded on his disgust with their dislike for one another. “The Jew is only united when a common danger forces him to be or a common booty entices him; if these two grounds are lacking, the qualities of the crassest egoism come into their own,” he writes. Numerous other antisemites wrote and spoke similarly about the Jewish people. They would not dedicate such attention to Jewish hatred of each other if they did not expect Jews to feel otherwise toward their brethren.

Today, nearly a century after the rise of the most diabolic, genocidal leader of the most advanced, modern, and civilized nation at the time, Jews have still learned nothing. Once again, division and internal hatred are rampant, both in Israel and outside of it. Jewish anti-Jewish groups are once again becoming increasingly raucous and yell out with righteous indignation that only their way is right, that Jews with other views are ignorant and inferior. They do not realize that their affirmation in the eyes of the nations, for which they so desperately yearn, depends not on their ideology, but on their unity precisely with those brethren they hate.

From the perspective of the world, nothing has changed. We are still tasked with being a light unto nations by setting an example of unity, and we are still hated for showing the opposite. Vasily Shulgin, a senior member of the Russian Parliament before the 1917 revolution and an avid self-proclaimed antisemite wrote in his book What We Don’t Like about Them…: “Jews in the 20th century have become very smart, effective, and vigorous at exploiting other people’s ideas. However,” he protests, “this is not an occupation for teachers and prophets, not the role of guides of the blind, not the role of carriers of the lame.”

Deep inside, every Jew feels indebted to the world. Deep inside, we feel the call of our vocation. But we will never live up to our task through hating one another. We will do so only if we show the world that above our fierce disagreements, we love each other like family. Although we cannot agree on anything, we form a union that is stronger than any dispute. The divisions between us are the vehicle through which we can show the world what unity means, but only if we rise to the challenge and unite above them. If we do so, the world will see that unity is possible however deep the chasm between people and nations. If we keep avoiding unity, the world will keep blaming us for spreading division in the world and will make us pay for its suffering.
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Kabbalah published my new article: ““The Meaning Of Tisha B’AV” (Kabbalah)”

Tisha B’Av (the 9th of Av) is a very significant state in human development.

Tisha B’Av serves as a memorial of the destruction of the Holy Temple. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, this ruin represents our loss of awareness of our unification as a single soul, which the Holy Temple represents. It is a state that Kabbalah also calls the “breaking” or “shattering” of the vessels.

The immense importance of the breaking of the vessels is that there can be no complete correction and unification without having undergone corruption and shattering.

Tisha B’Av thus represents two polar opposite states:

Sorrow and crying from the forecast of the impending breakage, with the understanding that we need to do everything in our power to withstand it, i.e., to hold onto our unification against the increasing pressure to shatter our unification to pieces.

Tremendous joy in the conditions that the breakage brings us, that our loss of unification is a chance at attaining a greater and more complete form of unification.

Therefore, the sorrow about the past ruins needs to be balanced with the joy in the chance that these ruins bring: to rise to a higher and more complete form of connection.

Tisha B’Av is thus not merely an annual fast day in the Jewish calendar, where a number of disasters throughout history are remembered and mourned. It is rather a state that can surface at any moment when we acknowledge our failure to actively participate in our current process of correction—the correction of those relationships that once shattered, which is considered as the construction of a new Holy Temple.

How does this work?

The 16th century, which was the period of the great Kabbalist Isaac Luria (the Ari), designated the time when the gates to the knowledge of the process of correction opened up to humanity. Until then, those gates were locked shut, as Kabbalists, who held the method of correction, knew very well that the time was still unripe.

Since the 16th century onward, and much more so in our times, the knowledge and ability to participate actively in the process of correction has become increasingly available, the more that the authentic wisdom of Kabbalah has spread.

Therefore, we need not dwell in sadness about Holy Temples that became ruined thousands of years ago. Instead, our sorrow should be directed at our negligence to willingly participate in the process of correction that is present at every moment.

In other words, each moment we fail to add our participation to the process of correction, i.e., aiming to connect positively to each other in order to bring unity to the world, and reunite on a higher level than we had in the past—or in other words, each moment we fail to add another “brick” to the construction of the new Holy Temple—then it is our unawareness, disregard and lack of concern about ours and humanity’s positive future, which we should be sorry about.

We cannot truly understand what happened 2,000 years ago. Our desires are much bigger today, and our era is characterized by the impending construction of the new Holy Temple, i.e., a state of unity above all divisions that all humanity needs to reach. Therefore, crying about what happened in the past makes us seem like righteous individuals who look back at those meager and unfortunate people back then, an approach that fails to account for the necessity of that ruin in order for a specific order to develop.

Since the 16th century, the Ari’s time, the ability to participate in the process of correction has opened up to humanity, and the meaning of Tisha B’Av can be understood according to this process: the ruin of the Temples is the shattering of human relations, the division spreading worldwide among humanity, a broken state that we have been given the ability to fix.

We thus should not relate to Tisha B’Av as history, but as a situation that we can encounter on a moment-by-moment basis as we head forth to correct our broken relations and reach a much higher and more complete unification than we have ever experienced before.

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The holiday of Shavuot comes on the 50th day after Passover. For 49 days we perform the Omer count, which is like counting tied bundles, because the main work of man is to bind himself with the Creator. If we bind all of us together with our desires and intentions, we create one common vessel, we create a place for the revelation of the Creator’s light.

There are seven Sefirot in the soul, seven qualities that are developing in the head of the spiritual Partzuf (Rosh): Hessed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. In each Sefira, there are another seven Sefirot, that is: 7 x 7 = 49, and combining all together, we get 50.

Therefore, on the 50th day after exiting Egypt, from the moment we began to correct our spiritual vessel, the connection between us, we come to this special day when the connection between everybody emerges. This day is called the holiday of Shavuot.

In Egypt, we were still under the control of the desire to receive and could not connect with each other. Pharaoh kept us in slavery and did not allow us to connect with each other. When we escape from the slavery of Pharaoh, we can begin to connect, and that is why we run away from him. After all, it was very good in Egypt in the corporeal sense. It was bad only in the spiritual sense because of the inability to connect.

Those who wanted to connect, considered it a spiritual gain and were not afraid to sacrifice material things for this purpose, they came out of Egypt. After that, when we start to connect with each other, we come to the state of Omer, a bundle. So, we join part by part, counting these bundles until we reach the last, 49^th day in the Omer count when we are already able to receive from the Creator the light that will fill us.

And for 49 days, we were receiving only the light of correction, so it was called the Omer. Each time, we found egoistic qualities between us that did not allow us to connect, but we tried to correct them and connect them, until on the 50th day, everything finally connected and we reached the common quality of mutual bestowal between us and from us to the Creator. Now the Creator can also give us the light and this is why it is called the day of the giving the Torah.

The symbols of this holiday are milk, the sign of bestowal, and a connected group bound together in one bundle (Omer) and in adhesion with the Creator.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/20, “Feast of Weeks”

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Question: After the exodus from Egypt, the Torah was received, which represents the special holiday of Shavuot. Receiving the Torah means receiving the upper light with the help of which a person can correct himself and reach the level of the Creator.

Why did this happen on Mount Sinai?

Answer: Mount Sinai personifies hatred toward our egoism, due to which we can receive the highest light.

We received the method for correcting the ego because we hated it as we were standing under Mount Sinai, we saw how much this selfishness is odious to us, how much it is against us. We were literally ready to bury ourselves under this mountain if we did not receive the force of correction.

Only after that were we able to enter the Land of Israel, in Eretz Yisrael.

“Eretz” is desire, “Israel” (Isra-El)—aimed directly to the Creator (Yashar-Kel).

Being in the Land of Israel, we built the First and the Second Temples there, which personify the unification of the whole soul in its leading form, called Israel. And in our time, we must draw to this not only ourselves, but also the whole humanity and reach the Third Temple.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/29/19

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The Torah describes so many different events. Can it all be just in order to achieve love for the created beings, to get closer to other people, and replace your hatred with love? Why is this written in the Torah, in the instruction given to us by the upper force? We do not understand this.

In fact, it is unclear how this is possible because experience shows everyone is ready to speak beautiful words, every religion calls for kindness and love, and as a result, the entire history of humanity is accompanied by mutual hatred and wars. This is why it is so important to understand what the Torah says. It describes the only thing that has not happened in history.

Baal HaSulam writes that the Torah speaks exclusively about one thing: about love of one’s neighbor as oneself, that is, the love of people. You have to love them as if there is nothing else besides this: to love all of humanity and every person (some people love humanity, but they do not love people). A person should do everything for the sake of love and live in this world only for the sake of it.

The only purpose of a person’s existence in this world is to bring good to all people. The Torah describes 613 actions of bestowal that a person must perform, and all of them are in regard to other people, relative to one’s neighbor. Only then does a person observe the Torah, that is, corrects his soul.

Rabbi Akiva, the greatest sage in times of the Second Temple, said that “Love your neighbor as yourself is a great rule in the Torah,” its entire essence. The Torah is intended for reaching love for people.

What should we do in order to receive the Torah? You must want to receive it! After all, why do you need it? To study the Torah means to study how to love your neighbor. Are you ready for this, do you really want this?

Little by little, we begin to understand that the attainment of the greatness of the Creator, His revelation, and reaching love for one’s neighbor are one and the same thing. The love of friends and love of people cannot be less than the love of the Creator since one is clothed into the other.

This one commandment about loving your neighbor as yourself includes all the commandments, that is, all the corrections that a person must make in his egoistic desire in order to bring him to bestowal, becoming a complete righteous. And within this love for people, he will attain the love for the Creator.

Each commandment is a correction of an egoistic desire. There are 613 desires in a person, and all of them are egoistic, and we need to turn them into the bestowing ones.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/20,Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah [The Giving of the Torah]“

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A special holiday is coming – Shavuot, the holiday of the giving of the Torah. It symbolizes the revelation in the world of the Torah to us, that is, the connection between the Creator and people.

This happened about three and a half thousand years ago, in the Sinai Desert, near Mount Sinai. Such symbols exist in our world because each spiritual root is obliged to touch its material branch.

This holiday is significant in that a person receives a connection with the upper force. Otherwise, we would remain animals that exist aimlessly on Planet Earth, which is rushing somewhere in a lifeless space.

And now we can connect with the very force that created the universe, the globe, and the people on it, and that launched the entire process of evolution. We can find out what is behind this process, what are the forms of relations between us and the higher power.

Shavuot is a great holiday because we celebrate gaining connection with the Creator, which allows us to rise from this life, from its aimlessness and meaninglessness, above this animate existence. There is no holiday bigger than the giving of the Torah; everything starts with it! If it weren’t for it, our lives would be in vain.

We would remain ordinary animals born in order to live and die. The Torah gives us the opportunity to rise above our lives, comprehend a higher power, and enter eternity, perfection, another dimension that is based on bestowal, not reception.

Our world exists only within egoism, reception, and the spiritual world exists for the sake of bestowal; therefore, it is eternal and perfect. Thanks to this means, which is called the Torah, we have the opportunity to rise from the lower world to the higher one.

Therefore, we celebrate Shavuot, in which there are not many symbols: white clothes and dairy food are symbols of bestowal. Those are all the characteristics of this holiday.

According to history, the giving of the Torah occurred after the people of Israel left Egypt, that is, after fleeing from the selfish intention and crossing the Red Sea (Yam Suf), which meant breaking off from egoism and entering the Sinai Desert, the place where hatred (Sinaa) between altruistic and egoistic desires is revealed.

And then a person faces a mountain of doubts. Har (mountain) comes from Hirhurim (doubts). How many objections we have against the desire for bestowal is revealed to us and we need to work on them. Therefore, we shout: “Where is the tool that will allow us to achieve bestowal? We do not have such strength!”

Then we get a power from above called “the upper light,” “Torah,” that is, “light” (Ohr), “program,” “technique” (Ora’a). Thus, we begin to develop purposefully.

Until now we are making correction after correction in our egoism, generation after generation, until we come to the end of correction. All this is possible thanks to the hidden power of the Torah, which is called “the light that returns to the source,” the highest light of correction.

In the days of this holiday there is a special power in the world. And if we study it together, it will move us forward.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah [The Giving of the Torah]“

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is Shavuot?“

Shavuot is the celebration of the giving of the Torah.

The Jewish holidays, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, mark significant stages in our spiritual path, i.e., in our transformation from our inborn egoistic selves to our spiritual, altruistic selves, above the human ego.

Specifically on Shavuot, we receive the name “Israel.”

The word “Israel” stems from two words, “Yashar Kel” (“straight to God”). It refers to a state when we are granted the method to attain the Creator, the quality of love and bestowal, through our free will.

If we do not use this method, then we will instead develop involuntarily to that goal through many indirect paths, much suffering and pressuring forces.

Becoming the people of Israel means that we ourselves decide that we truly want to attain the Creator, i.e., to attain relations of love and bestowal among each other, and act as if we ourselves implement such connections, without waiting for the Creator to give us such an ability.

Our efforts to achieve positive relations draw a positive response, which eventually grants us the ability to understand, feel and attain the Creator.

The Creator operates on us whether we attain Him or not. However, when we attain Him, we understand how He works, want Him to act through us, and precede His actions on us with our longing for Him.

In addition, when we discuss “the giving of the Torah” and our “reception of the Torah,” we need to understand that our engagement in the Torah has nothing to do with delving into the words of a written text.

Engaging in the Torah means increasing our unity, prioritizing unity above every divisive drive we feel, as King Solomon put it (Proverbs, 10:12): “Hate stirs strife, and love covers all crimes.”

It is written about engaging in the Torah meaning increasing unity in more places…

“Obtainment of the Torah is primarily through unity, as in the verse, ‘And Israel encamped there before the mount,’ ‘as one man with one heart,’ and there their filth (evil inclination) ceased.” In Parashat Emor, the book continues, “During the days of the [omer] count, a person should correct the quality of unity, and by this one is rewarded with obtainment of the Torah on the festival of Shavuot, as it is written, ‘And they journeyed from Refidim and came to the Sinai desert, and Israel encamped there before the mount.’ RASHI interpreted that they were all in one heart as one man and this is why they were rewarded with the Torah.” – Maor Vashemesh (Parashat Yitro).

“The root of mutual responsibility extends primarily from the reception of the Torah, when all of Israel were responsible for one another. This is so because at the root, the souls of Israel are regarded as one, for they derive from the origin of the unity. For this reason, all of Israel were responsible for one another upon the reception of the Torah.” –Likutey Halachot (Assorted Rules), chapter “Hilchot Arev” (“Rules of Guarantee”).

“It is impossible to observe Torah and Mitzvot (commandments),” meaning receive the light that transforms egoism into love of others, “unless through mutual responsibility, when each one is responsible for his friend. For this reason, each one should include himself with the whole of Israel in great unity. Hence, at the time of the reception of the Torah, they immediately became responsible for one another, for as soon as they want to receive the Torah they must merge as one in order to be included in the desire. …Thus, specifically by each being responsible for his friend, they can observe the Torah. Without this, it would have been impossible to receive the Torah whatsoever.” – Likutey Halachot (Assorted Rules), chapter “Hoshen Mishpat,” (“The Book Writes [Rule No. 3]”).

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do many Jews eat dairy products during the Shavuot holiday?“

Consuming dairy products during Shavuot is a symbol of love.

White symbolizes light, which is the pure force of love and giving.

Put simply, if we relate to each other out of love, we attract a positive response into our lives and progress to the discovery of a perfect world.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is part of the time between Passover and Shavuot thought to be?“

“And by the exodus from Egypt they received the level of faith…and after Passover, the purifying work begins in preparation for the receiving of the Torah. And when the Torah is dressed in a person’s soul, this is the time of Shavuot, the time of the giving of our Torah.” (Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag [Rabash], “Letter 52”)

Passover marks the end of the time of slavery in Egypt.

Our slavery in Egypt means that we feel problems stemming from the ego to make us want to disconnect from it and elevate ourselves upon it, and identify with the quality of love and giving.

In the process, we renew our efforts to rise above the ego time after time with the help of a supportive environment, i.e., others who share a similar desire to be above the ego and who support each other to do so.

The effort to rise above the ego is the work in Egypt. After we realize the full extent of that work, we receive a positive response to the effort: a force that emerges and corrects us.

That state is called Passover.

It is a significant correction on our spiritual path.

Passover, however, is only one stage toward our full correction. It marks the elevation above our ego.

Afterward, the time between Passover and Shavuot, designated by a count of 49 days, marks a time of disconnecting ourselves from our ego and rising to a level called “Bina,” a state of absolute giving, where there is no egoistic involvement whatsoever.

Shavuot marks the next correction, the full extent of the force we receive from Bina that lets us connect our ego with the force of correction, the force of the Torah. That is, at Shavuot, we don’t merely rise above the ego, as we do in Passover. At Shavuot, we gain the ability to connect our ego with the force of the Torah, which lets us use our ego in a corrected way.

Of course, such an explanation of the time between Passover and Shavuot relates only to the spiritual meaning of the holidays, as described by the wisdom of Kabbalah, which explains that the holidays are states on our spiritual path that we can feel at any moment we apply the necessary efforts to enter such states. See the links in my Quora bio for more info about how to get started with Kabbalah study.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/28/20

Today we’re celebrating the giving of the Torah. According to tradition, on this day, some 3,400 years ago, the people of Israel stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai and received the Torah. Incidentally, it is written that when Moses came down from the mountain with the Torah in his hands, it was written on two tablets. Afterwards, the Torah was written on parchment, then on paper, and finally on tablets again, so in that sense, we went full circle.

However, what’s really important is what the Torah is and why it was given. It is written that the Creator said, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice.” In other words, the Torah is something that corrects, improves. The word “Torah” comes from the word Ohr, which is Hebrew for “light,” meaning a force, energy that changes our inclination from evil, self-centered, to good, namely giving. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, every other explanation of the meaning of the Torah is a myth.

Another myth concerns the intended recipients of the Torah. The people of Israel who came out of Egypt and received the Torah had descended from Abraham’s initial group. Abraham was not a Jew. In his days, there was no Jewish people. Abraham was Babylonian, and he found a way to mend the evil inclination that was spreading across his country, and offered his ideas to anyone who’d listen. The people who liked his ideas and united around him later became known as the people of Israel. When the people of Israel received the light, the correcting force called “Torah,” they were merely following Abraham’s legacy of correcting the ego, the evil inclination.

Therefore, the Torah is not for the Jews; it’s for everyone, since everyone is egoistic, and everyone needs a force that will correct us, since we clearly can’t correct ourselves. And the final myth for this post concerns the way to receive the Torah—the correcting force. According to Kabbalah, receiving the force has nothing to do with Judaism, and everything to do with unity. To receive the Torah, Israel had to unite “as one man with one heart.” Only after they did this, they received the force of correction for their egos, and once they united, they became the Israeli nation. So anyone who truly wishes to unite with all the people, to bring them all into the heart, will receive that correcting force, and that will be his or her reception of the Torah.

Happy Matan Torah to everyone.

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