The holiday of Purim is the happiest holiday, the best time for great mercies. Purim symbolizes our whole spiritual work.

All holidays are related to the correction of the shattered soul of Adam HaRishon, the first man, but only Purim signifies the completion of this process, the very last action, called Gmar Tikkun, the end of correction.

Then we remember all our egoistic desire to receive pleasure in its entire tremendous scope and understand that we cannot withstand it in any way. We are very weak. Even the righteous Mordechai sits on a rock in front of the king’s gate, a poor old man no one considers, while Haman rules the entire kingdom as the king’s right hand.

The Creator purposely crowns egoism to rule, as it is written, “I created the evil inclination.” And Pharaoh (egoism) is the king of the world in various roles and characters. Only when a person feels his very existence is threatened does he wake up. Who helps him wake up? Haman does by telling him, “Let’s destroy this root that could awaken, the desire to bestow or intention in order to bestow, at its basis. Why should we keep it? I’m the king!”

When we reach that height of the will to receive that wants to control everything with the intention in order to receive, then we will discover that the desire to receive is unchangeable matter, but the intention to receive is incorrect and we can control the desire to receive with the intention to bestow. Although the intention to bestow is against nature, very weak, against our consciousness, understanding, and nature itself, and in addition, the king, i.e., the Creator, doesn’t support it, nevertheless it’s still there. How is it possible to fight this? The intention to bestow is too weak, too tenuous, and delicate to stand up to Ahasuerus who supports Haman with the power of evil.

But there is a part of the desire to receive that is called “the Jews” (Yehudi) because this part possesses the potential force of unity. If a severe threat looms over them, they will unite. Even though this unity is forced upon them, elicited by the fear of destruction, it nonetheless draws to them the Light that reforms, the upper force. The upper force is awakened in King Ahasuerus who initially supported Haman, but after the Jews’ unity, he fully and happily supports Mordechai.

It all depends on that group, which is called in its potential, “the Jews” (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi]). Then, when they unite, first coercively then later willingly, they then have great strength first to control King Ahasuerus, and later they destroy Haman’s power, the whole evil inclination that could have easily destroyed them.

This was all done by their uniting and attracting a great force, which helped them unite even more, then by acting through the power of unity they subdued the power of separation, the power of Haman.

They do that in every degree and state because this is the correction, but in Purim it plays out as a miracle. Purim is about a very huge will to receive, in its 32 parts, which are impossible to correct directly. That is why it is considered a miracle, because we can correct 288 parts of the will to receive gradually over 125 degrees, but the stony heart joins all those corrections, but it doesn’t appear. Only in the final action does the stony heart surface and become corrected through 288 parts, and the 32 parts also enter the correction all at once. Then, the Light of the end of correction comes.

In Purim, we can see the entire process of correction: the exile, the liberation in all of its forms. That is why Purim begins with the reading of the chapter “Remember what Amalek did to you.” Intention for own benefit, called the evil inclination or Amalek, accompanies us the entire time, and it is precisely because of Amalek that we come to the Creator.

If not for this evil inclination, we never would have awakened to unity, would never have revealed our separation from the Creator, and would not have achieved similarity of form with Him. It is impossible to achieve adhesion without the help of this evil force that is working in the left line.

That is why we must remember what Amalek did to us. In every state, the Creator sends us help against Him, and this is a great help. We just need to know how to relate to these forces of nature correctly.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/18, Writing of Rabash, Article 21

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Jewish Boston published my new article “How the Purim Story Is Happening Right Now“:

Purim has one of the most suspenseful stories ever written. From the panic, doubt and fear in the face of utter destruction to the elation, euphoria and high spirits after everything works out for the best, the story and meaning of Purim encompasses one of the greatest ever resolution of opposites.

Purim’s plot has many places that escalate toward its climax. If we neglect the importance of these places, we will skip its main idea, and remain with nothing more than an impressive narrative. One such place, for instance, is when Queen Esther relays to Mordechai: “You want me to go to the king and beg for your lives? Don’t just sit there at the king’s gate; go, gather the Jews!”

Mordechai is the story’s representative of good. The catch of the story is that, as much as Mordechai wants to bring good, he’s powerless to do so by himself. In order to do so, he needs to gather the Jews. By gathering the Jews, Mordechai invalidates the claim of Haman, the story’s representative of bad, which is to eradicate the Jews. “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed,” Haman says to King Ahasuerus, contending that the Jews were failing to uphold the king’s laws, which discredited their existence in the king’s eyes.

At this point, a question arises: Why did Haman connect the Jews’ dispersion to their disobeying the king’s laws? Cunning and intelligent as he was, Haman understood that the law by which the Jewish nation emerged is a law of unity. The Jews became ratified as a nation when they agreed to unite “as one man with one heart.” Their dispersion meant their disunity, which meant that they failed to live up to what established them as a nation to begin with. That is what Haman emphasized to King Ahasuerus.

While dispersed, Queen Esther could be of no service to the Jews because they were breaching the king’s law. When they united, however, they re-established themselves as a nation, exactly as King Ahasuerus commanded, making Haman’s claim fall short.

The significance of this Purim message penetrates sharply into our current era. “Hamanism,” or anti-Semitism, is rampant today, comparable to how it was in the Purim story’s setting of Shushan. Likewise, we Jews are in the same loop of brushing off the brunt of what a sudden rise in anti-Semitism worldwide could lead to.

The disastrous events in the middle of last century clearly exemplify what an escalation of Jewish hatred coupled with Jewish denial of that hatred and failure to do anything about it could lead to. Purim, however, provides us with the opposite, happy-ending example: where the Jewish people understand their role and purpose, and take responsibility to realize the king’s law, uniting above their differences and thereby securing their survival and bringing about great joy and happiness.

We Jews hold the keys to both scenarios: the choice to unite, which brings about the elated state Purim symbolizes, or the choice to remain disunited, which has devastating consequences.

What is this unity we need to reach? It does not mean that we need to physically gather in Israel or anywhere else. Uniting means that we mentally and emotionally support each other in seeking that common point of agreement, “as one man with one heart,” to be there for each other above any seeming differences between us. Moreover, uniting also means that by our efforts to find our common unifying point, we will become conduits of unity to the rest of humanity, as is written, to become “a light unto nations.” In other words, our dispersion and disunity spreads dispersion and disunity, and our unification spreads unification. Unity is an unfulfilled expectation that humanity currently has toward the Jews. Neither non-Jews nor Jews can pinpoint nor verbalize this feeling, but it lurks behind all anti-Semitic sentiment.

“In such a generation, all the destructors among the nations of the world raise their heads and wish primarily to destroy and to kill the people of Israel, as it is written (Yevamot 63), ‘No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.’ This means … that they cause poverty, ruin, robbery, killing, and destruction in the whole world.

“And through our many faults … the judgment struck the very best of us, as our sages said (Baba Kama 60), ‘And it starts with the righteous first.’ And of all the glory Israel had in the countries of Poland and Lithuania, etc., there remains but the relics in our holy land. Now it is upon us, relics, to correct that dreadful wrong. Each of us remainders should take upon himself, heart and soul, to henceforth intensify the internality of the Torah [i.e. focusing on the unifying essence of what the Torah instructs, to ‘love your friend as yourself’], and give it its rightful place, according to its merit over the externality of the Torah [i.e. where unity is not the main goal, but intellectual progress or performing physical actions with no intention to unite].

“And then, each and every one of us will be rewarded with intensifying his own internality, meaning the Israel within us, which is the needs of the soul over our own externality, which is the nations of the world within us, that is, the needs of the body. That force will come to the whole of Israel, until the nations of the world within us recognize and acknowledge the merit of the great sages of Israel…”
—Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” item 71

The Purim story, in addition to being an epic tale, symbolizes what life can be like when we unite. Also, as it is in the Purim story, so it is today: the Jews hold the key. We were given the law “Love your friend as yourself” before any other nation, and likewise today, we need to implement this law among each other in order for it to be able to spread to humanity as a whole. Until we do, anti-Semitism will continue rising in order to corner us into making that fateful decision. It is my hope that the anti-Semitic atmosphere will not have to grow to the likes of what we experienced in the middle of last century in order for us to wake up to our role. We have the wisdom and tools today to realize it much sooner and reach the perfection that Purim stands for even on this very day if we wanted to.
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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 3/1/18

Fact #8

The Meaning of the Custom to Get Excessively Drunk on Purim

After our salvation through our unity, the joy erupts, and it is a commandment to drink until we cannot tell right from wrong. This is because our unity spreads unity, until every person and nation willfully makes the right “click” to each other. By this, we become a “light unto nations,” a beacon of the light of unification for the whole of humanity.

By uniting, we would not need to watch our backs all the time like we do now. Also, we would not distrust or suspect any one of any devious or underhanded intentions, since we would be as a single person. Intoxication signifies the blurring of lines between Haman and Mordechai, since when united, the tension between these tendencies becomes released in euphoric joy.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 2/27/18

The connection between Purim and egoism.
#Purim #holidays

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 2/27/18

The connection between Purim and Anti-Semitism

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 2/27/18

Follow me on Twitter for more #Purim tweets.

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We are entering a special period of the Hanukkah holiday. This holiday has a very interesting story, but we are more concerned with its spiritual meaning. Man, as a common soul, was created completely opposite to the Creator.

After all, qualities of the Creator are bestowal and love, and qualities of the creature are reception and hatred. However, the program of creation is intended to lead a person from oppositeness to similarity to the upper force.

This program is implemented through the Light that reforms, which is awakened with the help of special methods: the work in the groups organized according to the example that Moses showed during the formation of the people of Israel.

When these groups unite in a special form, they attract the Light that reforms to themselves, which affects them gradually. Through this Light called the Torah, the creatures receive correction.

This correction is implemented in two stages. During the first stage, the desire to enjoy for oneself is corrected so that the intention changes to bestowal and the desire itself is not used. In other words, the task of the first stage is to reduce the desires to receive and concentrate only on obtaining the intention for the sake of bestowal.

Once we complete this correction, we again begin to reveal desires to enjoy and actively work with them, receiving now in order to bestow.

The first stage of achieving the qualities of bestowal for the sake of bestowal, the degree of Bina, is the war that is called the War of the Maccabees, and the point of transition from bestowal for the sake of bestowal to reception for the sake of bestowal is called the “stop,” or Hanukkah, which means “Hanu-Ko,” or “stop here.”

During Hanukkah, we celebrate a very important point: the completion of acquiring an altruistic intention, the degree of Bina. Our desire to enjoy is not used yet. We just reduce it and increase the intention for the sake of bestowal. In this way, we come to this stop, to Hanukkah, when we can only see its Lights, but cannot use them.

We can also see vessels, although we cannot use them. After all, it is impossible to see a Light without a vessel, but only for the sake of bestowal, above the desire itself. After Hanukkah, we learn to use even the desires to receive with the intention for the sake of bestowal so that “the darkness will shine like the Light.”

Therefore, Hanukkah is the celebration of Light because we use only the intention to bestow, and the Light cannot be used. We can only look at it. “To look” means to use the Light above the vessels of reception, and the use of the Light inside the vessels of reception is already complete and truly used.

This is how the place of this special holiday is determined that completes the special first stage of correction we celebrate during these days.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/12/17, Lesson on the Topic: “Hanukkah by the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Jerusalem is an indicator of the spiritual state of the people. That is why, there’s no place with greater disunity and hatred between all the currents of people than in Jerusalem.

It is a very rigid city because it manifests the true state in everyone’s heart toward unification. Jerusalem can either be the center of separation for the people of Israel or the center of its unity.

In the times of the Second Temple, people practiced the Torah and commandments and engaged in acts of charity, so why was the Temple destroyed? Because there was unfounded hatred (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate “Yoma”).

In those times, the commandments were meticulously followed, the Torah was studied, philanthropy was spread; there was only one problem that people did not get along with each other. It is just like today: there are a lot of religious people that scrupulously follow everything; however, there is disunity among them, distance, antagonism, and hatred.

And that is why everything collapses, as it is written: “The day the Temple is not rebuilt, it is as if it is destroyed again.” Until we unite above our differences, we cannot achieve the corrected state.

That is why correction is not conditioned on the observance of the Torah, the commandments, or engaging in charity but only on the connection of the hearts. We need at least to turn toward loving your neighbor, and then Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and everything in it.

Question: Does charity not mean mutual bestowal?

Answer: Charity is when a person is really ready to help another, give away everything he has—but his heart. He is not ready to connect in his heart. What is his intention for giving the charity? For the life of his children, reward in this world, and the future world.

Without studying the science of Kabbalah, it is impossible to achieve the state of bestowal, the quality of Lishma, because a person does not attract the Light that reforms, which is called the Torah. He is not trying to change his egoistic desire. Therefore, his charity is purely for his own benefit.

That is why the Temple was destroyed, despite people following the Torah and commandments and engaging in charity, because it all was for their own sake. The people were divided and that is what led to the destruction of the Temple.

We are unable to connect to be in one desire, in one heart, which is called “being under one blanket,” a single anti-egoistic screen.

Love of all has to be the purpose of our existence. Without this, there will be no nation of Israel, no country of Israel, no land of Israel. That is why it should become a national program. All efforts should be made to educate the people in the spirit of brotherly love, and naturally, Judaism has to lead the way of being an example of such love for the entire nation.

As it says in the book Sefer ha-Middot (The Book of Character Traits) in the chapter, “Importance of Faith”: “Jerusalem will not be rebuilt until peace reigns among the people of Israel.” Achieving peace within the people of Israel and committed, friendly relationships is what it means to rebuild Jerusalem: not from stones, but from our hearts.
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Torah, Deuteronomy 31:10 – 31:11: Then, Moses commanded them, saying, “At the end of [every] seven years, at an appointed time, in the Festival of Succoth, [after] the year of release, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord, your God, in the place He will choose, you shall read this Torah before all Israel, in their ears.

Self-examination, examination of your own negative, egoistic desires occurs prior to the New Year (Rosh HaShana).

Rosh HaShana is the beginning of correction; Judgement Day (Yom Kippur) is the next stage.

And the final correction occurs on Sukkot. This is “Hibuk Smol” (embrace from the left side) and “Hibuk Yamin” (embrace from the right side),in other words, the drawing together of the Creator and the created being. Their complete union is symbolized by the last day of the holiday of Sukkot called Simchat Torah (Rejoicing of the Torah).
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From KabTV’s Secrets of the Eternal Book, 1/23/17

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Yom Kippur is the day of judgement. Who judges? Who is being judged? What does a person need to do on this day? What will happen if a person does everything correctly?

On Judgement Day, a person judges himself, rising above personal egoism and revealing the world as a unified system. It is not by chance that the Jewish people were always criticized for cosmopolitanism—even though all boundaries are arbitrary, our innate, inner core has always made us strangers among them.

Today, when the world desperately needs unity, the Jewish nation is shattered into pieces. However, other nations cannot lie to us—they instinctively, even without their own awareness, demand us to take on the responsibility for the mission of unification, to melt all hearts into one heart.

In this is the essence of our Judgement Day.
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