Question: How does Kabbalah explain “the night of the exodus from Egypt”?

Answer: The night of the exodus from Egypt is a result of all previous development of Jews whereby they brought themselves to the state that allowed them to become a nation and understand that inside them is the ego, Pharaoh, that rips them apart, leads to the conflicts with each other, and makes them feel distant from each other.

Look what is happening around: discords in the family, society, and government. We would do anything in order to suppress an alleged enemy. We need to start feeling our state as Egypt, as the reign of the Pharaoh, meaning our egoism that prevents us from being one nation, one family. Precisely this is called night.

This is why on the Passover night we gather together with our families and consider ourselves as one family, one nation. We want to demonstrate that we are ready to unite, to be together with the aim of rising above our egoism and coming to the freedom from it. This is the exodus from Egypt and the entrance to the land of Israel.

Between them there is a period of 40 years of passing the desert whereby we correct ourselves. By this correction we prepare ourselves for the entrance to the land of Israel as we can’t go straight away from the egoism and hatred to love. After all, love is the same egoism just in a reversed form. And 40 years long periods of preparation represent a distance from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow, from hatred to love.

Egyptian night is a pitch dark, terrible night of an absolute lack of understanding of what is happening and what will happen. People see that because of the mutual hatred, they cease to exist as a nation, as a family. They understand that this dead-end state leads them to death.

But at the same time they don’t see the way out of it because the power of egoism seems to be historically eternal and absolute. In everything the person turns to he sees his egoism, and he feels that he does everything only for his own benefit. It controls our every action: internal, external, our relationships, etc.

Everyone keeps such a distance from another where he would be able to defend himself and to receive maximum from the other. It means that the egoism all the time regulates our relationships with each other, nature, animals, the world, and life.

The terrible state of communication only in an egoistic manner is revealed to us as the darkness of Egypt. Exactly in this state, in the middle of the night a force suddenly appears in us, which leads us forward to the exit from the egoism and gives us a feeling that we can rise from it.

A culminating point of inversion appears and the most terrible darkness suddenly starts transforming into some hope, light: An exit exists somewhere, I have to run! And I run after this dream, after this internal power that suddenly erupts in me. And the light appears!

It is a special night, the night of exiting the egoistic slavery to altruistic eternity and perfection. This is why we celebrate it.
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From a TV Program “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/13/2016

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New Life 717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Reality is a whole; therefore, it is difficult to talk about part of it without knowing the entire picture. The burning bush in the wilderness represents the internal revelation of Moses after burning his ego and matching his characteristics to Divinity, like to a similar absorption frequency; he and the Creator broadcast on the same wavelength.

Fundamentally good is not inherent in us; the evil inclination is, so we can not consider anyone but ourselves. After the forty years Moses lived with Pharaoh, he came to Jethro for forty years and learned about the quality of bestowal, Hesed (Mercy), and how to attain it above the egoism that is exposed. Then, he can return to Egypt to work on the ego.

The goal of humanity is for all of human nature, including all egoism, to resemble the wholeness of the upper force whose nature is love.

The return to Egypt symbolizes the return to the ego of Moses that still needs correction. None of us recognize the Pharaoh within ourselves. Pharaoh symbolizes the absolute dominance of the general ego in us. Moses symbolizes the small desire for the characteristic of bestowal, the discovery of truth.

The people of Israel represent the desires that can be corrected to the attribute of bestowal and love within the general ego. The ego is the entire field of reality, and Moses needs signs and wonders to show the ego that he has power. So, Moses takes the rod, whose function is to aim him in the spiritual way, to put the ego below, and go above it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me,” 4/19/16

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New Life 716 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

After being raised in the house of Pharaoh, Moses, who represents the force of love, goes out and sees terrible things. The children of Israel and the Egyptians represent different approaches to life, pure egoism in contrast to connection and love.

Today people find like distasteful, and if we don’t advance on our own, the force of nature that manages the world might embitter our lives. Today, just as in the past, we must break away from the current method of life and move on to a new method. This is the reason that Moses married Tzipora, Jethro’s daughter, since she represents an additional desire, a desire that is made of receiving and giving. Moses receives an additional desire in order to advance because Moses is a weak force that is not enough to face the big ego, but the Creator is with him.

This is the preparation Moses needs in order to deal with the Egyptians, with Pharaoh, with the children of Israel, and with the Creator. This is how the Creator prepares the children of Israel for redemption.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 716 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 2,” 4/14/16

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Question: What does the Final Sea [the Red Sea] represent?

Answer: The Final Sea (Yam Suf in Hebrew) is a border between the ego and a freedom from it. It is not altruism yet, not love and bestowal, but an exit from the ego.

On the borderline between the egoism and the altruism there lies a barrier of water. Water has two qualities: on the one hand, the quality of the so-called Gevurot, meaning strict laws, harsh forces, and on the other hand, the forces of mercy and love.

Water that consists of these two forces represents a borderline that divides Egypt (an egoistic world) and an altruistic world. Therefore, it is necessary to pass, meaning to break through the part of the water representing harsh force that protects Egypt and doesn’t let to exit it.

If a person can pass this wall of water, he enters the amniotic fluid that starts developing him like a fetus in the mother’s womb. But he has to hate the ego so much that he would be able to get rid of it. And then the waters will part.
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Question: Who are the Egyptians and the people of Israel in terms of spiritual work?

Answer: The Torah speaks about a person like about an object that includes in itself the entire world. Everything is within the person.

The Egyptians in us are egoistic forces; the people of Israel are altruistic forces or forces that want to be altruistic, but are under command of Egyptians (egoism). The Pharaoh represents the entire ego in which we exist.

The Creator is the upper force that controls the Pharaoh, Moses, and all others. His task is to bring the entire creation to the equivalence of form with Him, to altruism. But this requires the recognition of the ego as an evil and the exit from it.

Moses is a force representing part of the Creator that exists inside the person and pulls him toward the revelation and attainment of the upper spiritual qualities. Between these forces occur interactions when a person feels inside himself which of his desires are egoistic, which are altruistic, which of them require a connection with the Creator and which cling to the Pharaoh.

This way he sorts them internally and as a result of this work he understands what actually drives him. He sees that he is completely under control of the Pharaoh. Wherever he turns, everywhere he discovers the Pharaoh hidden within him.

It seems to him that he already works for the sake of bestowal and love of others, that he is above all earthly egoistic desires, but he still continues revealing them within himself. In the end, he doesn’t just despair but is convinced that the Pharaoh possesses him 100%.

But at the same time a special point called Moses that resists the Pharaoh is emerges within him. It starts a fight with the Pharaoh and dooms itself to the ten plagues of Egypt that have to pass over the ego. This way a person starts to understand that he can get rid of the ego. But how can he do it? It is not clear yet.

With this feeling he enters a dark night where, on one hand, he cannot see and understand how the redemption happens, but on the other hand, he passionately desires it. This night is called the night of exiting Egypt and we celebrate it on Passover.
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New Life 715 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 1
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

How does Egypt represent a person’s ego? How do the figures in the story about the exodus from Egypt illustrate forces that operate in a person, and what is the analogy between the slavery in Egypt and the crisis the world is undergoing today?

The story of the exodus from Egypt in its literary sense is well known all over the world, why is unclear. However, if we wish to penetrate the inner meaning of this story and understand the forces that build the figures in it, we must get away from the simple description of the characters in the story. Our world is managed in the same way that different forces create the display on a computer screen. Reality is made of two forces: the force of bestowal and the force of receiving, the Creator and the created being.

The Creator’s hand turns the images from inside, and it also motivates Batya to pull Moses out of the Nile. Moses symbolizes a special force that should correct all of the other desires that are in the attribute of receiving and take them out of Egypt, which symbolizes the ego. Moses was raised as a prince in Pharaoh’s home, egoistic system of healthy capitalism where everyone cares only about himself and everything revolves around money.

Money (Kesef) represents the ability to cover (Kisuf) (same root in Hebrew), the ability to pay for the fulfillment of my desire, while Egypt symbolizes the same dream that we have in our world today. Today, we can no longer manage our world in this way because it is against the Creator, the quality of love and bestowal, and so we must advance to a system in which everyone examines what he can give to others and not receive.

When the children of Israel fled from Egypt, it was because they did not want to live according to their lust for money, according to the desire to receive, and felt that it meant death for them. The alternative is to live in love, not in pride, and this is what Moses represents.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 715 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 1,” 4/14/16

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My article “Passover – a chance to pass over” was published recently in The Jerusalem Post, an English language news source for Jews.

“Passover – A Chance to Pass Over”

Soon, as we do every year, we will be seated once again around the Seder table.

According to the Jewish calendar, Passover is actually the beginning of the year. Officially, the year begins on Rosh Hashanah, but the Jewish calendar also has a deeper, hidden level, which describes our internal, spiritual development.

The Jewish nation is a special one. It was formed not by biological kinship or geographical proximity, but by adherence to an idea—the idea of unity! We became a nation only when we agreed to live “as one man with one heart,” and we were given the task to be “a light unto nations” when we pledged to love our neighbors as ourselves. And Passover is where it all began.

Until Moses was born, the people of Israel were very happy in Egypt. They were prosperous and wealthy, and enjoyed life’s amenities of “pots of meat” and “bread to the full” (Exodus, 16:3). But material contentment can only take us so far. It is human nature that once we have what we want we begin to want something else, something higher. At that point we begin to seek delight in human connection.

That moment of beginning is the birth of Moses—an aspiration for brotherhood and connection. It has existed all along, maturing in the house of Pharaoh and enjoying the material pleasures life has to offer until it had its fill.

At that moment begins the exile in Egypt. Pharaoh, our egoism, cannot surrender to such “lofty” ideas as brotherhood, connection, and mutual responsibility. It loathes and despises them.

And yet, the more the children of Israel developed as individuals and as a society, the more they felt that unity was the next step, a must happen scenario. The children of Israel went through a process similar to the one happening today, where we are realizing that our happiness, health, and general well-being depend on the quality of our social relations. Pharaoh did not want to torture the children of Israel; he simply wanted them to continue to cater to him, namely the ego, rather than to follow Moses, meaning aim for brotherhood and mutual care. And when they wouldn’t go along, he became the vicious king we know from the story.

Our forefathers insisted on their unity and eventually won. They united at the foot of Mt. Sinai and received the law, whose essence the Holy SHLAH expresses by these few words: “Love is the commandment on which the entire Torah stands: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” The children of Israel carefully cleared themselves of hametz [leaven], the self-centeredness within them, and passed over from egoism to brotherhood until they became a nation bound together and united by the vision of love of others.

Today, as we are waking up from the American Dream to the reality that we cannot base our societies on competition and isolation, we are beginning to feel more and more like the children of Israel in exile. Until now Egypt was quite fun, but now it is becoming hostile and feels more and more like exile.

Now is the time to rekindle our brotherhood and love of others and pass over once again. It is the beginning of a new year, a new era in our society. It is time to shift to a new paradigm of relationships.

The “Me, me, me” culture has exhausted itself because we are simply not happy being confined to our separate shells. In order to be happy, we, the descendants of the children of Israel, must move like our forefathers from egoism to brotherhood and mutual responsibility.

Imagine the life we will have when we care for one another. No one will have to struggle through life’s trials because everyone will help out. And likewise, we will enjoy helping others. And as each of us chips in for our neighbors, our ties will strengthen and create a bond that will build a society based on friendship, warmth, and unity. “Love your neighbor as yourself” will stop being a cliché, and will become what it was always meant to be—our reality.

Recently there have been numerous references in the press to the disunity of the Jewish community. It is a good sign. It shows that we are beginning to see fragmentation and alienation as the root of our problems. We will always have diversity, but rather than fear it, we should embrace it! The more diverse we are, the more our brotherhood will grow, as long as we value unity above all else.

And there is another bonus. As we unite above our differences we will present a model of a prosperous community that thrives because of its diversity, rather than despite it. This is something that the world needs desperately today. We can offer it. We had it when we came out of Egypt, and we can reignite it now and share it with the world. In this we can become “a light unto nations,” a beacon of hope for the world.

This Passover, let us pass over from alienation to brotherhood, from indifference to mutual responsibility. In short, let us all come out of Egypt, together.
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Question: Why don’t we eat Chametz on Pesach (Passover)?

Answer: Because Chametz symbolizes the connection between flour and water. Flour symbolizes the attribute of the egoistic desire and water symbolizes the attribute of the altruistic desire.

Therefore, on Passover we are at final stage of the domination of the ego and we begin to feel that egoism controls us in everything since we lack the attribute of Hassadim, the attribute of Hesed, the attribute of the water, which is what the Matzah symbolizes.

Matzah is the connection between flour and water. They are mixed for a very precise period of time, for 18 minutes, so that the flour will not begin to rise. If they are mixed too long, we have to constantly knead the dough without stopping…

This process symbolizes our work with egoism, the process in which we have to keep working with it, giving it new forms over and over again, moving to altruism. And then it is possible.

But in principle, it is impossible to work with the Chametz for more than 18 minutes, which means that the connection has to be minimal, just as it appears in our egoism. What is altruism? That we want to show good intentions toward someone so the ego will benefit from it? The Matzah symbolizes the lack of water, the lack of Hassadim, the lack of Hesed, in our egoistic attitude, and so it is called the “bread of poverty,” which means the poverty of a wide heart, in the openness between people.

It is customary to eat Matzah on Passover eve because it is on this night that we reveal to what extent we don’t have the attribute of love and bestowal among us, the attribute of Bina, or the attribute of Hesed. We are ready for anything as long as we can exit this egoistic state, and so we eat Matzah on the night of our liberation from egoism.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/13/16

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The first hero of the Passover holiday is Moses, the spiritual leader. This is a special quality within a person that leads him to the exodus from Egypt.

If we don’t talk about Moses as a quality within a person but as a character, then he wasn’t a born leader. Moses is a person who is closed within himself, who wants to achieve, to be aware of the surrounding world, his characteristics, himself.

Moses lived in the palace of Pharaoh and used all the benefits that were due him as a prince. In the palace they respected him and he learned the Egyptian wisdom, magic, everything that was used in Egypt in his time in the construction of the pyramids, in perceiving the universe through astronomy and everything that had been developed back then. Moses was a scientist and so all this was very attractive, but he was not connected either with the Egyptians or with the people. He was simply a prince.

When he was in exile from Egypt, the Creator called for him to return to Egypt and he obeyed, but without any personal intention. When he returned to Egypt, he went to his grandfather, Pharaoh, and his stepmother, Batya, as an opponent, standing before them and saying to Pharaoh, “Let my people go” (Exodus 5:1). But Pharaoh opposed this and argued, “The children of Israel are living here with their families and cattle; they manage their households and have been mine for quite some time already. They don’t intend to go anywhere.” Imagine a situation in which we apparently demand from President Obama, “Let the Jews go to Israel.” And he would answer, “I don’t intend to free them; I need them for the development of the economy, science, and commerce. Try approaching them and listen to what they will answer.”

After all, the Jews were living very well in Egypt. They used all the benefits even more than the Egyptians themselves. So it was impossible to approach them in any form, even from the point of view of Pharaoh and from the point of view of the Jewish people themselves. The people of Israel were fat, lazy, and under the influence of traditions, culture, science, arts and entertainments of the Egyptians. They had everything they needed, including huge pastures for their cattle. One can say that they lived in the best place in the world.

The moment Moses began to ask Pharaoh to free the people of Israel from Egypt, they began to feel the evil side of Pharaoh: blows, pressure, oppression, taxes, great persecutions, and pogroms. Generally, everything that we have seen throughout the history of the Jews suddenly began to appear in Egypt with the people who had been totally pampered in every way! And so the attitude of Pharaoh towards Moses became sharply negative. In spite of this, Moses went to Pharaoh according to the command of the Creator and demanded from him, “Let my people go!”

Moses was afraid of Pharaoh and the Creator, and didn’t know what to do. He tried to convince the Creator that he was tongue-tied and stuttered, that he was not a natural leader. But the Creator replied, “I know whom to choose, so onward!” And he went. Moreover, when the Creator said, “Let’s go together. I will harden the heart of Pharaoh so much that it will be preferable for us to go together.”

The wisdom of Kabbalah talks about the deepest and innermost characteristics of a person, which he must discern within himself specifically through the pathway of spiritual development in which a person begins to search within himself for the characteristics of Pharaoh, Moses, the Creator, the people of Israel, Egypt, and all the rest of the images in the Torah.

Ultimately, he reaches a state of absolute darkness when he understands that he cannot leave Egypt, he doesn’t want to leave it, and doesn’t know what forces will make it possible for him to do this. And then at night an immense power, a storm breaks out, lightning and thunder in the spiritual sense. The person is found in a terrible panic! But he runs after the Creator.

The exodus from Egypt happens in haste; from where and to where is unknown. What matters is that the Creator wants this, and the person carries out His will.

There is nothing else! What matters is what the Creator wants and that we follow Him because it is impossible to get our bearings by using our feelings or knowledge—neither through the heart or the mind. Only the upper force shows a person where he or she should go. The Creator leads you by a pillar of fire or cloud, and you go; it cannot be in any other way.

To be completely purified from Egypt and take everything above your reason and feeling, you must leap into the sea! The sea is a terrible state in which it is up to the person to take a step absolutely contrary to all of his emotions and reason! After that, nothing is left of what was his! He exists completely pure. In this state, a spiritual birth happens. After full purification of emotional and physical memory, a new life begins.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/11/16

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Question: What does Pharaoh represent?

Answer: Pharaoh is an immense force. I will not talk about him as a personality because practically this persona doesn’t really exist. The wisdom of Kabbalah examines Pharaoh as the immense ego that is created by the Creator. It develops and absorbs everything into its egoism and is ready to devour the entire world.

It is insatiable and gradually becomes revealed as humanity develops. The more we strive to do something in the world and get something, the more it devours, leaving us no hope of changing the world for the better or a happy future. On the contrary, the world only becomes worse and worse.

More and more people are dissatisfied with life. We once thought that we could get along, but today we don’t. Today people no longer feel secure in the most distant villages, not economically or from the aspect of material existence. Now people are so tied to the whole world they cannot feed themselves. This is a paradox, but a farmer cannot feed himself from his own land.

Pharaoh (egoism) swallows this, because it brings us together so much that we cannot be independent from others. It makes our world integral, global, and interconnected, a small village in which we all depend on each other. And here we see that we cannot handle it.

Egoism leads us to the need to be properly interconnected with one another. This means that Pharaoh himself, by transforming our world so that it becomes mutually connected, brings us to a state where we hate it and then we transform our world into another one with good connections between us. Otherwise we will not be able to continue living. But then Pharaoh continually directs us against unity. So on the one hand, even though he awakens in us a desire for unity and acts so that we cannot live without making the right connections between us, since otherwise we cannot provide ourselves with even the most essential things, and on the other hand, he won’t let us unite. This contrast sums up the merit of Pharaoh.

Therefore he is called an “angel of the Creator.” He was created by the Creator like the two-faced Janus, where from one side he obliges us to connect and unite and on the other side won’t let us get closer to each other. So we begin to understand that we have no other way out besides rising above it, escaping from it. So we run away from him. This means that the flight from Pharaoh, from our nature, from our ego, is the Exodus from Egypt.

This is not easy because it is still up to us to discover all this within us. Our time is unique. We are now discovering everything that the Creator prepared for us in the form of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is now being revealed among us in the form of the global and integral world, and at the same time, individually it doesn’t allow us to exist in accordance with this integral world. So we need to respect Pharaoh because he takes us out of Egypt.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/12/16

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