In my column in Ynet a new article was published about the month of Elul, the month of mercy and forgiveness and especially about our fate.

“We Sinned, Betrayed, Stole…United!”

We find ourselves in a state of war every other year. When this happens, we are the world champions in connecting and in mutually caring for one another, but when the last missile lands, we quickly pull out the arrows of hate. That’s the way we are, but are we meant to live that way? Is this really our fate?

The month of Elul quietly arrives at the end of every year and we put on a righteous face (after all, this is the month of mercy and forgiveness) and cannot just let it go by. So we rush to call out: We sinned, betrayed, and transgressed. Beautiful. But what?

Even a quick glance around doesn’t promise us a rose garden. Hamas continue to dig tunnels; the Iranians keep fooling everyone and continue to arm themselves; the Europeans are experiencing a first encounter with the Middle East, and the world is losing its balance. Some may say that the Jews can never benefit from a situation like this, and that the waves of anti-Semitism and different anti-Israeli organizations are on their way to us and our families in the Diaspora.

Tracking Our Roots

We have to go 4,000 years back to the days of ancient Babylon in order to understand our fate. It was then that a wise man Abraham discovered that if people’s ego grows sky high, they cease to understand one another and begin to fight each other. Remember the Tower of Babel? This is exactly what it is about.

Abraham developed a method of working with the human ego correctly so that it can help people connect more strongly to one another and rise above the hate and the fighting. Together with his wife Sarah, he established a system of disseminating the method of connection that he developed. Eventually thousands gathered around him, which eventually formed our nation.

Since then, our relations are defined by clear laws: The moment we harm the connection between us, hatred and contempt overcome us. When we grow weaker internally, there are forces that immediately rise to destroy us externally.

Introspection?

The last year should make us all realize that if we don’t start a meaningful process of connection between us, our country could fall apart. The division, the polarization, and the gap between us is growing increasingly greater from day to day. The ego is growing in each of us and no one can give it up in order to connect, and so there is no doubt that we need help. We need a method that will teach us how to channel the ego, that can explain to us what the right connection is and how we should connect.

This is exactly what the wisdom of Kabbalah that Abraham established engages in, and today we need it more than ever before. We need the uniting force that connected us then. Only if we use it will we survive and actually become invincible.

Happy New Year!
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Adam discovered the secret of life 5,776 years ago and the fact that man can discover the upper world while living in this world. He taught it to his students, and twenty generations later, Abraham came along and completed the teachings of Adam and turned it into a method that was vital to all of mankind in his days.

Abraham was the first who actually implemented the teachings of Adam. He gathered the ancient Babylonians around him and told them the reason that their life was so difficult and why there were so many problems after the building of the Tower of Babel when people ceased to understand one another.

Abraham said that it was possible to rise above our ego and build a wonderful life for everyone because this method enables us to get closer to one another. People understood that their life would be better if they treated each other more nicely, but they couldn’t overcome the hatred they felt.

Abraham’s group that implemented the method grew and became known as Israel. 1,500 years from the time of Abraham until the destruction of the Temple people live in the attainment of the upper force while living in this world, having acquired the upper spiritual life.

They lived according to the law of “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” but the time came when they fell from this high level and instead of brotherly love, felt unfounded hatred toward one another. This is called the destruction of the Temple.

If the nation of Israel unites again, they will feel as if they live in Paradise. This is possible, and there is no need to die in order to achieve that. We simply need to connect according to the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is very simple. Let’s do it, and let’s all live a wonderful, peaceful life, a secure and tranquil life.

Question: It is hard to believe that the nation of Israel can unite because it is the most divided nation with many different streams and factions.

Answer: This division is typical of the nation of Israel because the advantage of Light from darkness is revealed. We are so hostile toward one another because we must feel how much we need the method of connection and unity, which means the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about nothing but connection and unity. All of the holidays, customs, and the commandments of the Torah are about the connection and unity among us.

Yom Kippur symbolizes the dissemination of the method of correction all over the world. After all, the nation of Israel is obliged to be “a Light to all the nations,” first to connect with each other and then lead the unification of the entire world.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 9/6/15

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Question: We usually celebrate our birthday and that of our relatives. What is the meaning of celebrating Rosh Hashanah, which is the birthday of a person who lived thousands of years ago?

Answer: We celebrate the anniversary of the day that the opportunity to discover the secret of life, the purpose of our life, and the meaning of life, which makes it worth living, was first revealed to mankind.

These questions about the meaning of life awaken in many people today. Adam HaRishon (First Man) was the first to discover this secret. He explored it and found out that we are living in this world in a special reality so that we will ascend from it to an upper level, to a whole and eternal existence.

We can actually attain this existence right now and don’t have to die in order to do so. Death itself doesn’t provide us with the right to enter the upper world. If it were so, why would it be worthwhile to do anything in this life?

People think that by living without the revelation of the upper world they will be able to enter it after they die. So what do we need this world for?

Many don’t even believe that there is anything else other than this corporeal world. This is exactly the secret that Adam discovered. And this is the event that we celebrate when the Jewish new year begins.

It is because we discover that we have nowhere to advance to since this world is only a passageway, a corridor, through which we can arrive at the revelation of the Creator (Bore), which means to come and see (Bo – Re).

Question: Will this happen after we die?

Answer: It will not happen after the death of our body, but after the death of our ego. It says “you shall see your world in your lifetime.” So please see it while you are alive!

Adam discovered that anyone who wants to has the opportunity to discover the upper world, that is, the next level according to the order of our evolution, here and now in this world.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 9/6/15

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Question: Every year we wish each other a good year, and at the end of the year it turns out that it wasn’t particularly successful. In what way are we mistaken? All of us want things to be good, but we don’t know how to do this.

Answer: We don’t understand that to the degree of our rapprochement with each other, we are approaching the higher power, the good and beneficent force. The formula is very simple: the closer we are to each other, the closer we become to the Creator.

It would seem that there is no simpler formula than this, but it is not possible to carry it out through human powers. And so the wisdom of Kabbalah was revealed to help in doing this through the higher power. The upper force will help a person in this way only, and not in anything else. It is only waiting for this request from us.

Question: If Adam already opened the way to the good life 5,776 years ago, why didn’t he show it to everyone? Why was it necessary to go through all the wars, exiles, and troubles through which humanity has passed for thousands of years?

Answer: Adam taught his method because the Kabbalists in all generations were followers of the students of Abraham. To this day Kabbalists study the discovery of Adam so that in each and every generation further and further new details were added to the study.

Kabbalah develops like every other science, and ultimately we received knowledge about what kind of upper world is found above us, how it influences us and manages us, and how it is possible to influence it from below to above.

We clarify that the upper world and our lower world are completely interconnected, and within our relationships with each other we discover the upper force driving both these worlds called the Creator. The wisdom of Kabbalah deals with the discovery of the upper force and the establishment of a mutual connection with it.

The problem is that it is possible to discover the upper force only on condition that we resemble and become equivalent to its characteristics, like everything else in our lives. I will not be able to understand another person if he is talking in a language that is unknown to me or he talks about things that are understood only by a professional, or we have such different perspectives that we cannot communicate.

All of our senses, sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch are arranged to absorb only what we are ready to perceive in the range of frequencies of their sensitivity. But we have no sensitivity regarding the upper world; we still need to develop this within us. And this is what Kabbalah teaches us.

And so there is a name for this, Kabbalah,  from the word, “LeKabel” (to receive); it is a wisdom about how to receive, grasp, understand, and feel the upper world. Adam left us this knowledge, and all the Kabbalists that came after him developed his discovery more and more and added to it, similar to how physics develops from generation to generation.

As a result, today there is a developed, unique, and powerful science in our hands that explains how we must discover the essence of life and its purpose practically, meaning to implement it. The Kabbalists from the past wrote about our generation, pointing to it as the “Generation of the Messiah,” that is, those who could draw upon all of the wisdom and use it, ultimately attaining and knowing the purpose of our existence on the face of this Earth.

Humanity has reached a state where it must answer this question, otherwise our situation will be hopeless. Kabbalah opens up all the possibilities within us, so we have a reason to celebrate the new year and be happy; we just need to correctly use the gift that we received from Adam HaRishon (The First Man), Adam.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 9/6/15

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Question: How is it really possible to reach recognition of evil, to express remorse, and repent in this world where it has become the norm to harm each other, disregard others, and deceive every day?

 Answer: Humanity developed for thousands of year in order to reach the recognition of evil in our time. All of nature around us is starting to “round off” and put pressure on us, forcing us to connect to one connected system, similar to the world of still, vegetative, and animate that is united in one symbiotic system, and people need to be connected with each other like that. This state is created now, the first time in all our history.

The Kabbalists pointed to the 20^th Century as the time that humanity would start connecting. To this end, the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed, the method of connection, unity, and correction. But the correction is not possible as long as the ruin is not revealed, and that’s why so many problems—hatred of each other, separation, parents and children unable to find a common language, people not getting married and establishing families or divorcing—are revealed in the world.

All these are signs of the time that Kabbalists described precisely like that many years ago. Evil, hatred, and separation is revealed and people are looking for every opportunity to retreat and hide in order to take a break from each other. But we need to understand that nature obliges us to unite, leaving us no choice. We are in the framework of the laws of nature. Just as you cannot go against the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, there cannot be disregard for the internal laws of human behavior, that is, the soul.

The wisdom of Kabbalah tells about the laws of the soul: how to assemble it all together from the separated parts of the broken Adam HaRishon. We all must connect, but not in physical bodies, but in our inner desires in order to complete each other. When we unite and connect, one mutual general virtual creature comes out that is called Adam (Man). We all work for this virtual unity and make efforts to improve it, and then inside it we will feel the upper spiritual world.

Question: What can I do if I curse everyone on the road, argue with the cashier in the supermarket, insult people that are near me in my egoistic attitude?

Answer: Everyone behaves like that. The main thing is to understand that this is bad, that is, to reveal what benefit we would receive due to our unity, for example, a million dollars. For example: if a few people unite together and each of them would receive a prize of a million dollars, everyone would run to unite if they would see such a benefit from connection.

Imagine that ten people are sitting around a roundtable. Ten is the number required for a complete measure of connection. And if we succeed in connecting, then from above a sack with $10,000,000 falls on the table, one million for each.

Then I realize that my inability to connect with others is my evil nature, my enemy. I could have gained, but my ego did not let me connect. Only this recognition is lacking.

The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals a little of what is the upper world to us. How good it is, but the condition to enter it is that we scrutinize our main obstacle, our egoism, calling it the evil inclination. We are only lacking this recognition; otherwise, we don’t think that our egoism is bad. And this is whole purpose of repentance, which is customary to do in the month of Elul before the new year. Repentance is the revelation in me of the disturbances against good connection with everyone.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/30/15

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Question: What is the meaning of the symbols of Rosh Hashanah: apples in honey, a fish head etc.?

Answer: A fish head symbolizes our desire to be a head and not a tail. It is because we want to determine our life by ourselves and not allow ourselves to draw us in the direction of the ego. We want to know what this life was given to us for, what the purpose of our life is, and how to fill it with meaning and make it worthwhile and significant. This is the difference between a head and a tail.

The pomegranate symbolizes the nation of Israel, the unity of all the souls in one body. This is exactly how we want to feel, united in one soul.

The apple in honey symbolizes our desire to fill our life with meaning and sweetness. It is the same apple that Adam ate and sinned because of his calculations. He meant to perform a correction for all of humanity at one time because he included all the souls in him. This is how great the egoistic desire was that was revealed in him.

But Adam didn’t succeed in performing the correction. To correct means to fill with sweetness and to ascend above our ego. The apple symbolizes our egoistic desire that was created by the Creator and when we dip it in honey and correct it we reach a good life.

Adam tried to perform this correction at one time and didn’t succeed, and so we perform it gradually—many people throughout history, one correction after another, gradually attaining the end of correction.

The apple dipped in honey is the symbol of the correction and the sweetening of the ego that allows us to use it for good.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 9/6/15

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Question: How can we start believing that relationships among the people of Israel can be corrected to such an extent that they will be an example for the entire world? After all, today we can see that they are becoming increasingly worse and the rift within the society is growing.

Answer: It is actually good that the situation is so bad, as this is forcing us to discover the cause of all evil and correct it. I am happy when transgressions are revealed, and may they come to light even more.

These transgressions existed among the people of Israel before, ever since the destruction of the Temple. Only now, they have finally emerged and floated to the surface in such a way that nothing can be done through the usual means. Things cannot be smoothed over, nor silenced, nor hidden. Only one thing remains, and that is to explore and understand their true cause.

It is then that the people of Israel will discover that they have the wisdom of Kabbalah, which speaks about this, that there are people who know what to do, and that it is worthwhile to learn from them. They will see that a whole system is already in place that should be strengthened and broadened, but that salvation will come specifically from this handful of Kabbalists.

Question: And what is this salvation? Everyone understands it in their own way, and usually one’s salvation comes to the detriment of others.

Answer: Salvation is a way out of the evil of egoism. The good is love amongst all people, with such a connection between everyone that we feel ourselves as one body. This method and its effects will spread from Israel to all countries where it will develop and fill the entire world.

Question: What does a country, where all citizens feel themselves as one body, look like?

Answer: It is like a close knit family where everyone feels at home, in his castle in the best possible sense.

Question: And how will this influence international relations?

Answer: It will force the entire world to adapt the same form as Israel. The nations of the world do not have freedom of choice in this. Today they are copying Israel’s negative form, and this is why they hate it. But when Israel will influence them in a good way, they will realize it and treat it with the same goodness.

Question: Should the people of Israel give some thought to why the world hates and blames it these days?

Answer: It is necessary to understand the root cause and stop hoping that the situation will resolve itself. From now on, there will no longer be a good life, it will only get worse.

This will be to such extent that after waking up in the morning, a person will be thinking about how to survive until evening, and when going to bed at night, he will not be sure that he will wake up in the morning. Life will become worse and worse until we fulfill our mission.

The people of Israel will not be able to escape it, because only they have the freedom of choice and determine all relationships in the world, including the relations between Russia and the United States, about which everyone is very concerned.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/6/15

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Question: What does the food we eat on Rosh HaShanah symbolize?

Answer: On Rosh HaShanah, it is a Mitzvah (commandment) for us to eat the head of a fish to emphasize our desire to be the head and not the tail. This means that we want to find an understanding for the entire structure of creation, the entire spiritual project, and not just to understand and recognize our actions, goals, or our role in penetrating into the entire wisdom of creation, but also to find the power and courage to realize them within ourselves.

The pomegranate symbolizes the correction of the 613 egoistic desires in every person for rapprochement, unity, and love. The seeds of the pomegranate create one collective, common fruit. Each one of us is a small seed, and we need to unite, which represents the completion of our common collective spiritual work, a fruit in which all components are connected in the right way.

The apple is that part we took from the sin that happened with the Tree of Knowledge. We dip it in honey to sweeten whatever is waiting for us as we continue forward, so that the instructions and help that we receive from above will be correct and precise. The correction of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge is called mollification. If a person places before himself the same goal that exists in nature and finds harmony within it, there can no longer be anything in life that is bad for him. He will constantly feel mutual, harmonious help from nature that surrounds him.

If we think about unity and connection between us, we can balance the climate on Earth and do everything that we want, such as preventing all suffering and war. But before we teach humanity to connect and unite, we need to learn this ourselves. Studying the wisdom of Kabbalah will explain to everyone how this is done, andI hope that we attain this unity.

All these customs are simply external in character. But in fact, this is a huge, major holiday from which the right attitude towards life truly begins because a person now begins to restore himself.
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From KabTV’s “Holidays. Rosh HaShana” 8/6/15

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In order to ask for forgiveness, we must know what love is for people like yourself and what it means by asking these questions, “What haven’t I done on behalf of this love? If it is necessary to feel that I have love for others, which is the main Mitzvah (commandment) of the Torah, do I or do I not feel it?” Many people think that it is enough just to carry out physical Mitzvot.

The Kabbalists advise us to unite into groups of 10, so that together we can check if we are truly treating each other well. Is everyone trying to distance himself from his ego and connect with others, become integrated with their desires and to feel love between us? If we understand that all of this doesn’t exist, we feel we are to blame, so we ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness is for not carrying out the main condition, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Today, this condition has become imperative for the whole world in order to come out of the global crisis. But the people of Israel must be the first to realize this, and we are not doing it. So we ask for the power to help us attain this love. We clearly see that we are not prepared to carry out this condition by ourselves, but we can ask for help. And we conclude the Selichot (forgiveness) by asking for the power to carry out the main Mitzvah and bringing people closer together. And through this getting closer we also get closer to the higher force, the Creator.

A person cannot realize this by himself, so we work in a group, which is how we check if we have attained mutual bestowal and connection or not. If not, we need to ask for the power to help us connect and reach unity. This common request is called prayer and it is derived from our connection, from the center of our circle, like a pillar that rises upward. When we examine our union, we reach Selichot.

From here we see that without studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is impossible to discover what to ask, towards what to be attracted, the purpose of Creation, and how the Torah is connected to the Mitzvot of love of others and love of the Creator through the entire order of correction. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to realize ourselves according to what is written in the Torah. The only Mitzvah is to rise above our ego and attain connection and unity between everyone. It includes within it all the rest of the Mitzvot, which are individual corrections of our ego. The egoistic desire is composed of 613 parts, each one of which we must correct, beginning with the easiest and moving towards what is more and more difficult. In this way it is necessary to carry out 613 corrections, which are called the 613 (Taryag) Mitzvot.

When we help each other we ultimately attain redemption, meaning that we discover the higher power, the Creator, within our correct mutual connection of bestowal and love. And this is the forgiveness before Rosh HaShanah. Certainly it is impossible to begin the New Year, the new beginning, the next level, towards which we must ascend thanks to our correction without clarifying all that we went through. And this is the essence of repentance, to ask with greater vigor for the Light that Reforms to correct us and make it possible for us to attain an even stronger union.
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From KabTV’s “Selichot” 8/17/15

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The month of Tishrei is coming, a special month full of holidays. The Jewish holidays are not just fulfilling a traditional obligation, they have spiritual roots derived from the forces of nature that operate in cycles, according to the rotation of the Earth around the sun and other higher reasons.

We feel that every day influences our world with different forces: One day is not like another, and one night is not like another night; we are changing all the time. There are more pleasant and better days and there are problematic days.

The month of Elul is a very good time for review of what we did in the past year and what we intend to do in the New Year.

The meaning of the name “Elul” is an acronym, “Ani LeDodi VeDodi Li (I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine)” (Song of Songs 6:3). We must understand the essential demand of the Creator, the higher force of nature. “I am my beloved’s” means that I need to examine myself this month before the beginning of the new year, in a special period of concentration of unique forces within us and our influence on the world.

We must carry out what is written in the Torah, the obligations that were received at Mount Sinai: “Become as one person with one heart” and “All Israel are friends.” Ultimately it is up to us to reach, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” and complete union.

People don’t understand what love is. In our world, this word takes on a very unclean and sexual nuance, or we connect this word with love for animals, trees, and the preservation of nature.

But the concept of love of others means connecting to feel all the desires of others and trying to fulfill them. This is like the connection of two devices; if we connect them correctly, the result is a single device all of whose parts can understand each other and work together.

That is how an engine is built so that all of its parts work in concert, like the organs of a single body that support each other. In this case, it is possible to say that there is love between them.

The Torah is speaking about love like this, about mutual connection, about understanding between everyone, when each one works for the others. If everyone works for everyone, a perfect system emerges, and this is the situation we must attain.

First only one person was created, Adam, one desire. But after that this system was shattered into a multitude of fragments that were not able to integrate with each other. Our work is to find a place for each one that is appropriate for him, and clarify in what form he must be integrated with the others. This is like a gigantic puzzle that we must assemble into one picture.

This puzzle includes 600,000 essential parts called “six hundred thousand souls,” and a further multitude of additional small fragments that are inserted between us. Every person in this world has a part of the overall puzzle because all of us are the “children of Adam,” and must compose him together.

But the main obligation in assembling this puzzle is imposed upon the people of Israel. They are the main constituents of all its billions of parts. If the people of Israel will assemble themselves correctly and will connect this puzzle correctly, then all the rest of the fragments will begin to move and search for their place. And ultimately each one will integrate with the others and become integrated in the puzzle.

In this way humanity will attain harmony, wondrous union, and the correct global integration that our world requires today so profoundly.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/30/15

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