Question: Can we say that the whole Israeli nation will undergo the state of the darkness of Egypt, as dark clouds are building up around us and things are getting very tense. Is this the approaching night?

Answer: Of course. Otherwise it is impossible because we have to build the quality of bestowal, which starts with a desire and the desire for it can appear only in a state of night. We must remember that.

Night, sufferings, detachment, weakness, and disappointments are part of our way. We need to collect them all and yearn to advance; otherwise, we will not feel the day. In the Torah there is no day or night. The moment we process everything, we sense the night correctly, we will begin to feel the Light instead.

After all, what do we feel as day? The attitude of love and bestowal unto others. Now, however, we feel it as night, as darkness. It is only the change in our attitude towards darkness that will invoke the feeling of Light instead of darkness.

We don’t move from one sphere of the globe to the other side where the sun shines and fills everything with light. No, we process our negative impressions of bestowal, love, and mutual help internally into a positive attitude, and then night turns into day.

Everything takes place inside us, in our attitude towards these values. There can be nothing else. We always start from night, because the attribute of bestowal is night for us.

When we correct our negative feelings and impressions and change them, we feel Light and day in the opposite state. We are the ones who determine internally what is night and what is day.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/12/14

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Torah, “Leviticus” 26:9 – 26:12: I will turn towards you, and I will make you fruitful and increase you, and I will set up My covenant with you. You will eat very old [produce], and you will clear out the old from before the new. And I will place My dwelling in your midst, and My Spirit will not reject you; I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people.

Question: What does this mean: “And I will walk among you….”?

Answer: This means that all of the distance and space between us will be filled with the characteristics of the Creator, the properties of bestowal and love. So we will become His people, that system that consciously, willingly, and with love, accepts and perceives all of His laws and feels the Creator, and He us, for according to the law of “equivalence of form,” He is found among His people.

The Creator turns to all who want to be like Him by carrying out these conditions. Every person can become Israel, except for a few people who are like Amalek. They are not ready to change themselves. Yet, in each one of us, there is a characteristic of Amalek because, falling from a spiritual height, they have become mixed among us at the end of the last exile so that we became a mixture of all kinds of qualities. So, we need to wipe out the property of Amalek in us completely and replace it with a new quality. This is talking about those qualities and quantities that we must correct.

We need to understand that each one of us includes within himself all of the human qualities. So, when we correct ourselves, we can correct all of humanity and, in this way, pave the way for the rest of the people, fragments of whom already are found within us.

Question: However, it is difficult for a person to understand that each one of us is composed of all the rest, and yet you introduce this as an axiom.

Answer: I would not say that it is difficult to understand and internalize this. This is basically a scientific picture characteristic of a global world in which everyone is mutually linked, including the opposing properties within them.

The fact is that if we don’t discern reality this way, we cannot be corrected. We need to attain this thought and understand that as long as the last person of the seven billion has not corrected himself, humanity will not be corrected because his fragment exists in each one of us, he or she must be corrected and integrated with the others. This is an integral system in which each part is composed of all the rest, as well as his own.

Question: You once said that movies were for a person to identify with someone and even feel him, for example, The Prince and the Pauper.

Answer: In the world everything is created only so that our characteristics will become mingled. Movies are one of the means through which we can become integrated with others. After all, in any case it is information, no matter what.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/12/14

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In the corporeal world I depend on everyone and on all. I do not know what will happen a moment from now. But when speaking about independence beyond time, space, location, and movement, here I myself define my future states by becoming free from all the factors that can change me against my will.

This can only happen in one certain case: When I am completely connected with the Creator who determines the present and the future of the entire universe.

Baal HaSulam believed that our independence begins with the actual establishment of the state of Israel because the only way we can reach unity with the Creator is through our own interconnection. And this will happen once there are no foreign elements between us. This is why we must once again gather on this land.

And when people (Jews and non-Jews), who understand their mission and strive towards unity with the Creator, work on it, their unity, the circle they create between them, turns them into a receptor of the Creator’s influence and a sensor, which reveals the Creator within them.

We fully start determining our present and future by developing and cultivating this feeling, revealing the Creator to the extent of our unity. This is the attainment of independence.

This is why there is no way to attain independence before we turn ourselves into this structure and start working on it in our world. Spiritual work begins with the physical creation of a group, which gathers into a circle and begins to cultivate the quality of bestowal, interchange and interconnection.

And then we must position ourselves in a way where everyone will lose his “I,” we would all turn into a “we,” and then this “we” would turn into a “one,” where we will begin to perceive the oneness of the quality of goodness and love, which is called the Creator.
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From “A Talk about Independence Day,” 04/02/2015

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Question: Is it really possible to unite in a way that others become more important to me than myself, if a person always thinks about himself first?

Answer: A person has to rise to a level where he thinks about others first.

Question: Why does the Creator give us impossible missions? First He gives us an egoistic nature, then demands for us to attain love for the neighbor as for yourself, and when we can’t do it, he sends us the Holocaust?

Answer: Did we really try it and fail? We did’t even try to do it. If we start trying to unite, we will see how the Creator will come and fight the battle for us.

We aren’t required to do anything other than make efforts to reach unity. It’s clear that we don’t have the desire, forces or understanding to do this. But we only have to start making efforts, like a baby taking his first steps.

These efforts are the only thing required of us. They are enough, and the Creator will do the rest. The upper law operating in the universe will finish this work for us.

Throughout all the generations, the nation of Israel was persecuted by others. In this way, we are being pushed toward correction, unity, and love for the neighbor as for ourselves. When others become closer to us than ourselves, we thus create an integral connection in which all of humanity is connected into one sphere. Everyone is united and depends on everyone. No one is more or less important; everyone is absolutely equal. That is when we will reveal a new world.

Today we see the world through the eyes of our egoism, assessing how much we can use it for our own benefit. But if we attain unity, we will see a perfect, boundless reality, which is beyond our egoism, beyond the interest to profit or the fear of losing. This will be life in the eternal ad perfect world—a life of paradise.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/12/2015

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Question: Is the European group of Bnei Baruch also to blame if the world experiences a disaster because of a lack of connection within Israel?

Answer: Today, everyone is responsible for this, meaning each one who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah and feels a connection inside Israel. When I refer to Israel, I am referring to all of our friends and groups all over the world.

All of us have received an awakening from the Creator, just as the group of Abraham received it in ancient Babylon. And so we are found today in the same situation of Israel (Yashar-El – straight to the Creator).

It is not important that one received an awakening 3,500 years ago in Babylon, came with it to this day, and another received this awakening in South America only a few months or years ago. According to the spiritual world, there is no meaning to these physical years.

All of us are already related to Yashar-El , directly connected to the Creator, and so must convey the Light through us to the world. If we do this, it will be good; and if not, it will be very bad. I hope that we will succeed.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/14, Chosen Topics on: Holocaust Memorial Day

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Question: The Holocaust, which befell the Jewish nation, was the most tragic event in all of our history. But when we see how anti-Semitism is gaining momentum all over the world, it seems that instead of becoming a thing of the past, the Holocaust is possible even today. Can the Holocaust happen again?

Answer: The point of the process that is happening to us is for us to repent our egoistic nature and demand to replace it, to replace hatred with brotherly love. And in order to reach that kind of realization, we need to learn about the entire program of creation.

The science of Kabbalah explains that all of creation is one closed, analog system, all of whose parts are interconnected on all levels into one sphere. Thus, every element affects all other elements and they all harmoniously take part in the system, except for man.

Imagine a sphere that contains still nature, plants, and animals that all exist in total symbiosis with each other. Even though we see how one of them eats another, it’s only because man, the most developed creature, is evil and egoistic by nature.

Egoism separates us and forces us to profit at others’ expense, to compete and wage war. Each person feels better if he manages to get ahead of others, instead of letting them get ahead of him.

Human nature is opposite to the perfect, global, integral nature, which is a round, closed system. But eventually, humanity has to reach equivalence with nature and attain a wonderful, perfect state where all the nations of the world are united.

There is one special nation called the nation of Israel, which has the method to attain unity. This nation lived in such unity for 1,600 years, from the time of Ancient Babylon on.

After coming out of Ancient Babylon, the Jewish nation went through the land of Canaan, Egypt, and the Sinai desert, and then reached the land of Israel, where it lived until the destruction of the Temple and its expulsion into the last exile. For about 1,500 years, this nation lived by the principle of love for the neighbor as for yourself.

The Jewish nation lived in the attainment of the general nature of unity, and by virtue of that it attained the laws of the general nature, it attained the “Creator,” or perfection, mutual love and bestowal.

After that we fell from the height of love into hatred and thus became equal to all the nations of the world, among which we live to this day. But about a hundred years ago, the Jewish nation got an opportunity to return to the land of Israel in order to create the state of Israel here again.

The state of Israel needs to be created according to our program, the laws by which we used to live, meaning the laws of unity of the nation and state. Without such unity, which suits the Jewish nation, that is, love for the neighbor as for yourself, we cannot become a nation. That is why we are still called a gathering of exiles.

Only by realizing the method of unity that we were given will we build the nation of Israel. Otherwise we cannot be considered a nation. It looks like we live together, in one country, but in reality, each person is by himself. That’s how we live today. Many people would even like to leave, and they would happily leave the country if they had the chance to live well abroad.

There is no spirit of one nation here, living in one country, on its land. It is more like a refuge where we have gathered because we had no other choice. However, while in previous generations, immediately after the Holocaust, when the Jews escaped here from other countries, Israel did resemble a refuge, today it is no longer one because today every person has the chance to travel the world and live wherever he wants to. You can meet Israelis in any part of the world. That is, we are once again dispersing all over the world, as if the threat has passed and we can come out of the refuge.

But according to the program of creation, we have to become one nation, and it’s not in order for us to live well, but to show the right example to everyone else. This is the meaning of becoming “a Light onto the nations of the world.”

We will have to realize that unity whether we want to or not. Therefore, we will experience all sorts of problems inside the nation of Israel, along with horrible hatred and anti-Semitism from outside, from other nations, until all of this obligates us to unite. But we can become aware of the need to unite on our own and begin working on it according to the method of Kabbalah, which explains how to love your neighbor as yourself. Then we won’t need to be nudged toward that by internal strife or external hatred.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 04/12/2015

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Question: Passover is a special holiday. Everybody respects it, both secular and religious people. Everybody gets ready for the Passover Seder (festive meal), cleaning the house, buying new clothes, inviting guests and contemplating how to better celebrate a Passover Seder.

I want to understand the essence and symbolic meaning of this holiday. The most important Passover symbol is Matzah. What does it denote?

Answer: Matzah symbolizes the state in which we use only our vessels of bestowal without interference of our ego, our will to receive. We are prohibited to use egoistic desires since they are Pharaoh’s property. We must rise above them. Detachment from our egoistic desires signifies the “frugal bread” or Matzah.

We have to relate to each other only with love and bestowal to the extent it is available to us. We are not ready for it yet, nor do we fully understand what it means. Passover is a “small state” (Katnut) that is associated with the lack of energy. The holiday signifies our exodus from the built-in power of egoism and transitioning to the jurisdiction of unity and love among us.

The name of the holiday, Pe-sach, means transition, leaping from egoism to love and bestowal. This crossing is a symbol of the holiday.

Passover is a celebration of freedom; it’s a runaway from the devastating ego that buries us alive. As a result of redemption, we get to be a free nation in the free land, meaning independent of our desires (country or Eretz derives from Ratzon or desire). We stop “gobbling” each other up as before. Rather, we strive to become the people of Israel, to unite and become one whole.

This is what the exodus from Egypt is. It is not a geographical or physical notion; it’s an internal sensation of reaching inner freedom from the angel of death. Our everyday life is proof that our evil nature works as an angel of death that buries us. It doesn’t let us receive pleasure and constantly forces us to fight and quarrel, and even leads us to international wars.

Egoism is not about our desire to receive standard pleasures from the family, children, good food, vacations, or travel. Ego stands for a bad attitude of one human being towards another human. It’s a desire to receive pleasure at the expense of others. This explains why exodus from the ego means an escape from hating our neighbors, from constant jealousy, our inability to tolerate others, detachment and splitting into numerous parties, and sectors.

Question: Does it require us to give up anything?

Answer: You should reject your ego that is measured only by the degree of your negativism towards others.

Question: In the long run will I win or lose in my internal sensation of happiness and contentment?

Answer: I am absolutely positive that we can only win and have nothing to lose. We suffer damages because we treat each other badly.

Question: If we return to the symbols of Passover, what does Matzah mean nowadays, in Israel of 2015?

Answer: We have to start treating each other well. It will trigger a special, good atmosphere among us. At first, our future relationships will seem too “simple” since they will lack many nuances and tastes that result from our endless arguments and misunderstandings.

We will be like good kids whose mothers beg them not to fight with each other, but they don’t feel life in peaceful behavior. Only after they get involved in conflicts with their friends do they get colorful impressions.

This is why at first it is called “frugal bread” or Matzah. Later, we start developing our relationships that not only allow us to detach from wickedness by diminishing ourselves to the degree that we no longer treat our neighbors badly, but promote abstinence in others that lets us reach good, benevolent relationships among us.

It’s as if we crawl through a narrow tunnel and gradually reach a powerful, wide road of benevolent relationships among all of us. Then, the “frugal bread” turns into the best cake, the so-called “bread of love.”
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 3/24/15

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Question: It is said that during the festive dinner in honor of the commencement of Passover we have to tell our children about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. What exactly should we tell them? What’s the most important thing they should know?

Answer: First of all, I don’t think that there is a difference between the adults and children. It is said, “Tell your son,” meaning each one who doesn’t know these things and wants to learn them is like a son to us.

Everybody should figure out what “exodus” means and how it is different from liberation. We should know whether we are still in the state of an exile and continue to seek redemption.

Exile is a state that is opposite to redemption. They stand for two opposite internal sensations; so far, we are unable to define either of those states in us.

Speaking of Egypt… Was it so bad for the Jews? At first, they enjoyed an abundance of food and led a “kings’ life.” The Pharaoh treated them very well, it was a real paradise. Why all of a sudden were seven years of satiation replaced by seven years of famine and the Jews acknowledged that they are in the exile?

People lost the purpose of life. One stopped understanding why one lives. Today, very many people can make the same confession: “I don’t know why I live. It poisons my life to the extent that I don’t want to stay alive.”

People choose to become terrorists out of despair, in search of the Light in their lives. They seek an ideal that is worth living for. Fighting with things that don’t match their ideals makes them feel that they are heroes conquering enemies. This sensation makes their lives purposeful; otherwise they feel dead.

Nowadays, many people are concerned with finding the purpose in life. With no vital goal, our existence loses taste and even death looks better to us than this kind of life. Abundance of Egyptian meat and garlic do not satisfy any more.

Egypt met every kind of human desires: food, sex, family, money, power, and knowledge. It was a paradise for everybody, and the Jews were the most respectable and rich out of all the Egyptian population. So, what did they lack? Only the purpose of life. When this kind of question wakes up in a person it poisons the very sensation of living. We feel that we live in a golden cage and are unable to get out of it.

This is what is called “slavery.” Our prosperous life suffocates and kills us. If our existence were not as “satiated” it would justify our desire to run away from it. However, our egoism doesn’t allow us to reject comfortable existence.

Our ego receives pleasure from Egyptian life. At the same time, we are driven by a question: “Why do we live? Are we people or just animals?” This is what is going on in the world nowadays.

We can provide everything we need to live a good life, but everything we have is soaked with bitterness. The question about the essence of life is far more important than regular material benefits. It throws us from the top of the mountain into the abyss, thus making us acknowledge our total obscurity.

It’s very common in the modern world and particularly among younger generations. We start sensing that we are in the exile, in our egoism that keeps us under its rule and doesn’t let us go. This state is called “Egyptian slavery.” We must free ourselves from it.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 3/31/15

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Question: What is Egypt?

Answer: Egypt (Mitzyarim – Mitz – ra) is the concentration of the evil we are in and the hatred we feel toward each other.

Question: What is the meaning of the nation of Israel going down to Egypt?

Answer: The Jews who went down to Egypt are not a nation yet. They become a nation only when they gather at the foot of Mt. Sinai and accept the condition of ascending above the ego.

Question: What is Moses?

Answer: Moses is the force that pulls a person out of his ego and directs him toward the goal of creation, toward the Creator, toward the right action. According the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is called the “point in the heart.”

Question: What is the meaning of the phrase, “The Creator brings Moses to Pharaoh?”

Answer: There is an inner conflict in a person and the rejection of the ego, Moses versus Pharaoh.

Question: What are the ten plagues of Egypt?

Answer: The ten plagues are an essential precondition when I understand that my ego can no longer be my refuge, I have to detach myself from it, to ascend above it. It gives me so much pain and suffering that I cannot bear it any longer and must break away from my ego.

Question: Why does the breaking away from the ego occur at night, in total darkness?

Answer: The fact is that the separation from that the ego must be absolute; even if I don’t see anything before me, I still run away from it. Although I could stay in it and enjoy my corporeal life in an egoistic manner, I prefer to exit it into the darkness.

Question: What is the meaning of crossing the “Red Sea”?

Answer: A person understands that he must give up his previous egoistic perception totally, and he wants to get to know the world anew.

Question: What does it mean that the water of “the Red Sea withdrew and split in two”?

Answer: This isn’t a natural phenomenon, of course. It doesn’t exist in nature no matter how hard we try to explain natural phenomena that we don’t understand.

“The water withdrew and split in two” means that a person is allowed to enter the attribute of Bina (bestowal). He goes through Malchut to Bina and receives a feeling of elation. This means that the evil water now becomes water that helps us advance toward the goal.
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From KabTV’s “A Talk About Passover” 3/18/15

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The Torah, “Leviticus,” 26:6 – 26:8: And I will grant peace in the Land, and you will lie down with no one to frighten [you]; I will remove wild beasts from the Land, and no army will pass through your land; You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you; Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.

The enemies are different uncorrected desires that suddenly emerge in a person and are revealed inside him. There are no other enemies but our internal attributes, but they are revealed externally since our world is a replica of our internal attributes.

It says: “Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you,” because a person will always have the power, the power of the Light in order to overcome the enemies that rise against him; the power to defeat them and to go on.

Comment: I always think of an allegory that is related to a small state called Israel that looks like the eye of a needle on the world map. It is surrounded by many enemies, but will it be able to overcome them if it is compatible with the law of bestowal?

Answer: Even more than that. It will have no enemies. The enemies will be revealed only for a moment and will immediately become our friends, our helpers, because we will be protected by the attribute of love and bestowal.

Question: Don’t you ever give up because this doesn’t happen as quickly as you would like it to and is actually going in the opposite direction at the moment?

Answer: We should feel that way because we come out of Egypt only in a state of total darkness. Therefore, I am waiting impatiently for this state, waiting for the time that we will all be able to undergo it.

The people who are attracted to the revelation of the Creator need to understand that we have to undergo these phases, that we have to support one another, and that we have to advance in any case or crawl if we don’t have the power to do so! There is no other way. “Only he who follows the path will overcome it.” I do hope that I will be able to be with everyone at least in the hardest path of this road, so as not to leave the people in Egypt.

Question: Has the hardest period already started?

Answer: Yes, and I am glad that it has. We shouldn’t speak about it too much since otherwise we will not undergo it. We will begin to calm ourselves: “Everything is fine; that’s the way it should be; everything is still ahead of us.” Then we will really be unable to succeed in anything. We see what the Creator does: “Come to Pharaoh once again! And then once again!” so should I calm everyone here? On the contrary, we have to undergo all that.

The Torah says: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” Which means that without night there is no daytime; without night there is no whole day; without night there is no Light. One day! It is only after the evening, night, or darkness that we reach the Light. Every state, whatever it may be, has to start from the negative side.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/12/14

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