Question: We have reached a milestone date: 75 years of Israel’s independence. It has been 75 years since the Jews found their home, 75 years of wars, 75 years of proving that this is our place, that we want to live here, and so on. These have not been easy years.

How would you sum up this 75^th anniversary?

Answer: I would like us to understand that time is not working for us. We must admit that in the eyes of the world, despite all our attempts to present ourselves as the best, we still look like the worst.

Comment: This is a paradox. We have huge achievements in medicine, in progress, in everything.

My Response: Absolutely no one needs this from us. On the contrary, if we suffered, then maybe a certain number of non-Jews would love us. Or rather, they would feel sorry for us. But not in this way.

Comment: The great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam welcomed the creation of the State of Israel.

My Response: He hoped that this state of Israel would be the right one.

Comment: What do you consider right?

My Response: It is when the people who will inhabit it will try to show the entire world what the purpose of a person’s life on Earth is.

Question: You take it globally. What about the fact that a home was created for Jews who were persecuted and exterminated?

Answer: What for?

Question: To live at home, so that no one touches you. Is that not an idea?

Answer: This is impossible for the Jews. We were kicked out of our home. We have never had our own home in general. The fact that we lived for several hundred years, even less, in the land of Israel in the past, says nothing.

Question: How about the fact that Temples were built here?

Answer: So, what? We took the land from other nations and built them. Were there no nations here before that?

Rashi wrote that the nations of the world would come and ask: “Why did you take the land away from the nations who lived here?” And the Jews will have to answer. He asks, what can we answer?  “The entire earth belongs to the Creator. He gave it to other nations, and then took it from them and gave it to us.”

But this is correct if we follow His instructions, will, and desire. Yet, we do not do that. Therefore, there is no life for us here and there will not be. Will not be! I say this to everyone and always.

Comment: We started by saying that this is a holiday, but what you are saying does not sound festive.

My Response: This is a holiday because the people received the opportunity, as Baal HaSulam says, to exist on their land and fulfill their mission before all of humanity. So, if we fulfill it, because this opportunity still exists, then everything will turn out right and everyone in the world will understand why Jews exist and what we should do.

Question: What is the mission of the Jews, and why do they exist on this earth?

Answer: The Jews exist in order to live on this earth in unity with each other, in such a unity that will be called absolute unity. When they will be able to show all other nations an example of how to actually live without wars, without violence, without mutual hatred.

This is what we must show to the whole world. Then we will have the right to exist. Everyone will understand why we exist at all. And everyone will be happy to see that we exist on our own piece of land in order to translate all this into action and example.

Question: Then will everyone want this piece of land to exist, for Jews to live here, and for them to prosper?

Answer: Yes. In particular, our cousins the Arabs.

Question: In that case, what is independence in light of what you are saying?

Answer: Independence is independence from our egoism, when we can rise above it and show this example to all the nations of the world how to live in connection, in friendship, and in mutuality. Everyone will want to follow it.

This is our mission from above. Therefore, we are a special nation in this sense, and we cannot escape anywhere from fulfilling this mission. But it may take several thousand more years until we come to this.

Question: Thousands of years?!

Answer: Thousands. Has it been 2,000 years? Another 2,000 years will pass. It does not matter how long it takes, but we still will not be able to run away from fulfilling our mission.

We can hope that over the next 2,000 years, we will understand something after all.

Question: Is there such a layer in us that it cannot be penetrated?

Answer: The egoistic layer is such that maybe the next 2,000 years will do something to us.

Question: But anyway, one way or another, this is not our work, this is the work of the Creator. He might as well do it tomorrow. Why do we have to wait 2,000 years?

Answer: We are obliged, we have to agree to this job. We must wait for such a revolution in ourselves when we want to be not competing with each other but loving each other, to “love your neighbor as yourself” and be able to convey this as an example to all other nations of the world.

Comment: You have always said that a good businessman is a strategist, he looks forward to many years. A bad businessman wants to quickly grab something right now and that is it. You are such a businessman that you are looking forward to 2,000 years. You are engaged in this, you are disseminating this, and at the same time, you are saying that this is…

My Response: I live in this every day with the hope that after some time, I am not saying 2,000 years, but as we understand, not yet today, the people will begin to change.

Comment: And for this, you are ready to keep saying it today and repeating it.

My Response: In order for this to begin to be implemented in a few thousand years.

Question: But are you still an optimist?

Answer: I am not an optimist. I say that this is the law of nature, and we will still be obliged to implement it.
[311981]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/20/23

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Michael Laitman, on The Times of Israel: “Abundant milk, meat, and fish, but no animals in sight”

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood by a sleek tablet-like touchscreen of a big meat-producing machine, chose the percentage of fat he wanted in his steak, and pressed “Print.” A few minutes later, his order was ready. Printing a fish took only one minute. Soon, cultured meat and fish will be available in Israeli supermarkets. Even sooner, cultured milk will be on the shelves. The machines are ready, distribution agreements have been signed, the medical tests were successful, and the regulatory procedures have been completed. The dream of consuming animal protein without breeding or killing animals is months-to-a-few-years from becoming a reality. Has Israel solved the world’s food problems?

Especially when it comes to food and drugs, caution and prudence are critical. But with all the due caution, we may indeed be able to solve the world’s food problems. However, as with every breakthrough, we should not jump to conclusions before commercial distribution is underway, and the general public begins to consume these products. Especially for deprived areas such as parts of Africa and Asia, mass machine-production of meat, fish, and milk can be a life-saver in the full sense of the word.

But will it be a life-saver? Regrettably, human nature will stand in the way. Man’s evil inclination will run ahead and cease the opportunity to make another buck, to exploit, humiliate, demean, and abuse more people and in new ways. In all likelihood, humanity will waste yet another great opportunity to end its misery, and the rich and powerful will only become more so, while the indigent become even more deprived.

Theoretically, one of the ways in which society can mitigate the potential exploitation of such potentially life-changing innovations is by creating social wealth funds such as the one Norway has established, which uses some of the profits from its oil industry for the common good. Another way to balance the expected gargantuan profits is to modify the royalties that the state collects from manufacturers of cultured proteins. The State of Israel did this when natural gas was discovered off its shores, and everyone seems to be content with the agreement.

However, in practice, I think that such arrangements will not hold for long. In the end, humanity will follow the way of the ego, as it always does, and the abuse of knowledge and technology in service of the rich will continue.

A side note regarding the breakthroughs in food-tech in Israel is that many believe that these technologies will improve Israel’s international status. Over the past ten years or so, Israel has become a world leader in some of humanity’s most pressing issues: It is the world leader when it comes to water conservation and desalination, and a world leader in agriculture. It has become an exporter of gas, and from a country that was dependent on oil for its survival, Israel has become almost energy independent. Its military industry has leaped forward and today, Israel manufactures and exports almost everything except for fighter jets. And now with the advances in food-tech, it is jumping to the head of the bandwagon in food production, too.

However, all these boons have not made Israel any more popular among the nations, nor will they make it popular. Some nations may want its knowledge and technology, so they are willing to put on a friendly face to get a discount, but this is where Israel’s “favor” in the eyes of the nations ends. The only way Israel can truly be accepted by the nations is if it “exports” unity and social cohesion. For all the glitz and glory of sophisticated weapon systems and advanced food-tech, the only thing that the world needs from Israel is an example of unity. Social cohesion is the only “product” that all the nations want, that no one knows how to form, and that Israel can, must, and is expected to provide. If Israel delivers this, it will not need weapons, hacking tools, or any other protection to secure its place among the nations.

Additionally, if it delivers unity to the world, humanity will know how to use technological innovations for humanity’s sake, and not solely for the rich, powerful, and abusive few.
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Comment: To correct oneself for the sake of correcting the world sounds unthinkable for modern Jews.

My Response: Yes, exactly. It is much easier to raise any other nation to this precisely because there is less egoism and less potential for correction in it.

The Jews have internal genes from past incarnations. Therefore, dig a little bit, and they jump out. We see that among the people of Israel there is an opportunity for communication, unity, and mutual assistance.

All of this is not superficial, it lies inside. These are internal genes that are records of the information in which we existed. And now it is necessary to revive it and raise it.

We are trying to do it through dissemination. Of course, we still need to make a lot of efforts to pull the masses living in Israel with us.

They will gradually begin to be imbued with this since we that are correcting ourselves penetrate them even if we do not want it because the whole world is interconnected. And through them the correction will pass to the rest of mankind. It will pass! Internal forces will seep through everyone, and people will begin to understand, think, and solve all problems in a different way.

I believe that we can still make a correction and implement it in a good way. I believe in it.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Gaza Helps the Jews” 11/24/12

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Is there any hope that today’s people of Israel will be able to escape from the division in society like they once managed to escape from Pharaoh and exit Egypt?

Unfortunately, there is no basis for this yet. After all, when we left Egypt, we felt that we belonged to the same nation and opposed a common enemy, the Pharaoh, that is, the egoistic inclination that separates us.

When we left Egypt, we had already achieved some recognition of evil, but today this is not the case. Today we see evil only in those who oppose us; the left sees evil in the right, and the right in the left, and that is it. We do not notice our true enemy—our own egoism. Therefore, we are still far from exiting Egypt, and there is still a long way to the recognition of the evil of our egoism.

It depends on the education and preparation of everyone, and we see how difficult it is to accept this. Egoism is so deeply embedded in us and has grown so widely that it is difficult to understand where it begins and where it ends.

Unfortunately, we do not try to move to correction in a good way by ourselves, but we advance only because the Creator pushes us forward. Therefore, it is difficult to say what other trials we will have to go through until we reach the final redemption.

“Egypt” today is a common mutual hatred between everyone. Whichever way you look at a person, all his relationships with the surrounding society are permeated with hatred. Egoism is our Pharaoh, as it has always been. We will be able to exit Egypt only when we erase brotherly hatred from ourselves and replace it with brotherly love and connection.

People should learn how to treat each other with love, no matter how contrary it is to today’s reality. The revelation of evil must precede the revelation of good, but in the end we will implement the program of creation.

The exodus from Egypt is an exit from mutual hatred, mutual rejection, and the common evil that has poisoned Israeli society. It is the people of Israel who are in Egypt, not the nations of the world who have everything in order.

Unfortunately, the people of Israel are experiencing such a manifestation of evil that does not yet lead to a solution and does not allow them to recognize the evil contained in mutual hatred. Everyone is still only trying to prove to others that they are right. Therefore, nothing good will come from it, and we will continue to fall.

The army, the police, and all circles of Israeli society are already involved in this two-sided conflict. Such an attitude is completely unbecoming to the people of Israel and has led to disastrous consequences in the past.

The problem is that no one wants to be cured of this disease. Everyone thinks that the solution is that his opinion should prevail because egoism always requires: “I will rule!”

However, we must continue to disseminate the method of connection and hope that the Creator will save us from all troubles, and from this division too.

The Creator cannot open our hearts in order to enter them. We have to open our hearts ourselves by working from below, and then the Creator will enter them from above and fill them. Our hearts are opened by the fact that we try to come closer to each other and pray to the Creator for help. We must know the essence and purpose of the people of Israel.

I wish the people of Israel greater wisdom and greater understanding, a greater sense that we are a very small nation surrounded by other nations who want to destroy us. We can be saved only on condition that we understand how this can be done, and we end from this moment onward all wars between us in order to live by the rule: “They helped everyone his friend!”

The people of Israel must live by such a law, and then we will end all these quarrels and come to the final redemption.
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From the Writers Meeting – Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman 4/4/23

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Comment: Passover is a big celebration of the exodus from Egyptian slavery. It is celebrated by almost the entire country [Israel] and by all the Jews in the world.

This, of course, is also a family holiday; that is, everyone gathers at a festive meal, and everyone is waiting for it.

For those who study Kabbalah, Passover is a person’s understanding that he is enslaved in his egoism and he is fleeing from it.

My Response: He is fleeing from it—he is not exactly fleeing from it because in Egypt there was everything!

Everything you can imagine as communism in this world was there. In principle, they had everything ready for them; they had the best land and everything they could wish for. But ahead of them was a dead desert, a dead sea; everything was dead and full of uncertainty, nothing good. So where is the Egyptian slavery and where are we going? This is the question.

The whole work in Egypt is to picture that all the desert in front of you is paradise. And everything in Egypt (where everything is fine and absolutely everything you want) is hell. Egypt is an egoistic fulfillment, fulfilled by everything you wish.

It relates to each of us. It is our Egypt. Everything is good in it; there is everything here. All the pleasures of this world in all their details and in all their variations are at your disposal.

Nobody wants to get out of it. All is good in general. The only one who feels bad is the one who is not like them, the one who wants to get the people out of there.

Who wants to get the people out? Moses. So, what good did he do? For centuries after that, we only feel bad. There is nothing better than Egypt!

Comment: But it is written that we were slaves in Egypt.

My Response: We were slaves because we were in our egoism, but we got practically everything we could wish for.

Question: So why does a person suddenly want to get out of this fairy tale?

Answer: That is how a person is built.

Question: Why does he suddenly hear Moses? This is instead of listening to the Pharaoh who says: “Stay here, I will provide you with everything, and everything will be fine.” And Moses says: “We will go into the unknown, into the desert. Follow me.” Why did they follow him?

Answer: Apparently, Moses told the Creator that something had to be done with them to make them want to leave. Moses made an agreement with the Pharaoh and with the Creator that there would be Egyptian executions of the Jews, from which they would want to run away. But if it had not been for those executions, they would have run nowhere. And if they had not wanted to run away, then there would have been no executions.

Question: That is, after all, the egg was first? Did they want to escape in some way at first?

Answer: I think it was Moses who made an agreement with the Creator: “Let us arrange it so that they still want to follow me.”

Question: But still you said that Jews suffered from the ten plagues there. Even the Egyptians had a hard time. It is written that the Egyptians suffered the most.

What does it mean, in your understanding that the Egyptians suffered from ten Egyptian plagues?

Answer: It is the egoism of a person who wants to be free. That is, it was unclear to whom and how to be subordinate. But the main thing was to break out of this communism that had everything. There was everything in abundance.

Question: Are the Egyptians this communism that exists within us, this egoism? They want to keep us and ask: “Why are you running away from there? You feel so good there.” Does it turn out this way?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What is the Passover holiday for the world? Jews celebrate it materially and Israel celebrates it. But what is this holiday for the world?

Answer: It is liberation from Egyptian slavery; it is liberation from egoism; it is the liberation of man from himself. I do not want to be controlled by an egoistic property that wants to get hold of everything, to be filled with everything, and thinks only about that. I want an altruistic property to control me so I want to connect with others, to fill others, and not myself. This is the desire that emerges. This is Moses in us.

We become Jews when we hear Moses when Moses is inside us. And if not, then we are the same Egyptians.

Question: Can we say that there are only two kinds of people in the world? Are there two kinds of people in the spiritual world?

Answer: Yes, you are either an Egyptian or an Israelite. There is nothing in the middle.

An Israelite is one who is directed to the Creator, Isra-El, meaning straight to the Creator. And the Egyptian is directed toward  himself.

Question: When you say that this holiday is for the world, does the world have to decide who it is today?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: Today is such a critical moment that we really need to resolve this.

My Response: We do not even realize it yet. The world is unaware of where it is being led, completely unaware!

Question: But can we say that the Egyptian plagues are taking place all over the world now?

Answer: Yes! It is very serious. There is such a wave all over the world.

Question: But maybe the world will come to an understanding that it is necessary to get out?

Answer: It all depends on us, how we show this path to the world—the path of development, the path of unification, what should be ahead, and what to strive for. Will we be able to do it?

Question: Do we have to show it so that it somehow would be pleasant, sweet, and happy for a person?

Answer: Both sweet, pleasant, and necessary! That is, it should not attract someone because it is sweet. No one sees that in Egypt it is sweet as well.

But there the sweetness comes from freedom from egoism. That is, the feeling of slavery in Egypt is opposed to freedom from egoism outside of Egypt. And a person must grow inside oneself to such an extent that this difference between the two states simply pulls one forward.

Question: So must the world today hear that it is necessary to get out of egoism, out of Egypt?

Answer: Yes. We are stuck!

Question: It turns out that we were a little delayed in this Egypt. And what is happening now is pushing us out. Don’t we feel the need to get out of it?

Answer: But we must set a course, we must understand, we must strive, and we must pull everyone along with us.

Question: When you say “we,” who do you mean?

Answer: First, I mean those people who can understand and realize this, who are striving forward, Yashar Kel, Israel. And everyone else will follow.

Question: It is not necessarily the Jews that are directly to the Creator?

Answer: The main mass, the initial mass are Jews, that is, those who experienced in the past, in their roots, the state of exodus from egoism. And the rest will go and join “Israel.” There is absolutely no question about this. The whole point is to raise Jews.

Question: What is your prayer today?

Answer: My prayer today is to fulfill the role of Moses, to pull out this head part of all of humanity, which is called Israel, aspiring to the Creator, and which in potential can aspire to the Creator, to pull it out of such, I would say,  a somnambulistic state, and begin to excite them so that they themselves at least somehow try to want, to worry, and to rise forward to the exit.

Question: Is it in order that at least a thought arises that it is necessary to get out of egoism? But first, you always say that egoism is bad. Or is it not?

Answer: Egoism is bad depending on how you measure, weigh, look at, feel, smell, and taste it. But in fact, egoism is everything that gives you taste and life.

And altruism, freedom, what is it in? You go out into the field, and you do not know what, what for, or why.

Moses is not one person, in principle. It is a whole group of people who understand that the future lies in getting out of egoism. How can we get out of it? This needs to be studied and we should begin to apply it between us. And each time we take each step, it is done again out of the darkness, when we allegedly do not see any attraction in egoism, when we begin to try to get out of it and find that it holds us for all our feelings, for everything! And you cannot get rid of it.

And then we should only stick together and cry out.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/14/22

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Question: You said that we can correct the external manifestations of various events within ourselves. In particular, you cited what happened in the Gaza as an example. What does it mean to internally correct the external manifestations of the Gaza Strip?

Answer: Why else are external manifestations given to us? They are only given to us so that we can improve internally.

The whole world must reach correction. If we do not correct it in a normal way, that is, by revealing the Creator, then we are given all sorts of external problems that still force us to go toward this. But then we come to the Creator because of them.

Look at how many problems and suffering accumulate and how much time passes until we begin to realize that all this is only to solve our internal problems. This takes time! But by working internally, we can immediately get down to business.

Question: But if there were no external Gaza Strip, how could it manifest inside a person?

Answer: Under the influence of our dissemination, under the influence of some other milder problems. But if not, then by means of war, serious losses, and serious beatings, because then one starts asking, “How can I correct this, what should I do?”

Jews are very stubborn people. It is almost useless to say anything to them. To do this, we need to properly tune in because their heart, hearing, head, and brains are closed. Everything is closed! On the other hand, they are smart, wise, and receptive people, but very far from changing themselves. Very far! This means they are stubborn!

This stubbornness will require many more sacrifices until they finally agree that something needs to be done.

Question: What will their agreement be? In participation or just awareness?

Answer: In serious participation! In correcting themselves for the sake of correcting the world, for the sake of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Gaza Strip Helps the Jews” 11/24/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are things that can only happen to Israelis?“

It is common in Israel to disrespect people of status, such as state officials. The reason for this is that we—the people of Israel, the Jews—are a free people in our roots. We originated as a nation of members who were equal to one another.

About 4,000 years ago, when we first united as “the people of Israel,” we had gathered around Abraham. At that time, Abraham invited anybody in ancient Babylon who had a desire to reach the degree of equality, love and freedom from the limits of this world, to implement his method.

Abraham taught his group that they were a free nation in that they each needed to develop themselves to become a positive force of support, encouragement, care and love toward each other. In such a state, nobody is lesser than others and no one can tell others what to do, but we can each give each other examples of love and care. If we can sustain ourselves in that continuous motion to love and care for one another, then we experience harmony and peace, but if we cannot hold ourselves in such a positive direction, then we become like savages.

Abraham’s method is supposed to unite people as equals, without any limits, where no person is greater or smaller than the others. In other words, in our origin, we have no sense of one or is powerful and another who is weak, but rather we all complement one another in a common effort to unite above our differences.

Since Abraham once united us as equals in a connection of love among one another, then we developed a very open approach in our relations. We dwelled in a positive connection where we behaved as if everyone everywhere was in our bedrooms.

Later, when we fell from the degree of a common love for one another and immersed ourselves in opposite attitudes to each other—a state of unfounded hatred—the feeling of our equality turned into a common disrespect and disregard. In other words, disregard, rejection and alienation replaced love, mutual consideration and unification. That is what we see among us today.

We need to understand how much of a better life we could be living if we once again applied Abraham’s method to our relations. If we start uniting above our divisive drives, then we would experience a whole new harmonious and peaceful world open up to us. We would draw the force of love and connection that dwells in nature into our relations, and by doing so, we would tap into that ability that once united us as “the people of Israel.” Our unity would have immensely positive rippling effects not only for our own well-being, but people around the world would also feel a surge of a new positive force enter their lives, and the attitude to Israelis and to Jews in general around the world would become very positive: people would revere the group that brings love, peace and unity to the world.
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Based on the video “The Matter of Equality among the Israeli Nation” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Passover means the transition from the feeling of our world that is inherent in every person in this world, to the feeling of the upper world. This is subject only to the Kabbalists.

Passover, like all Jewish holidays, is a purely Kabbalistic holiday. It says that a person jumps from a state of the inability to unite with others to a state when his egoism allows him to do so.

The exit of a person from the authority of egoism to unite with people close in spirit is called Passover.

Question: What allows him to make such a jump?

Answer: Desire. After all, from the beginning of entering Egypt to the end of staying in Egypt, a huge egoistic desire is constantly developing, which does not allow the people of Israel to connect with each other.

The people of Israel must connect in order to reveal the Creator in connection with each other—the quality of bestowal and love. And when a person sees that he has no way to do it, then he feels like he is in the Egyptian darkness. Now he is ready to do anything just to get out of there! This is called the escape, salvation, from Egypt.

If we consider this from the point of view of what happens to a person, because this is usually what Kabbalah says, then we are talking about the quality of a person who is ready to do anything, even throw himself into the sea, just to escape from his egoism, rise above it, and achieve the Creator’s quality of bestowal and love.

He throws himself into the sea, and the sea gives way before him. He goes through it, cuts himself off from the ego, and thus becomes ready to work with it to transform it into altruism, while being above egoism. This is the way out of Egypt, which we celebrate during Passover.
[181930]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/14/16

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is social division in Israel becoming more extreme?“

There are different kinds of divisions in every society and nation, but in the Israeli nation, the division is much stronger. This is because, as it is written, we are “a stiff-necked people.” It means that we are incredibly stubborn, and this stubbornness comes from us having an overblown desire.

It is unlike the desire in other nations. We can see it clearly among Israelis, among Jews in general, and everyone feels it one way or another.

How is it expressed?

We each feel as if we have a certain power, and accordingly we are ready to stand up to anyone. We do not care who it is. If you put the Prime Minister in front of any Israeli, you will see that there is an attitude as to a person of equal status. Moreover, it is common to feel smarter than others, no matter what position they hold, and to relate to them accordingly.

In other nations, there is a feeling of knowing one’s place and degree in society, an unspoken code of how to speak to one person or another. In Israel, however, no one cares about other people’s seeming status. It is the nature of the Israeli nation and of the Jewish people in general.

In the past, religion tied us more tightly together. It calmed and restrained us as it made us fear all kinds of punishments, and it also attracted us to various rewards for being nice people.

When we move away from religion—and this happens in all sectors, including the ultra-religious—it is called “the decline of the generations.” That is, we believe less and less in a common path, in the various higher forces of nature that we think might punish or reward us. We then become more and more stubborn from one generation to the next, and it leads us to a point where we take no one else into account.

In such a state, however, we cannot return to how we acted toward each other when we had smaller desires. Rather, we need to learn how to rise above our bloated desires today, to unite above our divisions, i.e. to realize the state of “love will cover all crimes” that we once discovered when we first became a nation. Our lives will become harder and harder in our stubborn divisiveness until we eventually realize the mutual detriment we bring to each other in such a state. We will then need to shift our course to unite above divisions through our mutual positive influence on each other.
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Based on the video “Why Is Social Division in Israel Becoming More Extreme?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The New Refuseniks”

In the early 1970s, when I first asked for permission to immigrate to Israel, the Soviet authorities denied my request. In those days, I was not alone. Many soviet Jews who sought to leave the Soviet Union were refused and became what we now know as “refuseniks.” Even though I was denied, I kept hoping. After several years, I was finally given permission to make Aliyah ‎‎[immigrate to Israel].‎

I paid a heavy price to come here—money, career, family—and came to Israel penniless with a wife and newborn son to feed. I did this because I believed that Jews should live here, and I wanted to contribute my share to the revival of the Jewish people in their homeland.

I served in the army, and then worked for the Israeli air force as part of a team that calibrated navigation and stability systems of fighter jets. I knew that if I did not do my job right, I would risk the pilot’s life. I treated my job as a sacred duty and would not dare slight any aspect of it or allow myself any kind of negligence.

These days, a new kind of refuseniks has emerged. The new refuseniks are not denied anything. They are not refused; they are refusing. Many of them are Israeli air force pilots who declared that they refuse to partake in training or in military action until the government withdraws from its intention to overhaul the Israeli judicial system. They declare that they are doing this in the name of democracy, but their ultimatum attempts to force their opinion, a minority opinion, on the democratically elected government. Indeed, with each passing day, the true nature of our “democracy” is surfacing.

We should not be surprised. After all, we are the people of Israel, the obstinate nation where each member feels that they should be the prime minister. It is true that as we are approaching crucial times in the history of humanity, the people of Israel will have a special role and each member of the nation will have to function like a prime minister, but it will not be in the sense that we are absolute leaders and everyone obeys our orders. On the contrary, it will be by setting an example of kindness and love of others above all the differences. The current attitude, where anyone who thinks a little differently from me is my sworn enemy, is the exact opposite of how we should behave toward each other.

Worse yet, as time passes, we are growing increasingly vicious toward others. Our nation has a history of self-inflicted trauma. We do not need to go back to the days of the ruin of the Second Temple, when a ruthless civil war destroyed the city of Jerusalem and prepared the ground for the Romans’ takeover of the land. It is enough to look back at the days preceding, and during Israel’s war of independence, when Jews told on other Jews to the British authorities and got them hanged, or when Jews fought Jews over possession of arms that came on board the ship Altalena, resulting in multiple casualties by drowning and by gunfire, shot by other Jews, and the sinking of the ship with most of its badly needed weapons and munitions still on board. It was a classic case of Jewish egocentrism: Either I win, or no one wins.

The current struggle is no different. It is not about a judicial reform; it is about power. When we are willing to destroy our country if we are not in power, this is what will happen. We will sink the country just like Altalena sank. And just as with Altalena, the few survivors will blame each other for our destruction.

At the moment, the only way I see to reverse the trajectory of mutual destruction is through the world’s pressure. If the nations hate the Jewish state with sufficient ferocity, it may just be enough to force us to unite. But even then, we will remain united only while we are under threat. The minute the threat is gone, so will our unity.

Of course, we could unite of our own volition and resolve that nurturing solidarity is preferable to a pointless struggle to the death, but at the moment, I do not see that Israelis are even looking in that direction, they feel too entitled, and are too proud being refuseniks.
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