Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Who’s a Beauty Queen?”

For the first time since 1950, there will be no Miss Israel beauty pageant in Israel, and Israel will not send a contestant to the Miss Universe contest that will take place in the United States in January. According to i24 News, the decision “aroused many reactions, some deploring the event’s end while others rejoiced. In recent years,” the story continues, “the pageant has been criticized on the grounds that women are only judged on their physical appearance.”

I sympathize with the critics. I do not think that the length of a woman’s legs is a yardstick for her beauty. Besides, how can anyone decide who is the most beautiful woman in the world when every race and ethnicity has its own characteristic look? How can we compare the Japanese standard of beauty to the European standard beauty, and who can say which is more beautiful?

To pretend as if these girls are treated as anything but objects, the judges ask the contestants silly questions, which no one even expects them to answer sincerely. If we were to believe them, we would think that all the girls wished for world peace, and they are all deeply troubled by climate change.

A student of mine told me that the contest is losing popularity and asked why I thought this was happening. I was happy to hear about this; I think it could be a sign that we are maturing, and we are beginning to look beyond the physical.

It is time to start looking for inner beauty because at the end of the day, this is what makes people happy. When you search for a woman’s inner beauty, you will find that you cannot measure it. This is true not only of women, but of all people. When you search for their beauty, it is always hidden.

A person’s beauty evolves over time. It is defined by one’s connections with other people and with the environment. Beautiful people are caring people, people who sympathize with the sorrows and hardships of others, and want to help them feel better.

Such feelings are a gift, but we can also develop them. Once we recognize how self-centered we are, we can learn to change.

It is not a process that one can do on one’s own, but if we, as a society, decide that we have had enough of the Me! Me! Me! culture, we will be able to teach ourselves to think more in terms of We! and less in terms of Me! This will do a world of good for everyone. It is certainly a better way to promote world peace than conducting Miss Universe beauty pageants.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Meaning of Being Jewish”

I received an email from a man who converted to Judaism in a Reform synagogue in Arizona, U.S. To his dismay, he discovered that his conversion was not recognized by Conservative and Orthodox denominations. As a result, he started looking into the meaning of being Jewish and asked me what the wisdom of Kabbalah and The Book of Zohar say about it.

To begin with, the wisdom of Kabbalah does not relate to a person’s body or to one’s material actions whatsoever. It speaks of and relates only to the desires in one’s heart, and how to help us unite with each other and with the power of unity, the Creator. As a result, the wisdom of Kabbalah does not relate to one’s formal religion, but only to one’s spiritual state. In other words, a person can be Jewish and a member of the Israeli nation at one moment, and a gentile (non-Jew) the next. At the same time, one can be born into a different religion altogether, yet be regarded as a member of the people of Israel in the spiritual sense. I hope my explanation below will clarify what I mean by these statements, which I know will surprise many people.

The Hebrew word for “Jewish” is Yehudi, from the word yechudi [unique or united]. Unity is the heart and soul of Judaism, and particularly unity above differences and divisions. King Solomon said (Proverbs 10:12), “Hate stirs up strife, and love will cover all crimes.” The Book of Zohar (portion Aharei Mot) describes the relation between uniting precisely above hatred, and what it means for the whole world: “‘How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to also dwell together.’ These are the friends, ‎as they sit together inseparably. At first, they seem like people at war, wishing to kill one another. Then ‎they return to being in brotherly love.‎ …And you, the friends who are here, as you were in fondness and love before, you will not part henceforth … and by your merit there will be peace ‎in the world.”

The ancestors of the people of Israel united so deeply that they became as one, or as the great commentator RASHI described it, “as one man with one heart.” Only once they achieved that profound unity, they were proclaimed a nation, having united with the power of bestowal that we refer to as the Creator, and with each other. Once they achieved that unity, they were commanded to lead the world to unity, as Prophet Isaiah (42:6-7) described it: “I will appoint you as … a light to the nations, to open blind eyes, ‎to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, and those who dwell in darkness from the prison.”‎

Indeed, if we examine the ancestry of the founders of the Israeli nation, we will find that the greatest among them had non-Jewish roots. They achieved greatness because they united the people, not because of some ancestral privilege. Abraham, the founder of our nation, was not born Jewish; the nation did not exist before his time. Moses’ wife, Zipporah, led the women of the people of Israel along with Moses’ sister, Miriam, after they came out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. Rabbi Akiva, the greatest sage after Moses, whose disciples wrote The Book of Zohar and the Mishnah (the basis of Judaism), was born to parents who were not born Jewish. Another one of Rabbi Akiva’s greatest disciples, Rabbi Meir, who is the third most frequently mentioned sage in the Mishnah, and whose wife Bruriah is cited in the Gemara, descended from the Roman Emperor Nero. And last in this list, but certainly not the least, Ruth the Moabite, the heroine of the Biblical story, was the great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest king, King David, and whose dynasty were the kings of the people of Israel for centuries, during Israel’s greatest times.

We therefore see why the wisdom of Kabbalah pays no attention to one’s physical ancestry. If a person believes that unity of all people is the ultimate value, that everything else is secondary to it, and strives to unite all the people “as one man with one heart,” in the spiritual sense, that person is regarded as a member of the people of Israel.

From the spiritual perspective, as the wisdom of Kabbalah sees it, being Jewish has nothing to do with one’s color or creed. The only “test” is whether one strives for unity or for self-centeredness. As long as one chooses unity, one is Israel. If you ever watched one of my lessons, you will see that I have students from all over the world and from every ethnicity and background. The one thing that unites all of us is our aspiration to unite above all differences. This is the spiritual people of Israel.
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My new article on Linkedin “The UN May Declare, But Only We Determine”

On November 11, the United Nations’ Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee) approved six draft resolutions, one of which will “request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

What I think we should really do about this decision is nothing at all. We should ignore it as though it never happened, or we did not hear about it.

According to the resolution, the Assembly is to “demand that Israel cease all measures that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people,” as well as “have the Assembly decide to request the International Court of Justice to render urgently an advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”

The UN’s press release also noted that “Israel’s representative … said that calling for the Court’s involvement would decimate any chances of reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians.” The representative also said that “such resolutions demonize Israel and exempt the Palestinians of any responsibility for their current situation.”

I can understand why the Israeli delegate would urge the delegates of the member states not to approve the resolution although he knew it was a hopeless effort. He is only doing his job.

However, what I think we should really do about this decision is nothing at all. We should ignore it as though it never happened, or we did not hear about it.

The United Nations has been against the State of Israel since day one. This resolution, which purports to decry Israel’s violations of human rights in the areas occupied during the 1967 war, is nothing but a pretext to exterminate the Jewish state one step at a time. This is why in 1955, long before the 1967 war, when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was told that the UN would oppose a suggested military campaign in Gaza, he replied, Um shmum (lit. UN [is] nothing).

If, on the other hand, Israel is to respond after all, it must unequivocally state the facts:

1. The one book that all three Abrahamic faiths recognize, the Bible, writes that the Land of Israel is the land of the people of Israel.

2. Every historic evidence ever found supports that the land of Israel was the historic land of our fathers, including, of course, the Temple Mount.

3. There is not one text that mentions a Palestinian people in this land (Philistines are not Palestinians and certainly have no connection to Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria).

4. The name Palestine appeared very late in history: It was given to Judea in the 2nd century C.E. by the Romans after they crushed the Jewish Revolt of Bar Kokhba. By doing so, they attempted to obliterate all traces of Jewish presence in the land, so the Jews would not try to return to it. However, according to Prof. of History Louis Feldman, Rabbi Akiva testified in the second century that Diaspora Jews still referred to the land as Eretz Israel [Land of Israel].

5. If any territorial demands are to be made, then according to what is written in the Bible and what has been found by archeologists, Israel should stretch from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq.

I have no qualms about whether the world will agree to such demands, but I do think we should stop apologizing. Instead, we should insist on our rights, and—even more importantly—do what we came here to do: unite among ourselves and become a model nation, a nation of solidarity, mutual responsibility, and love of others as ourselves, precisely the legacy of our people.

Our presence in this country does not depend on this or that UN resolution, on the terror of Arabs, or on our sophisticated weapons. Our presence here depends on doing what I just stated—on our internal unity. Through our connection, we will determine not only our fate, but the fate of the world.

This is not my idea, but what our sages have been writing since the inception of our nation. It is something that every Jew feels, even if subconsciously, and that every antisemite feels, as well, even if they do not admit it. This is exactly why the Jewish people conceived the concept of Tikkun Olam (correction of the world) and made it the highest moral goal of a Jewish person. In fact, some Jews define the level of Jewishness by the commitment to Tikkun Olam, although disputes over the meaning of the term are often so deep that they prolong the correction of the world because they hinder Jewish unity.

Antisemites, too, feel that the Jews must correct the world. They may not articulate it to themselves in this manner, though some, like Henry Ford, actually did, but the fact that antisemites blame Jews for the world’s misfortunes implies that they believe that Jews are responsible for what is happening in the world—for better or worse.

To conclude, I do not think that Israel should altogether ignore the latest display of UN antisemitism; I think we should use it as a reminder of the urgency to unite. We need not respond to the actual resolution, but simply do what we must do: unite among ourselves and thereby put an end to our internal problems, to our troubles with our neighbors, and to all hatred around the world, since the world will follow the model nation, as Ford, Shulgin, and other antisemites had hoped to see from the Jewish people.

*For more on how Israel should relate to UN anti-Israel bias, read my ‎latest publication, New Antisemitism: Mutation of a Long-lived Hatred.‎
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My new article on Linkedin “Israel – A World Leader in the Wrong Expertise”

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become essential components in the battlefield. In Ukraine, both sides use them extensively to attack and for surveillance, and the US, Turkey, Israel, and other countries have been using them for military assignments. Terror groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas also use them, as do the Houthis in Yemen in their conflict with Saudi Arabia.

Unlike conventional military aircraft, which are very expensive to develop and build, UAVs are relatively cheap and rely on advanced technology rather than superior aerobatics to accomplish their missions. This allows countries with limited resources but advanced technology, such as Israel, to become world leaders.

Not only in the air, but also on the ground, unmanned military vehicles are “gaining ground.” Remotely controlled armed vehicles regularly patrol borders, and if they need to engage, they can open fire with high precision machine guns. At sea, unmanned patrol boats guard maritime borders and can detect, track, and fire on enemy vessels.

The problem is that while autonomous war machines give countries advantages they would not be able to achieve otherwise, they also make killing easier and risk-free for the attacker. They may give their owner a temporary edge over less advanced adversaries, but in the long run, they do not bring us closer to peace, but rather to a world war.

The evolving human intellect is captive in the hands of human wickedness. Instead of using it to improve our lives, we use it to destroy the lives of others.

If we want to change course, Israel must become a world leader in something entirely different: education. And more specifically—education for connection.

If we truly want to avoid war and promote peace, our focus should shift from protecting ourselves or destroying our enemies, into nurturing and enhancing internal unity and cohesion. With this tactic, we will not need to protect ourselves from enemies or destroy them in self-defense since we will have no enemies. We will become a beacon of hope for the world rather than a constant point of contention, which is our current international status.

Furthermore, our internal unity will reflect on the entire world, and conflicts that seem unrelated to us will subside as if on their own. The unity we will project to the world will install a mindset of peace on all of humanity and nations will conclude that they gain more by making peace and cooperating rather than by making war and obliterating.

I wish humanity would understand Israel’s role and pressured us to unite, so we could become a model nation, as our calling mandates. Yet, even if the world does not understand it, it is still our duty to unite and become a role model for the world. This is our only road to lasting peace and a prosperous future.

*For more on this topic read my book The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, and my ‎latest publication: New Antisemitism: Mutation of a Long-lived Hatred.‎
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does Jordan B. Peterson think about Israel?“

Jordan Peterson stated on his visit to Jerusalem that Israeli people “have a tremendous moral responsibility,” and continued…

“like you have, perhaps, for your entire history, for reasons that are very difficult to understand, and I think it is true, in some real sense, that the fate of the world depends on the decisions of the people of Israel.”

He is right. We have the ability to change ourselves, and by doing so, we change the world.

The change that we need to realize in Israel so that others will think that Israel is handling itself correctly is for us to start treating each other as members of a single family. It is as simple as that: to love others here just because they are the people of Israel.

We think that if the world were different, then we would also be different, but it is not the case. On the contrary, if we change, then the world will change in the same direction.

The world depends on the connections among the people of Israel. If we create positive connections among ourselves, then we will accordingly impact positive connections throughout humanity. In short, positive connection and world peace depend on positive connection and inner peace among the people of Israel, and the lack of positive connection and all the wars, conflicts and other forms of suffering in the world are due to the lack of positive connection among the people of Israel.

Based on the video “Jordan Peterson on Israel – A Kabbalist’s Response” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Following the Israeli General Election”

Perfect timing: on the day of the Israeli parliamentary elections, we began studying Baal HaSulam’s article, “Peace in the World.” Among other things, the article speaks about the interdependence of all people and how the positive or negative actions of each of us affect the lives of all of us. This means, concludes Baal HaSulam, that if we do not know that the world operates according to the law of mutual consideration, adjust our behavior, and build our society accordingly, we will end up hurting others and ourselves.

If we look at the world today, it is clear that we are oblivious to our interdependence and indifferent to the necessity to be considerate of others. As a result, we are heading toward a global social breakdown.

Physics. Chemistry, biology, zoology, astronomy, and every other field of science follows strict laws. It is impossible to understand any science without first studying its laws. We, on the other hand, believe that we can invent social laws according to our whims. Not surprisingly, the results are wars and chaos.

Take, for example, yesterday’s parliamentary elections in Israel. In our democratic country, everyone votes according to their own opinion. How did people formulate their opinions? Through what they heard from the media, from friends, and from family. However, without knowing the laws by which the world operates, how can any view be correct?

Instead of learning the law of mutual dependence that governs the world and building society according to this law, we insist on thinking that our selfish opinion is the only one that is valid. Somehow, we fail to grasp that in a world whose elements are all connected, selfishness is inherently wrong, detrimental by default.

It is like trying to study the physical world without first learning the laws of physics. If we tried to do this, we would make mistakes at every step. Since we do not know the rules for living in an interdependent society and try to impose our egocentric attitude on it, our society is fragmented and unsafe to live in.

The truth is that we need not change anything in the world. If we looked at nature, we would see that it is perfectly balanced, and everything works smoothly as long as we do not interfere with it. The only thing that needs to change, therefore, is humankind. If everything in nature is interdependent and mutually supportive, we should do the same.

To change the world we live in, we do not need to change the government; we need to change ourselves. Any government that acts selfishly harms its constituency. The right “vote” is to “elect” unity; this is how everything around us works, and unless we adjust ourselves to our surroundings, there will not be peace, prosperity, or well-being.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The agreement with Lebanon to bring neither peace nor quiet”

“Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday rejected petitions that would have held up a landmark US-brokered deal setting a maritime border with Lebanon, which Washington predicted could be finalized on Thursday,” hailed Reuters on Monday, October 24. But if the agreement does not guarantee peace, and it does not, if it weakens your position and gives up territory to an enemy that has sworn to kill you without even a formal promise to cease hostilities, then what is there to hail in this agreement? Why is it described as a “landmark” agreement?

The only relationship we should have with Lebanon is commercial: We drill out the gas that is in our territorial water and sell it to them, if they want to buy it. This is what every reasonable country would do.

I realize that it sounds as though this policy leaves no room for peace, but there is no one who wants peace on the other side anyway, so there is no room for peace to begin with. On the contrary, we should focus on strengthening ourselves in order to deter the enemy from harboring any thoughts of aggression, which would lead to casualties on both sides (mainly theirs) and still not lead to peace. When your enemy is trigger happy, a show of strength and courage is the best deterrence, the best way to prevent escalation to violence.

There used to be a slogan in Israel: land for peace. It promoted the idea that if we gave the Arabs land, they would give us peace.

We tried it several times. We tried signing agreements based on this formula, and we tried giving up land even without an agreement, believing that if the other side got the land it wanted, it would stop fighting. Neither way worked. The only formula that makes sense is peace for peace. If the other side wants peace, it gets peace; if it wants war, it gets war.

We need to understand the meaning of peace. The peace I talked about so far is not real peace. It is the absence of hostilities, and at best, it is normalization of the relationship based on economic interests. But when you are dealing with an enemy whose motivation stems from profound hatred, it is impossible to make peace under any circumstances. As long as there is hatred, we are condemned to live by the sword.

However, we can cure the hatred. Curing the hatred of the Palestinians toward Israel and Israelis is within our power. In fact, no one else can cure their hatred for us but we alone. And we can do this by curing the hatred that we feel for one another.

The Hebrew word for “peace” is shalom, from the word shlemut (wholeness). Currently, our nation is deeply fragmented and divided. When we have no shlemut among ourselves, we have none of it with others.

It could be said that the Palestinians are striving to eliminate the State of Israel because it is only natural for countries to spot division and weakness in their enemies and strive to take advantage of it. While this is true, this is not the case with Israel. When it comes to Israel, things get very emotional and relationships are determined by feelings of love or hate rather than by rational thinking.

The Israeli nation contains within it “delegates,” or “representatives” of people from all (or at least most of) the nations that inhabited the ancient world. Those nations have evolved into the nations we know today, all of humanity. As a result, all the nations subconsciously feel connected to the people of Israel, that they have a “stake,” an “investment” in this nation. This is why they feel entitled to judge and reprimand Israel and Jews, which they would not allow themselves to do to any other nation or country.

Thousands of years ago, those “envoys” carried out a feat that has never been repeated since: Despite their different backgrounds, they united and came to love one another even more than they cared for their own people, even more than they cared for themselves.

In doing so, the ancient Israelites created a model nation, a miniscule sample of world peace. However, the ancient Israeli nation was a proof of concept, and it worked. Because of their success, they were titled “a virtuous people,” and were instructed to be “a light to the nations.”

As long as they maintained their unity, they fulfilled their mission and the nations could see the example they needed. When they became belligerent and divided among themselves, the example they gave was the opposite of the one they had been tasked with giving. As a result, the world admonished them.

The people of Israel will never be freed from its mission. It will always be the focal point of all the nations, who will judge it according to its level of cohesion or separation. Although neither Jews nor gentiles are conscious of their ancient connection, that connection exists at our root and cannot be uprooted. This is why only when we make peace among ourselves, achieve shlemut and love one another, the world will love us, too. And when we hate each other, the world will also hate us.
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Comment: It is said: “When you’re sick, you should see a doctor. He is given the right to treat.”

My Response: This was not said about our doctors and not in our time. It was about the times of Hippocrates and Avicenna, about the times when there were great Kabbalistic sages among the Jews before the collapse of the Temple.

The collapse of the Temple, meaning the fall of that part of humanity called the people of Israel from the spiritual degree greatly affected everything! The Middle Ages arrived, everything went into stagnation, and everything went into decline. Before that, even the Romans and Greeks were not so cruel.

Of course no one is to blame for this. It is the upper program that created such conditions through them. But the fact that through them the upper program destroyed Israel in the form in which it existed, even though it had already slipped to the point that it had to be destroyed, it turned the whole world around. Since then, medicine and everything has gone into a completely different direction.

Before that everything was different. Even relations among other nations were not as barbaric as later. Where are these ancient Greeks? Look at Greece for the last two thousand years. What was it like? And the Romans? And so on. Even the ancient Arab world. Everything has collapsed everywhere. Wars and battles were not needed.

However, all this is nearing completion.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Cause of All Diseases” 7/23/13

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Question: They say that when mobile telephone communication appeared, Israel ranked first  in terms of conversation activity. Not because there was a need to communicate, but simply by talking to each other.

Answer: Yes, Israelis like to chat no less than others. Of course, they cannot be compared to Italians or Spaniards. There are probably statistics about which nation in the world is the most talkative.

As for communication, technology, and all these things, a person has a very acute sense of needing them. This gives him the opportunity to be more connected with the world and with the world view, and not just to be shut within himself, but to be more open.

As before, people were accused of excessive openness, cosmopolitanism. The word “cosmopolitan” was considered a curse—a worldly man.

In Stalin’s time, cosmopolitans referred to Jews. This is partly true since, while Gypsies and other national minorities (as other nations surrounding Russia were then called) have something of their own that they steeped in, the Jews always strived to have common ties all over the world. Therefore, the word “cosmopolitan” suits them.

I think that the development of communication and the desire for technology that connects people is, in principle, part of their internal national culture. It is because the whole Jewish culture is fixated on the common connection of everyone and everything, on the need to see the world as common.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Most Talkative Nation” 23/6/13

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All the nations of the world celebrate the New Year as an ordinary corporeal holiday, and only the Jews have a special celebration as we celebrate the creation of Adam. This is a very significant date.

Five days before the New Year (Rosh HaShanah), the creation of the world took place, and on New Year’s Day, at the fifth hour of Friday, Adam was created.

All the red dates of the Jewish calendar are dedicated not to the corporeal holidays, but to various spiritual actions, including the creation of the world and the creation of Adam. They gave our people a general and purposeful movement forward.

Adam is a soul, i.e., a structure of force, a network of forces, which is supposedly located somewhere in space and is an analogy of the Creator.

But it was created from above, under the influence of the upper force, which is kindness, love, and bestowal. Therefore, the structure itself was in the same state of bestowal, love, and mercy toward itself, and was an internal, self-sufficient “cocoon” that did not need to develop, it existed by itself.

In order to force this structure to develop, it was necessary to shake it somehow, to introduce an element of interference into it, a sharp external influence. This was done with the help of an additional system called Hava or Eve. She disturbed Adam’s inner balance, and as a result, this structure exploded from the inside.

For example, when an imbalance occurs in an atomic bomb due to excessive convergence of the two halves, the critical mass increases and self-decay begins, which leads to a nuclear explosion.

The same thing happened here. It turns out that we basically celebrate the fall. It would seem that we should sit in mourning, fast, cry, and “sprinkle ashes on our heads.”

No, we celebrate it, because thanks to the shattering we can assemble ourselves from the fragments of Adam and Eve and bring ourselves to the state similar to the upper force that created them and become equal to it in perfection and eternity.

In this way, we correct what the Creator deliberately broke for us, just as parents disassemble a puzzle for a child so that he becomes smarter by assembling it. In all this action, we must see the preparation of the Creator who treats us with love and wishes that we reach His perfection, become equal to Him.

Therefore, we celebrate the opportunity given to us for correction as a holiday. This is the New Year.
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From KabTV’s “Holidays, Rosh HaShanah“

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