Who is given the technique of correction?

Question: In the article “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings,” Baal HaSulam writes that the Kabbalistic methodology was given to one kind of people, but with the goal that they pass it on to all other people.

It turns out that from the whole creation, after hundreds of thousands of years of development, the Creator singles out a certain group of people who were predisposed to this?

Answer: He takes representatives of all the people of the world, collects them into one group, which he calls “Israel,” meaning “straight to the Creator,” and gives them this technique so they realize this goal and pass it on to everyone else.

The correction technique consists of a person acquiring the properties, meaning the properties of bestowal, when I put the desires of the other above mine.

Question: If the Creator is a property of bestowal, then He does not think about Himself?

Answer: Of course. He does not even have a single thought about Himself. We, on the other hand, always think about ourselves. Above these thoughts, we build thoughts about others.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/7/19

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The Times of Israel published my new article “The Cause and Solution to Israel’s Poverty according to Kabbalah”

Nearly one-third of Israel’s children and nearly one-fifth of Israel’s elderly are in poverty, according to a recent poverty report by Israel’s National Insurance Institute. When the country’s citizens make no effort to strive for a warm, family-like sensation, they let a high tension atmosphere develop that chokes its citizens from one day to the next. Such relations give rise to a country with great wealth and amassing poverty.

The Cause of Poverty: Not Sensing Each Other as Members of a Single Family

Israel’s “rich country, poor citizens” state is bigger than merely an economic situation, and thus cannot be solved at the economic level alone. It requires the implementation of connection-enriching programs through its education and media systems, regularly explaining how all Israeli citizens are members of a single family, and which aims to pass a family-like sensation among everyone.

It might sound like a socialist idea, but it’s not. We saw such examples in history, and they all failed. The reason was because they did not to take nature’s laws into account.

The laws of nature are integral laws of interconnectedness and interdependence. They guide us toward more and more connection, and in our times, the connections we need to form are at the level of our attitudes to each other: that we develop a feeling toward strangers as if they are members of our own family. By aligning our attitudes to each other accordingly, we guarantee ourselves a harmonious future.

2 Steps to Solve Poverty: Disagree With Division and Promote Connection

The first step toward a change of attitude to each other is disagreeing with our present separation. Social division is the principle cause of poverty, and our disagreement with this situation makes room for a new desire to appear—a desire to change our relationships so that we feel ourselves connected like members of a single family.

By activating and encouraging the desire for family-like connection to spread among society via educational and promotional means, we would then start seeing the erasure of our emotional remoteness, and likewise, its symptoms of poverty.

The Kabbalistic Explanation as to Why There’s a Growing Gap between Rich and Poor

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the state of imbalance between rich and poor takes place due to an imbalance between Ohr Hochma (light of wisdom) and Ohr Hassadim (light of mercy), i.e., when there is a lot of Ohr Hochma and only a little Ohr Hassadim.

What are these two lights in relation to this current situation? Ohr Hochma signifies spiritual abundance and wealth, while Ohr Hassadim expresses the desire to give that abundance and wealth. Ohr Hassadim is a condition that prevents the desire to keep receiving more and more for personal benefit to imbalance our systems. In other words, Ohr Hassadim can be thought of as a regulating device that warms the heart, which otherwise becomes continually colder in an encasement of egoism without such conditioning. Therefore, when we apply Ohr Hassadim upon our instinctive desire to devour everything for self-benefit, we build a new sense, a tool that gives us the ability to receive the Ohr Hochma in a balanced manner. In this way, we can have a country where all its citizens experience spiritual abundance and wealth. Without such a regulator, we then continually head in an egoistic direction and bear witness to the “rich country, poor citizens” situation we are in today.

Moreover, without the Ohr Hassadim regulator that aims to give the abundance to others in society, then not only the poor citizens feel as if they are deficient, but also the rich feel a constant lack. More wealth is never perceived as enough wealth, and thus they continually seek how to increasingly fulfill themselves. This is how the pressure of the Ohr Hochma is felt. When we aim to receive for self-benefit alone, then pleasures we receive ultimately encounter an empty space within us, like a black hole that extinguishes any self-aimed pleasure we absorb.

Therefore, whether or not we have a little or a lot depends on our attitudes to each other.

Abundance Reaches Everyone When Society Becomes as a Single Family

We can organize our relationships in order to create an abundance that fills the space between us. When we open ourselves up to others, we become conductors of that abundance, like hubs and nodes in a network that pass signals to each other, and then our lives becomes rich and diverse.

Therefore, the more the idea of our need to connect as a single family upon our innate division spreads among society, both rich and poor, then the more we will find that there is plenty to go around for everyone.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “How Russian Immigration Reshaped Israel”

The contribution of Russian immigrants to Israel is considered to be a key factor in the country’s success in multiple levels and areas. These days, as Israel commemorates 30 years since the beginning of the massive aliyah (inmigration) wave from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, we are able to assess that its influence will continue to resound for generations to come.

However, despite decades of experience with the absorption of new immigrants, we have yet to realize that it is precisely by rising above the differences between us that we will be able to strengthen Israel’s social fabric.

The Largest Immigration Wave

Three decades ago, Israel became home to about 30% of Soviet Jewry, close to a million people, changing the face of the country for good. My family and I were not part of this wave. We arrived in the small precursor wave of the 1970s, before the massive influx, which didn’t change the difficulties of absorption and integration into the country. When we arrived, all that I had with me was a small tent and a few basic utensils I thought we might need. I had next to no idea what would I find in this desert land.

I arrived neither destitute nor abandoned since I had my diplomas in hand and a profession as a scientist and researcher. I had my family and was economically established. Despite my advantages, moving from one country to another is always accompanied by feelings of insecurity, since you never know what you could encounter. Until you step into the experience of the land of Israel you really have no idea about its true character.

After a short period of time, I was accepted into the Israel Air Force. Since the crews were under daily pressure to be alert for any operation at any given moment, our commitment to work together, no matter what the challenges, always prevailed over our differences. There was no place for degrading anyone. Therefore, on a personal level, I had no experience of the bitter treatment that many immigrants have complained about since.

However, I fully understand the source of the disparaging treatment many immigrants describe. Trouble integrating into Israeli life is not unique to the Russian immigration wave. It has always been this way. It was the common experience of every immigration wave that arrived, whether from Morocco or Yemen, to undergo some sort of discrimination. Depictions of immigrant treatment even found their way into skits, which until today have become part and parcel of the Israeli humor lexicon.

I remember that the janitor in the building where we lived was a doctor from Moscow, and the street was cleaned by an engineer from St. Petersburg. These were the people who made aliyah in this Russian wave: doctors, engineers, technicians and nurses. These were the people who made this immigration wave so successful. They catapulted the nation forward in sports, culture, medicine, academia and many other fields. They brought an ambitious spirit that pushed for achievement. Notwithstanding their contributions, they were not spared from surges of cynicism and contempt.

Learning to Live Together

The Israeli mentality is one of contempt toward everything and everyone. The scorn is not directed specifically against the Russians or any other group. It is deeply ingrained in our Jewish DNA. In fact, we are even contemptuous of the upper force. It is a permanent phenomenon and not a passing phase, and it cumulates and passes from one generation to the next.

The ego that separates us is an open social wound. It reveals itself with every wave of immigration. The good news is that it also reveals the only place that needs mending: our relations.

Sooner or later we will have to learn positive relations above and beyond our differences. Such an achievement will secure our lives in a prosperous and balanced nation where all the newcomers, regardless of their origin and background, will be respected and appreciated for their contribution to society.

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Question: In Kabbalah there is the concept of 70 nations of the world. Where does the number “70” come from?

Answer: It comes from the fact that spiritual roots form corresponding consequences in our world.
Zeir Anpin is composed of seven Sefirot, and each Sefira of ten, which totals 70.

Question: Kabbalists wrote that our desires, from a spiritual point of view, are divided into 70 nations. But if we begin to study historically, could it be different, not necessarily 70?

Answer: No. Josephus Flavius has confirmation of this; after all, he is considered a great historian.

He was captured by the Romans and he left with them from the subjugated, destroyed Judea. In Rome, a huge institute was created for him where hundreds of people worked under his supervision so that he could write his treatises. Therefore, we cannot say that these facts are false or in some way far-fetched.

Question: How do Kabbalists relate to his treatises?

Answer: They are not particularly relevant because he did not write about spiritual conditions. He described what happened in our world as a consequence. But still, his book begins with the words: “In the beginning the Lord created heaven and earth … “ and so on, as described in the Torah.

Question: Can you, as a Kabbalist, confirm that the consequences he described in our world clearly correspond to those spiritual laws that you know from the spiritual world?

Answer: Of course. He described everything precisely.

Question: Doesn’t it happen that historians can distort things?

Answer: He was not at that level, and the Romans too. They just had to record everything for future generations, which they did. In the eyes of the Romans, he glorified them forever. That is why such conditions were created for him, and he was able to describe it all.
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From the Kab TV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/28/19

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The Times of Israel published my new article “Israel’s 3rd Elections: Fateful Wake-Up Call for the People of Israel”

A third election round has been announced in Israel for the first time in history due to our inability to form a government.

What can I say? All I can say is that we need something to shake us. I’m sorry to write such words, but it hurts when you love the people of Israel and the State of Israel. After all, it is my home.

I have lived on this land for decades and never once thought about leaving. However, I see no positive future if we continue business as usual, without a thorough scrutiny and decision to change the way we go about our lives.

It is our duty to provide every citizen with the method that initially connected us as a nation, and which would grant us an undeniable right to live in this land. It is as Kabbalist Rav Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (Rabash) opened the first of his many writings on how a society can make the shift from division to unity: that we have gathered here to establish a society in order to rise and become human, in the fullest sense of the word (the word for “human” in Hebrew, “Adam,” is also the word for the collective soul that we discover when we unite according to nature’s integral laws).

In other words, the purpose of our gathering in one place is not to merely continue living mindlessly in the currents of life here instead of in the diaspora, but to realize the method we were given: to unite and pass the force that unifies us to humanity.

Today’s divisive atmosphere in Israel is a sign that we will be unable to find peace among each other if we fail to understand and implement nature’s integral laws. It is what unified us in the first place, i.e., an inclination to unite upon the divisions of the ancient Babylonian society from which we emerged as a nation.

It is our purpose and role in the world to reach such unity, and without moving in that direction, our purposeless squandering, where we each focus on building our lives at the expense of others, brings about the opposite: social division.

Our disunity then receives a negative reaction from the nations of the world. That reaction is known as anti-Semitism, and its widespread awakening today is because we are in a developmental stage where we need to make a step toward uniting as a single nation, according to the tenet that brought us together in the first place: to unite (“love your friend as yourself”) above divisions (“love will cover all transgressions”) in order to spread this unifying tendency to the world (to be “a light unto the nations”).

According to the laws of nature—integral laws of interconnectedness and interdependence—the people of Israel have a key role: to spread positive connection among humanity. We were given a method to do so, the same method of connection that Abraham guided us with in ancient Babylon, and which has undergone upgrades over the generations to suit us in our time.

Essentially, it is a method of how to actualize connection between us to the same extent and quality as nature’s connectedness, gradually discovering the immense unifying force of nature the more we connect.

Also, our revelation of nature’s unifying force spreads among humanity’s collective consciousness, inverting our current increasing divisive tendency—where we behave like cancerous cells taking as much as we can for ourselves at society’s expense—to a unifying, peaceful and loving tendency that benefits humanity.

I will never leave Israel. I will remain here and do everything in my power for its success. However, its materialistic achievements as a startup nation is no sign of success to me. Success for the people of Israel can only be spiritual: that we realize our role to be a conduit of unity for the world.

Ever since our ancestors achieved the sublime unified state under Abraham’s guidance some 3,800 years ago, our role has remained unchanged. We have since detached from that awareness, but as explained by Kabbalists, the time has come where the need for unity is not only pressing on us within our current borders; it is also expressed worldwide as a growing divisive tendency increasingly tearing societies apart. Thus, not a day goes by where I cannot speak or write about this phenomenon, as a peaceful or painful future depends precisely on the people of Israel’s unity or lack thereof.

Once we clarify and establish our exalted, spiritual and eternal goal to ourselves, our lives will then shift in a positive direction. The shambles we find ourselves in today is due not to a few politicians who failed to form a government, but we—the entire people of Israel—are responsible for it.

Therefore, we must lift our heads out of the water, recognize that we are all one family, interconnected and interdependent, and we must all address the problem together. In the meantime, not only do we suffer, the entire world suffers as it depends on our inner spirit to rise as a united people of Israel.

I thus hope that we will start feeling the great responsibility upon us, to ourselves and to the world, and start implementing the method of connection that we have at our fingertips.

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Remark: The whole creation is divided into two parts. One part is called Israel, the second the nations of the world. If Israel does not fulfill its function, the nations of the world come to them with claims, and this is manifested at the human level, at the level of society.

My Comment: This is called anti-Semitism.

Remark: However, neither Israel nor the nations of the world understand where it comes from, although it is all recorded in Kabbalah and can be studied.

My Comment: Of course. It is also recorded in the Torah. Hatred arises naturally from the nations of the world toward the people of Israel. There is no other phenomenon like this.

Question: However, the functions of Israel and the nations of the world are not chosen by the people themselves? Does nature calibrate them in such a way?

Answer: No, it is determined according to the soul. Every person in the world can feel this.

All of a sudden, some Eskimo begins to feel the need to discover a quality of nature, cause and effect, why and for what reason he exists. That is, he aspires to the Creator, to the source of this knowledge, these revelations. Therefore, he begins to delve into everything and, in accordance with his aspiration, is called Isra-El, direct to the Creator.

Question: It turns out that the what is called God’s chosen people is just a determination of nature?

Answer: I would say that there are two parts in this “God’s chosen.” On one hand, there is a part that is given to a person from above, meaning the upper force picks him and gives him desire toward it. On the other hand, the person who feels aspiration toward the upper force makes efforts himself. Meaning, that there must be arousal from above and arousal from below.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/28/19

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Question: What is the main function of Israel (the people of Israel)?

Answer: The function of Israel is to achieve such a connection that unites them together and then through this unity to pass the higher energy, the upper force, which unites and binds everything, to all nations of the world and to the rest of the layers of nature: animate, vegetative, and still.

Question: If Israel, as a center of connection, does not fulfill its function, then the system itself, in which the nations of the world and the people of Israel are located, forces the function of the nations of the world to affect Israel negatively, pushing it forward. Is that how it manifests in our world?

Answer: Yes. It happens automatically. To the extent that Israel transmits positive energy to them through the system of the souls and worlds that is in a certain state of development, but does not do this, to the same extent the negative reaction arises from them, a request: “Where is what we should receive now?”

Question: Does all this happen unconsciously?

Answer: Half-consciously. People do not know why aversion and specific demands appear in them toward Israel. But these demands appear: “You, Israel, are the source of all problems in the world!”

And actually, it is so. “You must do so that everything will be good in the world. We all depend on you! And you are not fulfilling your function!”
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/28/19

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My article in Newsmax: “New US Israeli Settlements Policy Could Foster Peace”

Setting the record straight, the reversal of a four-decade old U.S. position on Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank as being “inconsistent with international law,” is a meaningful and positive declaration.

First and foremost, if it helps repair the breakage in Israel’s social fabric, it will help ease the road to peace. After mending the connections of the people of Israel, tranquility with our neighbors will follow naturally and smoothly.

The shift in American foreign policy announced by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agrees with President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 assessment that the settlements in territories conquered by Israel in the 1967 war were not “inherently illegal.”

However, this assessment contradicts U.N., European, Mideastern and Palestinian positions on the matter. The international community generally deems the settlements to be illegitimate, claiming that they erode the possibility for a future Palestinian state that would include disputed areas in Judea and Samaria.

Washington’s declaration has been rejected by Russia, Jordan, Turkey, and the European Union representatives, which comes as no surprise. The nations of the world consistently hound Israel, with no hesitation to unmercifully pressure Israel in comparison to what they demand from its neighbors or any other country.

Why Is Israel Always the World’s Focal Point?

We might wonder why Israel is treated differently than other nations, grabbing such global attention. It is so for a reason. The world subconsciously feels that Jews hold the keys for a good future but are somehow withholding the secret to a better world.

Therefore, the nations of the world goad us from behind and will not rest until we deliver what is expected of us.

Our Jewish nation was founded by our forefathers based on adherence to the condition of being “as one man with one heart.” Together, our people discovered and refined the method to rise above personal interests, the ego, to nurture genuine concern for one another.

They discovered a positive unifying force that guided their every move, and for centuries succeeded in uniting above divisions.

However, around 2,000 years ago, the Jewish nation succumbed to unfounded hatred, which led to their exile and eventual dispersion.

The shattered state of separation still rules in our hearts, and it is the root cause of myriad problems today.

Therefore, rebuilding our Jewish unity is the key solution that can restore a state of harmony profound enough to permeate everything around us and the entire world.

This is precisely our moral and spiritual obligation as a people, to “be a light unto the nations,” serving as a positive example for the world. It is the mandate for our existence as a nation, as well as for the Land of Israel upon which we reside.

As Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi in the Land of Israel, wrote, “In Israel is the secret to the unity of the world” (Orot Kodesh).

Peace Should Start At Home

Until we reconstruct our state of cohesion, which humanity direly needs today, the nations of the world will not accept our existence as individual Jews or as a sovereign Jewish nation. Therefore, peace must begin at home, among Jews. When we rise above our differences and attain a certain extent of unity, everyone will benefit. Otherwise, the world will continue blaming Jews and Israel for their woes.

We are the carriers of the method of the ego’s correction and of the division destroying our world. First, however, we need to learn how to implement correction among each other in order to be able to pass it on.

That method for “covering all crimes with love,” as King Solomon put it (Proverbs 10:12), always was and always will be our weapon for our survival and prosperity.

Reinstating the connection we once achieved is the peace process we need most.

The sooner we begin, the faster we will find calm and quiet for all.

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Question: How does someone become a Jew?

Answer: There are two ways to become a Jew: by birth or by becoming Jewish.

Anyone can become a Jew, no matter whether one is French, Italian or any other nationality, because Jewishness is not via lineage.

To become a Jew means to adopt a certain way of thinking, an attitude toward life and its purpose, when you realize what it actually means to be a Jew. What does it mean to be a Jew? It means to bring the method of correction and connection into the world, and to become a contributing member toward the world’s unification.

Question: So, the word “Jew” – “Hebrew – Ivri,” means “crossed over”?

Answer: A change from the egoistic attitude toward the world and others to an altruistic one.

Question: Is this how one becomes a Jew?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, in effect, are you discreetly telling us that the whole world can become Jews?

Answer: Not discreetly, but indeed so.

This is a serious transition from egoism to altruism, which only happens as a switch that turns on inside each person when one asks the upper force for this change .

Question: You also say that those who are born Jewish are not actually Jews?

Answer: No. Those are not the Jews the Torah speaks of. A Jew is a spirit. One must be guided only by the calling in his heart.

Question: Is the ultimate goal of life to become a Jew?

Answer: To become a Jew means to unite all people, to be the force that elevates them toward the quality of bestowal, mutual love, and unity. It means reaching such communication between all people in the world so that they will be as one.

Being Jewish has nothing to do with whether or not one’s mother is Jewish.

Question: People of different nationalities will now suddenly hear that one way or another the goal of every person is to become a Jew?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Do you calmly say that it is so?

Answer: Of course. In other words, the goal of every person is to transition from the egoistic perception of the world into the altruistic one. This is considered as crossing (“laavor“) the egoistic barrier.

So, let them cross it.
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From KabTV “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/30/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What will the state of Israel look like in 2050?“

No one can answer this question definitively because we’re in a process of free choice.

What does it mean that we’re in a process of free choice?

It means that we can either move forward unknowingly into traps and blows that will force us to examine the way we live our lives, or we can build a society that will let us carry out what depends on us: to unite with each other, balancing our relations with those of the integral and interconnected laws of nature. Ultimately, if we fail to progress the latter way, then we can consider ourselves done for.

Let’s say that by 2050, we need to have transitioned to a much more unified society, with a certain amount of disclosure of nature’s quality of love and bestowal dwelling among our relations. To the extent that we tried to unite, we would experience a positive reaction from nature, and to the extent that we failed to make efforts in the direction of unity when we could have, then we would experience suffering. And the suffering would be in order to show us that we’re going the wrong way if we’re not trying to unite.

Nevertheless, what can be said is that the nation of Israel will continue living on. Why? It is because the nation of Israel needs to carry out the above-mentioned correction of the world, i.e. unification in order to be a conduit for global unity.

The nation of Israel carries the method of the world’s correction at its foundation. It received the method of correction from Abraham in ancient Babylon, based on the premise of “love your neighbor as yourself,” and in order spread its unity to humanity at large (to be “a light unto the nations”).

We thus need to consider what depends on us, how we can realize the correction—to awaken a spirit of unity among each other in order for a sense of connection to ripple throughout the world.

Therefore, I cannot say what will happen in 2050. What will happen is what we will decide—the extent to which we will implement our unifying function in the world.

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