Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the Temple embody within them much more than what comes to mind when we first think about them. Their spiritual meaning leads us to the necessary understanding that the connection between us is not only for our sake, but for the sake of all of humanity.

Forty-nine years ago, paratroopers entered Jerusalem, liberated the Old City, and united it. It seems that there is no city in the world in which every stone within it is steeped in a history so important to the shaping of the human species. The city that gives hope to an entire people is today the focus of outrageous announcements devoid of all logic from UNESCO, that “the Jewish people have no religious connection with the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.”

International organizations are trying to sever the connection between the Jewish people and their heritage. The EU intervenes in every activity in the city, and given the pace of events, don’t be surprised if the enlightened world wakes up tomorrow morning and decides that Jerusalem is not connected to the nation of Israel, and this doesn’t just mean the separation of East Jerusalem.

Tireless efforts and money are invested in creating a false consciousness, which must awaken this question in the heart of each one of us: How can it be that the capital of Israel—an ancient city that encompasses within it the abundant history of the people of Israel, our religion, and our culture, the city in which two Temples were built and, unfortunately, also were destroyed—is liable to be erased from the map of the land of Israel? In general, from where has such a decisive opposition popped up among the nations of the world to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? What does this say about the negative attitude toward us as a people?

We Have the Key to the Gates

The wisdom of Kabbalah maintains that the reason for this persecution lies in our not having realized our role as a people, a role that is rooted within us from the nature of creation, upon whose basis the people of Israel were established. According to ancient wisdom, humanity is connected by a network of mutual links. Within this network, the people of Israel were intended to be “a light unto the nations[FD1] ,” which is to say, connected so that the positive force that is inherent in nature would stream into the world and function to connect people and nations.

The world subconsciously feels that the source of all evil and the root of the suffering that it is experienced is derived directly from the fact that the people of Israel are not realizing their role. This feeling continues to bubble up more and more, and is crystallizing into an agenda that is expressed in the attempts to boycott the nation of Israel. Voices from the international community are calling for a recognition that the world was mistaken when it allowed the establishment of the Jewish nation in the Middle East and that perhaps the hour has arrived to take back the scepter.

Rav Yehudah Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes:

“Judaism must present something new to the nations. This is what they expect from the return of Israel to the land! It is not in other teachings, for in that we never innovated. In them, we have always been their disciples. Rather, it is the wisdom of religion, justice, and peace. In this, most nations are our disciples, and this wisdom is attributed to us alone. …”

“This would certainly prove to the nations the rightness of Israel’s return to their land, even to the Arabs. However, a secular return such as today’s does not impress the nations whatsoever, and we must fear lest they will sell Israel’s independence for their needs, needless to mention returning Jerusalem.” (Rav Yehudah Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), “The Writings of the Last Generation,” Part 1, Section 12, pp. 75-76.).

UNESCO, the UN, the EU, and the rest of the international bodies that protect us are a kind of reflection for us of the lack of fulfillment of our function. In other words, we are determining our fate with our own hands. If the world is exhibiting so much hatred and anti-Semitism toward us that it denies the connection between our people and our home, it depends only upon us. In our hands is the choice to decide the future of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, for better or for worse. All that is up to us to do is to decide to implement an essential change in the interpersonal relationships between us, connecting as “one man in one heart” instead of each person being concerned only about himself. As a result of the positive force that we create among us, we balance the forces of separation and bring to completion the system of connection between people. The forces of connection between us also will permeate the nations of the world and oblige them to begin a similar process as well, to connect and recognize us as the origin of connection and goodness.

“The built-up Jerusalem is like a city that was joined together within itself.” (Psalms 122:3)

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, there is a parallel and direct connection between the system called the spiritual land of Israel and the state of the physical land of Israel. The desire (Ratzon -רצון) that is in the heart of a person is called Eretz -ארץ, the land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael – ), which has a desire Yashar El (Straight to God), meaning that it has narcissistic desires, but only love for others (The Writings of Rabash). “Jerusalem – ירושלים” comes from the words “Ir Shalem” (Perfect/Whole City) and Irah – יראה (Fear), a city that is built on the fear of separation, representing the sense of necessity in preserving the perfected connection between us.

In the center of the shared fear of Israel, right in the heart of the connection between us, a unique spiritual stratum is revealed that is called the Temple Mount. In it, we build the Temple, a term for a more internal connection between us, a shared desire for love. The moment we stop striving for inner connection, the links begin to unravel, and the people of Israel are expelled. When the roots hidden in the earth are uprooted, this kills the entire tree. That is how the first Temple was destroyed, that is how the second Temple was destroyed, and that is how it has continued until today. And this is not the destruction of a building constructed from wood and stone, but the destruction of the network of love  between us that connects into one. This is because “The house [Jerusalem] was ruined because of unfounded hatred” (Rabbi Israel Segal, Netzah Israel, Chapter 4).

The same general rule applies in our day, “According to the connection of the people of Israel and their awakening to love and fear, Jerusalem is built” (Koznitzer Maggid). Jerusalem will be built only when we establish it first in our hearts with corrected relationships of connection and love. Until then, the unfounded hatred will continue, and Jerusalem will remain as a ruined capital until then, as a torn city full of conflict and bloodshed, for instead of a place where love dwells, after the destruction, the power of separation and hatred dominates.

“The Messiah sits in the gate of Jerusalem and waits for people to be worthy of redemption. He is in cuffs and needs complete people to release him from his chains. …now he craves men of truth” (Sayings of Rabbi Menachem Mendel). The wisdom of Kabbalah, the wisdom of truth, is a method that teaches us how to connect and apply the general rule, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). With the help of the power of connection, we can realize our role as a nation and restore the spiritual concept of Jerusalem to its full glory.

Then, Jerusalem will become the capital of love for all of humanity. As it is written, “In the future, Jerusalem will be like all of Israel, and Israel will be the entire world” (the Yalkut Shimoni). Then the world will understand the words of the prophets: “…for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7), and “for they shall all know Me from their smallest to their greatest” (Jeremiah 31:33 ).
What else did the sages of Kabbalah write about Jerusalem?
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From Ynet article 6/2/16

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New Life #588 – The Limits Of Freedom Of Speech
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Why does society abuse the freedom of speech today? How can we learn to use the freedom of speech correctly, and how can we teach effective social criticism?

Summary

There are influential actors, musicians, and artists whose opinions are highly regarded, but there is actually no justification for that. People have lost any sense of good taste and those who express themselves in a more vulgar way are more highly regarded. The media is also becoming more provocative and we can definitely say that we have crossed the line.

Humanity is in retreat: in the past we were eager to know more, and today we have everything but people are like a herd. Today there is no point restricting people artificially and shutting their mouths. We must invest in education and publicity. This cannot be done instantly. It can only be done through an educational process that includes all of society. We have to learn that our negative attitude toward one another is very harmful in every aspect of our life. After all we are connected and integrated.

Everyone wants to feel good, but people don’t know that their well-being depends on the well-being of others. A person who knows how to use his freedom of speech effectively will be a most positive component in society. After all, everyone is special, and no one can contribute to society what others can and so it is vital that everyone cooperates in this system.

Today everything is based solely on power. Those we are stronger, richer, and more cunning can buy themselves a platform. The problem today is not freedom of speech but the fact that we don’t educate the public for tomorrow. There must be some form of control, intelligent control, which stems from knowing the laws of human development.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #588 – The Limits Of Freedom Of Speech,” 6/21/15

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Question: It turns out that there is still slavery in the modern world. 45 million people around the world are abused as slaves. This number is equivalent to the population of Spain.

According to recent research, slavery is the exploitation of a person who cannot leave because of threats of violence, coercion, or deception. People can be enslaved because of a debt and so forth.

Answer: Before the destruction of the Second Temple the slaves among the nation of Israel had many privileges. The landlord was required to take care of his slave, and the slave was obliged to work for the landlord according to his powers and his abilities. At the same time, the relationship between them was normal and mutual, just as they are today between an employer and an employee. A slave did not want to leave his landlord because the latter provided everything he needed, as it is written, “… give your slave your pillow.”

As for other nations, they had a completely different attitude toward slaves. They beat them, humiliated them, killed them, and did not treat them as human beings, not even as domestic animals, which were looked after, cherished, and fed.

Question: What is slavery from a Kabbalistic perspective?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, slavery is total obedience to your landlord, “This is what the landlord wants, so this is how I move.” A slave constantly looks to the landlord and carries out his will, and at the same time, totally suppresses his own desire. His efforts, his opinion, his desires, and his thoughts all are aimed at the landlord’s desire so as to continue the latter’s desire. A slave has no desire of his own, but only the desire of the landlord.

Question: Can we say that, in this world, we all are slaves to our egoistic nature?

Answer: Of course! We also can say that we are the Creator’s slaves, but unconsciously! This is because the Creator is the only force of nature that manages us, but He wants us to be independent. This is our problem: to be independent of Him and even above Him!

It is written, “My sons have defeated Me,” which means becoming free of slavery, becoming totally independent, and taking the leadership of the entire world from the Creator’s hands. This is His real desire, His dream. And we, unfortunately, do not want to think about something higher, more sublime, and thus we remain slaves and live as animals.

Therefore the Creator pushes us through suffering so that we will perceive and understand our absolutely poor, paltry, miserable, and limited state, and will want to rise from it.

I hope that as the sufferings grow, people will begin to perceive and understand that. There is no other way to influence people. Then, people will use what the Creator offers them: His knowledge, His method, His wisdom, the wisdom of Kabbalah.

If we begin to implement it, we will see how much we gain from becoming the masters and ceasing to be slaves. This is how we enter a completely different level of existence, a world of eternity, infinity, and perfection, a totally different entity, a different dimension. But this is for free people.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/6/16

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Question: The security of Jews in Israel and throughout the world is often tied to a strong Israeli army. Can we expect the Israeli Defense Forces to not abandon the Jews throughout the world and can the Jews sleep in peace and quiet?

Answer: I believe that only people who are “hiding their heads in the sand” can think like that. I served and then worked in the Israeli army for four years and I assure you that something like that cannot be. Just as completely hermetic borders don’t exist, so an army that protects completely doesn’t exist. As far as we are concerned, if we don’t carry out our mission, the situation will become such that we will not be able to stand against any threat that is facing us.

We will need an army as long as we haven’t taken hold of our mission and haven’t begun to realize it. By refusing to carry it out, we lose the right to remain on this land, to protect ourselves, and to exist not only as a nation and as a people, but also throughout the world as Jews.
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From the Webinar 5/8/16

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Dear friends! During these days we celebrate the greatest holiday that symbolizes receiving the upper force in our world, its revelation and possibility to use it for the common good, for the spiritual elevation of the humanity in order for everyone to become a dweller of the upper world and to feel eternity, infinity, and perfection.

Contact with the upper world is a gift of connection that we can use for our benefit and the benefit of others, but only on condition that we will take on arms the upper force and bring the entire world to perfection with its help. This is the mission of our nation in the name of which we received the upper Light called the Torah.

During a short historical period we were realizing the spiritual method only among ourselves, but today the time has come when the entire world needs it. And therefore, as it is said in the wisdom of Kabbalah, we have reached the state of the “last generation,” meaning the last generation that can feel only a limited material world.

Let’s start to unite together in order to reveal the upper Light within us, in the center of our union, according to the law of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Then it will start to gush, will be manifested within us from the depth of the universe, and will change the entire world and us!

Everything depends only on us. We have come to the state when the entire history of the humanity faces the moment of accomplishing the great correction. The Light is ready to affect the world.

Therefore, we have to achieve that the Torah be given to the entire humanity so it will begin to feel itself existing in the quality of love, kindness, and mutual connection and will rise to the next level of the universe, above life and death, above limitations of our world, and above all problems. This is the giving of the Torah, meaning the upper Light, upper force, and our receiving it.

I wish everyone to realize this way the holiday of Shavuot, the holiday of the giving of the Torah!
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New Life #576 – Shaming on the Internet
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

A person who has been shamed on the Internet feels that he is in “hell” because our basic force is the ego and so we aspire to feel pride and fear being shamed. A person who has been shamed, feels that he has been erased, buried, and that he has nothing to live for.

Our self, the human being in us is everything for us, everything. If it is erased, we have nothing to live for. What is more, there is an internal spiritual point in us that doesn’t die, a spark of our soul that develops from one generation to the next.

Some people don’t care about anything, while others are very sensitive to the issue of shame and pride, and others’ negative opinions can lead to great emotional stress.

We are like gears in a single system, dependent on each other. Sometimes embarrassing pictures of people are publicized on the net and it hurts the person’s pride to such an extent that the only resort he feels he has is to commit suicide. It doesn’t help to hide in order to protect oneself from shame. Instead a person should ascend to a higher level.

If a person goes into a chicken coop, for example, and all the chickens yell at him, he is not ashamed because he is higher than them. A person who raises himself morally understands that the others are still behaving like small children. The ascent is in spiritual values, in the values of love of others through which one reaches connection to the upper force.

Sometimes a great person is humiliated from above, as has happened to great Kabbalists throughout history, but they realize where this stems from and why the upper force has such an account with them.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #576 – Shaming On the Network,” 5/28/15

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Comment:  As a result of the terrorist attack in the shopping and entertainment center in Tel Aviv, four people were killed and sixteen injured. This caused a surge of joy in the military wing of Hamas, in Gaza, and adjacent countries. This way began the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.

Answer: Terrorist attacks have to be restrained not with military means, so aggression from our side won’t help.

The most effective is to take away from terrorists their ideological base, and not to use force against force. If they act according to the ideological motives, we too must respond in the same way. And our ideological strength is only in unity.

If we don’t unite, we will have nothing that can oppose what they put forward. Therefore, neither the decisions of our ministers nor the destruction of the houses of terrorists will give any results. They are good as a preventative method or as a tactic, but nothing else.

We have no other choice. We have only one weapon and it is unity. Through it we invite from the depth of Nature its greatest power, the so-called Upper Light. Like a laser beam it burns away all the evil on its way and leaves only good.

This is the weapon we can acquire if we really want to unite. Then in the center of our connection, in the center of our nation the Light that is directed to everything that prevents us from becoming one single entity will appear. At the same time all negative forces and everyone who is against this rule will disappear from the world and the world will come to its unity.

We must do one thing only: to be conductors of the upper Light to our world. This is the mission of all Jewish people.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/9/16

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New Life #587 – Freedom Of Expression
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

What responsibility is placed on a person who publicizes his personal opinions, what kind of responsibility is involved in the use of freedom of speech, and why should we understand where humanity is heading before using this freedom?

Summary

To the degree that a person expresses his opinions, he feels his existence. This is a natural impulse that is derived from the ego. As we develop and the ego grows, we demand more freedom of expression.

Looking deeper, it is worthwhile clarifying what freedom of expression is. Is it the freedom to say anything that comes to me? Freedom of expression also requires a person to be responsible because his words can have much influence in the world.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is explained that even the thoughts of a person influence the world, so this requires even more responsibility.

Freedom of expression, as it is today, leads to social disorder and contempt of people toward each other. Even the media are controlled by particular interest groups and others, and everything is bought and sold with money.

To reach true freedom of expression, we must learn what the world is developing toward according to the law of nature. The summit of development will be when all parts of reality will be in absolute balance, connected as one.

On the way to this, we must go through all kinds of forms of opposition between each other, as it is said, “…as light excelleth darkness” (Ecclesiastes 2:13).

The opinions that people express today are not really independent opinions. What is heard impresses one, and so on.

A child’s self-expression are to grab, take, and hit others. Then he or she expresses verbally. Yet it is not enough to allow a person to shout his opinions; he must be taught what the good state toward which we aspire is.

Nature determines where we are advancing to, not us. But like little children, it seems to us that we are free. Keeping our mouths shut is also not good. But in the meantime, when everyone shouts, we aren’t advancing toward the good. Without a general social educational process, we won’t advance toward the good.

We must know what the law of nature is demanding from us. The final state nature is moving us toward is for us to be as a single unit, “As one person with one heart.” When this general picture becomes clear, everyone will be able to express themselves optimally.

In summary, freedom of expression obligates us first to learn what kind of world we are in.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #587 – Freedom Of Expression,“ 6/21/15

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Comment: 83 of the 100 American senators signed a letter that calls upon the President of the United States Barak Obama to increase the aid to Israel and to sign a security agreement soon. The aid package is currently three billion dollars per year whereas Israel insists on increasing the budget to five billion dollars per year.

Response: First, it is up to us to rely more upon ourselves, improvement of our situation depends on the order that we make in our nation. We can collect two billion dollars from the state funds if we just get serious and less wasteful. Second, the restrictions contained in the agreement are not beneficial for the nation of Israel. The Americans profit a great deal from the Israeli innovations related to ammunitions, so it is very worthwhile for them to support us, yet in the meantime it could be that we have no other way out.

Despite the help from Obama and others, it is up to us to rely upon ourselves. We shouldn’t rely on help from European nations or Russia and also not on our military power, but only on the connection with the upper force.

Nobody will take this from us. The problem is that this relationship is up to us to discover, to arrange, and to use correctly. Then we will have no need of help from the Americans or anyone else, and they cannot defeat us; on the contrary, everyone will require our help.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/26/16

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Question: Israeli journalist Yossi Melman writes that the life cycle of the nuclear plant in Dimona has ended and that there is nothing to replace it. As we know, the plant was bought in 1963 from France and has served as a deterrent to armed forces surrounding Israel. According to the foreign press, during the years the reactor was active, Israel built more than 200 different types of nuclear warheads, and according to the data published by the Swedish Institute for Peace, Israel has built 80 warheads.

Will the process of national unity you speak about so often replace the nuclear plant or should the two exist side by side?

Answer: A nuclear plant is a necessary means for restraining external forces until we unite.

A nuclear potential, a strong army, armed forces, an air force, submarines, and space innovations are means used to protect the country and therefore are important. This is true until we come to our senses and begin to use the true weapon we have, not against anyone but for others.

It is time we realized that neutralizing the evil forces in the world and especially turning them into positive forces comes down to our unity.

Consequently, we will oblige all the other nations to unite whether they want to or not. Everyone will come up to Mt. Zion and together we will build the Third Temple.

Question: How, will we disarm, because over the years a huge military potential has accumulated?

Answer: This potential will simple fall out of our hands without polluting the earth, what is more, we will understand how to neutralize nuclear technologies and how to recycle them. Humanity doesn’t need outdated nuclear energy. The world will have totally new sources of energy.

We only have to open our minds and then we will discover totally new natural laws and will see how much energy is concealed in nature. We will only need energy according to Einstein’s theory: Е=mc2 and we will receive it easily. Humanity will not need ancient, coarse, heavy capacitive technologies.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/28/16

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