In the News (from lenta.ru): “Pottery shards found in a small Israeli fortress reveal an answer to one of the most important issues of Biblical studies—whether basic texts of the Old Testament were written before the Babylonian exile or after it. Inscriptions on potshards attesting to the literacy of the Jews speak in favor of the first version. This was reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. …

“However, Israeli archaeologists have studied the inscription (in Hebrew) on the clayshards from the fortress of Arad (southern Judah), dating from about 600 BC – and found a high level of literacy among the Jews of that era.

“It turned out that the text on 16 potsherds belong to a minimum of six authors, who did not need the help of scribes. Among the records were instructions to the deputy quartermaster of the fortress about the issue of provisions for a detachment of Greek mercenaries. The literacy of junior officers far from Jewish centers of culture indicates that Jews could read the sacred texts long before the Babylonian exile.”

My Comment: From the days of Abraham, comprehensive learning and education were practiced in his group, as well as reading of books written by him. The books from more ancient Kabbalists, from Adam to Abraham, as Rambam wrote, just didn’t reach us. But it indicates that in the period of the First Temple there was no uneducated child who did not know how to read and write and did not know all the sacred texts by heart.
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New Life 722 – The Children Of Israel In The Desert
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Hare

The “desert” is a state in which a person feels that he cannot use his former egoism, that has no nourishment. In the physical world, a person has a livelihood, a family, work; everything is okay, but inside he feels that his life is “dry” like a desert. The feeling of dryness brings a person to ask about the purpose of the whole “story.”

Nature is very wise; it creates every detail with a wonderful understanding. But the purpose for which everything exists is hidden.

In the desert, a person lives from a connection with the desire to bestow, with Divinity, so the concept of the “children of Israel in the desert” speaks about correction, about rising above the ego, about the level of Hafetz Hesed (delighting in mercy). The “desert” is a state in which we learn to go on without a reward and without egoistic benefits, but with the higher power of love. The “pillar of fire” and the “pillar of cloud” illuminate the way for a person and direct him toward that upper force in states of night and day, darkness and light. In the desert, a person neutralizes the ego, and when he reaches the land of Israel he has already harnessed the ego to bestowal and love.

The “forty years in the desert” symbolize the inner changes through which the children of Israel pass in the desert. Throughout this period they are actually complaining all the time because the desire to receive is first revealed and only after that is the correction revealed. The complaints are basically the elevation of MAN, a request for the correction of the Kelim (vessels). When the Kelim are corrected, this is a “miracle.” A miracle is the discovery of a new phenomenon, an action that happens not in our original natural egoistic way.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 722 – The Children Of Israel In The Desert,” 4/26/16

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Zionist, anti-Zionist, Jewish: they are not the same thing! The Jews were divided into Zionists and anti-Zionists with the appearance of their aspiration for Zion in the 19^th century. There was always a desire to be reborn on our land, but the non-religious movement to establish the revival of the Jewish people in its historic homeland was something new.

There are Zionists who criticize Israel because they don’t agree with its policy of “occupation.” Among the ultra-Orthodox community, Neturei Karta has come out against Zionism and the Jewish State because they believe that Israel can be established only with the coming of the Messiah.

I believe that the ultra-Orthodox are absolutely right. It is indeed only with the coming of the Messiah (a force of attraction that draws the people out of exile through attitudes of connection and love, out of the egoistic state) will the true Israel be established. They don’t take into account that the coming of the Messiah (redemption from the ego, from mutual hatred) depends on our efforts to unite through a comprehensive method of public education and consolidation into a complete whole. That is how we leave the exile via the short way, through Achishena – will hasten it (Isaiah 60:22).

But if we wait for the Messiah passively, it will happen by way of Beito – in its time (Isaiah 60:22). This means through terrible suffering (wars, Holocausts), labor pains, so to speak, until the Jews become unified as a people and then into a proper nation. This is similar to what Abraham did 3,500 years ago when he united part of the Babylonians into a group that called itself Israel, “aimed directly toward what is higher,” toward union and love.

Subconsciously, the nations of the world are expecting this unity specifically from us. Until the realization of this state, they will blame us for all of their troubles and suffering because the origin of all suffering can be summed up as a lack of the unifying power and love in our world that can only appear through the unification of the Jewish people.
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In the News (nrg.co.il): Summary: According to Professor Yaira Amit, faculty member of Bible Studies at Tel Aviv University, non-religious Jews in Israel don’t know and don’t understand the Bible and its significance as the book Jewish culture is based on and its role in preserving the national Jewish identity. Most Israeli student don’t know the content and the major stories of the Bible and can hardly read the names of its heroes or quote the world famous words of the Jewish prophets. The reason for their ignorance and their indifference regarding the Bible is that it has been systematically pushed out of the national educational system. Non-religious schools have cut the hours for Bible studies to two hours a week.

Answer: Most students feel that Bible studies are not interesting, irrelevant, have nothing to do with us, and are related to religion which they regard as hateful.

I suggest learning more of the inner meaning of the Bible because it is about the structure of our world, its correction, the revelation of the upper world, and the goal and meaning of life. According to this method, the youth will not study dry history but information that is relevant to the whole world.
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New Life 721 – From Abraham To The Generation Of The Desert
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Who are the children of Israel who gathered around Abraham in Babylon? What do the hunger and the exile they felt in Egypt symbolize, and what can we learn about our life today from their story?

The same people who wanted to discover the meaning of life in ancient Babylon gathered around Abraham with the intention of revealing the upper force, the force of love and bestowal that manages our life by adapting us to it. There was a great crisis in Babylon, egoism erupted and separated people, and Abraham taught them how to connect. He took this group of people with him from Babylon to the Land of Canaan.

The successors of Abraham’s path are Isaac and Jacob. Egoism continued to grow from day to day and the same people made efforts to overcome it, but were not successful. This created a sense of enslavement and it brought about the awakening of the point of Moses in them, the point of connection that stands against the ego, against Pharaoh, and brings about the ten plagues of Egypt.

The miracle of the exodus from Egypt takes place when the children of Israel escape from the ego. When they reach the gathering at Mt. Sinai they hear that they have to feel love between them and they are ready to do so but cannot, and so they go out to the desert. The 40 years in the desert symbolize the effort they made to at least not harm others if they cannot reach love. The ego is revealed like a snake at any given moment and their effort is to rise above it, not to harm others and to maintain friendship between them.

The children of Israel receive the manna from Heaven in the dry desert. It is the force that helps them maintain good relations between them. In Babylon the ego was relatively small, but in Egypt it erupted in a terrible way. In this respect our situation is worse today. There is hatred between us; we are inconsiderate on the roads, in the media, in the Knesset, everywhere. If we wish to change that, we must first recognize the cause for this bad situation ,which is our egoism, and then we have to learn how to correct it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 721 – From Abraham To The Generation Of The Desert,” 4/26/16

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In the News (aljazeera.com): “The resolution, adopted by the United Nations cultural agency’s 58-nation executive board last week, condemns the Israeli government’s stewardship of Jerusalem and decries the renovation of “so-called Jewish ritual baths” and the alleged creation of ‘Jewish fake graves.’

“Sites are either referred to by their Arabic or English names, or, in the case of the Western Wall Plaza, the holiest site where Jews can pray, are put in quotation marks.

“The Western Wall is in East Jerusalem’s historic Old City, which was occupied by Israel along with the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Middle East war, though Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed the Jerusalem Law, which in 1980 declared the city ‘complete and united.’

“However, the vast majority of the international community – including the United States, the European Union and the UN – do not recognise Israel’s claims to sovereignty over East Jerusalem.”

My Comment: The Jewish people emerged under the leadership of Abraham in ancient Babylon through the union of separate families, clans, and tribes. They agreed to become a single society whose purpose was to attain the relationship of “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). In such relationships between people, the property of love that manages the world manifests. This characteristic is called the Creator.

As a result of the egoism that dominates us, we exist inside the property of love, as in an impenetrable bubble. Within it, we feel our world, in its egoism. Kabbalah calls to us to unite in spite of our egoism, to break through the membrane of this bubble and discover for ourselves the upper eternal and perfect world.

Humanity subconsciously waits for unification of the Jewish people to show the example (to be a light to peoples of the world) of how it is possible to unite in the integral world. As long as we don’t fulfill this Mitzvah (commandment) to bring the whole world to unity with the Creator, the world will hate us. The more that we reject our mission, the more we will be witness to greater and greater hatred of the world toward us.
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New Life 725 – Memorial Day: An End To Bereavement
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Why is Israel in a continuous struggle for its existence? How can we put an end to war and and what is the way Kabbalah provides a sense of security for us and for the world?

I was born into the grief of WWII and when I came to Israel I served in the army and in the military reserve forces. Memorial Day is a day of self-searching.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we live in the system of nature in which there are clear and definite laws. As Jews, we are given freewill and our role is to balance the world in which the negative egoistic force constantly grows. The first to balance the world was Adam, and then there was Abraham. Abraham told people how to cope with egoism with the help of the positive force in nature. The nation of Israel that gathered around him learned how to build a connection above the ego and to balance the two forces in nature.

The roots of the nation of Israel, which was built on love of others, are its uniqueness. If we go back to our role and bring the positive force to the world, no one will rise against us. Instead of competing against each other, we have to invoke a new type of competition, competition over mutual help. We have to get closer to the force of love for the sake of all the fallen soldiers, and then we will also feel all the souls among us.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 725 – Memorial Day: An End To Bereavement,” 5/5/16

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Question: The Prime Minister of Israel summoned the then Defense Minister  Moshe Ya’alon to explain his comments in front of senior officers of the IDF. Ya’alon stated that the officers should express their views even if they are different from the views and the opinion of the senior command and the political leaders. His words provoked different responses on part of the government and the army, starting from full support to the idea of firing Ya’alon. (Ya’alon resigned from his post a few days later.) How do you relate to such pluralism?

Answer: This isn’t pluralism but indiscrimination that exists only in our army. Military men should engage in their profession. For some reason we are witnessing an unfortunate tendency of military men preparing their political futures. This is totally unacceptable because while still in the army they begin to adapt to certain streams or political parties, whereas the army should be totally indifferent and independent of anyone, subordinate only to the government. No matter what it commands, the army has to carry out its orders and think only about how to do so in the best possible way.

If military officers begin to argue about why politicians think one way or another, it isn’t an army anymore but another parliament. This must cease, stop, and there should be a law that a person who is released from military or police service cannot hold a position in the government. He can engage in any type of administrative work in the free market, no matter where and how, but under no circumstances can he be part of politics.

Comment: In that case we wouldn’t have had half of our prime ministers since most of them were ex-military officers!

Answer: And we don’t need them. What was the benefit of General De Gaulle’s becoming Prime Minister? He lost the love of his people. We should understand that it isn’t the same thing. For some reason we believe that a person who knows how to command will also know how to run a state well. Studies show that it is the exact opposite because the laws in each case are totally different. This is the reason that it should not be allowed.

Question: Why is it that in the Israeli army everyone wants to express himself and to show his independence?

Answer: The point is that all the Israelis have come from different places and were initially organized only in kibbutzes. All the members of the kibbutzes served in the army, they were accustomed to this way of life, and then gradually made their way to politics. This happened because our state was founded at time of war, but today it is simply impossible.

Question: Is the fact that everyone feels that he is the boss related to the spiritual level?

Answer: “Everyone should be happy with his fate and with what he was given! It is the duty of the workers to work and for a brave man to be a warrior,” said Shota Rustaveli. This is how we should advance.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/17/16

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New Life #569 – Israeli Society: Hatred Of The Rich
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Society changes according to the development of the human ego. Once the rich were respected, after that they hated them. The hatred of the rich is often led by educated people among the upper ten percent. In Israel, the situation is unique because we haven’t lived together as a single society for the past two thousand years. We haven’t gone through the entire process in Israel that Europeans have gone through, for example, with all of their revolutions and changes.

The social phenomena that are occurring in Israel have not been typical for the Jewish people at all. In the Diaspora, the Jews supported each other, helped each other, didn’t steal and lie to one another.

In this country, we are passing rapidly through processes that have happened in Western nations over hundreds of years. Economic disparities will only worsen until we begin to re-educate ourselves toward connection. Education for connection among the general public will radiate new values even among the rich on top.

The nature of education for connection will permeate the entire nation since all of us are connected in a linked network. Only education for connection will initiate a real revolution, a standard forceful revolution will not be beneficial in any way.

Today, the public feels that the rich are stealing from them and exploiting them, so they hate them. As a result of education for connection, the wealthy will themselves want to contribute more to society as a whole.

Through the tendency to connect, the public will recognize a new benefit, a new fulfillment—the discovery of the upper force, a new life. This is not just a fulfillment through the clothing of wealth, property, or honor; this is fulfillment through Light.

To gain this exalted fulfillment, fulfillment through Light, a person must be connected correctly to others. Hatred of the wealthy will stop only when they work together with the poor to build a united society.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #569 – Israeli Society: Hatred Of The Rich,” 5/14/15

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New Life #568 – The Socio-Economic Gap In Israel
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Wise people have always been respected and wealth was not as valued as wisdom. In the past the most important thing was to be wise in the Torah and only then came the acquisition of professional knowledge and expertise. That’s the way it was when the nation of Israel was in exile.

In Israel, knowledge and wisdom are less appreciated today. We have to change our social-value system and respect expertise and wisdom instead of wealth.

Growing egoism has led to social destruction and people don’t see the person anymore but how much money he has. On the other hand, we can see that people are getting tired of chasing money. The widespread depression and drug abuse is an indication of that.

We should take not only wealth into account but also happiness, joy, a sense of security, and peace in the family. We need a new approach to life so that a person should feel encouraged, that he has support, and that he is loved, secure, and connected.

An egalitarian society can only be built by educating people to connect so that people will feel close to one another and care for each other.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #568 – The Socio-economic Gap In Israel,” 5/14/15

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