New Life 553 – Holidays: Independence Day – The National Symbols
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Why is the Menorah (the seven branched candelabrum used in the Temple) the symbol of Israel? When will there be peace between us and our neighbors? And how is our independence as a nation expressed?

The seven branches of the Menorah symbolize wholeness. 7×7=49: 49 gates of impurity and on the other hand, 49 gates of purity. The wisdom of Kabbalah will help us illuminate like the Menorah. It teaches us how to build a connected egalitarian society.

The olive branches symbolize the aspiration for peace, but it will be attained only when we reach peace between us. When our relations shine like the Menorah, we will be rewarded with peace in the world as well. This will be the outcome.

The land of Zion and Jerusalem refers to the fact that we want to leave the hatred we feel and return to brotherly love, to the state of wholeness and beauty. Man’s inclination is evil from birth. A person naturally cares only about himself. We have to develop the good inclination in us.

A yearning Jewish soul refers to the fact that we were as one man in one heart in the past and we yearn for that. True independence means independence from the evil inclination, from the narrow egoism.

To be a free nation means free from the evil in us, from unfounded hatred. Even when I want to do something good, I suddenly discover that I operate only for my own sake. A person who lives in “being a free nation” sees everything in life through the point of connection.

If we connect in love, most of the problems will disappear from the world because it is the bad relations between us that are killing us. When we connect in love, the state of Israel will improve miraculously and everyone will want to follow our example.

It is customary to have barbecue parties during this holiday, so it is a good idea to include a connection workshop that will ignite a new spirit in us.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 553 Holidays: Independence Day – The National Symbols,” 4/14/15

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Comment: A new bill was proposed to cancel financial transactions imposed on the weaker sectors of the population, over the phone or during a visit of a representative from different companies, that push pensioners, new immigrants, or disabled people to buying products they have no need for.

Previously it was possible to cancel transactions within two weeks of a purchase, now it is proposed to extend the period to four months.

Answer: Correct. It is essential. In addition, organize legal aid for these people to protect them from the various offers and unexpected visits they receive. Such occurrences are frequent! After all, we are talking about a lot of money.

It is worthwhile to add, because at present there is a transition to communicate through the Internet since people contact each other through the internet and prefer not to go to stores.

Comment: The whole matter is about lack of trust….

Answer: The whole matter is about the egoistic nature of man that wants to cheat others, to get rich at the expense of others, and it’s the only way to earn a lot of money.

Question: Why does it make us feel good?

Answer: A person doesn’t just get corporeal satisfaction from it but also moral satisfaction. He feels that he is higher, more successful, and smarter than the other, that he is special.

Further, he is strongly convinced that he did a good deed for the “poor guy,” by selling him something a little cheaper.  He even justifies himself.

There is nothing we can do; we live in this world. If we reveal this from the viewpoint of egoistic existence, then we are speaking about constantly “deceiving ” each other and a constant struggle at all levels: in the government, in organizations, and between them!

Everything is aimed at deceiving people, taking advantage of them. First I think how  I will profit in relation to the other, that the other person should lose, and that he will lose in such a way that the next time he will come to me anyway and will buy from me. This means that the next time I can deceive again. And that’s the way it is all the time.

Question: Will there be an end to this?

Answer: The end will come only after all the population goes through general education. It needs to be a political mission. We need to support education for the society, for the nation, and also for the United Nations. After all, it should be involved only in education!
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/31/16

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New Life #649 – Product Labeling And Hatred Of Israel
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

What is the reason for the boycott of products from Israel, why will the feelings of hatred of the world toward us increase in the future, and how will it be possible to transform these feelings of hatred to love and support for Israel?

Summary

Among the Israeli public, there are also those who think that product labeling is good because this will advance us in the peace process.

The more that the people develop, the differences of opinion among them grow, and we already know that the outbreak of hatred among us is destroying us. Before the destruction, disagreements were altruistic, that were how we increased connection. The dispute between right and left in Israel has already existed for more than a century, no one listens to the other.

As the world develops, everyone becomes connected to each other. And if the relationship is not good, this creates a problem. All people are parts of a single system called “Adam.” Israel, which is from the phrase “Li-Rosh” (I have a head), are the head. The world feels that we determine everything, so the world hates us. This hatred has been prominent in all of Israel’s wars.

We survive only because we are able to connect with each other and bring the power of connection to the world.

The labeling of products from Israel is only the first step; everything that is offered against us is will be welcomed by the world. If we continue to fight brother against brother here in this country, the world will rise up against us more and more.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed today to teach us to connect, and then the world will feel that abundance comes from here. Even our neighbors, who are sending their children to murder us today, will relax. We determine the next news bulletin.

Nothing will help us other than connection between us. Even if we were to hand over the entire land of Israel, the hatred would continue. Only if we learn to connect above all the differences between us, will everyone connect well with us.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #649 – Product Labeling And Hatred Of Israel,” 11/12/15

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New Life #646 – The Jewish-Israeli Ideology
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

There are two paths of development: the path of setting goals or just rolling along and flowing through life. That is how we proceeded until ancient Babylon when Abraham gathered people around him who later became the people of Israel.

Summary

They were connected by the ideology of “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), connected above all the differences of opinion. This ideology comes to us from nature; all of its parts are connected harmoniously, like a single body. Where does the power to unite come from? After all, this is against our nature. It is from the force that unites all the parts of nature.

This is the ideology of the people of Israel, and in fact it is the only ideology that can be considered an ideology at all. We must develop ourselves to the kind of unity toward which nature is advancing us, whether we want it or not.

Islam has an earthly ideology, which is to bring everyone under their control. But we have a spiritual ideology. Both Christianity and Islam stem from a single source, Abraham. But neither of them change a person. Only we have the method for changing a person from an egoist to an altruist. But as of today we are not doing this. Since the destruction of the Temple there has been unfounded hatred between us and a small Light is holding onto us until we return to ourselves.

All of the power that Islam has today is only because we haven’t activated our ideology. Islam and Christianity exist only because of our weakness. If we were to become strengthened with brotherly love, everything would be okay. As of today, only connection between us can save Israel. Kabbalah teaches how to bring love into our hearts. Christianity and Islam also speak about love for others because they drew this from us. But they don’t have a method for achieving this.

The only method that can correct the evil in a person is the wisdom of Kabbalah. It teaches us about how all of reality is constructed. The connection between us will have an influence through our common root, Abraham, as well as on our cousins, and they will calm down.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #646 – The Jewish-Israeli Ideology,” 11/8/15

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When anti-Semitism is rising reaching heights we have never seen before, a call to cancel the Holocaust Memorial Day was echoed on campuses all over Europe. In the US, there are campus protests to boycott Israel, and the BDS organization is becoming increasingly more legitimate in the eyes of many. It may be time to begin asking ourselves how to prevent a second Holocaust.

I was born in 1946, about a year after WWII, in the region of Vitebsk where many Jews were killed. The atrocities our people had undergone were burned into my memory since I was a child and have been part of my life. For me, the Holocaust Remembrance Day is not just a national memorial day for a tragic event that took place in the past, but a warning sign of what might happen, especially if we consider the hatred that the nations of the world feel toward us.

It is a common mistake to believe that the hatred for the Jews was born in Nazi Germany seven decades ago. It is actually a phenomenon that is more than 3,000 years old. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the root for the deep hatred is at the gathering at Mt. Sinai, a special event where the feeling of hatred was revealed among the nation of Israel (the word “Sinai” stems from the root “Sina – hatred” in Hebrew), on top of which they managed to rise and unite as one man in one heart through the method of connection, the Torah.
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From the Webinar, “Why Jews?”

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Comment: On the 20^th of April, Adolf Hitler’s birthday, nine universities in Germany suddenly began printing leaflets with quotations from Hitler’s book Mein Kampf: “Wake up Europe! Hostile foreigners have flooded Europe, and the Jews are responsible for the settlement of foreign racial elements on the banks of the Rein.” This was written a long time ago, and is now being published in a new edition.

Answer: Baal HaSulam said that Nazism is not a product of Germany. Therefore, everything comes full circle to Nazism.  Any history of human begins on a small scale.

There have been seeds of Nazism in the past that have developed in the course of evolution, repeated in a spiral and reached the last explicit manifestation as Nazism in Germany. And now has come the time for the manifestation of Nazism all over the world.

And the claim that “the Jews are responsible for the settlement of foreign racial elements on the banks of the Rein” is true. We are not responsible for the foreign invasion to Germany and their settlement there. We are responsible for not bringing the world to correction, for not explaining and not setting an example of how to do it.

In fact, we sit idly because we are not drawing the Upper Light that can correct humanity. The Jews are the only force that can do so, and if we don’t, everything that will happen is natural.

Nazism is the most extreme form of mutual hatred that appears in humanity. Therefore, it is only natural that it will be aimed first at the Jews, and this time from all over the world. It will be cultivated simultaneously by everyone, starting from many serious prominent sources, which all of the others gradually will join because they will not be able to resist it.

Let’s see how it happens in America and Europe because the Jews there will be blamed instead of Israel; here we, in general, are in a similar situation now to that of the time of Masada.

Soon, we will need to fight, not on land, air, and sea, but in the spiritual dimension. This is the reason that we must quickly prepare the people of Israel and the Jews all over the world by making it clear to them that if we unite and understand our mission in the world, we will not weaken or kill our rivals, but will change and re-educate them, and then the world will reach a happy ending.

Everything depends solely on us. Let’s start doing it. We only have time left for the accurate correction, not for reflections and philosophies.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/24/16

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Question: Israeli Deputy Minister of Health Jacob Litzman called the people of Israel to cut down on the consumption of fast food and even wanted to ban the McDonald’s fast food chain restaurant. He suggested teaching children to avoid unhealthy food. He emphasized that the goal of the health ministry has changed and that now it will focus on curbing the popularity of fast food.

Answer: The Americans already have realized that they should give up fast food since it is only beneficial for those who produce it.

But people still must grab something on the way and have no idea, for example, what a hot dog is made of, and they don’t really care as long as it fills them up. A person eats a hotdog, drinks a coke, and feels good. The fact that he later must spend his wages on doctors and medications doesn’t matter, he doesn’t see the connection here.

I am for removing all the junk food and sweets, of course. They are merely the product of our latest technologies. If you told a person 150 years ago that you have candies, he would not understand what you are saying. Candies, just like sugar, do not exist in nature. There are, on the other hand, fruits, honey, nuts, and so on.

Question: But the body craves it.

Answer: This is because it is easy for the body to receive an immediate supply of fats and carbohydrates. The body gets used to such foods very quickly and becomes too lazy to get it any other way. This is very harmful, so such foods should be forbidden in children’s institutions and on every street corner. It is better to consume foods like falafel because it is a vegetable product. If you don’t fry it in oil, it is certainly healthy.

Question: Should we ban such foods?

Answer: Of course I would love to keep all of the sweets and junk foods far away from our children. See how the French live. They live longer because everything that they consume is natural. They don’t consume hot dogs and cokes. I believe that we should not adopt the worst there is in humanity. I support the health minister’s proposal.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/14/16

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Question: According to the results of a poll that was arranged by the ICN company, more than a third of the adherents of Islam in Britain believe that the Jews have acquired too much control in Britain and influence over the communications media, financial institutions, and the economy. In addition, more than one-fourth of them are convinced that the Jews are responsible for most of the wars on Earth.

Unlike the other citizens in Britain, 27% of the Muslims who were questioned, acknowledge that they hate the Jews simply because of their behavior. So has anti-Semitism been more pronounced among Muslims than anyone else historically?

Answer: Throughout many generations Jews and Muslims existed together more or less normally because they never had any religious opponents, there weren’t special contrasts between them.

The crisis in relationships began from geographic and political opposition, when England didn’t want to leave the land of Israel and began to incite hatred among the Arabs toward the Jews. This was the usual policy of “divide and rule.”

Islam in its essence is not at all opposed to Judaism; on the contrary, these have been two religions that have been close as a counterweight to Christianity.

Question: Why does the current radical Islam bear such intense aggressiveness toward the Jews?

Answer: Modern Islam is radical Islam, yet the foundation of true Islam is Sufism (Islamic Wisdom of Kabbalah). Arab Kabbalists (Sufis) have lived in all times, from which are great literary works.

Today a major clash of egoism is happening in the world. So it is natural and necessary for Israel to go out first and present the method of unity to the whole world. This exists only with us, and we don’t want to reveal it in us and begin to work with it. This method of unification is called the wisdom of Kabbalah. It is not mysticism, Tarot cards, or red strings, but specifically the true wisdom of Kabbalah.

If we begin to be involved with the wisdom of Kabbalah, all of humanity will immediately feel how serious our intention is to introduce corrections of the egoistic nature of humanity into the world and bring everyone to unity, establishing peace and tranquility. Then all the streams that are directed against us will disappear.

Question: What is the first current that will accept the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: First everyone will be against the Kabbalists, including Judaism. After that, awareness and understanding will begin to happen partly among Christians and partly among Jews.

In the meantime, the matter is much more complicated among the Muslims even though inside they are closer to understanding. But there is a very big internal problem among them regarding their identity.

The best thing will be if we Jews unite and show the peoples of the world how to achieve global unity in our world.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/14/16

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Question: The Management Committee of UNESCO passed a decision regarding Jerusalem which did not mention the connection of the Jews and Israel to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

The Temple Mount is mentioned solely and only as a place in which the Al-Aqsa Mosque is found and the area of the Western Wall (the Wailing Wall, Kotel) is called Al-Buraq Square, the square from which the prophet Mohammed ascended into heaven. In the same document they state that Israel is “occupying” that area.

The resolution formulates a demand for the Israeli government not to limit the access of Muslims to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and likewise condemns the Israeli government for “illegal actions against religious freedom.”

From your acquaintance with the Chairperson of UNESCO Irina Bokova, how would you explain their attitude toward us?

Answer: This is a completely legal attitude. Subconsciously, the world is demanding the method for the correction of its nature from us. Since we are not acting on this, they blame us for everything that is happening in the world.

We had to gather in the land of Israel to carry out our mission to become one people, as one person with one heart, and live according to the general rule, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), thereby serving as an example to everyone. Throughout the 70 years of the existence of the nation we have not reached the realization of our destiny, so we have no right to this land.

Comment: When you met personally with the representatives of UNESCO, there was a good mutual understanding between you and warm meetings that were supposed to lead to changes in the attitude toward our nation.

Answer: The attitudes have only changed in a negative direction.

They heard from me what the wisdom of Kabbalah says and what our organization is about, yet reality shows them that the trend is completely the opposite!

Question: And where is their support?

Answer: About what?! Everything depends on us. We are the Jewish people; it is up to us to reach mutual agreement, a mutual link, friendship, love, connection, and unity, mutual support!

But with each passing day, more and more political parties arise in our nation; separation and division happens because we have not implemented the function for which we exist here.

We have received an opportunity from above to establish a nation here that will show humanity the future of the world, but if we don’t carry this out, we have nothing to do here! We have no possibility of claiming a right to this land because we don’t strive for friendship and love between us, the creation of the right society, and we are not an example for the future of humanity.

So it is natural that the representatives of UNESCO have stopped taking all of our claims to the land of Israel into account. They accept the Palestinians because they have no obligation toward them, but that is not so for us. The Palestinians want to live here, this is their land. They feel that they belong to it more than we do, and in fact, this is so.

Unfortunately the people of Israel are not carrying out their destiny and so there is no place for them here.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/18/16

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New Life 716 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

After being raised in the house of Pharaoh, Moses, who represents the force of love, goes out and sees terrible things. The children of Israel and the Egyptians represent different approaches to life, pure egoism in contrast to connection and love.

Today people find like distasteful, and if we don’t advance on our own, the force of nature that manages the world might embitter our lives. Today, just as in the past, we must break away from the current method of life and move on to a new method. This is the reason that Moses married Tzipora, Jethro’s daughter, since she represents an additional desire, a desire that is made of receiving and giving. Moses receives an additional desire in order to advance because Moses is a weak force that is not enough to face the big ego, but the Creator is with him.

This is the preparation Moses needs in order to deal with the Egyptians, with Pharaoh, with the children of Israel, and with the Creator. This is how the Creator prepares the children of Israel for redemption.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 716 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 2,” 4/14/16

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