In the News (The Atlantic): “The foreign minister of Luxembourg has said in an interview that Hungary’s treatment of refugees, and the state of its judiciary and media were violations of the European Union’s fundamental values, and suggested the country should be ‘excluded’ temporarily or forever to protect the bloc’s values. …

“’We cannot accept that the fundamental values of the European Union are being massively violated,’ Asselborn said.

“He cited fences erected by Hungary to keep out asylum-seekers fleeing civil war in Syria and unrest elsewhere, as well as reported violations of the freedom of press and the judiciary by the country’s right-wing government. He said because of those steps, Hungary should be ‘excluded temporarily or if need be for ever from the EU.’ It’s the only way, he said, to ‘ensure that the values of the EU are preserved.’ …

“But both Asselborn’s remarks and Hungary’s response represent the debate at the heart of the EU’s future identity. …

“More than 1 million asylum-seekers have entered Europe since 2015, in the largest migrant crisis facing the continent since World War II.”

My Comment: Countries like Poland and Hungary understand only too well that absorbing foreigners who are filled with radical religious ideals and a completely different worldview opposed to the “landlords” receiving them will eventually lead to the “suicide,” especially for the small countries. The western European countries, on the other hand, don’t understand because their countries are large, have populations of tens of millions of people, have strong economies and different internal policies. They are immersed in internal political conflicts and use the refugee problem for the good of their party. This isn’t pluralism, of course, and neither is it love of others; it is a struggle for power. Every party is trying to be relevant by using the refugees as a bargaining chip in an attempt to raise its ranking.

I don’t think that the solution to this problem is near because the Jews have not said the last word yet. They have to feel that only by their method of unity is it possible to absorb the immigrants well, so that they will properly integrate in society and contribute to society. There must be a middle line between those who are against the wave of immigration and those who support it, according to which the immigrants should be received in a way that will make them citizens of the state and not a fifth column.

Question: Are you referring to the Jews in Israel or to those who are in Europe?

Answer: I am referring to the Jews all over the world. This is a general problem since the immigration will spread to every country in the world, whether in a negative or positive manner. No one will be able to stop it, and it should only be put in order so people will understand that they arrive in a certain country in order to live in it under universal terms.

All the countries in the world should gradually take on a common form, no matter which country it is! It makes no difference which nationality it is! We have to make people understand that the spirit of cooperation is the one that will win and that historical differences will not divide us, but unite us and add a good spirit to the right communication between us.

If this happens things will be fine; if not, the huge migration of peoples will invoke mass discontent, wars, and protests. The refugees will not only settle in the suburbs of Paris or London, but will also become a strong organization all over Europe, which will lead the immigrants to a general rebellion.

We must understand the importance of the unity between us.

We are all aliens on this Earth. It wasn’t given to anyone. We all came out of ancient Babylon and settled all over the world. Therefore, the people of the world have to gather once again on the basis of the method of unity, which is actually neutral and allows us to attain love of others.

Thus, we will discover a new form of life, which is perfect, eternal, above religion, and does not destroy the uniqueness of any nation and enables us to live in absolute pluralism.

If people understand the need for unity before the mass destruction begins, they will benefit from it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/14/16

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The secret of eternity of the Jewish people is in their connection with the Upper Light. Throughout their history, lasting 5,777 years, starting from Adam, they are connected with the upper force. When these people don’t implement their connection and, therefore don’t draw the Upper Light in a sufficient quantity, they receive blows from it.

If the Upper Light isn’t revealed enough in the people of Israel, they are bombarded by miseries and troubles and are attacked by haters and enemies. Conversely, if the people of Israel strengthen their unity, the Upper Light comes closer to them, giving them a good life.

All other nations come and go, replacing each other in history. No other nation was preserved in its original state from ancient Babylon, and only the people of Israel are eternal. Nature is arranged so that if the Jews fulfill their mission, the Light emanates from them to the other nations, and everything calms down due to it.

However, if the people of Israel don’t obey the instructions of nature; in other words, they don’t work on their connection according to the conditions given to them, the Upper Light moves away from them. Then, the illumination of the Upper Light doesn’t go through the people of Israel to the other nations, and they blame the Jewish people for it.

The nations of the world are “consumers” of the Upper Light. The people of Israel must be a channel for it, and the Light itself comes from the Creator. Therefore, all three of them work together.

The Creator strikes the people of Israel, urging them to unite and receive the Upper Light from Him in order to pass it to the nations of the world, and the nations of the world relate to the Jewish people either with friendliness, with kindness, or completely the opposite, depending on their efforts to bring the Light to them.

This is how it works. The Jews stand between the Upper Light and the nations of the world, and therefore, they suffer from the blows from above and from below. However, even in the most difficult times, even after the Holocaust that was intended to destroy Jewish people completely according to the Nazi plan, these people have still remained.

They can’t disappear. After all, without them, all other people would not be able to reveal the Creator. This revelation can come to them only through the people of Israel. Therefore, the entire world blames the Jews, and the Creator also raises a claim to them because they are not fulfilling their mission.

The secret of the eternity of the Jewish people is in the fact that they are engaged in the realization of the program of nature. Material immortality means that this nation exists, hasn’t disappeared, and hasn’t been replaced by another nation.

However, this is a temporary immortality since our entire world is temporary and given to us for a period of 6,000 years that will be over soon. Until then, we must unite as one people. At the end of this process, all the nations will achieve eternity, not the material, but the spiritual one.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/13/16

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New Life 777 – The Spiritual Revival Of The Nation Of Israel
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Through Israel, the abundance should move to all of creation— the still, vegetative, and animate nature and mankind—filling them with the knowledge of the Creator.

The main points of this plan:

• A Jew is a person who has a greater desire than ordinary people, which is expressed in different ways.
• Our spiritual revival means connection. We undergo a four phase process of connection and separation.
• During the last exile, the nation of Israel split up into two major streams: the Orthodox and the non-religious. Today the assimilation in the US and Canada is immense. The Jews who have drawn away from religion are disappearing so the religious Jews are becoming even more Orthodox and more extreme.
• The wisdom of Kabbalah, the internality of the Torah, speaks about connection. The wisdom of Kabbalah leads to the revelation of the Creator in the connection between people, to the love of Israel, and to the correction of the soul.
• When we connect to each other and are as one bundle, we will feel how the upper force dwells among us, the force of love. Then we will draw all of humanity after us, which is called being a Light unto the nations of the world.
• If we want to ensure that our children remain Jewish, we have to teach them the method of connection according to the wisdom of Kabbalah.
  [195120]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 777 – The Spiritual Revival Of The Nation Of Israel,” 10/13/16

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Comment: UNESCO has decided to deny the Jews’ ties to Temple Mt. and to Western Wall.

My Comment: On the one hand, UNESCO is an organization that depends on the UN in every sense, and on the other hand, it is hard to understand how it makes decisions that are opposed to all the values it is established on, although the Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova disagrees with the decision. How can someone deny the Jewish ties to the Temple that was built there in the past and to the Western Wall when everyone is aware of it. After all, it is not a new discovery that has only lately been revealed by some recent archeological findings.

What happens in UNESCO is a sign of what the Torah says: that if the nation of Israel does not unite and doesn’t convey the method of unity to the world, the world will be conquered by Islam and Europe will be painted in green, the color of Islam. The Arab immigrants are not asking to be accepted; they behave as if they own Europe, without any negotiations with the European governments. Their goal is to convert all the nations and peoples to Islam. Since everything happens exactly according to the plan of creation, Europe simply lends itself to this conquest. All the decisions are taken automatically until Islam will join Christianity and together they will conquer Jerusalem, just like in the days of the Crusades.

Question: But we will not move from the land of Israel. Will they manage to throw us out of here?

Answer: They can certainly throw us out, because if we are not compatible with this place, which means if Israel is not united, nature’s forces will naturally force us to leave our land. According to the Torah, if the Jewish nation connects, it sets an example of unity to the world, and unity is the salvation of all of mankind, not only from Islam but from the general crisis and from world wars.

This means that we will ascend to the next level of our existence or we will destroy ourselves, Europe, and the whole world in another world war. Basically only the Jews lead the world and we are the only ones responsible for its wellbeing and for the correction, and this means we have a choice. The rest of the world doesn’t have freedom of choice, only we do, so we are the ones who have to use it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 10/19/16

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New Life 776 – The Secret Of The Eternity Of The Jewish Nation
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitza Mazoz

Who is the Jewish nation? Why does it seem that they have received greater blows than any other nation and how is its eternity related to the role it has to fulfill with regard to the world?

The nation of Israel was founded on Abraham’s ideal, on the connection between people in order to discover eternity. When the people of Israel are connected, they serve as a conductor for the Light to all of mankind. It says that we are the eternal nation, that we have to be Light unto the nations of the world and to bring humanity to its goal.

The highlights of the plan:

• We have to be a nation whose members connect above their individual egoism and attain Godliness.
• Being a Jew is an ideology, an ascent above nature in the direction of uniqueness and unity. It is in the connection between people who then discover the Creator, Bore, stemming from the Hebrew words “come and see,” and so we are called Jews.
• Our forefathers were attracted to connection, and this is how the nation was founded. Every time we drew away from each other, we encountered problems.
• The secret of the eternity of the Jewish nation is its connection to the eternal Upper Light, to the upper force. We are the transition between the upper force and all of the created beings, and this is the reason we feel pressure on both sides.
• The eternal component in us is the point in the heart, the desire for a connection with Godliness. This desire invokes questions about eternity in a person, about the meaning of life, about the reason for our life and its goal. The point in the heart exists in every person. It is the point of connection with the general force of nature.
• The abundance we have to convey to the world is expressed by the feeling of love, by the connection between everyone as one unit. This is how mankind can ascend to an upper dimension, to a connection with the Creator, to whole and eternal life.
  [195116]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 776 – The Secret Of The Eternity Of The Jewish Nation,” 10/13/16

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Question: What will happen to the nations that don’t develop spiritually and don’t attain the Creator?

Answer: They will all gradually attain spirituality, but there are different levels of spiritual development. Just as there are nations that are more advanced technologically in our world and there are those that are more advanced physically, every nation is on a different level and develops in different directions. But eventually they all have to develop spiritually. In addition, the nations that advance faster have a smaller egoism, although it is expressed in the most overt manner. On the other hand, the nations that will attain spirituality later, like the African nations or Oceania, have a greater egoism, and they will attain a higher level of spirituality.

In fact, the Jews who are advancing at the head of mankind will reach the lowest spiritual level. Their duty is to convey the Upper Light through them, and this is why they are closer to it. But it is actually the nations that today are far from the question about the meaning of life and who will be the last to start the correction, that will receive the strongest and most powerful Light.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/9/16

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Question: Is it correct to say that a Jew is a symbol of eternity and because of this, these people survived all the trials that fell to their lot and will live forever?

Answer: Any person can become a Jew if he wants to join us. It doesn’t matter what nationality he is and what color of skin he has.

A Jew is something above nature. The Jew is an ideology of rising above our egoistic nature and connecting with others. A person wishing to achieve unity of people (Yichud) and to live in it is called a Jew (Yehudi). Therefore, after becoming a Jew, a person loses all the characteristics of this world, such as nationality and past relationships; he or she becomes a new person.

Question: Is there a guarantee of eternal life to everyone who aspires to unity?

Answer: Everyone who works according to the original method of Kabbalah, using original sources, and who achieves unity, reveals within himself a connection with the upper force that is called the Creator (Boreh), which means “come and see” (Bo-Reh). And in fact, we do “come” to a state and achieve revelation and “see” in it.

Then we are really called the Jews, the people of the Creator, because by uniting between us we provide a vessel for the upper force where it can connect with us. This way we begin to feel our unity and connection with the Creator. This is called the attainment of the upper world.

Question: Why does the principle of unity that is the basis of the Jewish people protect them and prevents them from disappearing?

Answer: Our forefathers, the founders of the Jewish people, began this process. They rose above earthly egoism and preferred unity above separation. Through all generations they aspired to unity, and this made them similar to the Creator; the Upper Light that influenced them was stronger or weaker depending on the importance of unity to them.

We can’t separate the fate of the nation from its purpose, its responsibility to achieve full and universal unity. At the time when they aspired to unity, their fate was good, and as soon as they were destroying this unity, they fell immediately and suffered from enemy attacks. Their lives became terrible.

The history of the Jewish people goes back almost 6,000 years, from the “first man” Adam who was first to reveal this secret and to start talking about unity and connection. It is clear that throughout their entire history, the fate of the Jewish people depended completely on their unity.

Since this nation always aspired to connection and was connected with the upper force, it was called eternal and passed through centuries. At the same time, it also suffered much more than all other nations. Although this nation is immortal, it receives blows all the time.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this by the fact that at any time in their history that the Jewish people weren’t aspiring to unity and drawing the Reforming Light hard enough; therefore, the Light wasn’t strong enough to correct them and dwell in them.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/13/16

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New Life 490 – The People Of The Book, Part 1
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

In our world, I have to prepare myself to read each book. If it is an English novel, I need to know English; if it is an architecture guide, I must be familiar with architecture; if it is a report on chemical experiments, I must be familiar with chemistry.

There must always be the basis of preparation that is transmitted separately from generation to generation.

So it is for spiritual attainment. The Oral Torah accompanies the written Torah. The word “Torah” is derived from the word “Ohr” (Light). Therefore, the Oral Torah precedes and is a preparation for reading the book; it accompanies this book and is transmitted by “word of mouth” from generation to generation, from Kabbalist to Kabbalist, in a chain of those who are able to open the book.

If I really want to find out and know what it is talking about, if I want to uncover the world in detail and understand through it who is showing me this “film,” if I am ready to be changed to become like Him, to delve into the matter of the essence of the “pictures” being broadcast, then I must search for people who have a mastery of the Oral Torah.

A Performance with a Surprise

Question: What does it mean to be similar to that force that is showing this “film”?

Answer: This is talking about equivalence of form, equivalence of characteristics.

For example, if I am far from being interested in the theater, when I go to some performance, I cannot connect to it immediately. But then they whisper to me that the playwright has a special cast, the lead actors are real characters who are truly experiencing these dramas….

At first I didn’t know and didn’t understand anything, I was not ready. But now, when I know the background, the substrate, with this I penetrated a bit more deeply. I created new characteristics and feelings within me, I could identify with the protagonists, come in contact with them as if I am standing in their place myself and even going through the situations they are experiencing. I acquired the same characteristics, and thanks to that, the performance appears before me in a completely new light. We don’t understand this world otherwise.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 490 – The People Of The Book, Part 1,” 4/1/15

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Question: Mark Twain wrote about the Jews: “The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.

“The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? ” (Mark Twain, “Concerning the Jews”)

Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev adds to it in his article “The Meaning of History,” “According to all materialistic criteria, this nation had to disappear from the world a long time ago. Its existence is a mystical and miraculous phenomenon, proving that the life of this nation is controlled by the force of its ancient mission.”

So what is the secret of the Jewish people that makes them immortal?

Answer: This “secret” is the most revealed of all. It is written in the Torah that the Jewish people are eternal because they are intended to be a “Light for the nations” to bring humanity to the final goal of its development.

Any other nation can disappear or change. No other nation has been preserved in the form in which it exited ancient Babylon. If we look at the map of Europe, we can see that there are no original nations that existed one or two thousand years ago. The modern nations are the result of mixing with Asian nations, who once immigrated to Europe in droves.

Yet, the people of Israel remain the way they were. Only in the last hundred years did they begin to lose their external material form, but internally they remain the same.

This nation was formed from a group created by Abraham from the residents of ancient Babylon. That is, they were assembled not according to a biological, but the ideological principle of those who gathered around Abraham. These are people who answered his call, “Let’s unite with each other despite the egoism that is burning within us and reveal the upper force inside this connection. Then we will learn about our mission in eternal life, in the upper world. When we connect to the Creator and are filled with the Upper Light, we discover the next dimension, a special ‘matrix’ where we can exist.”

There is a program in the world that leads us to a specific development through a variety of stages. It can appear to us that this development isn’t always kind, but it follows certain laws. Historians, philosophers, and other scientists study these laws, although they can’t understand their inner essence.

The wisdom of Kabbalah gives a full and clear explanation of what we need to do. The people of Israel must be this group that unites above their egoism. Each who feels the desire to reveal the Creator comes to this group.

It doesn’t matter in what country he was born or what his nationality or religion is, he will find a place for himself in this group. And if he invests his efforts in the right direction, he will participate in the construction of the group called “the people of Israel.”

The people of Israel aren’t a biological nation; they are assembled from the representatives of all nations. However, they survived and went through the centuries because they were aspiring to the great goal that all of humanity should reach in six thousand years.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/13/16

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New Life #483 – Secret Alliance With The Higher Power 
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

Question: What kind of a connection is there between the meaning of our existence and attaining the higher power?

Answer: This is the most primal force of nature. It is higher specifically because it manages everything; that is, it is the force of bestowal and love, spreading around it everything that exists within it: energy and fulfillments. It intentionally created the force of reception in order to fill it and bring it to a special level of existence.

The force of bestowal is perfect because it doesn’t need anyone. The force of reception that was created by it is limited and poor because it always lacks something and is not able to attain what it lacks by itself.

Comment: People are used to imagining the higher power, the Creator, as some kind of personality with which we make an alliance and now accompanies us. It is difficult to perceive it simply in the form of a force, as something lifeless.

Answer: Is it really difficult to imagine this? Even in our physical world there are many different forces that are unknown to us. So why is it so difficult for us to grasp the existence of an upper force? On the contrary, other than forces, nothing else exists.

All I see around me are forces that are shaped within my perception, in the form of physical images that seem to exist: inanimate, vegetative, animate and human nature. But in principle, these are all appearances of the same force.

Question: How can we develop a relationship with this force?

Answer: This is the upper force. When we create a relationship with someone, the forces are used to zoom in or connect, to get closer, to create contact. In reality there is only one force and nothing more besides it. Today, even physics, a purely materialistic science, has come to this conclusion.

Upon more in-depth investigation, the matter that we see disappears; it exists only in our perception. The whole world we feel is the product of our imagination. There are only forces affecting our brains, drawing a picture that seems to be standing in front of us. But all of this is the result of the work of forces, like the display on a computer screen.

Question: And each one of us is also a force?

Answer: A person is just a receptive force. But this force is composed of various receptive forces that are linked together in some kind of relationship. Therefore, all people are separate from each other. The receptive force is the force of the desire to receive.

A person is a desire to receive. But he has many desires for various fulfillments that are woven together. Each one has its own special combination typical of men or women, children or adults. But in fact there is only a desire to receive pleasure from all kinds of sources possible.

Question: So what are we referring to when we talk about the Jewish people having a connection with the upper force?

Answer: Abraham taught people how to achieve the goal of life, the general program of nature, if they have such a desire for it. It is possible if a person obtains the force of bestowal that is found above us. And it is possible to attain it on condition that we build relationships between us that are similar to the force of bestowal. For this, we need to reach love for others as we love ourselves, mutual love.

To the degree that we begin to discover these forces of love, unity and mutual cooperation between us, within them we discover the power of bestowal.

Question: If we create relationships of love and reciprocity between us, then do we discover the same upper force within them with which they say the Jewish people made an alliance? What is this higher power?

Answer: This is the upper force of love and bestowal, a desire to do good for others through our force of love. People who have a connection with the upper force are called the “Jewish people,” Jews, because they understand that they are obliged to be united among themselves and between them and the upper force.

The force of reception is given to us from birth. It is particularly very great among these people, so they are called a “stiff-necked people” (Exodus 34:9). But we understand that it is required only so that with its help we will discover the force of bestowal. The force of egoism burns within us and keeps us apart from each other. In this way it forces us to search for the force of bestowal and connection.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #483 – Secret Alliance With The Higher power, Part 2,” 12/25/14

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