My new article on Linkedin “All Blue”

Imagine standing outside your house on a sunny January morning. The deep blue sky is stunning in its clarity, and you could stare at it for hours. Now imagine looking straight ahead at the houses and trees in front of you. You expect to find brown trunks and branches, a dark brown earth, or the array of colors on the walls of houses in your neighborhood, but there is none of it. Their color has turned to deep winter blue, just like the sky. In fact, they are so similar that you can barely tell them apart from the skyline.

This is what has happened to the American society: It’s become all blue. Even Blacks are now blue. If you dare support a different color, you are ousted, banned, and banished.

Now look down and picture the ground. It was supposed to be pitch-black on the asphalt road or brown around the barren trees with patches of muddy snow from last week’s blizzard. But it isn’t; it is blue, deep, deep blue, just like the sky above you and the houses everywhere you look. The whole world is one and only color: the deep, clear blue of winter skies.

The next morning, you come out of your house, breathe the fresh air of winter, and once again, stare at the blue sky above you, blue trees and buildings before you and behind you, and the blue ground beneath your feet. On the third day, nothing changes, and likewise on the fourth, the fifth, and so on for weeks, months, years, a lifetime. The world has become all blue.

This is what has happened to the American society: It’s become all blue. Even Blacks are now blue. If you dare support a different color, you are ousted, banned, and banished.

Just like our world, society cannot consist of just one color; it is not real, unhealthy, and will bring with it America’s doom, simply because it is unnatural. When public discourse allows only one voice to be heard, it breaks the foundations of the country.

If you take social media and all the mainstream newspapers, they all back one and only narrative. This is very wrong for the American society. Just as walking forward means tilting slightly left, then slightly right, but always forward using both legs, so society must lean this way and that way, but always forward—toward a stronger union above Left and Right. Society cannot limp on one leg only; it will fall. The duty of the media is to reflect both sides as equally as humanly possible, so people can shift and tilt this way or that way, but do it in a healthy manner.

When you silence the opposite view, you are weakening yourself and forcing the other side to reinvigorate itself. Nothing good will come out of this. Republicans will build their own systems, develop, and grow stronger, while Democrats are basking in their own complacency. They are building for themselves what the Bolsheviks built for themselves in Russia a hundred years ago. Indeed, it is a blue, blue world.

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My new article on Linkedin “What Israel Can(not) Expect from the Jews in the Biden Administration”

When the Biden administration takes office, it will be one of the most, if not the most Jewish administration in US history. No fewer than eleven senior positions will be occupied by Jews, including the Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of Treasury, Chief of Staff, Director of National Intelligence, and quite a few others. Moreover, all three of Joe Biden’s daughters-in-laws and son-in-law are Jewish, as is Kamala Harris’ husband.

The Democratic Party is infested with sworn and vociferous antisemites and Israel bashers, but this is completely inconsequential to American Jews, whose vast majority supports the Democratic Party. Moreover, quite a few American Jews support specifically those antisemites and Israel bashers.

You’d think that Israel would be thrilled about such proliferation of Jews in key positions in the new administration, but Israel has no reason to celebrate. The chasm between American Jews and the State of Israel has never been deeper or wider. The Democratic Party is infested with sworn and vociferous antisemites and Israel bashers, but this is completely inconsequential to American Jews, whose vast majority supports the Democratic Party. Moreover, quite a few American Jews support specifically those antisemites and Israel bashers.

This leads to a very simple conclusion: They are Jews only by name. They do not understand the meaning of Judaism or the spirit of being Jewish, and the fact that we are labeled under the same religion, Judaism, is merely a formality.

When it comes to the Jewish state, Israel has nothing to look forward to. Today’s Democratic Party is nothing like it was a few decades ago. If Jews feel comfortable hobnobbing with people who try to destroy Israel’s ability to protect itself, then they don’t care about Israel; if they rub shoulders with rabid antisemites, then they do not care about Judaism. Actions, we know, speak (much) louder than words.

This leaves Israel with only one option: to rely on itself. Militarily, economically, or in any other sense, Israel is very vulnerable. But if the people of Israel unite, they will have all the power they need to overcome any ordeal. It is with good reason that antisemites not only hate, but also fear our power. They feel that we are far stronger than we feel about ourselves. But they are right, and we are the ignorant ones. Our power lies in our unity, and the only reason we feel weak is our division. If we overcame our division and united even though we cannot stand each other, but simply because unity is more important than how we feel about each other, we would immediately find that our enemies are gone. We wouldn’t even have to fight them. In fact, they would not only be gone, but they would sincerely seek our friendship. This is the power of our unity.

If this feels unrealistic, it is only because we haven’t tried, and because our egos blind us to the fact that everything that is united is stronger than everything that is apart. If we allow ourselves to see it, we will understand that our duty to ourselves, to our children, and to the world is to rise above our quarrels and abhorrence and unite despite the rifts. Then, our unity would be as strong as the hatred we had overcome, since the intensity of our hatred would compel us to forge a union that can override that hatred. This would be a kind of unity that the world has never seen, but that it will be eager to emulate once we achieve it. And when the world is eager to learn our kind of unity, the nations will turn from enemies to friends.

Clearly, the ego will never let us agree to this concept, but this doesn’t make it any less true. Just as reason denies quantum mechanics, but we all use it everywhere—from microwaves to missiles—and it works without fail, so will unity. If we only dare apply it, it will work.

For more on the meaning of unity for the people of Israel and for the world, look up my book Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour.
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My article in Newsmax: “Is Democracy a Figment of Our Imagination?”

Democracy, we know, comes from Greek and it means “the rule of the people.” The current power struggle in America shows one thing very clearly: There is no rule of the people in America. That is, there may have been a rule of the people in America, though a brief one, but when you let the people rule, what you get is tyranny. It does not matter whether the tyranny is portrayed as democratic, pretending to reflect the will of the people, or as it truly is: repressive despotism.

The problem with democracy is not that it’s a bad idea. Freedom, equality, and justice for all are noble notions. Regrettably, they cannot happen. They never happened and they never will until we teach ourselves the values required to even talk about freedom and equality.

Since we’ve never been taught it, we’ve never had a democracy. We’ve had plenty of bogus, manipulative governments who pretended to care for the well-being of the people while actually seeing to the continuation of their own control. And because we’ve never been taught how, or even why we should all be equal and free, we’ve always eventually succumbed to our basic, egotistical nature and tore off the democratic mask from the face of an actual dictatorship.

Simply put, democracies rise and fall because they don’t coincide with human nature. When an unnatural social structure is imposed on society, society eventually rejects it, however noble it may be, and retreats to its savage nature. If you want a truly noble society, which lives by noble principles, first make its people noble and then they will construct a noble society of their own accord, since this will be their nature.

One look at what is happening in America today shows you the level of education for nobleness that Americans have today. It may be painful to accept, but unless we accept the facts, how will we be able to change them?

Look, for example, at what is happening to the First Amendment today. Is there free speech in America? Is everyone encouraged, or even permitted to express what they really think? The public arena is governed by street gangs and online gangs, and anyone who steps out of line is immediately straightened out or silenced. And when you have no freedom of speech, you also have no equality, and therefore no democracy.

If you want to build a genuine democracy, you have to start from the premise that there is more than one opinion. If there is only one opinion, even if it is your own, then you should know that your society is not democratic. Uniformity of opinions should be your first warning sign. No two people have the exact same opinion, and certainly not an entire country. So when only one voice is heard, it is, by default, a non-democratic society.

Once you have two or more opinions, you have to know how to relate to them. You should know people’s views differ because they see reality from different perspectives. However, they are all looking at the same reality, which means that they are all seeing only part of the picture and not all of it.

So every part that you exclude from the pool of perspectives makes everyone’s perspective more deficient, flawed, partial and, therefore, unfit for making the right decisions. Only when all the different views are valued and included in the decision-making process can you reach a result that benefits the entire collective, and which is therefore sustainable. Otherwise, you are bound to create another “democracy,” the kind we’ve seen throughout history, which is here today and gone tomorrow.

For this reason, the rule of thumb in building a sustainable society, established on true freedom and equality for all, is the nurturing of diversity of views, refusal to silence any voice, and building a society that incorporates all those differences, and whose members value the union among them more than they value their own opinions.
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My new article on Linkedin “Is America on the Verge of Civil War?”

America faces turbulent times. The storming of the U.S. Capitol activated the alarms of a possible civil war while Democrats increased the pressure for President Trump’s removal from office less than two weeks before the end of his term at the White House. If the internal pressure continues escalating, the situation could be like sitting right on a powder keg that could blow up in all directions. The only way to avoid a disaster is to find common ground for everybody’s interest.

If the next administration starts a witch hunt and attempts to destroy positive elements that preceded it, then these actions could constitute a dictatorship and not a democracy. Violence and revenge from any side cannot be the solution. It would only increase polarization and animosity on the social level and would also have deep economic repercussions for the entire country.

An abyss separates the right from the left at this moment so there is no magical solution to bridge the divide like a pill that could be swallowed and suddenly calm would be restored. There is no such solution so dialogue between the two sides looks now scarce. No one from any side, Democrat or Republican seems to make any effort to calm the nerves, which the media is interested in warming up and escalating.

Americans are now giving us an example of how humanity will look if it continues its path of enhanced and unruly egoism in which one side wants to control, overpower, and eventually even wipe out the other. Uncontrollable mutual hatred can only lead to a dead end, to war. Today, we see dangerous signs of polarization similar to the situation experienced in the American Civil War fought between the Northern and Southern states 160 years ago; with the difference that now it is happening between the two factions of the political spectrum with no glimmer of reconciliation on the horizon.

There are many stakeholders in the world that would rejoice if war erupts in the United States. They all want America to start burning from inside for their own economic and nationalistic prevalence. Mexico would gain more open borders, while China, Russia, and even Europeans would benefit from a weak American nation.

So, is it possible to prevent a war in America? It is only achievable if there is recognition of the evil and destructive force of egoistic relations in which one succeeds at the expense of the other. It is important to realize that the right and the left forces have existed in human society since ancient times and each time they move further apart. After all, both of these lines are egoistic, and egoism becomes more and more demanding with its development. This struggle won’t end. Therefore, we must learn to balance them and come to reach a middle point of convergence where the balancing force of nature is revealed.

If people understand that reaching that middle line between conflicting positions is a condition for a prosperous and peaceful America, they will perceive their opponents differently. They will see that everything negative and positive happens only in order to propel us to such a beneficial goal, to the general advancement of society.

Life is arranged according to that principle. This is how it was created in nature, like in an atom. This very first element of any matter consists of negative and positive particles, plus and minus, and many neutral particles called neutrons. They balance protons and electrons, add weight, mass, and stability to them, thereby an atom can exist. So we cannot change nature, but we can learn from it and replicate its harmonious functioning for a peaceful coexistence. There is nothing to lose and all to gain.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “How There May Be Good in the New Administration”

At first glance, it seems as though the Biden administration is going to be nothing but bad news for Israel. On the other hand, we should ask ourselves what is bad and what is good for Israel. It is clear that Biden’s administration will be inundated with Israel bashers and Israel haters, including the Jews who will serve there, and including Obama, who will be pulling the strings behind the scenes. This will truly put Israel to the test. We will have to think how we conduct ourselves within the country, among us, and toward the world.

The people of Israel do not develop well when they are pampered. In that sense, I think that the tough times ahead may be good news for us, a chance to reflect on our purpose here as individuals, as a state, and as a nation. It is an opportunity to hone and cultivate our most valuable, if not only asset: unity.

I have no doubt that in the end, we will draw the right conclusions and become what we were meant to be: a beacon of unity, a role model society that sets an example of successful relationships, and people and nations will want to learn from us. The only questions are how long it will take and how much pain it will cost to get to this idyllic state.

We cannot stop the engine of evolution; it is pressing onward to bring us together and open our eyes and minds to the truth of our connectedness. There is great bliss and wondrous insights in being connected to all of reality, but it requires a yielding of the individual ego. This is something that is very hard to do.

When the ego becomes obstinate, it needs a “nudge” from behind. In the case of Jews, it is antisemitism, which reminds them they have to unite. In the case of the State of Israel, it is both antisemites and Israel bashers. In the end, these critics and haters are doing a great service: They are forcing us to reinstate our forgotten unity. However, would it not be better if we united under milder pressure?

The important point is that we acknowledge our disunity, the vitality of unity to our survival, and that unity is the example we must set to the world, to be “as one man with one heart.” This is the key point we must remember, and it’s not a question of whether we have an Obama votary president in the White House or the most favorable American leader in Israel’s history.

If we, the people of Israel, do what we must do, it will not matter who is occupying the White House. If we unite and set the right example, we will do good to the world regardless of external ill-intentions.
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Medium published my new article “Humanity in Labor Pains”

Clearly, we’re headed for an unusual year. We’re headed for an unusual year in America, an unusual year in Israel, an unusual year in Russia, an unusual year all over the world. We’re headed for a year of labor pains. A new world is emerging, and we are seeing its efforts to be born. For our part, we must help it materialize sooner rather than later, quicker rather than slower, and easier rather than harder.

There is pressure from all sides to be born, so let’s be born together; let’s shift from the state of division and alienation to the first state of connection in the quickest, smoothest way we can.

First, we must understand that the forces pressing on us from all sides are necessary. Otherwise, we won’t be born into the new world. Second, we must help the baby slide out of the birth canal more easily. The birth we’re going through right now is very special. We are not only emerging from one reality into another, from slavery to freedom. Our ego is being reborn in a new way; it is being inverted.

On the other side of the birth canal lies a new humanity, a new understanding, new feeling, the union of the power of connection that will be born between us. Within the ego, the quality of giving will be born; this is the embryo! The midwife is Nature, and we must help her deliver the newborn into the world by explaining the integral, interconnected reality being formed within us and among us.

We must understand, and help others understand the idea of connection. It is not the same type of connection that you see in sports teams or in companies in the corporate world, where teams team up against other teams and fight each other to the (metaphoric) death. We are talking about understanding that connection is a value in and of itself, not a means for another purpose, but the goal itself.

It is not only the goal, it is the highest possible value, the zenith of man’s achievements, when one can unite with others in a way that the individual senses the collective as though they are part of the individual, as if my body has spread across the globe and all of humanity and all of nature are cells and organs in my body. Rav Kook had some beautiful phrases about this inclusiveness. In his book Orot [Lights], he wrote, “Our soul will spread in everyone, embrace everyone, sustain and encourage everyone, and will bring everyone back to the place of our house of life.”

2020 was the first year when everything fell apart all over the world simultaneously. However, the surprising thing is that it didn’t destroy humanity; it simply stopped us in our tracks; things stopped working. Covid-19 stopped the global economy and the destruction of Nature, and the presidential election shattered what little faith people had in the government or in each other.

The bottom line is that we have neither a government we can trust nor an economy we can rely on, and we feel insecure about our health, wealth (if we had any), and mainly our future. This is a crisis.

However, a crisis is also the birthplace of newborn babies. In Hebrew, by the way, the word mashber means both “crisis” and the chair on which women in labor were placed in antiquity to help them deliver. Today, all of humanity is sitting on that mashber.

We, people who are aware of the shift humanity is going through, who understand that only connection above all our many differences will lift us to a new reality of peace and friendship, must help the rest of the world process the message. We need to help humanity go through the delivery with the least amount of blood being spilled.

Every birth is painful. However, since we are already in the labor, we might as well go through it with the least amount of pain. Mother Nature is already pushing us out, demanding that we understand where we are, grow up, and we, too, do not want to stay ignorant of our position and role in the universe.
There is pressure from all sides to be born, so let’s be born together; let’s shift from the state of division and alienation to the first state of connection in the quickest, smoothest way we can.
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My new article on Linkedin “The United State(s) of Humanity”

America is in a state of deep scrutiny. So is humanity. Today’s America presents the future state of humanity: If the world advances the way America is advancing, we will end up being divided between two blocs that hate each other in every sense—ideologically, approach to life, culture, education, and every other way. It will be impossible to connect the adversaries, just as it is impossible to connect the Democrats with the Republicans in today’s divided United States.

We should thank the American people for setting an example that demonstrates what our future will be like unless we achieve unity among us. In other words, if we don’t achieve a united state in humanity, humanity will become like today’s United States: an assortment of nations, colors, races, and faiths that hate each other to death, and do everything they can to cater to their hatred.

As things are, there will be no calm. It seems as though things have gone out of control, but they haven’t. It is simply what happens when the ego wants to govern and will not hear of anything less than that. It does not want connection; it wants domination.

It may be horrifying to watch, but we are merely witnessing the natural process. When everything revolves around who has more and who has less, and when the ego keeps intensifying, we come to a state where the ego wants everything, and to leave absolutely nothing to the other side. This is what you get when you don’t educate people.

It doesn’t matter how much you invest in aid packages and relief programs, when the ego comes to a state of all or nothing, nothing helps. Therefore, we should thank America for the example it is giving us, at its own expense. We should thank the American people for setting an example that demonstrates what our future will be like unless we achieve unity among us. In other words, if we don’t achieve a united state in humanity, humanity will become like today’s United States: an assortment of nations, colors, races, and faiths that hate each other to death, and do everything they can to cater to their hatred.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Why Israel’s World Lead in Vaccination Is Meaningless”

Israel has leapt ahead of other countries in the global efforts to inoculate its population against COVID-19 with the fastest vaccination rate in the entire planet. What Israel has yet to discover is that such an effort will be ultimately useless until the nation realizes its role and capacity to cure humanity from all its illnesses, as it holds the only lasting antidote to health, (as well as the key to peace and success): our unity.

Around 12% of Israel’s population has already been vaccinated with doses of the Pfizer vaccine as a result of a well-oiled 24/7 campaign and an efficient healthcare system. Vaccine distribution efforts in Israel are by far faster and more successful compared to those of other developed countries such as the US and European nations. But as much as we would like to believe that this is the panacea to get rid of the coronavirus, we will soon discover that the miracle cure to the pandemic does not lie within the biological sphere but instead at the human level, in the right connection between people. A method for reaching that goal is the real example Israel should give to the world.

Why is this successful immunization program not enough? It is not sufficient because it gives us the false impression that only through such measures are we protected from diseases, while nature is trying to teach us that we cannot sit on our laurels until we address and fix the root cause of the problem: our lack of alignment with nature’s balance, wholeness, and perfection. Our human intolerance, hostility and egoism cause imbalance within multiple levels of nature—inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human—which negatively boomerangs back upon us in the form of diseases. Our hatred of one another thus harms the system we all share and is reflected back on us in the form of all kinds of problems and crises.

So what is the true role of Israel I have mentioned? It is to pioneer the implementation of the method for attaining unity above division between people to the point of reaching the tenet “love your neighbor as yourself.” Israel’s role is to lead the way in moving humanity toward the attainment of unity and recovering balance with nature that has been lost as a result of our fractious, egoistic and self-centered human relations.

A method for realizing this goal is set out in the wisdom of Kabbalah and this knowledge has been inherited by the people of Israel through the generations so that they will become a conduit for the worldwide expansion of unity. As Rav Yehuda Ashlag, author of the Sulam (Ladder) commentary on The Book of Zohar wrote, “It is upon the Israeli nation to qualify itself and all the people of the world to develop until they take upon themselves that sublime work of the love of others, which is the ladder to the purpose of Creation.”

As the press of nature increasingly tightens humanity’s interconnection and greater rivalry and conflict surface between people, the conditions become ripe for humanity to learn how to organize our increasing connection positively, how to unite above the growing divisions.

Jews need only come to the realization that by starting to relearn and implement our historic and unique method for achieving unity and by disseminating this know-how to all, they will bring harmony to themselves and to the world at every level of nature. Such unity will radiate a positive unifying example throughout the entire planet and then the people of Israel will truly become “a light unto the nations” (Isaiah 42:6). Therefore, Israel can and should provide the role model for humanity to follow in order to reach the goal of achieving immunity from all its suffering and pains through healthy human connection.
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My new article on Linkedin “Amen and A-Woman? Gender Equality Campaign Does Not Change Nature”

On Monday, January 4, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), concluded the opening prayer at the end of the first day of the new Congress with the words “Amen and ‘A-woman.” Even Cleaver seemed uncomfortable when asked about his alteration of the traditional conclusion of the prayer as he said to Snopes.com: “I concluded with a light-hearted pun in recognition of the record number of women who will be representing the American people in Congress.”

As I see it, the whole notion of gender equality has gone too far for something that we can’t really change. Men and women aren’t the same, just as male and female aren’t the same in nature. Our bodies, including our psyches, belong to the animal kingdom, and just as lions and lionesses behave differently, so do people.

We can decide that we want to define our gender identity one way or another way, or no way at all, but it will not make us happier. It will only keep us constantly on the edge, having to defend our choice. But nature is nature, is nature; it does not change according to our whims. If we go against nature, we suffer.

Just as it is much harder to swim upstream than downstream, it is much harder to defend false views about life than to hold truthful ones. And the fact that someone told us that one view and not the other is the view to follow doesn’t make it any truer.

There is a good reason why there are two distinct genders in nature, and both are indispensable for the success of human society, and life as a whole. Genders are not superior or inferior to each other; they are complementary! Only when we look at life from this perspective we can truly appreciate our value as human beings, the value of our partners, and the value of our relationships. When we have good relationships, we are happy people, and in the end, happiness is all we need.

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My new article on Linkedin “From the Steam Engine to the Engine of Relations”

2020 was a culmination of a centuries-long process that started with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Technology began to move apace when steam engines became efficient enough to be used in England’s factories in the late 18th century. Since then, technology has only been accelerating its development. Gradually, we moved from the steam engine and bulky machines to devices that grew smaller yet more powerful. We learned how to use gasoline, electricity, developed electronics, computers, and eventually even waves and magnetic force fields. Things that seemed like fantasy or science fiction to educated adults in the 19th century are a given to children in the 21st century, and the pace is still accelerating.

We have gone from large to small, to smaller, to invisible, but we have yet to find the force that makes it all work, the engine of reality. Humanity is at a crossroads. In order to find the engine of reality we must invert our perspective. There is one more force field to discover, but our current perspective cannot reveal it for a very simple reason: We are looking in the opposite direction. Until now, we have been observing the world outside of us and registering our discoveries. From now on we must start looking inward and register our discoveries about the force that makes us move: the force field of relations.

If you have ever wondered why every innovation that humanity has ever made has always been put to bad use, here lies the answer. If you’ve ever noticed the strange phenomenon that the most powerful engines of development have been negative, and usually related to the arms industry, especially since the beginning of the 20th century, here lies the answer. The force field of relations is injecting negative energy into the system, making our entire society sick with venom that forces us to invent things that hurt others. And as technology accelerates its progress, we inject more and more malice into society, and at a growing pace. Currently, such tensions have piled up that we are almost at the breaking point.

The way we relate to one another determines not only how our society operates, but how all of reality operates. This is why I keep saying that no vaccine will help defeat Covid-19 unless we first heal what’s really sick about us: our relations toward each other. We are creating viruses through our ill-will toward others. Not directly, of course, but through a chain reaction that ultimately creates viruses, and moves on to create every adverse effect in our world, from wars to earthquakes.

There is no point looking for technological innovations to improve our lives; they will only be used to our detriment as long as we are detrimental to each other. If we ever want to have a peaceful, happy life, we must focus on changing our relations, and as a result, everything we do will change for the better.

[Intensive Care Unit Nurse Merlin Pambuan, 66, is hugged by hospital staff as she walks out of the hospital where she spent 8 months with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Dignity Health – St. Mary Medical Center, in Long Beach, California, U.S., December 21, 2020. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson]

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