My new article on Linkedin “How Kabbalists Deal with Rumors”

A student asked me how kabbalists handle rumors about them and false accusations: Do they ignore them altogether or deal with them in some other way?

This is an interesting question because since the dawn of Kabbalah, long before it was even titled “the wisdom of Kabbalah,” kabbalists have had to deal with slander and scorn, and sometimes even with aggression and violence against them. However unpleasant, kabbalists have always treated this phenomenon with patience and understanding, since they knew where it came from.

Humanity is a single, yet broken system. By broken, I mean that we do not feel our connections, and therefore treat each other as aliens or enemies, not realizing that by doing so, we are hurting ourselves, just as in autoimmune illnesses, when the immune system misinterprets elements in the body as aliens and attacks them, thus hurting the entire body.

The whole purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah is to reveal to us our connectedness and interdependence, and prevent us from hurting each other. In this way, Kabbalah seeks to heal each person and the whole of society simultaneously. However, since we do not feel our connectedness, we subconsciously interpret the efforts of kabbalists and the wisdom of Kabbalah to unite us as a threat to our existence, as though we’re being forced to sit close to a sworn enemy. As a result, we avoid it and warn others to do the same. Although this process happens deep within our subconscious, its manifestations in our world are very real.

As long as humanity evolved on the more basic levels, seeking mainly to satisfy desires for basic needs such as food, sex, family, wealth, power, and knowledge, we did not need the wisdom of Kabbalah. That is, we did not need an awareness of our connection. For this reason, any attempt to introduce Kabbalah was met with fierce rejection.

However, today, we are slowly developing new desires—to know the meaning of life, its origin, and purpose. It is impossible to understand life, and certainly not its purpose, unless we grasp the fact that we are all connected. Just as you cannot understand the human body by examining only one cell, or even one organ, but only by examining the entire body, with all its cells, organs, and (mainly) the connections and interactions among them, so it is impossible to understand life, and certainly not humanity, without understanding the interconnections among all people. This is why these days, many thousands of people from the world over are coming to learn Kabbalah: They want to know how everything works together.

If you look at human history, Kabbalah is a relatively new idea, precisely because it is the final stage in our development. The first kabbalist was Adam, who lived nearly 6,000 years ago. Although he had some students, who passed their knowledge and perceptions to their own students, there was no clear method of teaching, no tenets that one could follow, and therefore no system of circulating the idea of humanity’s inherent unity.

The first to treat Kabbalah as a remedy for humanity was Abraham. This is also why he was the first to encounter resistance from his contemporaries, who refused to hear about connection. Despite the resistance, thousands of people related to Abraham’s words and became his students. He taught them about unity, and they began to practice it among themselves. The uniqueness about Abraham’s students was that they came from clans and tribes that were initially alien and often hostile, yet once they joined Abraham’s students, they became very close to one another.

In forming his group based solely on unity, rather than on blood relations, Abraham had proven the merits of unity. In a sense, his group gained a huge advantage over others since they had become an entire organism while the rest of the people remained as separate cells or organs.

The hatred that Abraham’s group had experienced, and particularly Abraham himself, is the root of the hatred we now refer to as “antisemitism.” At its very deepest level, it is the resistance of the ego to unite with anyone or anything, for fear of losing its own identity. The deep sensation that unity is the best way to live, coupled with the objection of the ego to accept it and relinquish its dominance, creates a dissonance that is very hard for people to deal with. As a result, they hate the messengers of the idea of unity—the descendants of Abraham’s group—the Jews.

Abraham’s group evolved into the people of Israel. For many centuries, they lived by the principles prescribed by Abraham, namely that unity is the underlying principle on which all the rules of the Jewish people are constructed. This is why our sages said that “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the great rule of the Torah. However, in the end, Jews, too, succumbed to the raging egos within them and became as everyone else—selfish and oblivious to the principle of unity as the basis of Judaism and to their obligation to set an example of unity, as did Abraham with his group.

The result of the Jews abandoning the principle of unity was resistance to Kabbalah. Indeed, antisemitism of the nations toward Jews stems from the same fear that causes Jews to object to Kabbalah—the resistance of the ego to the necessity to unite, to the fact that we are all connected, no matter how hard we try to deny it.

Despite all the efforts of our egos, reality proves that we are all connected. With each passing day, we are discovering more ways and more fibers that connect us. And the more we discover our connectedness, the more we realize that the wisdom of Kabbalah is imperative to our understanding of the world around us. In the coming months and years, everyone, from simple folk to world leaders, will discover that without understanding the intricacies of our connections, they will not be able to manage their lives, and certainly not to lead nations. The wisdom of Kabbalah will have to show itself as a method by which to understand the world and establish connections among people that match the interconnected reality of humanity, and all of reality.

For more on the topic of resistance to Kabbalah, please see my publication, A Very Narrow Bridge: The fate of the Jewish people.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “On Jewish Unity and Antisemitism – The Triumph of Hatred”

The previous article described the Hasmonean Revolt, which erupted after Jews turned to Antiochus IV Epiphanes, King of the Seleucid Empire, and lured him into Judah so as to force the Hellenistic culture and belief system on the Jews. The battle that ensued between the adversaries was the final attempt to maintain the Jewish law of mutual responsibility and covering hatred with love, as opposed to the culture of individualism and reverence of the self, which the Greeks cultivated. The civil war was bitter and bloody, but the Hasmoneans were triumphant, securing a few more years of Jewish rule, which at least attempted to follow the laws that had won them the admiration of Ptolemy II, King of Egypt, a hundred years prior.

This article, the last in the series, will explore the final demise of our forefathers’ effort to maintain a society that lives by the law of mutual responsibility and love of others. It will include unpleasant descriptions, as all manifestations of extreme hatred are unpleasant, but if we are to understand the present, we must also acknowledge our history. Perhaps after reading this series, we will be able to understand what it means to be a Jew, why there is antisemitism, and how we can end this curse once and for all.

The egoism that had plagued the Hellenists did not subside simply because they had lost the war. The Hasmoneans, who were now the masters of Judah, had soon fallen prey to the same power of increasing self-centeredness, and the moral and social decline continued. “In becoming rulers, kings and conquerors,” writes the previously mentioned historian Paul Johnson, “the Hasmoneans suffered the corruptions of power. …Alexander Jannaeus [ruled 103-76 BCE] … turned into a despot and a monster, and among his victims were the pious Jews from whom his family had once drawn its strength. Like any ruler in the Near East at that time, he was influenced by the predominant Greek modes.”

Following Jannaeus’ example, numerous Jews abandoned Judaism and adopted Hellenism. Jannaeus, who was the High Priest, declared himself king and slaughtered thousands of Jews who opposed his introduction of Hellenism. This time, there were no Hasmoneans to save the Jews; Alexander Jannaeus himself was of Hasmonean descent, and no other force rose up against him. “Alexander, in fact,” concludes Johnson, “found himself like his hated predecessors, Jason and Menelaus,” against whom his great grandfather fought.

After Jannaeus’ death, the kingdom of Judah continued to decline and in 63 BCE, the Roman general Pompey the Great conquered Judah. This began the era of Roman rule in Judah, and ended the era of Judah’s independence. Perhaps Johnson’s poignant conclusion best describes the rise and fall of the Hasmoneans’ sovereignty in Judah: “The story of their rise and fall is a memorable study in hubris. They began as the avengers of martyrs; they ended as religious oppressors themselves. They came to power at the head of an eager guerrilla band; they ended surrounded by mercenaries. Their kingdom, founded in faith, dissolved in impiety.”

The Romans, like the Greeks before them, had no interest in forcing their beliefs or culture on the Jews. While they annexed Syria, they “left Judaea as a dependent, diminished temple state,” writes the Encyclopedia Britannica. In fact, the Romans handed the Jews a great arrangement: A mighty empire protected them from enemies while leaving them free to lead their lives as they pleased. They could have lived peacefully and quietly under Rome’s protection had it not been for the rulers of the state who, once again, arose from within their fold. These rulers were so seditious and so cruel to their own people that eventually, in 6 CE, the Romans’ patience had run out, and they declared Judah a province of Rome and changed its name to Judea.

Between the years 6 CE and 66 CE, when the Great Revolt that destroyed Judea, Jerusalem, and the Temple broke out, no less than fifteen Roman procurators governed, sometimes for as briefly as two years. As one might expect, those years were far from tranquil. We will not go into detail in this essay or describe the countless misdeeds of the Jews toward their brethren, but we will speak about one, particularly noxious group of people: the Sicarii. The Sicarii certainly earned the title “First Century Terrorists” that Dr. Amy Zalman gave them, or “Ancient Jewish ‘Terrorists,’” as Prof. Richard Horsley called them.

Yet, they differ from contemporary terrorist organizations that act against Jews or the State of Israel in that the Sicarii came from within their own faith. They were not an underground movement that sought to overthrow the government and chose violence as a means to achieve their goal. Rather, they sought to intimidate and physically eradicate people from their own religion of whom they did not approve, either because they viewed them as submissive to the Romans or for whatever other reason. The division between the Zealots (from whom the Sicarii emerged) and the rest of the nation was the seed of the bloodbath that the people of Israel inflicted on themselves during the Great Revolt a few years later, but the diabolic assassinations of the Sicarii deepened the hatred and suspicion among the factions of the nation to levels that sealed the fate of the Jews.

After 60 years of disquiet, the Great Revolt erupted. While the official enemy of the Jews was the Roman legion, the most unspeakable, inconceivable, and inhuman agonies came to the Jews at the hands of their coreligionists. The bottom line of the atrocities of the Great Revolt is as our sages put it (Masechet Yoma 9b), “The Second Temple … why was it ruined? It was because there was unfounded hatred in it,” and because of how that hatred manifested.

The Romans’ war against the Jews was so gruesome and filled with Jewish self-inflicted cruelty that it made them think that God was actually on their side. At the beginning of the siege, looking at the Jews fighting one another inside the city, “the Romans deemed this sedition among their enemies to be of great advantage to them, and were very earnest to march to the city,” writes Josephus. “They urged Vespasian,” the newly crowned emperor, “to make haste, and said to him that ‘The providence of God is on our side by setting our enemies against one another.’” The Roman commanders wanted to take advantage of the situation for fear that “the Jews may quickly be at one again,” either because they were “tired out with their civil miseries” or because they might “repent them of such doings.”

However, the Emperor was very confident that the hatred of the Jews for one another was beyond repair. According to Josephus, Vespasian replied “that they were greatly mistaken in what they thought fit to be done,” adding that “If they stay a while, they shall have fewer enemies because they will be consumed in this sedition, that God acts as a general of the Romans better than he can do, and is giving the Jews up to them without any pains of their own, and granting their army a victory without any danger; that therefore it is their best way, while their enemies are destroying each other with their own hands, and falling into the greatest of misfortunes, which is that of sedition, to sit still as spectators of the dangers they run into, rather than to fight hand to hand with men that love murdering, and are mad one against another. … The Jews are vexed to pieces every day by their civil wars and dissensions, and are under greater miseries than, if they were once taken, could be inflicted on them by us. Whether therefore any one hath regard to what is for our safety, he ought to suffer these Jews to destroy one another.”

The siege on Jerusalem was the end of a four-year battle. When it began in 66 CE, violence broke out throughout the province. If during the Hasmonean Revolt, the fighting was between Hellenized Jews and militant Jews who remained faithful to their religion, now the fighting was only among “proper” Jews, among various sects of the militant Zealots, and moderate Jews, who strove to negotiate peace with the Romans.

Yet, the unfounded hatred that surfaced among Jews during the revolt was far worse than even the already intense odium that the factions in the nation felt for one another before its outbreak. Initially, writes Josephus, “All the people of every place betook themselves to rapine, after which they got together in bodies, in order to rob the people of the country, insomuch that for barbarity and iniquity, those of the same nation did no way differ from the Romans. Nay, it seemed to be a much lighter thing to be ruined by the Romans than by themselves.”

Once besieged inside Jerusalem, the fighting became even more hate-filled. Josephus writes that “this quarrelsome temper caught hold of private families, who could not agree among themselves, after which those people that were the dearest to one another broke through all restraints with regard to each other, and everyone associated with those of his own opinion and began already to stand in opposition one to another, so that seditions arose everywhere.”

“The Jews were … irreconcilably divided,” writes Johnson. They were so engrossed in mutual destruction that they could pay no thought to the future, not even to the following day. As a result, and as part of their all-out war, “Simon and his party set on fire those houses that were full of corn and of all other provisions … as if they had, on purpose, done it to serve the Romans by destroying what the city had laid up against the siege, and by thus cutting off the nerves of their own power.” As a result, “Almost all that corn was burnt, which would have been sufficient for a siege of many years. So they were taken by the means of the famine,” writes Josephus.

Thus, the Jews knew no boundaries when it came to self-destruction. In the end, they even resorted to cannibalism, though I will not describe the testimonies of it here.

Under these circumstances, the ruin of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the exile from the land were inevitable. Even Titus, the commander of the Roman legion, recognized that it wasn’t his doing that got him the triumph, but the hatred of the Jews for one another. The Greek sophist Philostratus describes Titus’ feelings about the wretched Jews: “When Helen of Judaea offered Titus a victory wreath after he took the city, he refused it on the grounds that there was no merit in vanquishing a people deserted by their own God.”

What Titus did not know, however, was that the downfall of the Jews was not because their God had deserted them, but because they had deserted each other. Indeed, the ruin of the Second Temple, with all the atrocities that accompanied it, testifies more than anything that the fate of the Jews is in their hands: When they are united, they succeed gloriously; when they are divided, they fail miserably.

When I started this article series, it was because the editor of one of the papers where I write regular op-eds requested more information on my message that if Jews are not united, they bring on themselves antisemitism. Specifically, he wanted to know my sources for making this argument so insistently.

I hope that now my sources are clearer. We must understand that unity is not an option for Jews; it is a must; it is our lifeline. As I have shown throughout this series, the scenario of division causing affliction and union bringing peace has manifested itself at every major junction in our nation’s history.

Today, we are at yet another such crossroads. Once again, we are facing the question: Unity and triumph, or division and defeat? It does not matter at the hands of what oppressor the defeat will come, but what is certain is that it will come if we are divided, and it will not come if we are united. It is my hope and wish that we will all join forces in a common effort to rise above our differences and truly become a light of unity unto the nations, as we were always meant to be. Today, like never before, it is paramount to our survival.
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(Article No. 8 in a series – previous article)
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For much more on this topic, please see my latest publication, The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism: Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.

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Thrive Global published my new article: “The Pandemic Unmasked Humanity’s Utmost Desire”

If we constantly keep in mind that our good future depends on our relationships based on mutual care and solidarity, we will experience a fruitful and happy new year, full of positive emotions, purposeful revelations and learning experiences.

Person wearing a protective mask against Covid-19. Rennes the 2020-09-19.Personne portant un masque de protection contre le Covid-19. Rennes le 2020-09-19.NO USE FRANCE

As a new year starts people are eager to leave memories of the pandemic way behind, but the virus is relentless. Even when millions of Covid-19 vaccines have already been administered in America and around the world, some preventive measures such as mask-wearing should remain for some time according to health officials. How will a mask covered society affect our personal interactions, particularly within the young generation? We will soon discover that trust and closeness will not be conditioned by the use of masks or the lack of wearing them. Progress at all levels will depend on good connections with others, on our internal desire to build meaningful relations.

The use of masks to prevent the spread of Covid-19 has transformed people’s mindset globally. With the exception of some Asian countries already accustomed to using face masks to prevent contagion of infectious diseases, the measure has awakened controversy in the US and other countries where people have been told to get used to wearing masks as the “new normal.” After a year of partially covering our faces due to the pandemic, new research from European and North American experts revealed that it complicates social interaction between people since it disturbs “emotion reading from facial expression.”

The results of the study indicated that emotional states such as happiness, sadness, and anger were misperceived as neutral. And people disgusted were misinterpreted as angry. These findings were not meant to question the use of masks or not but to evaluate its psychological impact on human interactions. People will slowly start to realize what happened to them during this time since the virus appeared, as the changes unfolded, and why the world experienced such a dramatic transformation.

What should be done to move forward? Our progress will not be conditioned by mask-wearing or social distancing. It will depend on our ability to realize that the pandemic is activating our utmost desire: our need for connection with others as our world is revealed as increasingly interdependent.

As social animals, our longing for deeper and closer relations with others have become more visible, more authentic and qualitative. What has the virus taught us the hard way? It shows us that we had to keep distance between us since we were not in good connection with each other, were incapable of living together in brotherhood and positive relations. So we will not be able to get closer again until we internalize this principle and change direction toward a more balanced society.

Who are most affected by the lack of social interaction? Undoubtedly, the younger generation. Some of us may have forgotten what it means to be young, the first kiss and embrace. Therefore, it is hard for us to grasp what today’s youth experiences now. They feel harsh restrictions inside, they disagree with whoever wants to stop and limit them, they even curse the supreme force, nature, for bringing such a situation upon the planet. They are willing to get rid of anything in their way regardless of the consequences just to live the moment to its fullest.

Nature knows how to fix us. From a sociological level it could have been a much sharper blow. Imagine a world where human connection would not exist at all, in which our contact between relatives, couples, children, and parents completely vanished. A sort of complete disconnection in which we wouldn’t be able to breathe, would feel helpless, alone, empty. As painful as it is to remain distant from each other, the pandemic is still giving us an opportunity to change by conducting us to the right direction.

So, how can we not lose hope after a year of the pandemic? It is possible through our positive thoughts toward connection. If we constantly keep in mind that our good future depends on our relationships based on mutual care and solidarity, we will experience a fruitful and happy new year, full of positive emotions, purposeful revelations and learning experiences. We will know how to live properly, shortening the distance between us, connecting our hearts.
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— Published on January 4, 2021

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My new article on Linkedin “Corona-Time Education”

One of the best indications we have for the state of any society is its education system, or rather. Since the beginning of Covid-19 and the disruption of the schooling system, the negative phenomena that infested schools have penetrated our homes and placed a very unpleasant mirror before us. Now we are experiencing firsthand what our children have been “learning” at school.

With no place to vent aggression, domestic violence and abusive language toward parents and vulnerable siblings have increased dramatically, and parents are aghast at what they are seeing. But they are seeing now what their children have been living through for years. Better now than never.

If there is any lesson to be learned from the pandemic as far as education goes, it is that the education system teaches nothing but bad values.

Nevertheless, now that we see that our education system is fundamentally flawed, I hope it will incentivize us to make amends. Now I hope we understand that the education system must, first and foremost, teach youngsters how to communicate with one another positively and constructively. Any person, however intelligent, will not be able to succeed in today’s society unless he or she knows how to communicate constructively with others.

Constructive communication requires much practice, and a profound realization of the interdependent nature of society. We cannot succeed in life if we think only of ourselves. We also cannot succeed if we forget about ourselves altogether. Currently, we are immersed in narcissistic tendencies and feel it is legitimate to ignore other people’s feelings and care only about our own. While this may feel good when we exercise it, it produces loneliness, depression, and anxiety when others exercise it toward us. For this reason, self-absorption is not a sustainable approach if we want to maintain a healthy society. Balance is the key.

Changing the education system alone will not work. You cannot expect children to change if they come home at the end of the day to a family where the parents inculcate egocentrism. There needs to be an overall effort in society to change the social paradigm. Now that we see the results of a sick education system, I hope it will give us enough of an impetus to change the way we operate on all levels of society. Otherwise, children will grow up just as they have been educated, become parents themselves, and the vicious cycle will continue with worsening consequences until life becomes Hell on earth, if it isn’t already.

We have built all the technology to lead an affluent life with abundance to everyone. The only reason for people’s misery today is our lack of education, our lack of mutual responsibility and our excessive self-absorption. Even poverty is not a curse from above; it’s a result of carelessness for one another, a lack of education of the poor and of the affluent. When we don’t understand that we are all parts of the same society, we close our doors before each other until the streets become battlegrounds. In the end, neither the rich nor the poor will enjoy living in such a country. Education toward mutual responsibility is the first step toward healing society; everything else will be mended afterwards.

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My new article on Linkedin “I’m Perfect! It’s Everybody Else Who’s Terrible”

Look at the title; isn’t this what we all think? The world is in terrible shape; look at what happened in this year alone: People have become mean, hostile, distrusting, and contentious. Look at what happened with the presidential election; look at what’s happening with Covid-19; look at what’s happening on the streets, between Blacks and Whites, the super rich and, well, everybody else, between police and civilians, with unemployment and stimulus packages, and the list is endless. Wherever you look, you find nothing good. The only exception, of course, is me. People are terrible, but I? There is nothing wrong with me. Isn’t this what we all think? And if we all think so, except, perhaps, for very few, is it a wonder that our world is what it is?

We can tell ourselves a million stories about why we can’t do anything about the world, that powerful people or countries prevent us from connecting, or that they are the true destructors of the world. These stories may be true, but we still have to ask ourselves if we did our very best where we could make a difference. Because if we didn’t, then we are to blame for the poor state of the world.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, we look at things quite differently: It is written in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5), “Each and every person must say, ‘The world was created for me.’” According to the book Likutei Moharan, “It follows that if the whole world was created for me, I have to look and delve into the correction of the world at all times, satisfy the needs of the world, and pray for them.”

In other words, the fact that the world is bad is not because other people are bad and I’m the only one who’s good. On the contrary, it’s bad because I have been negligent in my duty to “look and delve into the correction of the world at all times, satisfy the needs of the world, and pray for them.” That is, it is bad because I am not doing my job; it is my fault that people are suffering.

And when you look into the type of work we have to do in order to make the world a better place, you will find that our only work is to strengthen our cohesion. Nothing else is wrong with the world except for how we relate to one another and to nature as a whole. The wisdom of Kabbalah sees every single person as fully accountable to the state of the world, none excluded. We can tell ourselves a million stories about why we can’t do anything about the world, that powerful people or countries prevent us from connecting, or that they are the true destructors of the world. These stories may be true, but we still have to ask ourselves if we did our very best where we could make a difference. Because if we didn’t, then we are to blame for the poor state of the world. If we all acted based on that premise, the world would certainly be a great place, and no tycoon or media mogul would be able to change it for the worse. The only thing required for the improvement of our world is our resolve to do so.

Happy New Year.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “A Fourth Election, and No End in Sight”

We haven’t even recovered from the stream of three consecutive general elections, and a fourth one is already underway. Moreover, all of a sudden, everyone thinks they can be a better, if not the best prime minister for the State of Israel.

But if you ask me, this frivolous attitude toward the task of being the prime minister of Israel indicates a lapse in understanding and lack of accountability. People’s egos have grown to the point where they just want to rule, to be kings, even if just for a few minutes, and regardless of the consequences. I see a distinct similarity between what is happening now and what happened to the people of Israel shortly before the ruin of the Second Temple and the exile from Jerusalem. In those days, the High Priest would buy or bribe his way to the title, and would serve for very short times until he was pulled out of there and replaced by another. There was no sanctity in that institution anymore, only power struggles and the desire to be “king for a day.” We all know how it ended.

It isn’t happening only in Israel. All over the world, there are no systems that prepare people to be governors. How can a person be expected to know how to rule over a country without prior preparation? Any job requires learning and preparation, but the most impactful job in the country does not? Where is the sense in this approach?

Previously, in monarchies, a prince was born knowing that one day he will become king. From day one, he was taught what this means, what it entails, how to control the nobles, how to lead the army, and manage a taxation system that could sustain the monarchy and sustain the monarch. In that sense, democracy is a failed system by default since it allows people who know nothing about ruling to proclaim that they deserve to govern based solely on their word. Because they know that they are here today and gone tomorrow, they feel no accountability. They claim to work for the sake of the people when all they really want is to use their term at the top to gain as much as possible for themselves.

A king, on the other hand, feels that the monarchy is his, that his kingdom is his legacy, that he is the state. In the days of monarchies, a king was not just an autocrat. People hung their hopes on the king. A good king meant good living for everyone. A king was respected not only out of fear, but also as a sign that the people agreed to his authority to manage their lives and make them better. Compare this to the obligation that a “democratically” elected head of state feels toward his or her constituency, and you will see how flawed our system is.

However, the sad state of today’s democracies does not mean that we should reinstate monarchies. The raging egos of people will unquestionably make them abuse their absolute power. One look at North Korea or Venezuela demonstrates what happens when you give unchecked power to individuals today.

The solution to the deadlock that world governments are in can only be found in the realization of our connection, our mutual interdependence. As long as we lack the comprehension that what hurts each of us hurts all of us, and what helps each of us helps all of us, we cannot do anything right, much less govern correctly.

The past rulers of Israel were the Sanhedrin. They were people who engaged first and foremost in connection among them. They sat in a semicircle so they could all see each other and communicate with one another. Only people who achieved a certain level of connection among them, a certain level of care for others, could become members of the Sanhedrin. Those people were the governors of the land of Israel since they had the best interest of the people in mind, not their own.

Today’s governors reflect the level of connection among all of us. Since we, in society, are disconnected, and since our governors come from among us, they, too, are disconnected from the rest of the people and do not care about us. The only difference between them and other people is that they have a desire to be in power and they managed to convince us that they would work for our benefit. But if no one in society works for anyone’s benefit, if selfishness is the trait that dominates human relations, and they emerge from the people they now govern, how can we expect them to be anything but selfish?

For this reason, if we want to save the country, to improve the government, and to change the way that governors relate to their constituency, we must teach ourselves and our entire society to live by different values. When we live by values of mutual responsibility, caring, and accountability, so will be the nature of our leaders. Until then, we will continue the endless cycle of elections until we’ve had enough, or until we end up the way our forefathers did 2,000 years ago.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “On Jewish Unity and Antisemitism – From Decadence to a Revolt”

In the previous article, we described what might be regarded as the golden era of the Jews, the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, when there were relative unity and calm, and three times a year, people from the nations of the world would come to Jerusalem to be inspired by the unity and brotherhood during the pilgrimages and said, “It is becoming to cling only to this nation.” We also wrote that that was the time when Ptolemy II, king of Egypt, wanted to learn the Jewish wisdom, so he invited seventy sages from Jerusalem to teach him the Jewish Law and translate the Five Books of Moses into Greek so he could understand them. Ptolemy was so happy with what he had learned that he said to the sages that now he had learned how he ought to rule his subjects.

King Ptolemy wanted to keep learning from the Jews and asked the permission of the High Priest in Jerusalem, Eleazar, to request that one or two of them might come whenever he had questions about ruling or about Jewish wisdom. Regrettably, that wish never materialized, and not because of Ptolemy, but rather because the Jews themselves had changed.

The uniqueness of the Jewish system lies not in the fact that Jews are superhuman and can overcome their egos. There is no such thing. Rather, the uniqueness of genuine, authentic Judaism is in recognizing that human nature is egoistic yet rising above it, as King Solomon said, “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Prov. 10:12).

At the time when the Jews were in their prime, their ego rose to such levels that they could not overcome it. As a result, many of them began to shun the way of unity, the way of their fathers, and began to lean toward the cultures of their neighboring countries, namely Hellenism. The Hellenistic culture, with its gymnasiums, amphitheaters, grand statues and impressive architecture, seemed more appealing than Judaism, which demanded that the individual would strain to love others. Contrary to loving others, the Greeks extolled the self, the individual, and offered gods that were much more humanlike than godlike, which appealed to people’s growing self-absorption.

The result of this spiritual decline was that instead of the nations learning about brotherhood from the Jews, the Jews invited the Greeks, instilled the Hellenistic culture in the land of Israel, and the nation became increasingly divided.

In 175 BCE, Seleucus IV Philopator, ruler of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire—who was the sovereign in the land of Israel, and gave the Jews complete freedom of worship—passed away. His successor was Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Initially, Epiphanes had no intention to change the status quo in Judea, and had no wish to interfere with the Jews’ freedom of worship, but some Jews had other plans, and from here matters quickly went downhill.

By the time Epiphanes came to power, the cities of Shechem, Marissa, Philadelphia (Amman), and Gamal were already Hellenized. “A ring of such cities, swarming with Greeks and semi-Greeks, surrounded Jewish Samaria and Judah, which were seen as mountainous, rural, and backward … antique survivors, anachronisms, soon to be swept away by the irresistible modern tide of Hellenic ideas and institutions,” writes Paul Johnson in A History of the Jews.

Seeing what was happening around them, the Jews established what Johnson called a “Jewish reform party who wanted to force the pace of Hellenization.” Just as the contemporary Reform Movement that started in Germany strove to strip Judaism of Jewish customs, or at least mitigate them, and place the focus on its ethics, their forefathers strove to “reduce it to its ethical core,” he writes.

To accelerate the Hellenization of Judea, the leader of the archetypical Reform Movement, Jason [Hebrew: Yason], whose goals and modus operandi were not unlike today’s Reform Judaism, joined hands with King Antiochus Epiphanes, who was “anxious to speed up the Hellenization of his dominions … because he thought it would raise tax-revenues, as he was chronically short of money for his wars,” according to Johnson. Jason paid Epiphanes a hefty sum of money, and in return, the latter ousted the incumbent High Priest in Jerusalem, Onias III, and handed the position over to Jason.

Jason did not waste any time. He turned Jerusalem into a polis, renamed it Antiochia, and constructed a gymnasium at the foot of Temple Mount. Just as the Reform Movement did in Germany as soon as they were given emancipation in the early 1870s, the reformers in antiquity aspired to adapt Judaism to modernity, eventually abandoning it altogether. They abandoned ancient Jewish customs that related to the Temple and stopped circumcising male babies. In the words of Flavius Josephus, “they left off all the customs that belonged to their own country and imitated the practices of the other nations.”

Ironically, in 170 BCE, Menelaus did to Jason just what he had done to Onias III before him: He paid Antiochus Epiphanes a hefty sum of money, who, in turn, anointed him the High Priest in Jerusalem.

But far worse than the abandonment of their customs, when the Jews turned Hellenists, they also abandoned their unity. Even among the Hellenists, fights erupted between supporters of Jason and supporters of Menelaus. The rest of the people, who preferred to maintain the Jewish spirit that had earned them such respect from Ptolemy, wanted neither leader and were growing increasingly rebellious.

Interestingly, Epiphanes himself was not interested in obliterating Judaism. In fact, it was most unusual for a Greek government to trample other faiths. According to Johnson, “The evidence suggests that the initiative came from the extreme Jewish reformers, led by Menelaus.”

Yet, in 167 BCE, when the Hellenists tried to place an idol in the Temple at Modi’in, where Mattathias the Hasmonean was the priest, the tide turned against them. Mattathias the Hasmonean was well known, well respected, and very adamant about his piousness. The Hellenists wanted to “compel the Jews to do what they were commanded and to enjoin those that were there to offer sacrifice [to idols]. They desired that Mattathias, a person of the greatest character … would begin the sacrifice because [so they believed] his fellow citizens would follow his example,” writes Josephus. “Mattathias said he would not do it, and that if all the other nations would obey the commands of Antiochus … neither he nor his sons would leave the religious worship of their country.” When another Jew stepped in to sacrifice instead of Mattathias, the enraged priest “ran upon [the Jew] with his sons, who had swords with them, and slew both the man who sacrificed and Apelles, the king’s general, who compelled them to sacrifice, with a few of his soldiers.”

Before long, thousands of Jews, frustrated with the forced conversion into Hellenism dealt upon them by the High Priest himself, joined Mattathias and headed for the mountains of the Judah Desert. Mattathias appointed his third son, Judah Maccabee, as commander of the newly hatched militia, and from the desert, they conducted the brilliant guerilla campaign that we now know as the Hasmonean Revolt, or the Maccabean Revolt.

The Maccabean Revolt did not target the Seleucid army or any of the neighboring armies. It aimed at the Hellenized Jews and strove to intimidate them and force them back to Judaism. But since the Hellenists had the support of the Seleucid government, they turned to Antiochus and asked for his military assistance.

One year into the revolt, Mattathias passed away. Before his death, he summoned his sons and instructed how they should continue the struggle. But most of all, he commanded them to maintain their unity according to the ancient Jewish law: “I exhort you, especially, to agree one with another, and in what excellency any one of you exceeds another, to yield to him so far, and by that means to reap the advantage of every one’s own virtues,” writes Josephus.

It is this spirit of unity and contribution of everyone’s strengths to the common good that yielded the Maccabees their illustrious victory over the far greater, better equipped, and far better trained armies of the Seleucid Empire. Three years into the insurgency, Judah was strong enough to march on Jerusalem and retake it from the Seleucids. Then, finally, in 164 BCE, the High Priest Menelaus was forced to seek refuge.

Yet, retaking Jerusalem and resuming the worship in the Temple did not end the war. Not only did the Jews have to fight the Seleucids outside the walls, they also had trouble from within. “Throughout the period of persecution and revolt,” writes historian Lawrence H. Schiffman, “the Hellenistic pagans in the Land of Israel had sided with the Seleucids and had participated in the persecutions. It was therefore natural that Judah now turned on these enemies as well as on the Hellenizing Jews who had brought on the horrible persecutions. The Hellenizers, many of them of aristocratic origins, had fought on the side of the Seleucids against Judah.

After Epiphanes died in 164 BCE, his son Antiochus V Eupator came to power. After putting a long siege on Jerusalem, and having almost starved it to death, the Seleucids suddenly found themselves under threat from Persia. Having no other choice, the king offered the besieged Jerusalemites peace, promising them freedom of worship and self-governance. The Maccabees accepted the offer willingly, and the Seleucids quickly retreated to deal with the advancing Persians. They did, however, take with them the now ousted High Priest Menelaus, as “this man was the origin of all the mischief the Jews had done them, by persuading his father to compel the Jews to leave the religion of their fathers,” concludes Josephus. Subsequently, Antiochus V Eupator restored the agreement of religious freedom that his great grandfather, Antiochus III the Great, had had with the Jews, and put the final seal on the Hasmonean Revolt when he executed Menelaus.
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(Article No. 7 in a series – previous article)
For much more on this topic, please see my latest publication, The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism: Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “A New Day, a New Party”

(Yet) Another general election is coming up in Israel in less than three months. As we have seen over the past recent general elections, all of which happened in the last two years, a new campaign brings with it new parties. And as we have seen, these parties turn out to be ad hoc initiatives, which often fall apart soon after the election or, perhaps, last just until the next election.

Jews have always been opinionated people; it’s our nature. However, when the only purpose of establishing new parties is to politically eliminate other parties or other people and to take control instead, nothing good can come out of such political maneuvers. If there is any purpose to them, it is to discover that this road has no way out; it will amount to nothing. The only question is how soon we will discover it.

You cannot achieve anything by splitting the society. You also cannot establish a solid and stable party when you have dozens of other parties whose sole purpose is to ruin one another. We are only splintering our society to the point where we will be compelled to agree that we cannot build anything this way.

At the same time, we also cannot agree on anything, although we know how destructive division is to our society. What do we do? We realize that we cannot reconcile our differences, yet we must find a way to coexist despite the fragmentation. When we acknowledge this, we will realize why we are so divided—since this is the only way that we can build unity.

We must understand that without division, there is no unity. If we have no disagreements, we can live peacefully next to each other, but not with each other. We may live side by side, but not in any form of unity, but as neighbors who ignore one another, oblivious to each other’s existence. If this were the case, we’d be like different animal species sharing the same habitat, yet are separated from one another.

Humans aren’t animals. If we were, we wouldn’t evolve the way we have; we wouldn’t have developed civilization and we wouldn’t have developed global interdependence. Humans are meant to mingle because only mingling, connecting, and disagreeing force us to find a tighter bond than separate animal species cohabitating.

The process of forced unification is very meaningful. It’s the only way we can come to feel consciously what animals feel instinctively: that we are all connected. Instead of sensing that connection and following it instinctively, and therefore unconsciously, we humans must toil on our connection, exert for it, and overcome hatred and conflicts. In the process, we become aware of all the intricacies in our connection, cherish it, and comprehend it on levels that no animal can. This is the advantage of man over beast: the profound understanding of the makeup of life. But it happens only if we 1) reveal the separation that exists between us, and 2) exert to overcome it.

The Jewish people, or more correctly, the ancient Israelites, were the first to achieve this unity, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, when we connected “as one man with one heart.” Only once we did that, we became a nation. Immediately afterwards, we were instructed to reflect that unity to the rest of the world, or as the Torah phrased it, be “a light unto nations.”

It is therefore no wonder that we find that the Israeli society is more divided than any other society. The conflicts manifest in us more than anywhere else precisely so we will set an example of rising above them. We will never be able to eliminate them, since then we will have no need to unite. All we will be able to do is realize that our common goal is to be a light of unity for the nations and because of it—and for no other reason—unite among us.

I have no timeline for the completion of this process; I don’t know how long it will take, or how much pain the people of Israel in the State of Israel will have to endure before we realize what it is we have to do. Either way, unity will be the end result, and it will also be the solution to our problems. I hope we come to it sooner rather than later.

Happy New Year to all.
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Thrive Global published my new article: “2021—Between Pessimism and Optimism?”

A giant seven-foot tall 2021 sign was placed in the middle of Times Square on the 21st December to begin the countdown to New Year. The sign will be lit up at midnight on December 31st. People are asked to take pictures with the sign and share them on social media using the hashtag ‘#balldrop’ while still maintaining COVID-19 safety guidelines. Where: New York, United States When: 21 Dec 2020
Credit: Niyi Fote/TheNews2/Cover Images

A new year is always associated with a new beginning, particularly after a tumultuous year people want to forget altogether. This is a natural form of self-preservation that humanity goes through, acting like little children who close their eyes and say, “We’re not scared anymore, nothing is out there.” On the contrary, the year we have left behind has been one of great lessons learned, an eye-opener to the importance of the connection between us in order to make a fresh start of the world toward a good future. Everything depends on our unity.

Humanity is divided into two parts—pessimists and optimists, Left-leaning and Right-leaning, men and women. Nature has created a diverse reality, but if we learn to connect with each other in a mutually complementary way, all the shades and distinctions will fuse together beautifully. Such a merging will create the kind of wholeness that no single part could reach on its own.

Do you see the glass as half empty or half full? Being pessimistic or optimistic about life is largely determined by the way the brain functions and is influenced by our genes. If so, how can we build a balanced approach to all the kinds of situations that can arise?

Being constantly optimistic is not ideal because if, for example, we do not recognize the danger inherent in a particular situation, we may get into trouble. On the other hand, it is not good to always be pessimistic either. We need to learn how to connect these two tendencies in a balanced way, like the positive and negative in an electrical system.

If we were to look in depth, we would find that within every pessimist is also a bit of optimism, and vice versa. This is how we are built so that we have something in common through which we can somehow connect and communicate with others who have opposite qualities. That is, in order to complete every quality on the minus side of the forces of rejection, separation, and hatred, there exists a complementary quality on the plus side that expresses union and love. This is how we achieve balance.

In order to upgrade our perspective in life we need to connect with different kinds of people. Consider this: not only do we have two eyes, but our brain is also divided into two. The combination of opposites is necessary for building a complete working system. In recent years this insight has been internalized in the fields of science, technology, and various other innovations. The most significant projects require a very high level of integration.

Studies show that optimistic people tend to focus on progress and growth, while pessimists are primarily concerned with confidence and stability, being careful not to take risky actions. The right combination of the two tendencies can move us forward with confidence and security in an optimal way.

The tendencies that are inherent in us from birth cannot be changed, but what can be molded and directed is the way that they are used, and this is made possible by connecting with others. Therefore, constant self-criticism or torturing ourselves to change is useless. It is far better to concentrate on developing relationships with others, which then lead to the attainment of new achievements at a higher level. The formation of deep connections requires efforts to transcend our natural egoistic tendency to want to control others, the natural rejection we have of someone who is different from us.

In a broad sense, every society is comprised of disparate constituents and divergent people, and from year to year the struggles between conflicting types become more forceful. However, the globalized world we live in is a single connected network that is closing us in together. In such a reality where we are becoming increasingly dependent on each other out of necessity, only if we complement one another with mutual guarantee can we build a stable system that will ensure that humanity doesn’t implode and go to its doom.

The challenge of our times is to learn to maintain the difference and uniqueness of each and every individual, while building a balance between them all. Such a process will open up for us a new, integral, complementary, shared mind and emotions that will break through into a new dimension of existence, one that is connected and beautiful. Like nature, like the fabric of life. Therefore, the best New Year’s resolution we can set is to move toward closer connection with each other.
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— Published on January 1, 2021

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My new article on Linkedin “How to Make 2021 Our Best Year Ever”

Each year on December 28, people celebrate the Good Riddance Day, when they toss, smash, or burn objects, pictures, or notes representing bad memories from the previous year. This year, the event, inspired by a Latin American tradition, was especially noticeable as people lined up in Times Square to smash their bad memories. After all, didn’t 2020 provide much to toss and smash?

I understand why people want to smash bad memories and why they hope they will never return. But I also know that “smashing” bad memories, that is, putting them behind us and forgetting about them, is the best way to guarantee that they will return, and likely more intensely than before.

We treat unpleasant events as misfortunes, but they are not. If there is no purpose to unpleasant events, however painful, then is there a purpose to the welcome events, those that please us and make us feel good? If something makes no sense, how can its opposite make any sense?

What has emerged in the passing year, especially in the US, is hatred, mainly between Left and Right. If they could overcome it, they would thrive in everything: health, education, economics, and in every other sense. What is destroying America is hatred between Left and Right, and between Blacks and Whites.

Revealing the hatred in itself is not bad. What’s bad is when you don’t do anything about it. Hatred among people is revealed so we will rise above it. However hard we try to stifle it, it will not work. Americans have been trying to suppress hatred between Blacks and Whites probably since the beginning of slavery. They fought a civil war over racial hatred, yet racism is as vivid and as rabid now as it has always been. Moreover, now it is destroying the entire American society.

This should teach us something: We cannot erase hatred; we can only rise above it. That is, we can only increase our desire to unite, our understanding that unity is essential to our survival, to the point that unity precisely with the one we hate is more important than to vent our aversion.

When we do that, when we make unity that important to us, we will realize that this was the whole purpose of experiencing the hatred in the first place. Had it not been for the revelation of the hatred, we would not have needed to forge such a strong union. Now, thanks to the prior animosity, we have formed unity on levels that we never knew existed.

For this reason, we should not say “good riddance” to anything that we don’t like. On the contrary, we need to look for the flaw it came to show us. And that flaw, one way or the other, will always relate to our lack of love for one another.

So for the coming year, I wish everyone a year of reckoning, a year of understanding why things happen, why we should unite, and how we can achieve it. This will give 2020 purpose and meaning, and it will make 2021 our best year ever.

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