My article in Newsmax: “The Pandemic Antisemites Call Israel”

People react to what hurts them the most and antisemites are no exception. A global response to the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to wreak havoc with more than 50 million cases worldwide, apparently is not the priority for the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO).

Instead of assessing a global response to the problem, it spent four valuable hours of its general assembly bashing its annoyance, Israel. A similar dose of hatred has been injected by antisemites who are accusing Jews behind the companies in charge of the new COVID-19 vaccines of trying to control the world and profit from the pandemic.

More than a million people have died from COVID-19 around the planet. After months of the pandemic, the virus continues to spread uncontrollably, lockdowns have been renewed in multiple cities around the world, the global economy crumbles, the education systems operate irregularly and every realm of people’s lives has been impacted. So how is it possible that the main concern of WHO’s member nations was condemning the Jewish nation for the “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem and in the occupied Syrian Golan”?

If they were to search for real facts concerning those portrayed as underserved in health care services, they would discover that in fact the alleged victims receive better medical care in Israel than in any Arab country. So, is there any logic behind singling out Israel over and over again? There is none, because antisemitism is an irrational sentiment.

Conspiracy theories and blood libels against Jews are not new, they are just reignited. The fact that the scientific community has worked around the clock to develop a new vaccine against the deadly virus has only fueled antisemitic allegations.

The top medical expert of Moderna, the pharmaceutical company behind just one of the new COVID-19 vaccines, is Dr. Tal Zaks, an Israeli scientist, and Dr. Albert Bourla, a Jew of Greek descent and CEO of Pfizer, which is responsible for another vaccine against the coronavirus. In Greece, a newspaper published a series of articles accusing Dr. Bourla of Nazi-like intentions behind the scientific discovery and of making millions of dollars from the pandemic in coordination with Israel.

The world has a disease: antisemitism, that particularly resurfaces in times of peril. Why is this so? It is because people feel that Jews hold a pivotal quality to solve the world’s troubles. By attacking Jews, they in fact raise the Jewish nation to the pinnacle, holding them both responsible for the problems and, at the same time, acknowledging them as those able and empowered to repair an aching planet.

It is precisely the role of the Jewish nation, founded upon the tenet of “love your neighbor as yourself,” to lead the way to the attainment of unity and toward recovery of the balance in nature that has been lost as a result of our unruly, egoistic and self-centered human relations. Since the times of Abraham, Jews were the first people to identify and understand the laws of nature, the need to live in a society based on mutual responsibility.

As nature tightens humanity’s connection and more hatred surfaces between people, the time is ripe for learning how to realize our increasing connection positively, how to unite above the growing separation. In the last few months, the need for unity has become pronounced. The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the need for mutual responsibility and consideration to restore and maintain good health and growing social divisiveness demonstrates the need for unity.

If we fail to progress to unity above our own differences as a Jewish nation, we will continue evoking hatred upon ourselves and people will increasingly accuse us of being the root of the world’s problems, as we now also see with the coronavirus.

The sooner we realize that our unity will have a positive rippling effect the world over, the sooner we will realize that we are treating antisemitism at its root. By uniting, we fulfill our role in the world of bringing the forces between humanity and nature back to balance.

If we realize our role and initiate unity between us, we will not only see antisemitism diminish, but also, conversely, we can expect love and respect for a Jewish people who radiate a positive unifying example to the world. Then there would be no reason for anyone to hate Jews because people would know how to unite.

And united people do not hate each other or the ones who show the way to their unity as the only cure to humanity’s pains.

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The Times of Israel published my new article “On Jewish Unity and Antisemitism –Article No. 2”

In the previous article, we described Abraham’s struggle to spread his revelation that there is only one force in reality, which he called “God,” that that force manifested in two ways—giving and receiving—and everything, in reality, reflected interactions between the two. We also said that Abraham realized that his contemporaries in Babylon, his homeland, were becoming alienated from each other. Abraham wished to counter that alienation with kindness and mercy in order to balance the growing force of reception with appropriate giving. When his efforts were turned down and he was expelled from Babylon, he wandered west to Canaan. Along the way, thousands and tens of thousands—according to Maimonides, Midrash Rabbah, and many other sources—joined him and became “the house of Abraham.” Those people formed the nucleus from which the Israeli nation would later rise. The special thing about them was that they had nothing biological in common but rather the conviction that receiving must be balanced with giving, and they were willing to toil in order to develop the quality of mercy within them.

This article will review Israel’s time in Egypt. By and large, we are taught that Israel’s time in Egypt was a nightmare—that they were enslaved and tormented there until they had no choice but to escape in the dead of night. Yet, this is a very incomplete representation of the picture.

The book of Genesis (from Chapter 47 and into the book of Exodus) tells us that when Israel went into Egypt, Joseph was already Pharaoh’s viceroy and his most trusted man. Pharaoh even gave him his signet to use as he pleased. When Joseph’s family sought shelter in Egypt, Pharaoh gave them the most fertile land in the country, the land of Goshen, in the eastern Delta of the Nile. Joseph placed his family members in key positions and they prospered under his protection. As long as they were united under Joseph, things went smoothly for them and they were successful, prosperous, and multiplied.

However, when Joseph died, the Israelites’ unity began to weaken. Consequently, everything changed. “The Israelites began to conceal their Jewishness,” writes Prof. Zvi Shimon of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. “They were immersed in Egyptian culture, enthusiastically attending Egyptian cultural events and adopting their modes of entertainment. Egyptian sports and theater were popular pastimes amongst the new Jewish immigrants.” Little by little, they abandoned their commitment to unity and immersed themselves in self-indulgence and narcissism. That, perhaps, was the first incident of disunity that leads to Jew-hatred, long before the terms had been invented.

Much to the Israelites’ regret, the more they wanted to assimilate in Egypt, the more Pharaoh and all of Egypt turned against them. The Book of Zohar (Shemot) asks, “Why were Israel exiled, and why specifically to Egypt?” The answer that The Zohar gives is that they were exiled to Egypt because the Egyptians “were proud and despised and loathed Israel,” and therefore did not want the Hebrews to mingle with them. Midrash Rabbah (Shemot 1:8) adds a more explicit version of the story, pointing the finger directly at the Jews: “When Joseph died, they broke the covenant and said, ‘Let us be as the Egyptians.’ …Because of it, the Lord turned the love that the Egyptians loved them into hatred.” In other words, Pharaoh and the Egyptians didn’t turn against Israel simply because they were bad people, but because they abandoned the legacy of unity and strove to mingle with Egypt and disunite from one another.

This is why the Torah writes that only after Joseph died, Pharaoh turned against the Hebrews. Once Pharaoh became “antisemitic,” if you will, the Hebrews had no choice but to reunite. This pattern, where Jews shun unity when they are prosperous and are forced into it by the persecution of a local leader would repeat itself from Egypt to this day.

These days, we are seeing the end of the same cycle in America. Jews have been prosperous for several decades, achieved material wealth and power, but have abandoned their unity. Now we are seeing the flipping of the country from appreciation and approval to denunciation, criticism, and eventually hate.

In the next article, we will review Moses’ efforts to reunite the tormented people and thereby redeem them from their oppressors.

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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Medium published my new article “Commemorating the International Men’s Day — Has Manhood Become Obsolete?”

In the past, men were the breadwinners, and often the sole providers. In the twentieth century, and particularly after World War II, things began to change, and today there is much more equality between men and women, at least as far as being the breadwinner goes. The trajectory was leaning toward even more equality, but then Covid broke into our lives and tossed everything into a muddled heap. With offices closing left and right, and people working more and more from home, or losing their jobs altogether, humanity seems poised to embark on the next social revolution: a transition to spiritual connections.

Instead of fighting, men’s work will be more around engagement with each other, meaning forming positive connections rather than combative and competitive relations.

Along with the growing equality, it’s become apparent that men aren’t sure about their role in the family, in relations with partners, and often in life. Women, too, became unsure about the role that men should play in their lives. Men don’t need to hunt anymore, not even metaphorically, meaning provide for the family, and they can’t really protect their families from the storms of the outside world, which has become not only hostile, but also too complicated to handle.

So, if men can’t provide sustenance or protection, does the world really need them? It does, because when material needs are provided, spiritual needs come into play and demand their satisfaction no less than material needs. And when it comes to spiritual matters, each sex has its unique role that only it can do. And because both are required to make society complete in the spiritual sense, men and women are becoming equally important, complete opposites, yet complementary and indispensable.

Instead of fighting, men’s work will be more around engagement with each other, meaning forming positive connections rather than combative and competitive relations. Also, in light of the situation, and in light of the fact that schooling will be done much more at home, men will have to become more active at home, and particularly when it comes to education — both in terms of teaching values, as well as in provision of knowledge and teaching school topics.

When we speak of spirituality, we often imagine yoga postures, meditations, and things of that nature. I am not speaking about that. I am referring more to the spirit of society, the atmosphere in society. Of course, both men and women will play their vital parts in nurturing the spirit of society, but men, who were used to competing with one another, will now have to transform their thinking and learn to support one another in order to bolster the community.

In the end, our happiness depends on the society we live in. If that society fosters solidarity and mutual responsibility, if people feel accountable to their society and wish to contribute to their communities, then people in that society, or community, will be happier, more stable emotionally, and more confident.

Men will have to take an active role in that process, participate in their communities’ activities more than before, and be more involved. The era of measuring success by one’s income or career achievements is quickly ending. We are embarking on a social era, where people are measured by their contribution to society. Especially now, when we see that the main thing that’s broken in the country is the society, the ability to fashion solid communities and societies will become the “hottest” commodity. Accordingly, manhood has to adopt a whole new meaning — more social, collaborative, and uniting.
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Medium published my new article “The Tie between Work and Pay Is Crumbling”

Among various economists, there is a growing conviction that we are nearing the end of capitalism. Personally, I think it’s too soon to proclaim the end of capitalism, but what we are seeing is a growing disconnect between work and pay. That raises important questions that we will have to answer in the near future.

Our meaning in life will not be found in work, but in meaningful and enriching connections with others. Only when we grow through our interactions with others, and when we help others grow through their interactions with us, do we feel satisfied that we have contributed something meaningful and lasting.

First, people have to eat whether or not they work. They have to live somewhere, too, buy clothes, and in a modern country, they have to get medical insurance and education. While it’s true that even today not everyone has these basic needs, it is also true that this state doesn’t reflect a healthy society, hence the growing prevalence of depression and the soaring numbers of premature deaths due to substance abuse, homicide, and suicide. So the first question is how to make sure that everyone gets the basic things that every person needs.

Second, if people don’t work, what will they do all day? If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it is that sitting idle at home is a bad idea. Over time, it makes people agitated, aggressive, depressed (if they weren’t already), and, worst of all, hopeless, since they don’t see an end in sight. In other words, people need a sense of purpose, a reason to get out of bed. If it isn’t work and the need to earn a living, what can it be?

First, people must be informed. They have to know that although they have money in the bank, if they do, it doesn’t mean that they are independent from others. The production and supply chains that provide us with the products we buy at supermarkets and gadget stores entail millions of people. If you break just one link, the whole chain might stop working. This chain affects not only what we can buy, but also our jobs, our possibility to provide for ourselves and our families, national and international politics, and in the end, it can even determine life or death for many people. This is the true meaning of globalization: We have come to depend on each other even for our very lives.

Once people comprehend our interdependence, it is easier to explain that if this is the case, it makes sense that better connections enable better lives. It also makes sense that the current system, which endorses individualism and self-absorption, is the opposite of what we need today, and is in fact the main reason that our society is in such a sorry state.

At the moment, we are indoctrinated to value ourselves by two things: what we do (our job, title at work, etc.) and how much money we make. In the absence of connection between work and income, these gauges for self-esteem will become irrelevant and we will have to find new ways to appreciate ourselves, or we will all feel worthless. In fact, this is already happening to millions of people who are unable to find meaningful engagements.

The new criteria that will determine our self-esteem will be social criteria, since, as we just said, the quality of the connections between us determines the quality of our lives. Therefore, gradually, we will come to appreciate such values as solidarity, mutual responsibility, and contribution to the community.

As we grow into the new paradigm, we will discover that contrary to what we have been taught, man was not created to toil so many hours each day until he or she cannot but want to escape from life. No, we were made to enjoy one another, socialize, challenge one another, and support one another. We were made to help each other be the best individuals we can be and realize our full personal potential, not to be individualistic, isolated, and suspicious of each other.

The physical part of our lives is only here to support the spiritual part of our existence. It’s the spiritual part that makes us human, but we are so exhausted tending to the physical that we have no energy left in us to nurture our spiritual selves. Is it any wonder that we feel frustrated?

Our meaning in life will not be found in work, but in meaningful and enriching connections with others. Only when we grow through our interactions with others, and when we help others grow through their interactions with us, do we feel satisfied that we have contributed something meaningful and lasting.

As the tie between work and pay crumbles, we must hurry and introduce these new values. It will spare us much unnecessary agony and lead us quickly and easily into the new era, where satisfactions are spiritual and lasting rather than material and fleeting.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “The Pandemic Anti-Semites Call Israel”

People react to what hurts them the most and anti-Semites are no exception. A global response to the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to wreak havoc with more than 50 million cases worldwide, apparently is not the priority for the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO). Instead of assessing a global response to the problem, it spent four valuable hours of its general assembly bashing its annoyance, Israel. A similar dose of hatred has been injected by anti-Semites who are accusing Jews behind the companies in charge of the new COVID-19 vaccines of trying to control the world and profit from the pandemic.

More than a million people have died from COVID-19 around the planet. After months of the pandemic, the virus continues to spread uncontrollably, lockdowns have been renewed in multiple cities around the world, the global economy crumbles, the education systems operate irregularly, and every realm of people’s lives has been impacted. So how is it possible that the main concern of WHO’s member nations was condemning the Jewish nation for the “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan”?

If they were to search for real facts concerning those portrayed as underserved in health care services, they would discover that in fact the alleged victims receive better medical care in Israel than in any Arab country. So, is there any logic behind singling out Israel over and over again? There is none because anti-Semitism is an irrational sentiment.

Conspiracy theories and blood libels against Jews are not new, they are just reignited. The fact that the scientific community has worked around the clock to develop a new vaccine against the deadly virus has only fueled anti-Semitic allegations.

The top medical expert of Moderna, the pharmaceutical company behind just one of the new COVID-19 vaccines, is Dr. Tal Zaks, an Israeli scientist, and Dr. Albert Bourla, a Jew of Greek descent and CEO of Pfizer, which is responsible for another vaccine against the coronavirus. In Greece, a newspaper published a series of articles accusing Dr. Bourla of Nazi-like intentions behind the scientific discovery and of making millions of dollars from the pandemic in coordination with Israel.

The world has a disease: anti-Semitism that particularly resurfaces in times of peril. Why is this so? It is because people feel that Jews hold a pivotal quality to solve the world’s troubles. By attacking Jews, they in fact raise the Jewish nation to the pinnacle, holding them both responsible for the problems and, at the same time, acknowledging them as those able and empowered to repair an aching planet.

It is precisely the role of the Jewish nation, founded upon the tenet of “love your neighbor as yourself,” to lead the way to the attainment of unity and toward recovery of the balance in nature that has been lost as a result of our unruly, egoistic and self-centered human relations. Since the times of Abraham, Jews were the first people to identify and understand the laws of nature, the need to live in a society based on mutual responsibility.

As nature tightens humanity’s connection and more hatred surfaces between people, the time is ripe for learning how to realize our increasing connection positively, how to unite above the growing separation. In the last few months, the need for unity has become pronounced. The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the need for mutual responsibility and consideration to restore and maintain good health, and growing social divisiveness demonstrates the need for unity.

If we fail to progress to unity above our own differences as a Jewish nation, we will continue evoking hatred upon ourselves and people will increasingly accuse us of being the root of the world’s problems, as we now also see with the coronavirus.

The sooner we realize that our unity will have a positive rippling effect the world over, the sooner we will realize that we are treating anti-Semitism at its root. By uniting, we fulfill our role in the world of bringing the forces between humanity and nature back to balance.

If we realize our role and initiate unity between us, we will not only see anti-Semitism diminish, but also, conversely, we can expect love and respect for a Jewish people who radiate a positive unifying example to the world. Then there would be no reason for anyone to hate Jews because people would know how to unite, and united people do not hate each other or the ones who show the way to their unity as the only cure to humanity’s pains.
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My new article on Linkedin “What Intolerance Means for the Jews”

November 16 is the International Day for Tolerance. If I were asked to give a fitting title to 2020, I’d call it the year of intolerance. But I won’t, since I know that tomorrow we’ll be even more intolerant. Many people thought that the 2016 presidential election was the ugliest in history. As we can already see, it’s nothing compared to 2020. In 2024, can we even be certain there will be an election, much less an honest, free election?

At a time when all the world needs is tolerance and unity, Jews cannot engage in anything other than establishing and nurturing precisely those two values. Anything else that they do works against them, and if they can’t see it now, they will see it very soon. But if they wait until they see that their thinking was off course, it will be too late to avoid the heartbreak.
Judging by the fanaticism and vindictiveness shamelessly percolating into the surface, I don’t think that people even appreciate democracy anymore. All they want is for people to be like them, and if they aren’t, they shouldn’t exist.

The tensions between the two sides in America will only grow. No side will take abuse lying down. But this civil war will not end like the first one. In this one, there are Jews embroiled in all of this, and as it’s always happened when Jews are concerned, the parties will conclude that it’s all the Jews’ fault and unleash hell on them.

The Jews are supposed to be the unifying factor. It is the nation that coined the motto “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “That which you hate, do not do to your neighbor.” Instead, Jews are among the leaders on the more extreme fringes, inciting and even calling for bloodshed almost explicitly. When blood is shed, they will be blamed for it and both sides will unite against them.

If the Jews are not uniting the world, the world doesn’t want them and regards them not only as superfluous, but as injurious. Admittedly, if Jews are inciting parties against each other, then the parties are right for hating them. At a time when all the world needs is tolerance and unity, Jews cannot engage in anything other than establishing and nurturing precisely those two values. Anything else that they do works against them, and if they can’t see it now, they will see it very soon. But if they wait until they see that their thinking was off course, it will be too late to avoid the heartbreak.

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Medium published my new article “It Takes Two to Disagree”

November 16 is the International Day for Tolerance. It seems as though a day of tolerance has never been more apropos. At the same time, with politicians and journalists openly calling to remove dissenters from society and even to “burn them down” because “if there are survivors….they will do it again,” it seems as though tolerance has never been more wishful thinking.

All the views, even the most extreme, need their day in the sun. In the end, they deepen and broaden our understanding of ourselves as human beings. But now, I believe we’ve seen enough of the negative side of human nature, and it’s time to harness the diversities between us to the benefit of all of humanity.

Intolerance seems to come in waves. Whenever intolerance rises beyond a certain level, violence breaks out in one form or another. Now it seems we’re quickly heading toward another peak in intolerance and unless we handle it better than before, it will erupt just as past waves have. And if history can teach us anything, it is that the peaks grow higher each time, and the resulting violence more horrific.

We need to understand that human nature isn’t growing more tolerant, but more extremist and fanatic. As a result, when one side speaks of annihilating the other side, as is the case today, it will attempt to do so physically. There is no question of if, but only of when. When both sides speak in these terms, it will lead to war.

Today, speaking about anything that resembles friendship, amicability, togetherness, or even merely tolerance arouses forgiving smiles, at best. More likely, such words will be met with due sarcasm because nothing is less realistic today than to ask people to be tolerant to one another.

Moreover, as time goes by, it will become even more unlikely. Human nature is dynamic, evolving toward increasing individualism, and therefore intolerance toward others. Today, individualism has reached such levels that there are more families with one parent living at home than with two, and nearly 30 percent of households are single-person households. In such a state, is it hard to imagine that many people don’t want anyone around them?

If this trend remains, the American democracy will soon be a thing of the past. To avert what seems like an inevitable fate, we must adopt radical thinking: Each of us must realize that the person I want dead, the person who disagrees with me, actually holds my lifeline. Without that person, I will not be who I am, what I am, and I will not be at all. It does not mean I have to agree with a person I can’t stand, but simply that our disagreement is what keeps us going, and it takes two to disagree.

Nature, which develops all creations, fashions them into plants and plant-eating animals, or animals that eat plants and animals that eat other animals. All of them depend on one another, though clearly none of them particularly likes the other. Likewise, human nature drives all of us to develop. It fashions us into different people, who clearly don’t like each other, but who are dependent on each other just as animals are dependent on each other for their survival. We wouldn’t have fascists if we didn’t have communists; we wouldn’t have secular if we didn’t have religious, and we wouldn’t have moderates if we didn’t have extremists. We are defined by what we aren’t no less, if not more, than we are defined by what we are.

The difference between animals and humans is that we can see, analyze, and appreciate the fabric that nature has created. If we could look at the big picture and see that we, humanity, form a diverse fabric that is just as beautiful as nature’s wildlife, we wouldn’t be at each other’s throats. On the contrary, we would appreciate and value the differences, which we would then refer to as diversity.

Everything is needed for its own time. All the views, even the most extreme, need their day in the sun. In the end, they deepen and broaden our understanding of ourselves as human beings. But now, I believe we’ve seen enough of the negative side of human nature, and it’s time to harness the diversities between us to the benefit of all of humanity. Humankind has championed countless ideologies. Now it’s time to champion the ideology of unity, which states that whatever you believe in and support, keep it, it is yours, and add it to the fabric of humanity. Only a society that places unity as its top value can tolerate diverse views within it, give them their rightful place, and use them to strengthen and improve all of society.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “The True Meaning of Tolerance”

Which does this world resemble more, a peaceful garden or a jungle with wild predators devouring each other? Most likely the latter. At the same time clashes and division are rampant in the United States as well as the rest of the planet, the UN’s International Day for Tolerance is commemorated. But unless we explore what tolerance truly means there will be no implementation. Understanding and mastering the art of listening to and embracing one another is what will give us the tools to flip polarization into balance.

“Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human,” states the UN Declaration of Principles on Tolerance. The ideals of those words are important, but marking a special day for tolerance on the calendar is meaningless if we do not educate humanity first about the essence of what this premise means and how to put it in practice in our daily lives. Otherwise, “tolerance” becomes an empty word.

Similar situations exist with other commemorations such as the International Women’s Day. Have we ever heard people receiving lessons during their early upbringing—in kindergarten or in school—on how to respect women or even the most basic principles of how to respect and love their mother? I have no such recollection. Therefore, our education is lacking as we fail to engrave core values into the social fabric.

The word for “tolerance” in Hebrew is sovlanut, from the verb “lisbol,” (to suffer), as if we need to endure or suffer the opinions of others. However, in that sense, there is no need to tolerate but instead to embrace one another. The suffering we experience stems from the fact that our vision is self-centered and is unable to feel others, particularly those who are different from us. We should rather accept and feel the other as ourselves, his opinions and feelings, even if they are contrary to ours.

We should base our human relationships on the principle that everyone has a place in society, and should recognize that difference and diversity create a colorful and wonderful mosaic. Nature created us this way so we would come to realize how the richness of opinions from diverse minds empowers everyone. If only we knew how to properly integrate the myriad pieces of the human cogwheels, then we would see how each one is indispensable for the synchronized and well-oiled mechanism called creation.

But why have we become increasingly reticent over the years to even look each other in the eye, let alone to properly communicate and connect? The reason is tied to our constantly growing ego that nature develops within us—our insatiable drive to fulfill our own desires to the detriment of others. The more the ego grows, the less calm we become.

Aggravation, intolerance, and mutual rejection are all states that nature compels us to feel in order to enable us to recognize our human egoistic approach as the cause of the turbulence in our lives, and by reaching a dead end in our ability to get along with others, to develop a sincere new desire to rise above the ego.

The evolutionary process moves humanity from deeper levels of conflict to higher states of balance and cooperation. Human society is coming to a point where extreme social polarization will inevitably bring about a higher level of social organization. There is no escape from learning how to unite above opposing sides, not by eliminating the opposites, but rather by balancing them to create a higher understanding.

Therefore, in order to avoid social catastrophe we will have to foster a new mindset and establish an entirely new model of socio-political order, one that can accommodate opposite views to achieve social stability rather than perpetuate and deepen social division.

In nature, the foundational urge operating within all living organisms is to find the coexistence and interplay between two opposite forces, creating a higher level of order and prosperity. Evolution brings opposites together through dynamic equilibrium. Knowledge about how this principle of the inner system of nature works—the force that operates and controls everything in reality—is our only anchor in the changing world.

Bringing people of different views closer to each other in order to reach new levels of mutual understanding should be the ultimate goal of today’s societies. When this takes place, our differences will remain, but in a complementary way, for collective benefit. Then real tolerance will occur, understood as comprehension, acceptance, and brotherhood. As Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) wrote in his essay The Freedom:

“Each individual should maintain the integrity of their inheritance, and the contradiction and oppositeness between them will remain forever, to secure the criticism and progress of wisdom, which is the major advantage of humanity.”
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The Times of Israel published my new article “The Wounded American Democracy”

A turbulent presidential race in the US was supposed to end with the elections, but in fact, the political scenario is far from calm and quiet. While half of America claims victory and vigorously celebrates, the other half feels betrayed, drained, robbed, and questions and challenges the democratic system. What kind of changes are required to recover the credibility of a system that has shown imperfections?

As President Trump’s legal team deals with court challenges and expects ballot recounts in six battleground states, the claims of fraud have overshadowed the American electoral process.

Democratic elections have brought the world human development, freedom of expression—where everyone is allowed to express their opinions and divergences fearlessly, vote, demonstrate—but now we see the system that was conceived as the panacea to listen to people’s voices, all voices, has lead to millions of people in the same country to become radically opposed to each other, split in a near symmetrical half, completely polarized.

So maybe the solution is to officially divide the country in two, a Democratic territory and a Republican land? They may relocate according to their political preference and visit each other once in a while, go sightseeing from one side to the other, even have some trade relationship between both lands, divide industry, the economy, society in general. If it is not possible to coexist, then splitting up the country seems to be the only alternative.

Can you imagine such a scenario? Clearly, tearing the country apart and dividing it in two pieces is not possible, and even if hypothetically it were an alternative, a clear cut division would separate families, dismantle communities, split every atom in every element of creation, and pose enormous disbalances and great danger. Alienation is the cause of social disruption and eventually may lead to war.

We have reached a dead end where democracy is questioned and there is no indisputable majority that determines the nation’s future. Today’s society demands results that consider and represent everyone. Otherwise, the credibility and legitimacy of the country’s leadership will be undermined, and the rift between the two camps will continue to deteriorate. The new reality requires all sides to sit together in a circle like the indigenous people of the country used to gather in a circle around a campfire to find solutions to their most pressing problems, to think and decide together about what should be done.

The solution cannot be to give up to everyone’s stand on any issue. It is not realistic and shouldn’t be. When one side overpowers the other, the outcome eventually will be destruction. Rising up against each other wishing to annihilate those opposing one’s views contradicts nature, acts against the supreme force that created two sides in the world in the first place. Nature’s purpose for creating this division is to lead humanity to strive for connection and build a new reality in common through a sense of mutual guarantee. This goal can be achieved when people elevate themselves from their instinctive egoistic desires and consciously put aside their particular interests for a collective benefit.

How can someone want to think of others if we are naturally inclined to think only about ourselves? Because the alternative is ungovernability, collective chaos, distrust, rivalry—all conditions that are a recipe for disaster. And when there is chaos no one gains but all lose. Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interest to realize that the wounds of US society can be cured when Americans realize how interdependent they are. Nature shows us the perfect electoral system. It chooses connection over dissolution, unity over division, integrality over dispersion. So if we want to live peacefully next to each other and succeed as a society, we only need to learn from this example.
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Medium published my new article “The Deepening Rift between Left and Right Is Here to Stay, and so It Should”

We need to realize that the deepening rift between Left and Right is here to stay, and grow. The sooner we do, the better our chances of dealing with it correctly, before it explodes into an all-out war.

People are different. There are different genders, races, colors, and body structures. These are biological differences that cannot be changed without gross interference with nature, and even then with questionable results.

We must also remember that we are dependent on each other, and without seeing that all of us are healthy and contributing our share to the well-being of humanity, we, too, will have no future.

What we are less aware of is the fact that our views, faiths, and the way we think are also, to a great extent, dictated by nature. As such, they are often unchangeable. When was the last time someone managed to totally reverse your opinion about something that really mattered to you? When was the last time you managed to do this with someone else? Leaning left or leaning right is carved within us almost as deeply as the color of our skin. That is not to say that there is no way to change one’s mind through brainwashing or some aggressive reeducation program, or even by planting someone in a totally new environment, but if we’re speaking about changing the views of millions of people simply by appealing to their reason, it’ll never work. Their reason works differently, as do their minds, and they will never agree.

Think of your own body. Within you, there are organs that function very differently from one another. They share the same DNA, but if you put a cell from the heart in the liver, it wouldn’t become a liver cell; it would probably die. Even though it’s created from the same hereditary material, its nature and mode of work are so different that it wouldn’t be able to survive in any environment outside the heart, where it belongs.

Now think of your body without any of its organs. How would it survive without even one of them? If you pulled out even one organ, you would kill or seriously maim yourself. Every organ, however small or insignificant, is vital for our well-being and often our survival. We wouldn’t want the pancreas, for instance, to be like the heart since we would not have a pancreas and would have one heart too many.

Human society is just like our body, but on a macro level. Take out even one of its organs and you have maimed the entire system. The rifts we see between people are not the problem; they only point to people being more aware of their function in society, which is actually good. The problem is that we cannot work as a single system the way our body works with all its organs. We aren’t aware of our interdependence in society the way we are aware of the interdependence of our organs on each other.

Dealing with the rifts between us correctly means seeing the big picture — that everyone is vital, everyone contributes, and humanity will not be what it is without each and every one of us. In the arguments between us, we must never forget that we are all one entity. It’s fine to disagree; it helps us grow, understand ourselves and others better, and do our duty for humanity more successfully. But we must also remember that we are dependent on each other, and without seeing that all of us are healthy and contributing our share to the well-being of humanity, we, too, will have no future.

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