Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Judicial War May Devolve into a Civil War”

The judicial reform that Israel’s new administration is advancing has stirred turmoil throughout Israeli society. From every sector and faction of society, people are condemning the reform or rooting for it. Those condemning it warn that the reform will obliterate Israel’s democracy and place it at the mercy of politicians. Conversely, those who praise it say that it will restore the balance to Israeli democracy, which has been disrupted when Israel’s supreme court took excessive rights into its hands, such as the power to revoke laws or appoint new judges.

Recently, the protests against the proposed reforms have become so heated that prominent figures in the Israeli society, such as incumbent mayors, decorated retired generals, opposition leaders, and former prime ministers have begun to tout the possibility of a civil war, with some even explicitly calling, on social media and in public speeches, for the murder, no less, of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Yariv Levin, and the entire cabinet, in order to restore democracy.

Since the inception of our nation, we have been known as obstinate people. We are extremely opinionated, and we think that only our view has merit. Worse yet, at certain points in our history, we took this view to the extreme and not only believed that anyone who disagreed with us did not deserve to live, we also acted on that belief and went on vicious civil wars. Now, it seems, we are heading there again.

Democracy is not good for such people. Democracy is for those who believe that general policy decisions are made at the polls. If more people prefer one policy to another, the parties that support that more popular policy will win the election. It does not make them entitled to abuse the minority, but it does make them entitled, and even obligated to implement the policy for which they were elected.

If I think that my country is democratic only when the view I support is in power, then I am not a democrat; I am a tyrant in disguise. It hurts me when I see what is happening in Israel today. While the rest of the world is learning and progressing, we are stuck in power struggles that will unquestionably bring the country to its knees and ruin the State of Israel.

Perhaps, considering our bloody past, when we killed each other in civil wars, it would be better if the people were dispersed and the nation disbanded. I have no idea what the Creator has planned for us, but if the choice is between dissolution and civil war, I prefer the former.

That said, there is a third alternative. Our people always have been and always will be obstinate, arrogant, and opinionated. If we are disbanded now and reassemble later, we will still have to face each other and disagree just as we do today. We are like that because our ancestors were like that, and precisely because they were like that, they realized that their only chance of success was to step on their own egos and form a union precisely with their dissenters. In those days, it was either unity or death. Now we are approaching that dramatic point once more.

In the past, when our ancestors chose unity, we not only became a nation; we also became a model for the world, a proof that no matter how much we cannot stand each other, if we rise above our hatred and unite, the bond we will form will overcome anything, and the power of such a nation will be insurmountable.

At the moment, I do not see that people are in any mood for conversation, much less unity. All I see is bellicosity. But as long as we are still not fighting, there is hope that we will come to our senses before we drown the ship that we are on.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Initial Takeaways from the Disastrous Earthquake”

As the scale of devastation from the earthquake that struck southern Turkey and Syria becomes clearer and more horrifying by the minute, initial takeaways are already surfacing. But before I talk about what I believe needs to be done, I wish to extend once more my deepest sympathy and prayers to the people of Turkey, and especially to those who have been affected by the quake. May they recover quickly, and may they never know sorrow again.

Earthquakes are not uncommon in Turkey, including strong ones, though not as strong as the one that struck this past Monday, and its subsequent powerful aftershock. Therefore, it is surprising that Turkey did not take more extensive preventive measures against powerful tremors. Every country that is located in an area that is prone to earthquakes should take this into consideration. Just as Japan imposes strict construction standards that make its buildings much more quake-resistant than almost all other countries, so should every country do if it is located in an earthquake-prone region.

However, there is something that is just as important as imposing construction standards when it comes to saving lives: international cooperation. Member states of the NATO military alliance, for example, are required to meet certain military standards. Once a country becomes a member, the rest of the countries in the alliance are required to help it if it is attacked.

Similarly, there must be an international alliance that mandates all the member states to help one another in case of a significant seismic event. At the same time, members must meet minimum conditions that the alliance will determine as far as building and road construction standards, accessibility and durability of rescue routes, communication and energy infrastructure, and medical services.

Without such an alliance, each country will determine its priorities by itself, and usually, rare emergencies are at the bottom of the list. The problem is that emergencies do happen, and when they happen, the cost of years of neglect is horrendous in human lives, infrastructure, manufacturing, and money. By the time countries realize they should have prepared in advance, it is too late.

Therefore, by forcing its member states to take preventive measures, an international alliance can save thousands, if not tens of thousands of lives, as in the case of this week’s quake. Additionally, the mandatory mutual assistance will guarantee that affected countries do not have to face natural disasters on their own or rely on the generosity of other countries, which is never enough, and often comes with a political price tag attached to it. If neighboring countries are obligated to help because of their membership in an international alliance, such considerations as international relations and other political caveats will not impede the provision of assistance.

Moreover, maintaining an alliance against natural disasters can help foster better relationships that will reflect on other aspects of the countries’ relationships. Enemies do not talk; they fight. But once countries are engaged in an alliance, they communicate regularly and are no longer enemies. On the contrary, they are responsible for one another. Therefore, they can communicate with one another freely and directly, which can help resolve crises in other dimensions of their relationships.

Therefore, establishing an international alliance for dealing with natural disasters can have benefits far beyond the purpose for which it is established. If we leverage the cooperation established in order to save lives during earthquakes and the like, we can begin to foster better and more constructive relationships among all the countries in the world.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “New Antisemitism Needs Ancient Solution”

In an attempt to counter rapidly growing antisemitism in the country, the French government updated its plan to combat antisemitism to include training teachers and requiring students to visit sites of antisemitic or racist incidents.

The problem of rising antisemitism is hardly exclusive to France. We see this targeted hatred rising dramatically in many places. One may ponder why this age-old hatred does not go away despite initiatives like France’s Interministerial Delegation for the Fight Against Racism and Antisemitism (DILCRAH), which it adopted in 2015 and updates every three years, and the multiple efforts in other places in the world where Jews are persecuted.

Hatred toward the Jewish people has been a regularly recurring phenomenon over the course of history that started in ancient Babylon and has taken on many forms up to the current time when we see what we call the “new antisemitism” is the same old hatred clothed in new dressings.

Ancient Babylon was a time of great social turmoil marked by the shattering of the Tower of Babel when the Babylonians felt an outburst of the human ego and lost their ability to understand one another.

In response to the demands of the time around 4,000 years ago, a Babylonian priest named Abraham discovered a method for rising above humanity’s divisive inclinations to reveal the single unifying force of nature.

Essentially, Abraham led his followers on a path to the discovery of this uniting force of nature through work in practical actualization within the relationships between people who applied the principle, “love your neighbor as yourself.”

The uniqueness of the followers of Abraham was that they shared no biological roots. They came from among all the peoples, clans, and tribes of the region. They coalesced as a group formed of people from different nations in the area who were drawn together based on a unifying ideology and joined together by a commitment to work on themselves in order to attain the quality of love of others above the pressure toward social division that existed at that time.

The Jewish people became a nation through a pledge to be “as one man with one heart.” This common ideological connection among the people of Abraham was formalized into a binding covenant at the time of the reception of the Torah at the foot of Mount Sinai.

Since then, it has been our duty to maintain this connection between us and to pass it on to other peoples, a role that does not involve entitlement, but rather service to others. Therefore, it is the duty of the Jewish people to fulfill the law of love among ourselves and to set an example of this brotherly love to others.

Unfortunately, since the time this covenant was made, we have completely lost awareness of our Jewish unity, and in its place, frictions and separations prevail. However, this shared experience of attainment made an indelible impression on the Jewish soul that is so profound that it could never be erased.

Thus, we should not waste energy thinking about how to make small fixes here and there. Instead, we need to put all our effort into achieving unity. I am certain that if the few million Jews on the planet today would think about how to unite in order to do good to all of humanity, the unifying tendency would expand throughout the world and everyone would join in.

In short, humanity will be able to connect on the condition that the people of Israel unite. Today, however, Jews are more divided than any other people. Therefore, antisemitism will gradually gain force and acquire forms that will unpleasantly compel us to unite. Eventually, an inner perception will form within Jews that we need to be closer to each other. And by finally doing so, we will save ourselves and the whole of humanity from all hatred, division, and crisis.

More on the subject in my book, New Antisemitism: Mutation Of A Long-Lived Hatred.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “How Fast Can We Fill the World with Love?”

We all want to live in a world filled with love, but at the same time, think that it is impossible.

But what if we could live in a loving world?

We currently live in a hostile world. We find ourselves fighting and competing against each other more and more, and our lives become worse as a result.

Our egoistic nature, where we wish to self-benefit at others’ expense, starts turning against us as we can never fulfill our growing desires, and we likewise excrete more and more anger and cruelty into the world, which negatively boomerangs back to us.

Now imagine that we could shift our worldview and our relationships to a direction of love and care.

What if we could suddenly change the world so that no one would exploit or harm others?

We would then see an opposite world, one where our fears, anxieties and negative sensations in general would shift to a positive direction—one of support, encouragement and love for one another.

Love would obligate us to want, think and act optimally. We would cease our constant plight to keep ourselves busy with an ongoing array of producing, advertising, using and throwing away unnecessary excesses.

If love filled the world, then even if nobody worked, we would still get our needs met because we would have no desire for excesses. Instead, an atmosphere of love and mutual consideration would fulfill us completely.

Today’s overblown human ego leads us into an increasing contrast with nature, as around 90 percent of what we produce is unnecessary, while nature itself produces only what is necessary. In nature, everything is repeatedly used in 100 percent of its capacity.

Nature functions as a closed integral system, and our influence within nature is the exception. That is, our produce does not return to nature in its natural form, but rather in a distorted form that adds toxins and poisons back into nature.

If, however, we related lovingly to each other, then we would clean the world. A loving and caring attitude among us would replace our demands for excess and surplus, and we would reach a newfound balance among each other and with nature.

Moreover, until we bring about a major transformation in our attitudes to each other—where love would replace hatred, and where care and support would replace indifference and apathy—then the more we invest in technological means to clean the world without fixing our attitudes to each other, the more we will find our world becoming increasingly polluted. This is because nature ultimately demands of us to come into balance with each other, in our attitudes to each other, that we would create an atmosphere of love and mutual consideration throughout the world. Until we do so, nature will keep reminding us that our efforts to solve our accumulation of problems without fixing our attitudes to each other will only lead us to more and more problems and suffering.

In order to develop relations of love in our world, we need to exercise our attention, consideration and responsibility toward one another. By doing so, we will mutually participate in the integral system of nature, and only then will we bear witness to a new loving world that will solve the myriad problems and crises that are tumbling down on us today.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Is Time?”

We can observe time when we look at our watches, and we can sense time when we reflect on our lives and realize how quickly time passes., We feel it when we contemplate the events in our lives and consider their consequences and our emotions.

Our desire to receive, the fundamental matter from which we are composed, perceives the past, present and future. It recognizes time as changes that take place in our desire for pleasure. In other words, time is dependent upon the sensations that arise from our desire to receive. Without these sensations, we would have no concept of time.

If there were no differences in our sensations between feeling better or worse, we would be unaware of the passage of time. If our sensations remained the same, time, as we know it, would stop. That is, time is a result of fluctuations in our sensations. If there is no change, there is no time. How does one minute differ from the next? The variations are due to the processes that take place in our desire to receive, and that is what we call “time.”

Time is the measure of the difference between the amount of pleasure we experience in our current state compared to our next state. Our sensations continually change, which explains why occurrences in our past, present and future are so important from our egoistic point of view. We explore the states that our desire to receive pleasure experiences, and the changes between these states are recorded within us as time.

The desire for pleasure is the matter of creation. It is a sensor that feels fullness or emptiness. It assesses the state that it undergoes based on a comparison of the sensation of fulfillment in its previous state and forms a concept of time by evaluating the amount of pleasure in both states.

Time is a tool for measuring fulfillment in the desire to receive. We strive for contentment, so we look to the future and reflect on the past in order to learn how to best organize ourselves for achieving a desired outcome. Since we organize our fulfillment, we thus split time into various phases.

Both our past and future are based on our desire for pleasure. The desire to receive develops and goes through the following phases: inanimate, vegetative, animate and human. Humans are the only ones who sense time, i.e. they recognize the past, present and future. These phases are different for humans from the viewpoint of their sensation of fulfillment.

We experience different types of time internally. There is time that we keep track of with a clock, but we also have an inner sense of time. We can measure time as expansive as billions of years or as minuscule as fleeting moments. We gauge time according to its significance to us and our involvement in it.

Our perception of time and its essence are two distinct concepts. Our own experience of time is based on our personal experiences, while astronomical time measures the orbital movement of planets, though this too is relative for the time being.

The entire universe is a desire to receive within which we observe processes that take place at inanimate, vegetative, animate and human levels. Therefore, everything in reality is really inside us. Our reality is a product of our perception. If our perception changes, then the concepts of time, motion, space, the universe, and its entire picture that we live in will also change. This leads us to ask questions about our reality and whether we have the power to alter it.
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Medium published my new article “Your Negative Attitude to People Causes Climate Crises More Than Anything Else You Think Does”

As the climate heads into greater extremes globally, how can we best deal with future climate crises?

The short answer is that we cannot deal with them unless we take care of nature’s inner balance.

We live in a tightly-closed and interdependent system in which everything boomerangs back to us. While living in such a system, we need to reconsider what we want and think, and how we treat each other, because our human connections are the primary influence on how nature responds to us.

It is common to think that climate is dependent on factors outside of us — whether it be balances between heat and cold in the environment, or the effects of various kinds of pollution we emit — because we lack a complete picture of how our attitudes to each other bring about the strongest responses from nature toward us.

No creature distorts nature the way that we people do. And it is not simply a matter of switching to renewable energy sources, electric cars and the like; it is a matter of how we relate to each other.

If we truly wish to witness more balance throughout nature and not have to deal with all kinds of cold waves and other natural disasters, then similarly to how we have electricity, water and gas meters in our homes, we should also have meters that count how much evil we emit into the world from our negative attitudes to each other. What I mean is that if we could feel the extent to which we emit negative forces into the world, which negatively ricochet back to us, then we would wish to change this negative driver within us. We would want to switch it to a drive that makes our human connections positive, and which harmonizes us with nature.

In simple terms, when we get up in the morning, we should first and foremost consider what we need to do in order for all people to have it good. Developing such an attitude is not so simple, yet we will need to seriously work on it as we head into the future. A life of increasing blows from nature or a life of peace and harmony depends on the extent to which we impact a shift in our attitudes to each other — from negative to positive.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Holocaust Remembrance Day: Reflections on New Antisemitism”

Holocaust Remembrance Day is a time to reflect on the past, and how modern-day circumstances prove that the ominous specter of antisemitism didn’t simply die with World War II.

Indeed, Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, recently stated that social media had given antisemites propaganda power “that the Nazis could only dream of.” Mr. Goldberg also shared his fears of a “bleak” future without survivors to tell their stories.

In my book, New Antisemitism Mutation of a Long-Lived Hatred, I emphasized the fact that antisemitism is alive and kicking and should serve as a wake-up call to Jews all over the world. Like Mr. Goldberg, many in the Jewish community have grave concerns for the future.

For example, Steven Spielberg, who established the USC Shoah Foundation to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, has expressed deep concern that genocide is as possible today as during the Nazi era. “When collective hate organizes and gets industrialized, then genocide follows. We have to take it more seriously today than I think we have had to take it in a generation.”

Within three months of Hitler’s coming to power in Germany in 1933, a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses and professionals was ordered. The Nazis’ official explanation for the boycotts was that they were implemented as a counter-reaction to the demands of Jewish organizations in the US and Britain that were boycotting German-made products due to the Nazis’ rise to power. This action legitimized anti-Jewish activity and gave it official support which had not existed until that time, and it marked the commencement of the war against the Jews, with the penetration of the German consciousness with antisemitic ideology.

The Nazi boycotts were accompanied by harassment and vandalism of Jewish businesses, people, and institutions. The boycotts were followed by a widening cyclone of actions that led to the deaths of six million of our brethren. For this reason, it is understandable that when Jews hear the word “boycott,” it still triggers a brutal reminder of the beginnings of the Holocaust.

There are differences between the 1930s and today, the major one being the existence of the State of Israel. The position of Israel today in relation to worldwide Jewry is similar to that of the Jews of Germany in the 1930s: it stands at the frontline and bears the brunt of a new war against the Jews. Antisemitism has been repackaged under the guise of anti-Zionism.

Israel is an intrinsic part of the collective Jewish identity and is perceived as such by the nations of the world. So, when judgment is passed and punishment is imposed on Israel, it falls on the entire Jewish collective and not only an individual part. The increasing pressure against Jews and the State of Israel is a wake-up call for Jews to come together and ask essential questions: Who are we as a people? Where do we come from? Where are we headed?

The Jewish people are a unique example in humanity. The fact that our ancestors originally came from a wide variety of backgrounds, united above their differences, and became one nation, united “as one man with one heart,” makes us unique. But this uniqueness does not mean we are to look down on others; it means we are to serve others by using our ancestral wisdom to benefit humanity. Giving the world an example of unity under the motto, “love your neighbor as yourself,” is what the nations subliminally demand from us. They instinctively feel Jews hold the keys to peace and prosperity in the world, and their complaint for our not sharing these keys manifests as antisemitism.

It is incumbent upon each and every Jew to unite above our differences yet again. The only thing that will put an end to the new war against Jews is our making the entire Jewish people as one. As the great Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag wrote about the pivotal role of the Jewish nation and what is expected from us to fulfill:

“[The Creator said] ‘You shall be My Segula [remedy/virtue] from among all peoples.’ This means that you will be My remedy, and sparks of purification and cleansing of the body shall pass through you onto all the peoples and the nations of the world. The nations of the world are not yet ready for it, and I need at least one nation to start with now, so it will be as a remedy for all the nations.” The Writings of Baal HaSulam, The Arvut [Mutual Guarantee]

Over time, Jews have abandoned the unique connection we once cultivated and have become self-centered. However, the pressure of globalization is forcing us toward interdependence once again as humanity seeks a way to live together peacefully but cannot find one. Until Jews relearn how to create unity between us as before, the world will lack access to the knowledge of how to accomplish this necessity for integration and will continue to blame us for its woes. It is mounting pressure upon us until we finally change our course of action toward cohesion rather than division.

The need for cohesion is as crucial today as it was in those days. Jews must embark on a shared path to become a unified and thriving people once again with a desire for a common spirit and vision. We must set aside our materialistic impulses and our fears for the sake of this and future generations.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Why Deny the Holocaust When We Can Simply Forget about It?”

January 27 is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In recent years, there has been a sharp resurgence of antisemitism, which seems to be accelerating. The Jewish Agency’s Fighting Antisemitism page states, “With violent instances of antisemitism on the rise across the world, we are devoting more resources than ever to expunge this epidemic and ensure Jewish safety.” However, the efforts are not working. A report that the Jewish Agency recently released has found that antisemitic incidents on U.S. campuses have gone up by almost 50 percent during 2022, compared to a year earlier.

Even worse, as time passes, people forget about the Holocaust, or come to think that it was far less horrific than it actually was. This fork-movement of forgetting what had happened, on the one hand, and the spreading of antisemitism around the world, on the other hand, has reached levels that remind many Holocaust researchers of the venomous atmosphere that prevailed in Europe before the Holocaust, and which eventually allowed it to happen, if not accelerated and exacerbated it. I believe we have every right to be worried that what occurred might recur.

However, I also believe that we should acknowledge that our efforts are futile, and unless we overhaul them, matters will continue to deteriorate at an accelerating speed. But in order to change course, we need to know in which direction to turn, and for this to happen, we need to understand the roots of antisemitism.

Antisemitism has a very deep root. In fact, it is embedded in the laws of nature; it is one of its foundations. Allow me to explain.

The people of Israel are not like any other people, as much as they would like to be. The whole world treats us differently, and there is nothing we can do about it because the reason for the world’s attitude toward us is buried deep within us, deeper than we can see.

Two forces drive the universe, drive all of existence, all of creation. They are contradictory forces that always operate one against the other. The only way to reconcile them is to be aware of them and make a conscious effort to harness both of them for a higher cause.

On the inanimate level, these forces manifest as darkness and light, spring and fall, or as magnetic forces that pull or push away. On the animate level, they manifest as life and death, and love and hate. On the human level, they manifest as altruism and egoism, giving and taking, kindness and cruelty.

Because they are contradictory, the two forces are locked in an eternal struggle. However, they are of equal power, and therefore neither ever “wins.” Instead, they “take turns” dominating, and as a result, our universe evolves and changes ceaselessly.

Humans are the one exception. In every human being, the inherent tendency toward egoism wins. If we examine the history of humankind, we will see that the motivation behind all the changes that have ever happened was the glorification of its perpetrators or other self-centered drives.

The only people who have ever managed to rise above the innate selfish tendency in human nature and balance it with kindness, as it is in the rest of nature, were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who united “as one man with one heart” and were declared a nation—the Israeli nation—at the foot of Mt. Sinai. However, the Israeli nation achieved what it achieved not for its own sake. It did this so as to become a model nation, a proof of concept, or if you will, a startup nation.

Yet, like most startup companies, Israel’s idea was great, but its product never reached the market. The Israelites operated it for a while but eventually, even they abandoned their own invention and joined the rest of the self-centered world.

Nevertheless, the seeds of love of others, of the commitment to build a society based on mutual responsibility and loving others as ourselves, remained buried deep within every Jewish person, even though they do rarely feel it, if ever. Yet, every Jew carries a hidden spark of love of others, which puts us at odds with everyone who wants to remain self-centered, which is all of humanity, including the Jews themselves. This is why everyone hates Jews, and Jews hate Jews more than anyone.

But for all the hatred and attempts to annihilate the Jews, it will never succeed. Since it is impossible to annihilate a force of nature, it is impossible to eradicate its expressions. Moreover, the more self-centeredness prevails around the world, the more the world deteriorates, and the closer we are getting to another world war. The only way to escape another global cataclysm and another round of punishment against the Jews is if the Jews become what they are supposed to be—a model nation based on mutual responsibility and love of others.

There is no point protesting against antisemites; it will not deter them or diminish their numbers. The only solution to the oldest hatred is to stop looking outward, and start looking at one another. We need to put our heads and hearts together in search of ways to unite and nurture mutual concern despite the deep division and profound hatred among the various factions of the nation. If we do this, if we only try, it will dissipate the hatred of the world toward us and will usher in a new era in the history of the relationship between the Jewish people and the world.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Will Prevent a Civil War”
The tumultuous protests against the planned reforms to Israel’s judicial system seem to be tearing Israeli society apart. Prominent newspapers around the world have not only reported the plan to reform Israel’s justice system, but have actually taken sides. Thomas Friedman of The New York Times urged President Biden to take action against an Israeli government that is “hostile to American values.” At the same time, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled “Who’s Threatening Israeli Democracy?” and argued that it is actually Israel’s supreme court that poses the greatest risk to Israel’s democracy.

Indeed, I think there is truly an ideological war here. There are many entities involved, each with its own interest and benefits it wants to procure, but the result might be the division of the country. I think that we are truly in a precarious situation.

I do not think there is any nation more divided than the Jewish nation. When we consider what the struggle is about, the picture becomes even more confusing, since the parties are fighting over ideologies that have nothing to do with the tradition of the Jewish people. Different factions of the nation have adopted different ideologies from other nations, and now they are fighting for them as if they have been their core values since the inception of our nation. It is as if we have taken up ideological wars that were fought in the 19th and 20th centuries, and we are continuing the fight in the 21st century although neither ideology authentically belongs to the Jewish people.

And what is even worse, we are fighting for those ideologies against people from our own nation. In doing so, we are not only deepening the divide within the nation, but we are destroying the one ideology that is authentically ours: love of others above all the differences.

There is a good reason that we tend to adopt social ideologies from around the world. As a nation that has taken upon itself to do Tikkun Olam [correction of the world], it is inherently Jewish to take up all the ills of the world and cover them with a blanket of love for others. This is why we came up with such notions that we must love our neighbor as ourselves, build a society based on mutual responsibility, and unite with one another “as one man with one heart.”

However, if we are unaware of our task, then we still “catch” ideas from around the world, but we do not cover them with love, we do not correct them. As a result, we fight over these ideologies, hate each other for them, but nothing good comes out of it. If this modus operandi continues, the Jewish state, which was established to correct the world, will fall to pieces.

The Jewish people are no stranger to civil wars. In antiquity, we had had several of them, and the worst of which sent us into an exile that had lasted nearly two millennia. When Jews believe in something, they will fight to the death for it, very literally. They do not care who they have to face to make their view prevail, and do not think about the cost. The fact that they might lose the country altogether is no cause for them to stop. At such moments, it is either my way, or no way at all.

The problem here is not so much the destruction of the Jewish state, as it is the postponement of the correction of the world. Without understanding that we must set an example of rising above differences and forging love despite any disagreement, the whole world will not be able to advance toward it.

The hidden reason behind today’s growing antagonism toward the Jewish state has nothing to do with the stated cause of ostensible infringement of Palestinian human rights. The real reason is that the Jews are not doing what they are supposed to do. If they do not serve as an example of unity above hatred, of bridging differences with love, the world has no need for them, and certainly not for a Jewish state.

Even though this anger is unconscious, it is the driving force behind the growing hatred of Jews around the world. The ephemeral pretexts are just that, pretexts, but the reason for hating us is that we hate each other and cannot overcome it. Therefore, the only thing that can prevent a civil war is that we understand what Jews are meant to do, and resolutely follow our vocation.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Living in a World of Gray People”

A student told me about a forty-four-year-old woman who had decided when she was younger never to have children. But now that she is older, she wonders if she made the right choice because even though she has friends and relatives, it is not the same as having her own children, so she is afraid of growing old alone.

She is not the only one, the student told me. Today, many young people do not want to have children, either because they do not want to raise them in such a terrible world, or because they feel that there are too many people in the world already, and the planet cannot support all of us.

I cannot say that these stories surprise me. When people suffer, when they see that life is tough and they are only trying to survive, it is only natural for them not to want their children to experience it. As a result, many decide not to have children.

At the same time, the phenomenon of childlessness is much rarer in third-world countries than it is in Western countries, where the standard of living is much higher. This makes no sense unless we take into consideration that the quality of life is measured not only by one’s ability to provide for one’s physical existence, but also, if not mainly by one’s sense of happiness in one’s social environment.

When people have secured their physical existence but cannot find emotional satisfaction, their lives become gray, colorless. Especially in Europe, where people have everything, they also have coldness in their hearts and grayness in their lives. Nothing is more depressing than a colorless world, especially for children, so people do not want to bring them into such a world.

When my student asked what I thought would happen to those children who are born into today’s gray world, all I could tell him was what the wisdom of Kabbalah says, as I had seen it written in the writings of Baal HaSulam and as my teacher, RABASH, the firstborn son and successor of Baal HaSulam, had told me. They say that unless we change the society we live in, humanity will plunge into another era of world wars. They predict a third, and even a fourth world war, but this time nuclear ones.

Since the end of World War II, we have had a relatively quiet period, without global conflicts. It was a time when we could harness the lessons from the two world wars we had experienced in the first half of the 20th century, but we didn’t. We kept on arguing and fighting “cold” wars and proxy wars, until the window of opportunity had closed on us, and now we are approaching the realization of the warnings of Baal HaSulam and his son, RABASH.

For all the knowledge humanity has gained, for all its power, technological, military, and industrial achievements, and for all our knowledge of history, we cannot seem to change the course of the world toward anything enlightened, toward a good future. The one thing humanity has not learned throughout time is how to make our lives safer and calmer by simply caring for each other.

Instead of using our knowledge to improve our lives, we are playing with it like toddlers holding a loaded gun. This cannot end well.

If we want to add brighter colors to our world, we have to add another field of knowledge to our learning: how to care without wanting to dominate. These brighter colors lie with the people around us: They are the new perspectives that they bring, the new ideas and attitudes that enrich human society. If we embrace these myriad colors that surround us, the differences between us will not threaten us but strengthen us.

If we want to add some blue-sky colors to our lives, we need to find new horizons, horizons that exist in the dreams of others. If we learn to care about them, they will become our dreams, as well. If we want to add some green-grass colors to our lives, we must learn to be happy when our neighbor’s lawn is greener than it was. Not that it is greener than ours, but simply that it is greener than it was, and that our neighbor feels happy and content.

If we do this, then we will add the color I like the most: orange, the color of the sun. We already know all that we need to know in order to live in a sunny world. Now all we need is to learn how to care.
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