Future Of Work Article Trending On REDDIT
Posted on April 8th, 2018
REDDIT published my new article “The Future of Jobs: Working on Being Human:“
REDDIT published my new article “The Future of Jobs: Working on Being Human:“
The Times of Israel published my new article “Israel’s True Strength and Gift to the World Is Unity”
The tension on the Israel-Gaza border that materialized as 2018’s Passover set in is a clear reminder that Israel’s enemies haven’t changed their plans. This goes for both its direct neighboring enemies as well as its enemies around the world, which quickly jumped on the opportunity to once again permeate the media with their criticism of Israel as “inhumane” and “oppressive.” We can expect more hostility to organize against Israel if the people of Israel continue to resist unification.
The State of Israel is a reflection of its residing Jewish people. The problem is that currently, there is no State of Israel in the sense of a unified Jewish people (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]). There is but a cluster of separate groups. Wars and tensions with neighboring countries momentarily unite Israel’s inhabitants against a common external enemy, but as soon as a period of peace sets in, Israel’s factions enter into constant struggle with each other: left vs. right, religious vs. secular, Ashkenazi vs. Sephardi, to name a few.
Jewish Values Are about Love and Connection
In order to construct an authentic State of Israel, we first need to reinstate the values that originally united us as a Jewish people. These are values initially established by Abraham and his group 3,800 years ago, which is why he is considered as the father of the nation. He set the foundation of unity and connection, in which “love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) and “love covers all crimes” (Proverbs 10:12) were the leading principles for its adherents to live by, harmoniously under a single tent, in one connection.
We do not need to achieve this elated state of love and connection right away. If we can simply accept the willingness to start heading in a transformational direction, we can then start organizing as a genuine Jewish society.
When Abraham united his group in ancient Babylon, they were not a genetically-based group, but people who gathered around a certain idea, who felt that love for one’s fellow person was the leading value worth dedicating their lives to. If one’s intention is to reach unity and connection with other people, one can follow that path Abraham paved and enter the tent of peace and harmony.
The Time Has Come for Israel to Show Its True Colors
If we thus gather under a common flag that unites us toward a common goal of love and connection, we can then become ready to deal with all our current and future problems, and engage in a mutual construction of building not only a genuine Jewish people, but also a well-established State.
The State of Israel will be one based on laws that serve to strengthen the bonds of love among its inhabitants, laws of connection spanning across people, groups, factions, ages and genders, which aim to unite everyone, without exception, into a single cooperative society. The Jewish state is one that concerns itself with unity above everything else, while also allowing for the fullest expression of each individual’s uniqueness.
A Nation Bonded With the Higher Power of Love and Connection
By engaging in this mutual venture to build a new, positive society based on love and connection, will we be able to make giant strides toward realizing our destiny that our forefathers dreamed of, to become the State of Israel in the maximal essence of the word: “Israel” from the words “Yashar Kel” (“straight to God”), a nation bonded with the higher power of love and connection. By realizing such a vision, we will serve as a model for a perfect society of happy and successful individuals who share life’s most important values of love and connection. As a result, the world will absorb the atmosphere that we will spread, and the criticism of Israel will disappear.
Those who currently protest against, boycott, slander and plain hate Israel will be the first to feel Israel’s positive transformation. They are the constant reminder that emphasizes the division of the people of Israel. Hatred of Israel and the Jewish people only points out the lack of love among the Jewish people themselves.
The majority of nations were favorable toward the establishment of the State of Israel mid-last century. It represented an opportunity for a new society of love and unity to emerge. However, the opportunity given to the Jewish people in the State of Israel over the last 70 years to build such a society is quickly reaching its expiry date. As a result, the world’s outlook on Israel and the Jewish people has taken a negative course. When we fail to progress in our mission, the world discredits us. Gradually, we get taken down from the stage, dissolving like any world power that has ruled in certain historical periods. However, since other people’s happiness and well-being depend on Israel carrying out its role, then unlike the other nations that rose and fell, whether it be Germany, Russia, Ancient Greece and Rome, Israel will be obligated to carry it out and unite.
On a Mission to Unite the World
Those brief moments when the world pressures us and we come together are examples of how we should treat each other every day. However, there is no long-lasting unifying power in such connection since it is based on external causes. In order to create a unified society out of a positive, we need to create an incentive to connect us to a lofty goal. Even if we remain a handful of Jews on earth who will be forced to do so, the world will not give up. Our mission is to unite and by doing so, allow the spreading of that heightened unified consciousness to spread to humanity as a whole. If we work on our connection, then we can attract the positive, unifying force dwelling in nature to enter our connections, thereby allowing this force to spread, setting up a new basis for a society of giving, connection and love.
Previous Generations Gave Up Because They Lacked the Means
That is also the society that the founding fathers of Zionism dreamed of, including David Ben-Gurion. However, they gave up at a certain point, because they did not have the means by which to realize their vision of a positively connected society. However, today these means are available and becoming all the more needed in order to rise above the intensifying social division and realize a whole new positive, harmonious direction society can take.
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Jewish Boston published my new article “Passover: A Story of Hebrews Who Wanted to Be Egyptians:“
To most of us, the story of our exodus from Egypt is nothing but a tale. It is a fascinating story, no doubt, but is it relevant to our time? When placed against the dishes served before us on the table, it is an unfair match toward the Haggadah. However, if we knew what Passover really means to all of us, we would be “drinking up” the narrative instead of waiting for it to make way for the main event: the food.
Underneath a tale about the struggle of a nation to be free lies a description of a process that we as Jews went through, and which we are going through again today. It is with good reason that the Torah commands us to see ourselves each day as though we had just come out of Egypt. The ordeals of our ancestors should be both warning signs and traffic signs, directing us which way to go in a world fraught with uncertainty and trepidation.
Israel’s Heydays in Egypt
When Joseph’s brothers went into Egypt, they had it all. Joseph the Hebrew was the de facto ruler of Egypt. With Pharaoh’s blessing, he determined everything that happened in Egypt, as Pharaoh said to Joseph: “You shall be over my house, and according to your command all my people shall do homage. …See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt. …I am Pharaoh, yet without your permission no one shall raise his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt” (Gen 41:40-44).
Thanks to Joseph’s wisdom, Egypt not only became a superpower, but also enslaved its neighboring nations and took their people’s money, land, and flocks (Gen 47:14-19). And the prime beneficiaries from Egypt’s success were Joseph’s family, the Hebrews. Pharaoh said to Joseph: “The land of Egypt is at your disposal; settle your father and your brothers in the best of the land, let them live in the land of Goshen [the richest, most lush part of Egypt], and if you know any capable men among them, put them in charge of my livestock” (Gen 47:6).
There is a good reason why Joseph became so successful. Three generations earlier, his great-grandfather, Abraham, found a method for healing all of life’s problems. Midrash Rabbah tells us that when Abraham saw his townspeople in Ur of the Chaldeans fighting one another, it deeply troubled him. After much reflection, he realized that they were growing increasingly egoistic and could no longer get along. The hatred between them was causing them to quarrel and fight, sometimes to the death. Abraham realized that the ego could not be obliterated, but could be covered with love by focusing on connection rather than separation. This is why Abraham is regarded as the symbol of kindness, hospitality, and mercy.
Although Nimrod, king of Babylon, expelled Abraham from Babylon, Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Chapter 1) and many other books describe how he wandered toward the land of Israel and gathered tens of thousands of followers who understood that unity above hatred is the key to a successful life. By the time he had arrived in the land of Israel, he was a wealthy and prosperous man, or as the Torah describes him, “And Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold” (Gen 13:2).
Abraham passed his knowledge on to all of his disciples and descendants. According to Maimonides, “Abraham planted this tenet [of unity above hatred] in their hearts, composed books about it, and taught his son, Isaac. Isaac sat and taught Jacob, and appointed him a teacher, to sit and teach… and Jacob our Father taught all his sons” (Mishneh Torah, Chapter 1). Joseph, from the Hebrew word osef (assembling/gathering), was Jacob’s prime disciple and strove to implement his father’s teaching. In Egypt, Joseph’s dream of uniting all the brothers under him came true, and everyone benefitted from this. This was the heyday of the Hebrews’ stay in Egypt.
How the Tables Turned Against Us
Everything changed when Joseph died. As it happens every time throughout our history, when Jews are successful, their egos overcome them and they wish to abandon the way of unity and become like the locals. This abandonment is always the beginning of a turn for the worse, until finally a tragedy or an ordeal forces us to reunite. Egypt was no exception. Midrash Rabbah (Exodus, 1:8) writes that “When Joseph died they said, ‘Let us be as the Egyptians.’ Because they did so, the Creator turned the love that the Egyptians held for them into hatred, as it was said (Ps 105), ‘He turned their heart to hate His people, to abuse His servants.’”
The Book of Consciousness (Chapter 22) writes even more explicitly that had the Hebrews not abandoned their way of unity, they would not have suffered. The book begins by quoting the Midrash I just mentioned, but then it adds, “Pharaoh looked at the children of Israel after Joseph and did not recognize Joseph in them,” meaning the quality of assembling, the tendency to unite.
And because “New faces were made, Pharaoh declared new decrees upon them. You see, my son,” the book concludes, “all the dangers and all the miracles and tragedies are all from you, because of you, and on account of you.” In other words, the good Pharaoh turned against us because we had abandoned Joseph’s way, the way of unity above hatred.
When Moses came along, he knew that the only way that he could save his people was to pull them out of Egypt, out of the egoism that was destroying their relations. The name Moshe (Moses), says the book Torat Moshe (Exodus, 2:10), comes from the Hebrew word moshech (pulling) because he pulled the people out of the evil inclination.
Yet, even when he pulled them out, they were still in danger of falling back into egoism. They received their “signet” as a nation only when they reenacted Abraham’s method of uniting above hatred. Once they pledged to unite “as one man with one heart,” they were declared a “nation.” At the foot of Mt. Sinai, from the word sinaa (hatred), the Hebrews united and thereby covered their hatred with love. This is when they became a Jewish nation, as the book Yaarot Devash (Part 2, Drush no. 2) writes, Yehudi (Jewish) comes from the word yechudi (united).
The Pharaoh and Moses Within Us
It has been many centuries since this epic story unfolded, yet it seems that we have learned very little. Look at our current values, we are just as corrupt as the Hebrews were after Joseph’s death. By “corrupt,” I am not saying that we must avoid life’s amenities. Neither Abraham nor Joseph was abstinent in any way. By corrupt, I mean that we are shamelessly selfish, narcissistic, and promote these values wherever we go. We are arrogant, self-entitled, and have completely lost our Jewishness, meaning our tendency to unite. In consequence, just as the Egyptians turned against the Hebrews when they abandoned Joseph’s way, the world is turning against us today.
Pharaoh and Moses are not historical figures; they live within us and determine our relationships on a moment-to-moment basis. Every time we let hatred govern our relationships, we re-crown the Pharaoh within us. And every time we make an effort to unite, we revive Moses and the oath to strive to be “as one man with one heart.” Andrés Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, described our situation beautifully in a speech he gave last year: “In the last few years, we saw an unprecedented polarization and ugliness in the Jewish community. Those who think differently are considered enemies or traitors, and those who disagree with us are demonized.” This is precisely the rule of Pharaoh.
Being Jewish does not necessarily entail observing specific customs or living in a specific country. Being Jewish entails placing unity above all else. However fierce our hatred, we must rise above it and unite.
Even The Book of Zohar writes explicitly about the paramount importance of unity above hatred. In the portion Aharei Mot, The Zohar writes, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to also sit together. These are the friends as they sit together, and are not separated from each other. At first, they seem like people at war, wishing to kill one another. Then they return to being in brotherly love. …And you, the friends who are here, as you were in fondness and love before, henceforth you will also not part … And by your merit there will be peace in the world.”
Learning From the Past
Versions of the story of Egypt have occurred throughout our history. The Greeks conquered the land of Israel because we wanted to be like them, to worship the ego. We even did the fighting for them as Hellenized Jews fought against the Maccabees. Less than two centuries later, the Temple was ruined because of our unfounded hatred for each other. We were deported and murdered in Spain when we wanted to be Spaniards and abandoned our unity, and we were exterminated in Europe by the country where Jews wanted to forget about our unity and assimilate. In 1929, Dr. Kurt Fleischer, leader of the Liberals in the Berlin Jewish Community Assembly, accurately expressed our centuries’ long problem: “Anti-Semitism is the scourge that God has sent us in order to lead us together and weld us together.” What a tragedy it is that the Jews back then did not unite.
As though we are incapable of learning, today we are placing ourselves in the exact same position we always do. We have become slaves to our self-entitlement and arrogance, and we do not want to be Jewish, meaning united. We are letting Pharaoh rule all over again. What good can we expect to come out of this? We must not be blind again; we should know better by now.
In each of us there is a Moses, a point that moshech (pulls) toward unity. Yet, we must crown it willingly. We must choose to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the ego and unite above our hatred. This may seem like an impassable mountain to climb, but we are not expected to succeed, only to agree and make an effort. Just as the Hebrews were declared a nation and were liberated from Egypt when they agreed to unite, we also need only agree to unite, and the rest will follow. We will find within us the power and ability to unite.
In this Passover, we really must pass over from unfounded hatred, the blight of our people, and restore our brotherhood. Let’s make this Passover one of rapprochement, reconciliation, and accord. Let’s turn this holiday into a fresh start for our nation. Let’s put some seder (order) in the relations between us and be what we are meant to be, “a light unto nations,” spreading the glitter of unity throughout the world and to our brethren. If we only try, I know that we will have a happy Passover, a Passover of love, unity, and brotherhood.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “The Passover From Materialism To Unity:”
Passover is an opportunity to pass over from a state of divisiveness, disregard and coldness in modern society, to one of unity, care and warmth.
Although the Jewish year formally begins on Rosh Hashanah, there is a more expansive view of the Jewish holidays that shows Passover as the start of the Jewish year. To see it from this perspective, we need to understand the deeper meaning of Passover.
Passover describes an inner process where a period of intensifying division leads to a decision to unite, followed by the discovery of a more unified state. Also, Passover points out what makes the Jewish people unique.
What Makes the Jewish People Unique?
Unlike other nations and races, the Jewish people did not emerge organically from familial offspring or terrestrial closeness. The Jews were originally a gathering of people who became known as “the Jews” when they dedicated themselves to uniting “as one man with one heart,” and accepted the responsibility of being “a light unto nations” (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]).
The holiday of Passover explains this transition.
It starts at a time when the people of Israel lived exceptionally well in Egypt. In terms of commonly accepted social values, they had it all: comfort, wealth and success, or as it is written in the Torah, “in Egypt … we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted” (Exodus, 16:3). However, even with all their material abundance, they felt that something was missing.
At this point, let’s zoom out to see the process this describes: Human nature, which is a desire to receive pleasure, constantly urges us to fulfill ourselves. The more we fulfill ourselves, the more we feel empty, and the more we feel a need to seek higher and greater fulfillments time after time. Thus, our desire to enjoy grows, and we evolve through various stages of the desire’s growth. After we satisfy our basic needs for food, sex, shelter and family, our desire grows, and we develop social desires—money, respect, control and knowledge—which we continually try to satisfy.
Then, we encounter a problem.
Like a dog chasing its tail, we chase after all those pleasures, but we keep finding ourselves wanting something more or different than them, without being able to point out what we really want. The Passover story describes this new desire: that when our material desires are quenched, a new desire for positive social connection emerges. This desire is called “Moses.”
Moses had been around the whole time the people of Israel were thriving in Egypt. He grew up in the house of Pharaoh until he himself exhausted the material pursuit of happiness. That is when the Egyptian exile began. Pharaoh, i.e. our ego, refuses to accept unity. It cannot think of anything worse than the idea of living life with a goal to “love your friend as yourself.”
So as the people of Israel prospered in Egypt, they naturally started wanting more than what they had, and the idea of social unification—Moses—started forming among them. Then came the struggle between Moses and Pharaoh. On one hand, Moses pointed the way to unity and love for one another, while Pharaoh insisted that he rule, i.e. that they would continue living and working only for egoistic, material fulfillments. When Pharaoh saw the people of Israel accepting Moses, he became the savage king the Passover story describes.
Through a long process, the people of Israel ultimately stood by Moses, demanded their unity, and triumphed. They united at the foot of Mount Sinai and accepted the law of “love your friend as yourself.” They then proceeded to purify themselves of hametz (leaven), i.e. their ego, and made the transition (i.e. the Passover) from egocentrism to unification, realizing Moses’ idea and guidance.
Passover Today
Since Passover describes a process of overcoming egoism with unity, it is just as relevant today as it ever was. Today’s materialistic culture looks increasingly like the Egypt described in the Passover story: we enjoyed the delights of materialism for quite a while, but more and more people are increasingly feeling that their lives are missing something.
We see this expressed among individuals with increases in depression, stress and loneliness, and in society with intensifying politically-fueled social division, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. All these phenomena show us that we can have all the material abundance we want, but it still won’t fulfill us, and what we really need in order to fulfill our new, bigger desire is unity, positive social connection.
Unlike our material fulfillments, we cannot picture what uniting above our divisions would be like. We see no example of unity that we can fill our media and educational systems with, and so we keep regurgitating and reinventing materialistic ideas, stories and products since we do not see nor know anything else.
As society continually engages in this materialistic pleasure-chasing loop without any other goal in sight, and as problems increasingly burst out from this setup, the more society points the finger of blame at the Jews. Anti-Semitic sentiment thus rises because the Jewish people, in their ancestry, possess the template for realizing the new desire for connection. If the Jewish people fail to aim and work toward unification in a time when not only the Jews, but the world at large, needs unity, then the world subconsciously starts feeling the Jewish people as the cause of their problems.
Our forefathers underwent the process of uniting, saving themselves from ruin in the process. Today, as the finger of blame is on us for all kinds of reasons, it’s up to us to identify the root reason for all that blame—that out of all people, we have been given the keys to unite above all differences, and this is what the world really needs from us. It’s as if the world pays no attention to all the technology, culture and medicine we bring to the world. However, if we do as our forefathers did, then we’ll realize what we were put here to do, and we’ll see how the world’s attitude to the Jews will change to one of respect and appreciation.
I hope that we will start paying attention to the root causes and tendencies behind the world’s problems, and that this Passover, we will make a step toward their ultimate solution—unity.
Happy Passover!
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The largest portal Newsmax published my new article “Hawking Was All About Benevolent, Honest Science”
The death of world renowned astrophysicist, Stephen Hawking, can be seen as another nail in the coffin of genuine science. Hawking’s honest approach to science was exemplified by his readiness to admit his mistakes. In his 70s, he admitted that a belief he formulated early in his scientific career was incorrect. This form of scientific inquiry, however, has become a rarity in today’s scientific world.
Since around the 1960s, we have witnessed the gradual corruption and downfall of science.
The widespread acclaim for science deteriorated, and became replaced with business, Hollywood, and sports. More significantly, science itself became infused with goals other than understanding the nature of reality. It became increasingly exploited as a means to inflate people’s wealth, power, and respect.
Together with the decline in the appreciation of genuine science came scientists’ needs to serve their funders’ interests. It is now commonplace for governments to use scientists for advancing their political agendas, and for corporations to use scientists for increasing their profits.
One of the obvious results is that “scientific progress” and “technological progress” became confused as being one and the same, since scientific research and development is so prominently put to use in developing today’s technologies.
Profit-Driven Initiatives Do Not Benefit Humanity
It has thus become difficult to be a genuine scientist, one who aims to discover the underlying order of nature, and much easier to be a scientist who contributes to profitable high-tech ventures. The overshadowing of truth-seeking science with technology-developing science gained public support as it became a commonly-held belief that new technologies emerge to benefit humanity.
Statements such as “renewable energy is better for the environment” and “social media connects people” have become modern-day axioms in public discourse, creating a perception where each new gadget comes to solve people’s problems and make the world a better place.
However, a deeper look into this phenomenon shows the contrary. For example, electric cars like the Tesla, popularly branded as “good for the environment,” have been found to cause more pollution than 8-year old carbon-emitting cars; and social media, despite connecting people technologically, has been found to have dangerous sociological and negative psychological effects.
Therefore, lurking beneath the façade that technology will eventually solve most of our problems and make our lives better, are discoveries showing how these new “solutions” are actually detrimental to our well-being, because they fail to fix our problems at their source.
The reason for this is simple: we cannot expect real, long-lasting solutions to our problems if the solutions offered emerge from self-centered profit motives. In other words, everything we create comes from a destructive calculation, because our self-interests are more important to us than the benefit of all people. Stephen Hawking himself once gave the example of how computer viruses reflect the destructive quality of human nature, stating that “the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive.”
The Knowledge Science Still Needs to Extract From Nature
With science and technology resulting from our self-centered perception of reality, their capacity to do good to humanity is bound to reach a dead end. However, if we change our perception of reality to one where we wish for the benefit of all over selfish interests, then we will see phenomenal breakthroughs in science and technology: They will function to genuinely solve our problems, and will indeed make the world a better place, since the perception guiding them will become free from exploitative, manipulative and profiteering motives.
Interestingly, over the course of the 20th century alone, science itself did a 180 degree flip on the point that science itself is a result of human perception. It started with the Newtonian view that reality exists regardless of our perception, took a leap through Einstein proving that reality is relative to our perception, and ended with quantum mechanics stating that reality can be created by our perception.
Therefore, science itself has culminated to a pivotal moment in human understanding: If we want to make further progress toward discovering the laws of nature, and use them to everyone’s benefit, we need to change the way we perceive and relate to reality. The underlying motives of egoistic profit and power in this sector need to shift to altruistic motives that genuinely seek society’s benefit.
Hitting Restart on Humanity
To undergo such a fundamental change of human perception, we have to put ourselves into the laboratory as the object of research. That is, we have to actively experiment and find how to upgrade our relations to each other, through educational and social activities in groups. The aim of such social activities and experiments would be to develop an altruistic lens through which we can look at the whole picture of reality.
In my view of the future, researching the structure and behavior of the world through enhanced human connection will provide the major shift that our science needs in order to become truly beneficial for humanity. Ultimately, it would open our eyes to a whole new kind of science, one closer to the inherent balance and harmony that exist in nature.
Read Newsmax Article: Hawking Was All About Benevolent, Honest Science
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The largest portal Newsmax published my new article “Trump’s Business Skills Could Defuse a Nuclear North Korea”
As I have expressed before, Trump is not another politician who comes from the business world. Rather, he is expanding the business world to include politics.
Previous U.S. presidents such as Clinton, Bush, and Obama had played with the idea of meeting with North Korea, but mostly hesitated. Likewise, political commentators will tell you that such a meeting requires months of preparation. But Trump, as usual, surprises everyone by making a quick move and saying he’s ready to meet, and soon.
That being said, let’s not be naïve. A diplomatic relationship between the White House and Pyongyang has surely been taking shape behind the scenes, and the invitation for a meeting didn’t come as a total surprise for the Trump administration.
Until a moment ago, the two leaders looked like bullies in a schoolyard, feeding the media by name-calling each other, and now they are setting a date for a possible peace summit? Once again, Trump proves that his politics shouldn’t be taken at face value, and media pundits are last to correctly interpret his fast moves.
Commentators are looking for the familiar style of diplomacy they have gotten far too used to: a well-mannered, predictable politician who says the right things and tries to be clear to everyone. But Trump is different. He brings to the political arena what he knows best: business.
Trump demonstrates a business-like pragmatism, aiming for the results he believes are good for America, while caring a lot less about what spectators understand when he positions himself to make a deal. Like a dedicated entrepreneur, he relates directly to the results he aims to achieve through his actions.
This also explains why rapid changes make perfect sense in Trump’s White House, albeit being portrayed as a mess by mainstream media. Today’s White House works more like a business, which can change more dynamically to meet its goals. When something or someone becomes inefficient, it can be modified or eliminated in a flexible way, which is counter to the political world that everyone is used to.
New Interdependent Reality Vs. Nuclear Capabilities
From a global perspective, we are marching toward an interdependent reality with every passing day. Whether we notice it or not, interdependence forces us to lay a new basis for international relations. In this context, I see Trump’s politics as helping the world go through a “reset” stage, shaking away pompous ideologies and politically correct habits that tend to inhibit our thinking and distort reality, so as to restart human relations from a pragmatic give-and-take stance.
What motivated Kim Jong Un to offer a meeting to President Trump?
The young North Korean dictator surely realizes that the most he can get from using his nuclear weapons is hurting a few enemies on the way to self-destruction. All the while, his people are hungry for bread as their neighbors from the South are well on their way to becoming a technological superpower.
In other words, beneath and above the surface, Trump’s moves may have helped Kim Jong Un recognize that he can get more from coming to terms with the U.S. than by standing behind his weapons of mass destruction. And if this is what’s happening, Trump’s uncanny politics could be defusing the atomic regime that threatens the world.
Read Newsmax Article: Trump’s Business Skills Could Defuse a Nuclear North Korea
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The largest portal Breaking Israel News published my new article “What Can Israel Do About Its ‘Brain Drain’ Problem”
“More than all that you guard, guard your mind, For it is the source of life.” (Proverbs 4:23)
Israel isn’t losing its best and brightest because of greener pastures or higher standards of living abroad. It is losing because it is turning its back on its true identity. To solve the brain drain, the Israeli heart must be replenished first.
I understand what lies at the heart of scientists, academics and other great minds who are making the decision to leave Israel.
In 1974, I emigrated from Lithuania to Israel and stopped in Vienna for a temporary transit. All the cars were full of Jews who chose to emigrate to the United States, Canada or Western European countries. My family and another Georgian family were the only ones “crazy enough” to immigrate to Israel. As a young ambitious scientist, I could not imagine that forty-four years later, in 2018, I would be witnessing a different kind of Israel.
In today’s Israel, both great and average minds alike can be easily tempted by dubious organizations to abandon their homeland. The reason is simple: the pursuit of material profit. Many times, these offers come from sources with an interest in weakening Israel, and unfortunately, Israel’s leaders are busy trying to divide and conquer whatever’s left of the pie, rather than making the pie bigger together.
What’s worse, a fertile soil has been created here for people in positions of power to join hands in certain directions. There’s no real way to monitor the various ties being forged between government, military, police, courts and the media. Checks and balances are eroding and separation of powers is not always there. The successful players and brilliant minds who stay here are those who make the most profit.
Our Spiritual Potential Is Our Most Valuable Asset
Had I been warned about this situation forty-four years ago, I would have taken my family to the land of unlimited possibilities and urged the Georgian family to come with me, or at the very least retrace my steps.
What keeps me here in Israel? Only the spiritual potential that lies within our people. We carry a spark of unity that comes from our very foundation as a Jewish people, and if we rekindle it here on the land of Israel, we will rediscover our spiritual mission to be “a light unto nations.”
Being a shining example of unity is our vocation as a people and that is why, deep down, all nations are expecting something to come from us. When we fail to provide that example, the nations are driven to apply pressure on us in various ways, urging us to come together. But if we deliver, we can inspire the whole of humanity towards unity.
Israel has to recognize that the “heart drain” is what causes the “brain drain.” In other words, Israelis have lost touch with that spark of unity that ties them together and has no passion to serve as a beacon of unity for the world. They feel motivated to stick together only when they are under the gun; hence, material profit becomes the only calculation they make.
Abraham Planted the Seed of Love for All People
The first thing Israel should do is a massive campaign reviving the little-known birth story of the Jewish people, which took place in Babylon 3,800 years ago. Surely, everyone can point to Abraham the patriarch as the father of Israel, but very few can recount why and how Abraham brought us together.
The book of Noam Elimelech writes that “Abraham planted the seed of love for all people,” and Maimonides explains that “he went from city to city, kingdom to kingdom, until thousands and tens of thousands joined him, and they are the people of the house of Abraham… and they became a nation” (Yad HaChazakah).
So Abraham toured all of Babylon, and the representatives from all nations who followed him and practiced the tenet of “love thy neighbor as thyself” above all differences, later became the people of Israel.
Therefore, global unity is the foundation of our nationhood. To put it another way, the people of Israel were a mini-model of a united humanity. And this is why if we don’t maintain our bond of unity above all differences, there’s no real reason for us to stay together on the same land.
Rediscovering this common bond is the only way for Israel to create a renewed sense of patriotism, and reawaken the passion to contribute to our homeland, to a point that it’s more important for us than material profit offered abroad.
Along with this line, Israel should honor and cherish successful researchers and other brilliant minds who choose to stay in the country and thus strengthen the spirit of unity. This could be done regularly through presidential acknowledgment and broad media coverage of their unique contributions.
When we replenish the Israeli heart, the Israeli brain will work even better.
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The Jerusalem Post published my new article: “How the Purim Story Is Playing Out Right Now”
Purim has one of the most suspenseful stories ever written. From the panic, doubt and fear in the face of utter destruction to the elation, euphoria and high spirits after everything works out for the best, the story and meaning of Purim encompasses one of the greatest ever resolution of opposites.
Any exceptional drama-thriller has its climax, when the tension of a situation that seems impossible to get out of flips into a miraculous solution. Undoubtedly, the peak of the Purim story is when the decision to kill the Jews gets overturned.
Purim’s plot has many places that escalate toward its climax. If we neglect the importance of these places, we will skip its main idea, and remain with nothing more than an impressive narrative. One such place, for instance is when Queen Esther relays to Mordechai: “You want me to go to the king and beg for your lives? Don’t just sit there at the king’s gate; go, gather the Jews!”
Mordechai is the story’s representative of good. The catch of the story is that, as much as Mordechai wants to bring good, he’s powerless to do so by himself. In order to do so, he needs to gather the Jews. By gathering the Jews, Mordechai invalidates the claim of Haman, the story’s representative of bad, which is to eradicate the Jews. “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed,” Haman says to King Ahasuerus, contending that the Jews were failing to uphold the king’s laws, which discredited their existence in the king’s eyes.
At this point, a question arises: Why did Haman connect the Jews’ dispersion to their disobeying the king’s laws? Cunning and intelligent as he was, Haman understood that the law by which the Jewish nation emerged is a law of unity. The Jews became ratified as a nation when they agreed to unite “as one man with one heart.” Their dispersion meant their disunity, which meant that they failed to live up to what established them as a nation to begin with. That is what Haman emphasized to King Ahasuerus.
While dispersed, Queen Esther could be of no service to the Jews because they were breaching the king’s law. When they united, however, they re-established themselves as a nation, exactly as King Ahasuerus commanded, making Haman’s claim fall short.
The significance of this Purim message penetrates sharply into our current era. “Hamanism,” or antisemitism, is rampant today, comparable to how it was in the Purim story’s setting of Shushan. Likewise, we Jews are in the same loop of brushing off the brunt of what a sudden rise in antisemitism worldwide could lead to.
The disastrous events in the middle of last century clearly exemplify what an escalation of Jewish hatred coupled with Jewish denial of that hatred and failure to do anything about it could lead to. Purim, however, provides us with the opposite, happy-ending example: where the Jewish people understand their role and purpose, and take responsibility to realize the king’s law, uniting above their differences and thereby securing their survival and bringing about great joy and happiness.
We Jews hold the keys to both scenarios: the choice to unite, which brings about the elated state Purim symbolizes, or the choice to remain disunited, which has devastating consequences.
What is this unity we need to reach? It does not mean that we need to physically gather in Israel or anywhere else. Uniting means that we mentally and emotionally support each other in seeking that common point of agreement, “as one man with one heart,” to be there for each other above any seeming differences between us. Moreover, uniting also means that by our efforts to find our common unifying point, we will become conduits of unity to the rest of humanity, as is written, to become “a light unto nations.” In other words, our dispersion and disunity spreads dispersion and disunity, and our unification spreads unification. Unity is an unfulfilled expectation that humanity currently has toward the Jews. Neither non-Jews nor Jews can pinpoint nor verbalize this feeling, but it lurks behind all antisemitic sentiment.
“In such a generation, all the destructors among the nations of the world raise their heads and wish primarily to destroy and to kill the people of Israel, as it is written (Yevamot 63), ‘No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.’ This means … that they cause poverty, ruin, robbery, killing, and destruction in the whole world.
“And through our many faults … the judgment struck the very best of us, as our sages said (Baba Kama 60), ‘And it starts with the righteous first.’ And of all the glory Israel had in the countries of Poland and Lithuania, etc., there remains but the relics in our holy land. Now it is upon us, relics, to correct that dreadful wrong. Each of us remainders should take upon himself, heart and soul, to henceforth intensify the internality of the Torah [i.e. focusing on the unifying essence of what the Torah instructs, to ‘love your friend as yourself’], and give it its rightful place, according to its merit over the externality of the Torah [i.e. where unity is not the main goal, but intellectual progress or performing physical actions with no intention to unite].
“And then, each and every one of us will be rewarded with intensifying his own internality, meaning the Israel within us, which is the needs of the soul over our own externality, which is the nations of the world within us, that is, the needs of the body. That force will come to the whole of Israel, until the nations of the world within us recognize and acknowledge the merit of the great sages of Israel…”
– Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” item 71.
The Purim story, in addition to being an epic tale, symbolizes what life can be like when we unite. Also, as it is in the Purim story, so it is today: the Jews hold the key. We were given the law “Love your friend as yourself” before any other nation, and likewise today, we need to implement this law among each other in order for it to be able to spread to humanity as a whole. Until we do, antisemitism will continue rising in order to corner us into making that fateful decision. It is my hope that the antisemitic atmosphere will not have to grow to the likes of what we experienced in the middle of last century in order for us to wake up to our role. We have the wisdom and tools today to realize it much sooner and reach the perfection that Purim stands for even on this very day if we wanted to.
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BlogActiv: “International Women’s Day 2018: Gender Equality from the Perspective of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
In light of International Women’s Day, I was asked to give my take on gender equality from the perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah.
To begin with, the idea of comparing men and women is just as wrong as comparing apples and oranges. Nature designed men and women as different creatures, both biologically and psychologically. Just as our bodies work in very different ways, we also think, feel and perceive the world differently.
Therefore, the attempt to make men and women one and the same is completely unnatural. By trying to judge men and women by the same standards, and equalize them as much as possible, it’s as if we are trying to “fix” nature. And nature doesn’t need any fixing.
Rather than trying to level the differences between men and women, we need to learn how to embrace them. We should aim for harmony – not equality. That is, we have to upgrade our view on gender equality to a more holistic approach, to see how it is precisely our differences that make us capable of complementing each other to create harmony.
The whole of nature works that way – unique and opposite qualities are woven together to create life – plus and minus, contraction and expansion, heat and cold, ebb and flow, male and female. In fact, I believe this is something that women understand a lot better than men, since they are generally more sensitive to nature than men.
On the practical level, I’m not saying that men and women can’t serve in the same roles in society. Examples such as Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel prove that a capable woman can find herself in a position that was typically occupied by a man. However, placing a woman in a certain position just because it makes things look more “equal” is foolish and won’t do any good to society.
For instance, when a steering committee is asked to have an equal amount of men and women for the sake of “equality,” it is a childish perception of equality that aims for political correctness rather than optimal results. A steering committee could have a majority of men or a majority of women, depending on what the committee needs to achieve, and what each person brings to the table – not how we can make a poster of equality.
Western society needs more education about how various systems of nature achieve harmony when differences come together. Then, we will see that what we should strive for in society is mutual complementation, which means highlighting the unique qualities of men and women, and weaving them together to achieve the best of both worlds.
I invite you to take our free Kabbalah course and learn for yourself how to uncover your unique qualities for the benefit of all.
The Times of Israel published my new article “International Women’s Day 2018: Gender Equality From the Perspective of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
In light of International Women’s Day, I was asked to give my take on gender equality from the perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah.
To begin with, the idea of comparing men and women is just as wrong as comparing apples and oranges. Nature designed men and women as different creatures, both biologically and psychologically. Just as our bodies work in very different ways, we also think, feel and perceive the world differently.
Therefore, the attempt to make men and women one and the same is completely unnatural. By trying to judge men and women by the same standards, and equalize them as much as possible, it’s as if we are trying to “fix” nature. And nature doesn’t need any fixing.
Rather than trying to level the differences between men and women, we need to learn how to embrace them. We should aim for harmony – not equality. That is, we have to upgrade our view on gender equality to a more holistic approach, to see how it is precisely our differences that make us capable of complementing each other to create harmony.
The whole of nature works that way – unique and opposite qualities are woven together to create life – plus and minus, contraction and expansion, heat and cold, ebb and flow, male and female. In fact, I believe this is something that women understand a lot better than men, since they are generally more sensitive to nature than men.
On the practical level, I’m not saying that men and women can’t serve in the same roles in society. Examples such as Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel prove that a capable woman can find herself in a position that was typically occupied by a man. However, placing a woman in a certain position just because it makes things look more “equal” is foolish and won’t do any good to society.
For instance, when a steering committee is asked to have an equal amount of men and women for the sake of “equality,” it is a childish perception of equality that aims for political correctness rather than optimal results. A steering committee could have a majority of men or a majority of women, depending on what the committee needs to achieve, and what each person brings to the table – not how we can make a poster of equality.
Western society needs more education about how various systems of nature achieve harmony when differences come together. Then, we will see that what we should strive for in society is mutual complementation, which means highlighting the unique qualities of men and women, and weaving them together to achieve the best of both worlds.
I invite you to take our free Kabbalah course and learn for yourself how to uncover your unique qualities for the benefit of all.
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