Linkedin: “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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The largest portal Newsmax published my new article “Laws Won’t Cure Social Epidemic of Gun Violence“

School shootings in America are nothing less than a social epidemic. The Parlkand, Florida school massacre was only the latest of 18 events in which a gun was drawn on school campus since the start of 2018. This means such an event happened every 60 hours in different places, before it reached Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Let’s first take a look at the trend:

The Columbine massacre was carried out by an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old; Virginia Tech by a 23-year-old. Sandy Hook was executed by a 20-year-old. And now in Florida, another 19 year old. These are only the big names etched into America’s collective memory. Between them there were more than 200 other school shootings, most of which follow the same pattern — a young adult becomes a murderer.

As with any other epidemic, in order to offer a true solution, we have to go beyond the symptoms and treat the root cause. And since this horrific scenario is unique to America, we have to understand what happens to a young American before he decides to pick up a gun and shoot his schoolmates.

The High Price of Raising Children in a Competitive Culture

Firstly, we can’t just settle for calling someone’s behavior “evil,” “senseless,” or “deranged.” Human beings are social creatures and an individual cannot be separated from his culture when we want to understand a behavior that repeats itself.

Today’s America is arguably the most individualistic and competitive society in the world.

In such a social climate of “every man for himself,” carrying a gun becomes an extension of the human ego. It can compensate for fears and insecurities, helping maintain a sense of safety and confidence. Therefore, we have to understand human nature when it comes to normative Americans who got used to feeling that the way to be protected — or equal to others — is to own a gun.

When it comes to school shootings, however, we have to understand the stressors surrounding American youth, their unique insecurities, and their emotional fragility.

Just by being teenagers, they are already under pressure to establish their social status and cope with social anxieties, while their developing minds are making sense of themselves and the world around them.

On top of that, the competitive mentality penetrates the school and manifests in hostile or dangerous ways such as bullying, social exclusion, peer pressure to use alcohol and drugs, or do other extreme acts just to gain notoriety and power. All the while they’re in a system continually judging them with tests and grades.

Many teenagers today are diagnosed as suffering from some strand of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), anxiety, or depression. The various types of mind-altering medications prescribed don’t solve their problem. They only alleviate symptoms, sometimes at the cost of dangerous side-effects such as numbing their emotions and mentally disconnecting them from reality.

In parallel, American kids are being desensitized to obscene levels of violence. By the time they are 18, they watch 200,000 acts of violence, 16,000 of which are murders, and that’s just on television. Couple that with what they see when they go to the movies, wander the net, or the violent video games they play.

So, when you consider the impact of all the above on developing minds, who may also be struggling with difficult life circumstances, is it really unthinkable that every now and then some of them will snap, erupting in horrific violence?

Why Gun Laws Are Not a Solution

When people feel like their life is not worth living, their senseless acts reflect the worst their culture has taught them.

Therefore, even with tougher gun laws standing in the way of young, unstable individuals, we would not be solving the problem at the root. In fact, they could think of even more horrific ways to commit mass murder. And with the Internet at their fingertips, none of us wishes to imagine what that may be.

The way to treat the school gun violence epidemic goes beyond laws and regulations.

America must treat the deep cultural and social conditioning breeding these events by initiating a massive federal educational program to infuse its kids with new examples, norms, and values.

Kids need to grow up in a safe and positive environment, one preventing hostile competition from building up in the first place. They should be regularly trained to cooperate, build trust as well as develop their social sensitivity to each other through workshops, discussion groups, and collaborative projects.

School should feel like a supportive community, rather than a place where you fight for individual success while being anxious about social acceptance.

Nationwide Federal Plan for Social Reform

Our education must now focus on cultivating the human being within these young adults. This means building a value system within the person and a social environment around the person, which balance the human ego and direct it toward positive realization.

They need tools and guidance to better understand themselves and what they’re going through, to realize their potential and find their expression, and to forge meaningful and healthy connections with their peers. This socio-educational training should become the main thing they engage in, and are evaluated by, at school. In fact, their social sensibilities should become the initial qualification required for their participation in adult society.

In parallel, we have to make efforts to restrain the unlimited access to visualizations of violence and gore. This is why this endeavor has to go beyond schools. Mainstream media channels should also be required to dedicate a certain percentage of their activity to this educational program.

Ideally, this should be a nationwide effort from coast to coast. Pragmatically, perhaps it could start with one big city. But at the very least, let’s start by deciding that we’ve had enough, that we’re willing to go beyond the symptoms, and take vital steps towards social reform in order to contain a social epidemic.

Michael Laitman is a global thinker living in Israel. Laitman has a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah and an MS in Medical Bio-Cybernetics. He is a prolific writer who has published over 40 books, which have been translated into dozens of languages. He is a sought-after speaker and has written for or been interviewed by The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, Huffington Post, Corriere della Sera, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, The Globe, RAI TV, and Bloomberg TV, among others. Laitman’s message is simple: Only through unity and connection can we solve all of our problems, be they personal or global, creating a better world for our children. Dr. Laitman teaches live daily lessons to an audience of some two million people worldwide, simultaneously interpreted into English, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, French, Turkish, German, Hungarian, Farsi, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Japanese. Visit www.MichaelLaitman.com for more info. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.

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The largest portal Breaking Israel News published my new article “The Purim Story Actually Explains the Solution for Social Division and Anti-Semitism“

“The city of Shushan was perplexed.” (Esther 3:15)

The well-known verse from the Book of Esther in the Purim story couldn’t be more appropriate to describe today’s atmosphere of intensifying social division and polarization.

Reaching solutions and finding harmony in today’s left vs. right tug-of-war becomes all the more complicated as each side holds sterner to their own position and turns down any opportunity to open up to the other. As society becomes more polarized, Nazi, fascist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic tendencies reawaken, coupled with fears of nuclear weapons and war.

On the bright side, however, states of perplexity and disorientation can motivate us to reevaluate our life’s leading values. The growing left vs. right rift is an outcome of developing according to our base instincts, where we each seek comfort, security and reassurance as part of our closest families and tribes. The uncertainty and anxiety pervading modern society could just be the step we need in order to revise the way we’re going about our lives. Maybe we can use the mounting pressure to prod us into seeking common points of agreement and cooperation, and start rebuilding our lives on a new consensual basis?

The Purim story describes the near-genocide of the Jewish people.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “9 Facts about Purim That Will Let You Tackle the Holiday’s Core Message”

1. The Meaning of Purim

Purim is known as an exhilarating and joyous celebration that erupts in festivities after the salvation of the Jewish people from their near demise.

But what is the main message and meaning of Purim?

It is that even the greatest good, represented by Mordechai, is weak and incompetent when confronted by the greatest evil, represented by Haman, and that evil can only be overcome by unification.

Mordechai’s appeals for King Ahasuerus’ mercy on the Jews to Queen Esther lead to her famous statement that she cannot help them if they are dispersed and disunited. Then, Mordechai goes on a mission to pass on this call for unity to the Jewish people, and when they eventually unite, Esther gets Ahasuerus to take mercy on them.

2. The Meaning of the Purim Costumes

The costumes that people customarily wear to Purim parties signify the concealment of the forces that enact the Purim story within us.

3. The Meaning of King Ahasuerus

King Ahasuerus represents God.

4. The Meaning of Queen Esther

Queen Esther signifies a desire that has been corrected to connect with God. That is the reason why she emerges after King Ahasuerus divorces Queen Vashti for corrupting her ways. Her name, which is “Ester” in Hebrew, stems from the Hebrew word for concealment, “Hastara,” since her identity as a Jew is hidden.

5. The Meaning of the Megillah and the Purim Miracle

The identification of Esther as a Jew remains hidden until she needs to make moves to redeem the Jews from their threat of destruction. Thus, “Megillah,” the Hebrew word for “scroll” or “book,” as in “The Book of Esther” (“Megillat Ester”), comes from “Gilui,” i.e. the Hebrew word for “revelation.” The story in the Book of Esther is thus thought of as a concealed miracle, to signify the miracle of the revelation of God’s power acting via concealment.

6. The Meaning of Mordechai and Haman

Mordechai signifies the attribute of mercy: selflessness, compassion, generosity, altruism and plain goodness. This is notably expressed in a key moment of the Purim story, when Mordechai warns King Ahasuerus, through Esther, about a plot to assassinate the king. Mordechai neither gains nor requests any compensation nor honor for his efforts.

Since Mordechai is purely benevolent, he has no will to rule or control. Although the people would be better off and happier under Mordechai, he doesn’t have the same drive as the power-hungry, evil Haman.

In order to motivate Mordechai to make moves to become ruler, King Ahasuerus needs to institute a great threat not just to Mordechai, but to his people, the Jews.

That’s where Haman comes in. Haman signifies the complete opposite of mercy: an unrelenting will to rule, control and satisfy his own selfish desires, completely inconsiderate of others.

7. The Core Message of the Purim Story

Haman raised the claim to King Ahasuerus that the Jews should be killed because they were not keeping his laws, i.e. they were disunited. “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed.” This was an accurate claim because the laws by which the Jews became a nation at the foot of Mount Sinai were laws of unity. Therefore, being “scattered and dispersed” means that they failed to uphold the laws that made them a nation to begin with. While separated, the Jews were deemed unnecessary, which is why Haman has a case in his efforts to eradicate them.

The Jews, on one hand, feared for their life. On the other hand, they couldn’t understand what they did to deserve such a harsh verdict. Mordechai then gathered the Jews, reuniting them, and voiding Haman’s claim void that they were scattered and dispersed. Thus, by uniting, they no longer breached the king’s law, and the verdict against them was reversed.

As with all the Torah’s stories, the figures and the interplay between them represent attributes and powers playing out in our thoughts, desires, attitudes and relationships. They are just as present today as they were thousands of years ago. Moreover, the more we develop, the more these powers intensify. The ruthless will to rule and control surfaces in some people more than others, to the point of entirely consuming some, making them do anything possible to rise to all kinds of positions of power.

Therefore, the core message of the Purim story is that our unity is our salvation, and our neglect for our unity endangers, harms and can even potentially annihilate us.

8. The Meaning of the Custom to Get Excessively Drunk on Purim

After our salvation through our unity, the joy erupts, and it is a commandment to drink until we cannot tell right from wrong. This is because our unity spreads unity, until every person and nation willfully makes the right “click” to each other. By this, we become a “light unto nations,” a beacon of the light of unification for the whole of humanity.

By uniting, we would not need to watch our backs all the time like we do now. Also, we would not distrust or suspect any one of any devious or underhanded intentions, since we would be as a single person. Intoxication signifies the blurring of lines between Haman and Mordechai, since when united, the tension between these tendencies becomes released in euphoric joy.

9. The Meaning of Haman’s Pockets

Haman’s pockets signify the correction of Haman’s self-aimed desires to control and rule when all people unite. Their sweet insides symbolize the joy of uniting in selfless desires. It is also why we give gifts to each other and to the poor—to express our upgraded bond.

Purim is more than a festive holiday. It is a lesson in what is most important in life, that we should always concentrate on how we can improve our connection to each other, to unite above our differences, and that if we don’t do so, there are plenty of evil Hamans ready to take advantage of our disunity, waiting for the opportunity to build themselves on our downfall. Using this lesson, we can set up reminders so that we never forget our need to unite, and rise to the challenge to progress from strength to strength in an ever-increasing unification above all the forces that surface to distract us from that.

I wish everyone a happy and united Purim!

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Jewish Boston published my new article “How the Purim Story Is Happening 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.

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 anti-Semitism, 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 anti-Semitism 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 anti-Semitic 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, anti-Semitism will continue rising in order to corner us into making that fateful decision. It is my hope that the anti-Semitic 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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The largest portal Newsmax published my new article “Regulation Won’t Solve The Internet Privacy Issue — Here’s What Can“

This year, Facebook celebrates its 14^th birthday. The world’s most popular social network, which has connected billions of people to reveal every bit of information about themselves at any given moment, is now celebrating its mid-teens. We, on the other hand, celebrate the end of the age of privacy and the beginning of the era of collectivity.

Facebook is not the only one to blame. We are all part of this. From the moment we became technology junkies, we all “agreed” to have our online behavior constantly monitored. Our details are exposed in the virtual space, subject to the manipulation and exploitation of anybody who can spend on advertising, and anybody who decided to spend some of their time learning how to hack into our accounts.

But what do we have to hide? Also, who and what are we ashamed of?

Why Are We So Anxious Regarding Our Privacy?

The anxiety surrounding internet privacy partly stems from the fact that we feel ashamed of completely exposing ourselves to society. This shame emerges naturally and genetically. We feel its bitter pangs of insecurity emerge in our childhood, and likewise, from an early age we try to cover it with a smorgasbord of smug, arrogant, and prideful masks, all in order to maintain our feeling of self-value.

However, when we understand that the same fundamental nature exists in all of us — the human ego — then we can quickly realize that we have nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to hide.

What is the human ego? It is a natural, “devilish” force that motivates us to benefit ourselves at others’ expense. It starts by driving us to look great among people, and then goes much further to make us incite, manipulate, exploit and think negatively about others, so we can build ourselves on their ruin.

Ironically, while we think that following the ego’s demands to profit at other people’s expense will fulfill us, we eventually come to the opposite realization: that it works to everyone’s detriment, ours included.

For over a decade, I’ve been discussing the fact that our world is in an escalating crisis. We have reached a stage in our development where the egoistic intent behind our every desire, thought and action, can no longer lead us towards meaningful fulfillment. Thus, on personal, social, ecological, and economic scales, in every area of human engagement, we experience growing problems that appear all the more irresolvable: more depression, stress, anxiety, social division, xenophobia, extremism, as well as increasing economic and ecological instability.

But of all the above, the problem of internet privacy beautifully exemplifies the unique globally interconnected and interdependent situation we have today. On the one hand, we’re globally interconnected through technologies like the internet, and on the other hand, since the ego aims to benefit itself at other people’s expense, we find our behaviors under constant surveillance in order for advertisers to profit from us as much as possible.

Think of how two politicians can look neat and respectable, behave courteously, smile and shake hands with each other, all the while holding cutthroat intentions to manipulate each other as much as possible — the same goes for the internet: underlying very friendly and pleasant-looking websites are tracking codes that mark your behavior, save your information, and provide it to people who can use it to target and follow you with whatever they want to push onto you.

Why Regulations Won’t Solve the Internet Privacy Issue… and What Can

We’ve seen the commonplace scenario for dealing with situations like these many times: new regulation policy is proposed, followed by a struggle between who benefits most from the policy — the companies or the people — and eventually some kind of regulation is adopted. Then, the problem merely mutates to take on another form, because it wasn’t resolved at its root: the overblown ego that demands self-benefit at others’ expense.

Regulations will not alleviate the anxiety surrounding internet privacy. What we need instead is a special kind of education and training.

We need to develop a new perspective on how the ego operates our every desire, thought and movement, and see it as a foreign pressure that doesn’t belong to us. That is, we need to identify that our ego is not our independent selves. By distinguishing this force from ourselves, we can then work against it in order to balance it with an opposite, positive force from nature, which humanity truly needs.

That positive force is the profound, innate connection shared by all human beings. Discovering it requires certain ingredients:

1. A guide who already knows how to tap into the positive force of connection and use it to balance the negative force of the ego.

2. A society, or at least a small group, that learns and exercises how to positively connect, in order to interface with the positive force of connection among its members, which would serve to balance everyone’s ego.

Regular engagement in such connection-enriching experiences benefits us twofold: First, we satisfy our ego’s demands, as we become respected and appreciated for our contribution to such an environment. Secondly, the environment we build is warm and friendly, infusing its members with happiness, confidence and security.

Today our egos are like wild horses bumping into each other. By engaging in connection-enriching experiences, we learn how to tame these horses, become their masters, control them with both hands on the reins, and start being able to aim all that horsepower in a positive direction: to strengthen and spread the positive force of connection that can balance and guide the negative force of the ego.

But if society in general is egoistic, and we try to become altruistic, doesn’t it mean that we make ourselves vulnerable to being trampled on by those wild horses? It does indeed seem that way to our egos, but this narrow view fails to take into account that nature is an integrated system and by balancing our egos with nature’s positive force, we invite a new constructive quality into our lives, which neutralizes the negative attitude toward us, deflecting a lot of harm from us to begin with.

Time to Participate in the Most Natural Method Ever

The method of balancing and guiding the human ego by tapping into the natural force of connection holds universal importance and appeal. In fact, this method comes from nature itself, and we’ve already experienced it involuntarily and unconsciously. Today, we simply need to start implementing it consciously.

Since we were an embryo in our mother’s womb, nature’s systems worked to develop and form us into a human baby capable of exiting our mother and entering the world. Then, through infancy and childhood, on one hand, we started becoming exposed to all kinds of environmental disturbances, and on the other hand, we were handed nature’s protective forces in the form of parents, siblings, relatives, and friends. The more we grew up, the more independent and remote we became from the positive force. By the time we reached adulthood, it is as if the positive force left us, and we were faced only with the negative force, which continues inflating to this day.

Therefore, today’s balancing act requires our conscious realization of this method in which nature operates on us, and our full participation in infusing society with that same kind of warm, friendly and caring force that we felt from those natural players toward us as we grew up.

I would jumpstart this method by creating an internet space free from any profit motives. In this space, I would develop a virtual community consisting of groups, learning, activities, and exercises that guide each one of its members toward the attainment of nature’s positive force of connection, which will empower, enliven, and inspire people in this network to strengthen and share the positive connection they attain.

Even just starting this process with the right ingredients in place would fuel us with completely new feelings of purpose and motivation. All we need is to plug into a connection-enriching network, and we’ll experience a significant upgrade to a whole new level of balance. One way or another, we will have to learn how to balance and guide the human ego toward the good of human society. I wish this happens sooner rather than later.

Michael Laitman is a global thinker living in Israel. Laitman has a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah and an MS in Medical Bio-Cybernetics. He is a prolific writer who has published over 40 books, which have been translated into dozens of languages. He is a sought-after speaker and has written for or been interviewed by The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, Huffington Post, Corriere della Sera, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, The Globe, RAI TV, and Bloomberg TV, among others. Laitman’s message is simple: Only through unity and connection can we solve all of our problems, be they personal or global, creating a better world for our children. Dr. Laitman teaches live daily lessons to an audience of some two million people worldwide, simultaneously interpreted into English, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, French, Turkish, German, Hungarian, Farsi, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Japanese. Visit www.MichaelLaitman.com for more info. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.

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The largest portal Breaking Israel News published my new article “Israel’s Hubris Comes With a Price“

“’I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.’” (Exodus 32:9-10)

You’re having a pleasant walk in a nature reserve on the weekend and all of a sudden a fighter jet goes down near you. You immediately hear sirens going off, and buzzing alerts on your phone. What do you do? Panic? Run? Check on your loved ones’ safety?

Well, if you were one of the 100,000 people in northern Israel’s nature reserves or another 25,000 people in Israel’s snowy holiday area, Mount Hermon, on the second weekend of February 2018, you would have simply carried on enjoying your walk or your skiing like nothing happened, unfazed by the Iranian drone plane that penetrated Israeli territory getting shot down, and the IDF plane soon after also getting shot down after its response attacks on targets in Syria.

For Israelis, this is simply a routine situation raising no cause for concern. Protected by one of the world’s strongest armies, and what’s been recently rated the world’s best air force, Israelis seemingly have good reasons to be complacent.

The Excessive Confidence of the Israeli People

However, such indifference in the face of such close-range danger indicates the extent of our hubris, and confidence that our technology will always be there to protect us. It is also a prime example of our stiff-necked nature.

Do we realize that this event could be a preview of the next war in Israel’s north, which could spark overnight?

Are we attentive to the future endangerment of Israel’s northern sector, or are we impervious to it, just as we were some 80 years ago when we failed to detect the risks that led to the Holocaust?

Why Are the People of Israel ‘Stiff-Necked’?

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, our imperviousness derives from an inbuilt concealment within us, of and by an upper force operating our desires, thoughts, and actions. Kabbalists throughout history have pointed to our era as the one where we, the people of Israel, would need to realize our true function in the global system we are part of: to unite, and to become an example and a conduit of positive social connection for humanity, a “light unto the nations.”

Like caring parents who know how to develop their children by giving them problems they need to solve, the upper force challenges us by adding excess ego to our social relations, a repelling force separating and distancing us from each other. Therefore, like any healthy child who tries to outsmart his or her parents, we should think about how we could respond maturely to these hints. By using the wisdom we’ve been granted as preventative medicine to increase our sensitivity to reality and our role in it, we can develop our understanding of the bigger picture surrounding every such event, and our awareness of how we can use these hints to incentivize greater unity. If we don’t use this wisdom as preventative medicine, then it will still be waiting for us later. However, later we would use it as medicine to treat wounds and pains we can expect to suffer if we fail to use it in advance of the blows.

Therefore, if we would relate to every threat against us as a hint given to us from a loving and caring higher power that wants us to enter into dialog with it, then we would start using the medicine before the blow. We would not run to spend millions of dollars creating more advanced defense systems and technologies since we would see how all such development continues exposing our very same weak point: our stiff-necked egoistic nature that desensitizes and detaches us from each other. We would work out precisely where we need to apply our intelligence and efforts: to strengthen and enrich our connection to each other above our nature that constantly operates in the opposite direction.

How an Intellectually Advanced Nation Looks Handicapped

Right now, we appear to be intellectually, creatively and technologically advanced, but in terms of the uniting attitude, behavior, and example that the world really needs from us, we look sluggish and incapacitated.

If we were attacked from all sides, then we would see how quickly we would open up to each other and unite. But why should we wait for an unfortunate, suffering-propelled scenario to unite us when we have everything at our fingertips to unite while there is relative calm and prevent the pain scenario from unfolding?

As Samuel David Luzzatto wrote about 150 years ago, “The success of our nation depends solely on the love of one’s brothers, on our connection in a single bond as members of one family.” Today, escalating pressures amount on us, the people of Israel, to realize our deep seeded unity. In the meantime, however, we continue business as usual, numb to the hints were being offered. This is all on credit, though, and the time will come when we’ll need to pay it off. It is my hope that we’ll be able to wake up to our role sooner, through learning and wisdom, rather than later, through suffering and blows.

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The largest portal Newsmax published my new article “Suicide Rise After Robin Williams Signals Need for Media Revolution“

New research found that in the five months after comedian Robin Williams had committed suicide, there was a dramatic increase of almost 10 percent in suicide rates across the U.S., and it had a lot to do with how the media communicated the suicide to the public.

For several months, major news outlets repeatedly described or speculated on the suicide method and the site of suicide with all the visceral details, going against the basic standards established by the World Health Organization for how the media should cover suicides.

Reporting guidelines for celebrity suicides weren’t established arbitrarily. Previous studies have already documented the parallel increase between suicide rates and media coverage of suicide, and pointed at the risk of reinforcing suicidal tendencies by media reporting.

We also know that guiding the media on how to cover suicides does have an impact. For instance, popular rock star Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994 had very little impact on suicides in the Seattle area where he lived, with the media being restrictive in its coverage, and accompanying it with suicide prevention messages. In contrast, the suicide of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 was widely covered and was followed by a 10-12 percent increase in suicide rates.

So if both history and science are painting such an obvious risk for public health, what is guiding the media to do otherwise?

The answer should be easy to see: media outlets are guided by one thing, and that’s ratings, because ratings means money. It’s that simple.

This is why front pages and news programs made their coverage as sensationalist as possible in the case of Robin Williams, with some even portraying a glorified version of what happened. As long as it can win them more points in their battle for our attention, they will go for it.

Sadly, those who carry suicidal tendencies, those who are not as emotionally resilient as the rest of us, are the first to suffer the consequences. But it’s not only them, because we are all trapped within a vicious cycle: Headlines are becoming more obscene, while we are growing more oblivious to them, which in turn drives producers to create even more sensationalism, and the snowball just keeps rolling down the hill.

Robin Williams Wasn’t the Only One with Split Personality

Media outlets are not accountable to anyone besides their shareholders. As long as this continues to be the reality, the vicious cycle will continue to escalate. If we wish to make public health a real priority, then media outlets must be required by law to work together with psychologists, sociologists, and public health experts when it comes to covering events of such nature.

But there are even more lessons to learn from the case of Robin Williams. Like Williams himself, many people today lead a double life, appearing to laugh on the outside while crying on the inside. We’ve built a booming industry of distraction to keep ourselves continuously entertained, while depression has become the number one cause of illness and disability, and is the diagnosis most commonly associated with suicide.

Social media is encouraging and cultivating our “spilt personality” like nothing that came before it. We can hide dark and gloomy feelings behind colorful photos with glossy filters. We could have a thousand friends on Facebook yet no one to talk to, thousands on our contacts yet no one to connect with.

New Media Channels Are Bound to Emerge

The media is our broadest common environment, and it’s especially like that in the digital age. Sooner or later, we will have to see the need to make it a healthy environment for ourselves and our children.

But a change cannot happen before we recognize just how malleable we all are in the hands of media channels that only care about ratings. Whether we want it this way or not, our media channels affect us on multiple levels, from our worldviews to our health and wellbeing.

When we come to that realization, completely new media channels that are accountable to the people are bound to emerge. They will be channels that recognize the media’s role and responsibility in public health, in maintaining a balanced spirit in society rather than sensationalism, and most importantly, in contributing to social unity rather than division.

The internet can already provide the technical infrastructure for such a media revolution, but the drive from the people must come first.
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The largest portal Breaking Israel News published article based on my interview with Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz: “Artificial intelligence in the End-of-Days: Killer Bots for Gog or Dry Bones to Praise God?”

And He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of Hashem!” Ezekiel 37:4 (The Israel Bible™)

Artificial intelligence is advancing at a lightning pace and is already being adopted for military use, raising questions as to what role this powerful new technology will play in the end-of-days. Will it be a terrifying rogue combatant in the final Biblical War of Gog and Magog, or will it be an unforeseen savior of mankind and even have a possible role in the resurrection of the dead?

In one potential end-of-days scenario, technology plays a destructive role for humanity. A video, titled “Slaughterbots” and produced by the notorious Campaign to Stop Killer Robots illustrates this outcome in which autonomous drones armed with explosive charges wreak havoc on society. The video is part of a campaign intended to ban lethal autonomous weapons, a concern which clearly resonates with many as the petition has already garnered over 20,000 signatures.

Aspects of the fictitious future depicted in the video are appearing to become reality. Both India and Japan announced this week that they are beginning to introduce autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) into their defense sectors.

At the same time, governments also recognize that the destructive potential of AI raises moral difficulties. British Prime Minister Theresa May announced this week that her government is establishing an advisory body to coordinate with other countries in discussing how artificial intelligence can be used ethically for military purposes.

It seems that any future war, including the pre-Messianic War of Gog and Magog, will include killer robots, and many spiritual leaders are already considering how AI figures into a religious vision of the end-of-days. Rabbi Michael Laitman, a leading expert in Kabbalah and the founder of Bnei Baruch Kabbalah association, believes that technology and more specifically artificial intelligence, will play a major role in the end-of-days but not necessarily a positive one.

“It is clear in Kabbalah that in the times preceding geula (redemption), Man is going to utilize the entire potential of technology,” Rabbi Laitman told Breaking Israel News. “Men will begin to create artificial intelligence. People will want to achieve something similar to the creation of Man.”

“In the time of the geula, people will understand that all of this development, all throughout history, is what brought us to an even greater collapse,” he stressed. “This will become very clear in war when we see that all of the technology we developed for man’s good can immediately turn around and be used against man.”

Rabbi Laitman believes that the same motives of Man which led to the construction of the Tower of Babel are also in play with the development of artificial intelligence.

“Men wanted to ascend to the heavens and become like God,” the rabbi explained. “To do this, they were dealing with the basic foundations of creation. They wanted to fix something inside man they believed was a blemish.”
Though this motive sounds noble, Rabbi Laitman pointed out a flaw that turned their good intentions into evil.
“This came from a place of ego, in which they wanted to take the place of God,” Rabbi Laitman said.

In an article that Rabbi Laitman published last Friday in Breaking Israel News, he outlined the dangers of artificial intelligence but also described a solution in containing potential problems.

“Unfortunately, I do believe that AI-powered weapons will be developed,” the rabbi wrote. “If we upgraded our human consciousness at least as much as we upgraded our technologies, then we would have no fear of creating AI terminators that would be capable of eliminating us. Instead, we would further our research to discover a technology more sophisticated than AI, and energy more powerful than nuclear energy.”

Rabbi Mark Goldfeder, a senior lecturer at Emory University School of Law, speculated that AI would, in fact, play a more positive role in the Messiah.

“Some people have proposed an apocalyptic vision of AI in which Man and machine merge in the End of Days, suggesting that this would be tchiyat hametim (resurrection of the dead),” he told Breaking Israel News.
He also described efforts to upload the entirety of an individual’s knowledge to a computer.

“Some scientists think they are on the path to achieving this and in some form replicating or even recreating the consciousness of individuals,” Rabbi Goldfeder said. “This is not the traditional understanding of tchiyat hametim and not one that I ascribe to, but that being the case, I can’t imagine why it would be problematic as something else entirely if it is done with proper consent.”

The rabbi suggested that at some point in the future theologians will have to determine whether AI should be considered sentient and human.

“The line between Man and machine in the Torah is not as clear as what we would like to think it is,” the rabbi said.

Although AI poses many ethical and theological questions, Rabbi Goldfeder thinks that not only is this a good thing but that the development of technology was in fact intended by God to be part of Man’s role in being a partner with God in Creation.

“One of the first commandments we received was to conquer the world, which we understand as that doing your best to participate with God in creation,” Rabbi Goldfeder said, citing Genesis.

Hashem blessed them and Hashem said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; Genesis 1:28
“All these forces were put in nature and they are amoral, not immoral; what we do with them establishes good or evil,” explained Rabbi Goldfeder. “Artificial intelligence has the ability to help us do incredible good.”
Rabbi Goldfeder believes AI will continue to be important even after the arrival of the Messiah.

“People tend to think of y’mot ha’moshiach (Messianic era) as going back to Biblical times,” Rabbi Goldfeder told Breaking Israel News. “I assume the Third Temple will make absolute use of every technology we have available.”
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The largest portal Breaking Israel News published my new article “What The Book of Zohar Says About the Polish Holocaust Law“:

“Israel is the heart of the whole world, just as the organs of the body could not exist in the world even for a moment without the heart, so all the nations cannot exist in the world without Israel.”
The Book of Zohar, Pinhas

The Book of Zohar explains why the Polish law is just another expression of an inherent demand that the world has towards Israel

It’s easy to get angry at the Poles for trying to pass legislation that downplays their part in the Nazi crimes of the previous century. We can label them Holocaust deniers, blame them for distorting the truth, rewriting the historical narrative, and yes, we could even classify this as a form of anti-Semitism.

But let’s face it: anti-Semitism was not born yesterday. Therefore, beyond anger and frustration, we should try to understand where it’s coming from, and what can be done to solve it at its root.

The Demand from Jews Throughout History

In the early 1920s, Henry Ford, who was a known anti-Semite, published a series of booklets titled The International Jew where he wrote that “society has a large claim against him [the Jew] that he cease his exclusiveness, that he cease exploiting the world, that he cease making Jewish groups the end and all of his gains, and that he begin to fulfill, in a sense his exclusiveness has never yet enabled him to fulfill, the ancient prophecy that through him all the nations of the earth should be blessed.”

Similarly, famous author Leo Tolstoy wrote that “the Jew is the symbol of eternity. … He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.”

If you look into it, you will find numerous statements from various thinkers throughout history, that sound much like the above, some more anti-Semitic, some less and some even favorable toward the Jewish people. But what exactly is that inherent demand that they express toward the Jews? And why can it take the form of blaming us for all the evils in the world, as many anti-Semites do?

The Zohar: The Nations Cannot Exist Without Israel

The Book of Zohar is a seminal ancient Jewish text that offers an extraordinary explanation: “Israel is the heart of the whole world, just as the organs of the body could not exist in the world even for a moment without the heart, so all the nations cannot exist in the world without Israel.”

In other words, just as the role of the heart in the human body is to be the driving force for blood to circulate throughout the body, the role of Israel is to drive the force of unity and human connection that brings livelihood and abundance to all nations of the world.

In light of The Zohar, anti-Semitism should be interpreted differently. It is like an indicator, an alert mechanism that turns on when human society is nearing a state of crisis. And while not all anti-Semites can articulate it, they somehow sense that the world’s problems have everything to do with the Jewish people.
But how is all of this possible?

The Book of Zohar maps out the forces operating our world and human society. It explains that the terms “Israel” and “The Nations” are not just people divided to groups on planet Earth. Rather, they also represent desires that drive human beings from within. “Israel” represents desires for unity and connection, while “Nations” represents desires for abundance and pleasure. The thing is that the abundance and pleasure in human society depend on unity and human connection.

The introduction to The Book of Zohar describes the mechanism: “When a person from Israel enhances and dignifies their internality, which is Israel in that person, over the externality, which is the nations of the world in him… one makes the children of Israel soar upward in the internality and externality of the world as well, and the nations of the world, which are the externality, to recognize and acknowledge the value of the children of Israel.

In contrast, if an individual from Israel enhances and appreciates one’s externality, which is the nations of the world in him, more than inner Israel in him… one causes the externality of the world in general—the nations of the world—to soar ever higher and overcome Israel, degrading them to the ground, and the children of Israel, the internality in the world, to plunge deep down.”

Simply put, this means that when Israel doesn’t fulfill its function, they block the abundance from circulating to the rest of the world, generating a negative pressure that accumulates within the nations of the world, which is the root-cause of anti-Semitism.

Reversing the Trend

So how can we increase our sensitivity and turn on “the Israel function” within us?

The Zohar doesn’t just explain the situation, it also provides the remedy. The Zohar’s texts describe lofty states of connection between us that elevate the whole of humanity to wholeness and perfection. When we engage in these texts, we raise our sensitivity and activate that Israel functions within us.

According to The Zohar, the Jewish customs and traditions we are familiar with are in no way sufficient if we wish to fulfill our role in the world. It writes poignantly: “Woe unto them… that make the Torah dry, without any moisture comprehension and reason. They confine themselves to the practical part of the Torah, and do not wish to try to understand the wisdom of Kabbalah, to know and to understand the secrets of the Torah and the flavors of Mitzva. Woe unto them, for with these actions they bring about the existence of poverty, ruin, and robbery, looting, killing, and destructions in the world.”

In other words, as long as we disparage the tremendous power inherent in The Book of Zohar and in the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we walk blindly in the world, increasing our self-concern, causing the natural law of anti-Semitism to play out. As the introduction to The Zohar writes: “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 children of Israel.”

Unconsciously, the world feels that we carry a unique remedy within us that will enable goodness, peace, and happiness to all. It isn’t hi-tech solutions, revolutionary medicine or advanced agriculture that the world awaits from us. It is only one thing: “to be a light unto nations,” a beacon of unity, a nation that generates a force of human connection that brings the world together. That is the only way to break the vicious cycle of anti-Semitism and gain the world’s affection. And that is the only hard and fast law, legislated by nature, that we need to be worried about.
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