Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Who gave you the right?”

Once a week, filmmaker Semion Vinokur interviews me on a program called Novosti (News). In the program, Semion asks about current affairs and presents viewers’ comments. In the previous show, he presented a poignant question from a viewer who called herself (or perhaps himself) Her. Below is a translated transcript of the question with Semion’s follow-up questions, and my answers.

Question: Her writes to you as follows: I keep hearing in your clips that you say that only the Jews can change the world. Why do you take such a responsibility on your nation? And also, who gave you the right to do this? Please answer my question and don’t tell me that it is written in the Torah.

Answer: Because the method for correcting the world lies with the Jews. It was handed to us thousands of years ago.

Question: You see, we are only making ourselves stand out!

Answer: Can we make ourselves stand out more than we have been standing out throughout history?

Question: Yes, but it brings upon us resentment!

Answer: I understand this, but it is better to understand that this is the truth, and that you are hated precisely because of this. In other words, I accept their conclusion and say, “Yes, you are right, the problem is with us, we are to blame.”

Question: So we cannot run away from this?

Answer: No, no. However, killing us will also not make things easier on the world; it is better if we listen and reflect on how we can really use this eternal truth.

Question: There is no proof of what you are saying

Answer: If we, Israel, do what we must, there will be proof.

Question: But in the meantime, for many people, these are just words.

Answer: Of course, but on the other hand, they can say, “Oh, so this is why we hate them, that means we are right to hate them.”

Question: But what if a person doesn’t hate Jews? Many people don’t hate Jews, and we are basically telling them, “You do hate Jews!” We make a lot of clips of this kind with you, and the responses are always along the same line: “Chosen? The chosen people? Who gave you the right? Why are you so sure of that?”

Answer: But they themselves are saying it, all of humanity! Humanity has a special attitude toward Jews, a special opinion, a special demand. This matter has been with us for thousands of years; it is time to stop covering it and pretend like it doesn’t exist.

Question: So what should a non-Jew do if he wants to hear what you are saying?

Answer: He should simply listen to what I am saying.

Question: Even if he is not Jewish?

Answer: It makes no difference whether he is Jewish or not.

Question: But you are saying that the Jews have to do something specific!

Answer: Right. the Jews must know what distinguishes them, and accordingly, reveal their uniqueness to the nations of the world. Then, together with the rest of the nations, they must take upon themselves the transformation of all of humanity, of nature, of everything that exists.

Question: Transformation from what and into what?

Answer: Transformation from humanity’s absolute egoism, as we see today, into its opposite, into connection.

Question: Is this the task of the Jews?

Answer: Precisely this is upon the Jews to do.

Question: What about the rest of the nations?

Answer: The rest of the nations of the world should listen to what the Jews are saying because perhaps they [Jews] have a point, perhaps this is what can save us.

Question: But very few Jews speak about connection and changing our nature; the majority of Jews say nothing of the kind.

Answer: The majority do not know about their responsibility or understand their task; they are like everyone else.

Question: Their task is to connect and present it to the world?

Answer: Yes.

Question: OK, we will keep discussing it, as always; perhaps they will listen, and perhaps not.

Answer: They will listen, for sure.

Question: What makes you so hopeful?

Answer: I hang my hope on the fact that the world will not change just like that. It will not transition into a new state instantaneously. But in the end, nature will force all the nations of the world, and primarily the Jews, to think about what it really means to correct the world, and what we should come to, and first of all the Jews.

Question: Clear, but it is not simple.

Answer: It is not simple, but we are running out of time.

—

*For more elaborate explanations on the role of the Jewish people in the world, look in my books, Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour, and The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.
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My new article on Linkedin “Why We Do Not Remember the Moment of Birth”

Humans are emotional beings. Feelings guide us, determine our thoughts, our decisions in life, and our judgment. Whatever we do, we do it to feel good or to avoid feeling bad. Feelings are so central to our being that they even determine our memory. Why then do we not remember the most critical moment of our lives, the moment of birth? In fact, we also do not remember our formative years, when we are one or two years old. The reason is that in the first years of life, our physical senses quickly develop but our emotional world, our “self,” lags behind, and before we have a distinct “self” with its own emotions, we do not attach emotions to events, and therefore do not remember them, at least not more than as mere pictures.

Even later in life, at age three or four, from which many of us do have memories, they are still vague and incomplete, as though they are “immature” or “primitive” forms of memory.

“Real” memories begin when we begin to develop a psyche, a self that recognizes itself as an individual being. Once we perceive ourselves as separate beings, with our own thoughts and feelings, and we communicate with others as distinct individuals communicating with other distinct individuals, we transition from being little animals with the potential to become human beings into actual people.

The transition reflects itself in the way children connect with others, and becomes fully developed once we begin to develop hormonal attraction, in early adolescence.

This development, which is uniquely human, points to the reason for the creation of human beings. We are not meant to remain like animals; we are meant to ask about our world, about the reason for its existence, and for our existence in it. We are meant to ask about and understand the purpose of our lives beyond the physical level. Only once our emotions are fully developed can we begin to explore such questions seriously.

For me, that moment came with the question “What’s next?” I would ask myself, “What’s next, school, university, and…?” I did not have an answer. Because of it, I did not want to learn; I became apathetic. It was an awful feeling, a feeling of futility, of being forced to do something meaningless.

Not everyone is tormented by this question. Some people go through life chasing wealth or prestige, and are satisfied with that. The meaning of it all does not trouble them.

Yet, the meaning of life can be revealed only to those who ask about it. To varying degrees, the question appears in everyone, but only those who are haunted by it can find the answer.

The answer is that we are born and live only in order to develop the soul. The soul is not something within us, but between us. The soul is a special connection between people, which we can develop only if we feel that our existing connections, where we seek to constantly consume and absorb, do not satisfy us. When we begin to search for reciprocity, we begin to discover a completely new level of existence that is undetectable to those who are guided only by self-interest.

People who develop the soul begin to see the web, the network that connects all things, and how everything affects everything else. These connections are the soul, and revealing them is the purpose of our existence. All other beings function instinctively within the network, and only humans can come to understand this matrix of existence and operate within it as cognizant beings. Developing that consciousness is the purpose of our lives.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Answer Is Clear If We Ask the Right Question”

In the end, what everyone wants is to have a good life. A good life means more or less the same for everyone: a decent place to live, food on the table, good health, education for the children, and most importantly—the certainty of a bright tomorrow. When we ask ourselves what is preventing us from leading such a life, it is clear to most people that only our ego, in all its forms—pride, tyranny, exploitation, bullying, cruelty—prevents us from leading a good life. However, instead of asking how to overcome the ego, we ask how to protect ourselves from other people’s egos, in the best case scenario, or worse, how can we impose our own egos on other people.

There is a reason why we are not asking the obvious question: How do we overcome the only obstacle on our way to happiness? The thing that obstructs us, namely the ego, distracts us and diverts our attention into seeing other things or other people as the problem. But if we rise above our feelings and think logically for just a moment, we will realize that if we felt close to one another, if we felt like family rather than like enemies, we would not fight against each other.

The tricks that the ego plays on us are nothing new. For thousands of years, it has been pitting us against each other. For thousands of years, we have been killing, exploiting, abusing each other, and rejoicing at our neighbor’s pain. No other being does that, only humans, because only humans possess the inner serpent called “ego.”

Past societies were not as venomous as is ours today. In some cases, they truly lived like a family. But the ego does not remain static; it intensifies and poisons everything on its path. Humanity has tried every option. It tried the extreme left and the extreme right, capitalism and socialism, anarchy and rigid orders, monarchy, democracy, theocracy, and the list goes on and on. Nothing has worked and nothing will work as long as the ego governs our minds and hearts.

While humanity has been embroiled in incessant fighting, one man, who lived nearly 4,000 years ago, asked the right question: How can humanity defeat the ego in our hearts? The answer he found made him so happy that he realized how to help humanity, that he began to spread it wherever he went. That man’s name was Abraham, and the message he gave to all of humanity was that instead of trying to defeat other people’s egos, or even our own ego, we need to focus on the positive, on nurturing non-egoistic connections.

Abraham, who became known as “the man of mercy,” thanks to his novel idea, began to accumulate followers who understood that he was right. Pressured by the self-absorbed authorities in his homeland, Babylon, Abraham took to the road and headed for Canaan. Along the way, he accumulated more followers who saw the beauty in his idea. They were not a nation, at least not yet; they were a crowd of people who sympathized with their teacher’s idea. It was only when they began to implement Abraham’s method among themselves by nurturing care and consideration instead of alienation and selfishness, that they began to form a never-before-seen manner of unity.

Through their unity, these people discovered something that people did not know before: Everything is connected. Because they added the element of giving to their self-centered nature, they could feel that everything in reality not only receives but‎ also gives to everything else. In this way, they established a balanced and harmonious society that became a model for the rest of the world. That society became known as the “people of Israel.”

However, they did not maintain their solidarity. Their egos kept growing, as the ego grows in each and every person‎, so eventually, they, too, succumbed to it. Nevertheless, Abraham’s legacy remained in them, and very few among them kept that teaching alive in books and teachers.

Today, this wisdom is opening up to the whole world, since the world has exhausted its options. The futile efforts to find a way to overpower the ego have opened people’s minds to a wisdom of connection that does not try to suppress the ego, but to enhance connection. My teacher, RABASH, as well as his father, Baal HaSulam, were such teachers, and I try my best to make their teachings accessible in any language and in every place. Today, we are ready to ask the right question: How do we overcome the ego? Today, the ego will not be able to lure us into false ideologies that lead nowhere except to more misery.
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My new article on Linkedin “We Could Be Looking at Another Wave”

It may not seem like it now, but I have a feeling that we are headed for another wave of Covid. The story with Covid is not over yet; in about two months, around November, we will see another wave of Covid in Israel and probably around the world, and vaccinations will not stop it.

I am writing this because I feel that it will be a bigger blow than before. Since we learned nothing from the previous wave, other than to mock the virus, it will come to us in a new and more aggressive form, and there will be bigger problems than before. I have not been privy to some secret scientific information to support it, but this is how I feel—that another wave is due.

The first thing that the next wave will teach us is that we learned nothing from the previous ones. We did not draw the right conclusions from the previous states; we did not look for a new antidote for Covid, so it will return in order to make us learn.

As with the previous waves, the only way to truly overcome Covid is through our connection. I realize that connection among people seems irrelevant to our success in fighting against Covid, but regardless of our opinion, there is no other solution.

I have no doubt that we will spend many more billions of dollars on medical “solutions” around the world, and many more people will die, but we will still not get rid of Covid. We will not be rid of it because we are still not ready for connection.

Nevertheless, nature will not let up. It will teach us to connect even if we do not want to learn how. If we are aware of nature’s “intention,” we will learn more quickly. If we ignore it and insist on remaining self-absorbed and self-indulgent, nature will take longer to teach us and the lessons will be more painful, but it will ultimately defeat us and we will agree to connect.

Once nature has purified selfishness from our hearts so we cannot harbor bad thoughts about each other, the air will be clear of harm-doers such as viruses. We will extract selfishness from within us when we realize that the only medicine for our blows is connection and closeness of hearts among all people.

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My new article on Linkedin “The Omen of Financial Hardships”

The recent study by Gallup and West Health, which found that rising healthcare costs have forced nearly 100 million Americans “to delay or skip healthcare treatments, trim regular household expenses or borrow money,” could bode ill for Jews. Since the turn of the century, antisemitism has been on the rise around the world, including in the US, and antisemites are becoming more brazen and more aggressive. The problem is that for many years, American Jewry believed that antisemitism cannot happen in America. As a result, they often fail to recognize the warning signs, even when they flare up before them. Now that financial hardships have come to a level where Americans are forgoing necessities, it is an omen they should not ignore.

The majority of today’s American Jewry grew up in a relatively antisemitism free society. Jew-hatred was a taboo, and even if you felt it, you were forbidden to express it. Overt antisemitism is still not mainstream in America, so it is often portrayed as anti-Israel feelings, but the veil is very thin and can easily show its true face.

Before World War II, and even during the war, antisemitism was a recognized fact. There were antisemitic radio shows, clubs where Jews were not allowed, and other open expressions of the oldest hatred. The fact that it became illegal and morally reprehensible to show that you hated Jews did not make it disappear. It only tucked it away in wait for a more favorable time to rear its ugly head again. Now is a more favorable time, and it is rearing its head.

At such a time, Jews should lower their profile and forgo complacency. The current situation where Jews are occupying key positions that are often the target of political confrontation is not good for them. The losing side will readily blame them for its defeat. Even if it does not express it, it will feel it and, given the right opportunity, it will express it.

What is true for American Jews is also true for Jews around the world. Antisemitism has been rising everywhere. In many places, it is already mainstream, condemned by some, embraced by others, and gradually gaining prevalence and popularity.

Just as is happening in America, the worsening economic conditions make a fertile ground for outbreaks of Jew-hatred. As matters are continuing to deteriorate, the eruption of anti-Jewish sentiments is more likely to happen. It will not be long before Jews around the world are persecuted once again, just as they have been for two millennia.

However, if previously, ruthless leaders were using them as a scapegoat or as a means to manipulate the masses to their side, this time, it will come from the masses. There will be no need for a leader to incite against the Jews; regular people will do so spontaneously, and will accompany their words with actions. It will not be an endemic outbreak; persecution of Jews in the coming round will be worldwide and emerging from the people rather than from leaders.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Unwise Smartest People”

A famous Israeli singer recently wrote on social media that Operation Breaking Dawn, the three-day military campaign in May in which Israel fought against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, may have been a military victory, but it did not solve anything. Other than making us feel good about ourselves, it accomplished nothing. If anything, the pride is detrimental to us, rather than beneficial.

The singer also referred to the reputation of the Jewish people as being the smartest in the world. He said that our ingenuity in developing sophisticated defense systems makes us dangerously complacent and smug.

I agree with this statement because weapons, however sophisticated and advanced, will not bring us peace. At best, they can give us a respite from active hostilities, but if we use the pause to rest or build even more sophisticated weapons, and think that this is all we need to do, then we are a stupid smartest people.

We need to understand that weapons, however effective and advanced, will not end our wars because weapons do not bring peace. The saying si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war), is true only if our definition of peace is absence of active hostilities. This is not the definition of peace as I know it.

In Hebrew, the word shalom (peace) comes from the word hashlama (complementarity). Complementarity is when two contradictory, alien, and often hostile parties forge a bond that transcends their disagreements and conflicts. They do not suppress or cancel their disputes, but value unity more than the cause of their conflict. Therefore, they form a bond that is stronger than the reason for their fight.

Indeed, the bond must be stronger than the conflict so as not to break under the pressure of the division. It follows that the harder the dispute, the stronger must be the unity that the parties build, if they wish to maintain peace.

Achieving such peace requires working on connection, on bonding. It requires constant elevation of the value of unity, solidarity, cohesion, and mutual responsibility. This is the people of Israel’s only “weapon” that will give us real and lasting peace—first among ourselves, and subsequently with our neighbors.

It will not be easy. We are not only smart; we are also very selfish. There is no question that preferring unity to the pleasure of self-righteousness is not easy. On top of that, we lack the basic wisdom to understand that our strength lies in our connection, and that this is our only road to victory. But difficult or not, unity is still our only tool for achieving final victory.

Our successes on the battlefield buy us time, but we must use them wisely. If we use them to rest, we will eventually lose. If we use our breaks from active hostilities to strengthen our connection, we will promote peace within Israel and with our neighbors. This is Israel’s only hope for peace, and the only smart move that the smartest people can make.
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Medium published my new article “On the Borderline”

There is a reason for the apocalyptic talk that is so prevalent these days. The threat of the Russia-Ukraine war turning nuclear at the beginning of the war, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station that has become a center-point of contention, the growing tension between China and Taiwan, with the active involvement of the US, the constant threat of North Korea to use nuclear weapons — all these and more give the uneasy feeling that the world is on the brink of disaster. There are less catastrophic, but still very painful processes, which are already underway. Inflation is soaring in the US and Europe, accompanied by recessions, and the erratic, violent climate only exacerbates the situation.

These crises are happening concurrently because we are truly on the borderline. We are heading into a new era where our previous, self-centered way of life will become obsolete.

We are shifting from the selfish era into an era of such complete connection and mutual dependence that selfish thoughts, much less selfish acts, will not be tolerated. We will have to learn to be mutually considerate, initially, and mutually caring, ultimately. We will not be able to choose not to care for others because not caring will mean not surviving.

It will not be a bad world. On the contrary, it will be a world where everyone is responsible and cares for everyone else, a world where we will not have to tend to ourselves because everyone else will do it for us. It will be a world without abuse, wars, or crime. The only crime will be inconsideration, selfishness.

I have no doubt these words seem fantastic today. Indeed, we are still far from it. However, revolutions of this kind do not happen overnight; they are a process, and we are already well into it.

The reason I am writing about this now is that we are already on the borderline. We should begin to familiarize ourselves with the concepts and rules that will govern our lives in the future because the sooner we know them, and begin to live by them, the smoother the transition will be.

If we resist the trajectory of the evolution of the world, the threatening situations we are seeing today will materialize. If we embrace these changes, they will happen smoothly and pleasantly. I hope we will choose the latter.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Teach Your Children Well”

A few days before the beginning of the school year in Israel, the feeling here is that the education system has seen better times. Many teachers are quitting, especially the young and more gifted ones, and few are filling the blanks. A teacher’s salary is unattractive in Israel, to say the least, they have no respect from parents or students, and their social status is poor. In consequence, the entire system is now on the brink of collapse. In this column, I would like to relate to the role that parents can play in improving children’s education, and to the basic principles that I believe should guide a successful education system.

First, we need to realize that expecting parents to actively participate in improving the education system is unrealistic; it will not happen. Parents cannot and will not take responsibility for their children’s education. They were not taught how to do this, and they do not want the burden. Parents pay hefty sums for education in Israel, which is supposed to be free, and the Ministry of Education has the biggest budget of all government offices, except, perhaps, the defense budget, so parents rightly feel that this should suffice to finance proper education for their children.

In fact, one way to solve the problem is to indeed shut down the entire education system and establish a private one, instead, where parents’ payments will go directly and only toward their children’s education. Currently, when the government funds education, it spends the money where it wants, only some of it actually goes toward the education system, and no one is happy.

Even now, when the children purportedly get everything they need at school, parents who want their children to do well at school and continue to higher education must pay extra for extracurricular lessons, which are very expensive. This is actually one way to get the parents accustomed to privatizing the education system.

There is, of course, the justified fear that the haves will get better education than the have nots, but this is already the case, so in that sense, a private system will not be worse than the current one. If the entire system is privatized, parents will at least know what they are paying for, what they are getting in return, and they will be able to make educated decisions on their expenses.

At the same time, we do want all the children, and not only those from affluent families, to receive a good education. After all, children are the future of any country, including the State of Israel. To provide a good education for everyone, a team of highly skilled, unaffiliated professionals in education should design a system that is not related or obligated to any political system, but is committed only to the benefit of the children and to producing optimum education.

That education must incorporate far more than implanting information in children’s brains. Educating is not indoctrinating. Educating means teaching children how to be successful grownups. Being successful does not mean that people know a set of required information. Success depends first and foremost on a person’s social skills, and not a person’s level of schooling.

Acquiring social skills means learning to communicate, cooperate, share, take others’ perspectives in mind, be considerate, listen to others, and express oneself in non-threatening ways. These are all essential skills for life. In fact, they are the skills we use the most. Yet, we teach none of them at school, and for the most part, parents do not have the time, energy, or skills to teach them. As a result, children grow up to be emotionally ill-equipped adults who have to cope with relationships at home, at college, at work, with spouses and partners, yet they lack the knowhow.

If we want to teach our children well, we must build a system that teaches children to be human beings, first, and knowledgeable people, next. We must invest directly in the education system, and see to it that education means providing social skills, learning skills, and information, in that order.
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My new article on Linkedin “A Changing Reality or a Changing Perception of Reality?”

A recent study by Gallup and West Health has found that “rising healthcare costs have compelled nearly four in 10 Americans in the past six months to delay or skip healthcare treatments, trim regular household expenses or borrow money. That translates into an estimated 98 million adults having to take extraordinary steps to afford healthcare.” Considering that in all likelihood, many of these adults have children, this is a huge portion of the American society that is struggling to provide for a basic need like healthcare.

There is no denying that life in America is far from the American Dream, and that despite some good times, life there is tough for most people. However, it seems like the perception of scarcity has also changed and causes more people to grasp themselves as disadvantaged than before.

There are many serious problems in America. There is a deluge of substance abuse, frequent violence, widespread poverty, and pervasive depression and hopelessness. Worse yet, because of the American support for separation between the government and citizens, apart from occasional stimulus and rescue programs, people have been brought up not to rely on the government for financial aid. When people have jobs, they are fine with this way of life. But when there are no jobs, or no jobs that pay enough, they are left deficient, and without any hope of making sufficient income since they cannot find a better paying job or get the money elsewhere. As a result, they find themselves having to choose which necessity to forgo.

From the perspective of the government, the situation is quite straightforward. It wants people to be healthy. However, if they cannot be healthy, it is best if they die, so as not to waste money on treating sick people.

As terrible as the situation may seem, I do not think that it is worse today than it was a century or so ago. More likely, it is people who require more in order to feel satisfied. Since their demands are growing more than their ability to satisfy them, they feel deficient and deprived.

This feeling is especially poignant if people around them seem to have abundance. Since today, when everyone is connected to everyone else and social media presents everyone in their best form, people feel more disadvantaged and deficient than ever.

Materially speaking, I do not foresee any improvement. However, there is a way we can all have more than enough on every level.

If we begin to learn that happiness lies not in material possessions, in having more stuff, but in cultivating our connections with each other, we will discover two beautiful things: 1) We will find that we really do have enough, and then some. We will learn that the problem of adequacy is not a matter of price or quantity, but of an abusive attitude, and we will want to change that attitude. We will find that if we care about people having what they need rather than us having what we want, then they will have what they need and we have what we want. 2) The second thing we will discover is that confidence, trust, and happiness do not depend on what we have, but on guaranteeing that everyone has what they need. Warm and caring relations in the community make for happier, safer, and healthier members of the community, including ourselves.

Therefore, to overcome scarcity in society, we must overcome the antipathy in our hearts.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “How Israel Should Respond to Iran’s Nuclear Politics”

If there is one consensus among all the political parties in Israel, it is that a new nuclear deal between the US and its partners and Iran is bad for Israel. I do not dispute this view, but I think it misses a crucial point. First, we need to understand that Iran’s nuclear ambitions stem not only from a fanatical zeal to annihilate the Jewish state. More than religious fanaticism, it is politics. The Iranians are very clever and very well-grounded people. Their threats and their nuclear weaponization are political means to an end, which is to become a powerful player in the global arena. Therefore, even if they do have nuclear weapons, I doubt they will use it because it will hurt their interest; they will lose more than they will gain. They will pester us and hurt us in various ways, but they will not put themselves at risk.

Therefore, in terms of political strategy, Israel should do what it can to stall Iran’s progress as much as it can. At the same time, we must remember that Iran, too, will only go so far in its extremism.

But there is something more important than trying to prevent Iran from getting the A bomb. We need to understand our own role in the global scheme of things, and play our part. If we play it correctly, we will solve our problems without any wars or external conflicts.

The world is built in such a way that if you want the good to overpower the bad, you need to play by the rules that govern reality. You cannot make your own rules and expect to win. When it comes to playing by the rules that govern reality, we Jews have a crucial role, and this is the part that we must play.

The situation on the ground before us changes according to the way that we Jews relate to one another. The better we relate to one another, the better our situation will be. Better yet, the better we relate to one another, the better will be the situation of all of reality, not just our own, but in the entire world.

The first step toward doing this is to understand that we cannot destroy anything because all parts of reality are required in order for humanity to reach its goal. What is required, however, is for all the parts to connect to one another correctly.

A correct connection means that we relate to everything in reality that we regard as bad as an opportunity, as a call to increase the good so that it covers it. By bad and good I am referring to one thing only: bad means hatred and division between people, and good means unity and concern for one another. Therefore, for every bit of hate that we find among us, we make a joint effort to cover it with care, or as King Solomon said (Prov. 10:12), “Hate stirs up strife, and love will cover all crimes.”

We, Israel, must begin this special kind of work, which is currently nowhere to be found, and demonstrate how we transcend our negative feelings toward each other. We will be able to do this only if we elevate the value of unity and concern for one another above all other values. This is why Rabbi Akiva said that the all-inclusive rule of the Torah—our code of law—is “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Once we begin to work in this way, even before we actually establish a society that operates this way, by simply trying to raise mutual concern above mutual hatred, we will project a positive influence on the entire world.

The world’s eyes are always on Israel. Its opinion about us reflects our opinion of each other. Currently, we slander, despise, and detest each other, and the world feels likewise about us. We can proclaim that we are like everyone else, but it is undeniable that the world is always focused on us, and nothing we can do will change it. Since we are always at the center of attention, what we display is what the world thinks of us.

Therefore, if we resolve to rise above our hatred and nurture solidarity and unity instead of division and derision, the world will notice right away and recognize and appreciate our effort. If we make that effort, the bad example we are setting now will change into an example of unity, solidarity, and mutual concern.

In that case, the fact that the world is watching us will work in its favor and in ours. Just as currently the world is following our bad example and is therefore full of strife, if we unite, it will learn from our example and cover the crimes with love, to use the words of King Solomon, the wisest of all men.

In conclusion, Iran is not our problem. Neither are Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Palestinian Authority. If we make peace with one another and cultivate inner unity and solidarity above all our different views and perspectives, everyone will appreciate and welcome our existence as a model country for the world.
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