Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: ‘Israel’s Price Hikes Expose Its Many “Inner Countries”’

Over the past several months, there have been price hikes in almost every product and service in Israel. The price of gasoline is already almost double that of the US, the price of electricity has jumped 9.6 percent, water by nearly 8 percent, cars, appliances, and now even staple foods are jumping, in some cases up to 36 percent. Anywhere else, this would have sent millions into the streets to protest. In Israel, not a peep, as if nothing has changed but the headlines in the papers and the bottom line of the bill. It is not that the government cannot mitigate the spike, but it, too, does nothing, a matter of priorities. Will these hikes change anyone’s mind in light of the upcoming general election? Probably not. The people absorb in silence.

What is stranger still is the fact that many people are completely unaffected by the hikes. For many societies in Israel, government decisions make very little difference in their personal lives. They live in large communities that conduct their own lives as if they were a country within a country. Bnei Brak, the orthodox city where I lived for many years, is just such a bubble, as are the residents of Jerusalem, and as is the Arab population in Israel.

The volatile economy, it turns out, not only harms the disadvantaged defenseless who have no “country within a country” to protect them, but exposes yet another aspect of the social division within Israel. This division both harms Israel’s position in the world, and harms the Israeli people’s bargaining position against their own government.

With the world being in an economic storm, I cannot see how Israel can avoid being unaffected altogether. However, the country’s economy is very strong, and the government has plenty of leverage to play with. It can decide what and whom to support, and what and whom to allow to fail. Currently, because the people are divided among themselves, they are nearly powerless against decisions that take anyone’s interest into account but theirs.

Again, if we are not united, we cannot achieve anything. As with all our troubles, the inflation is here to show us that if we want to succeed, we must act in concord, in unison, and this requires unity.

If we had solidarity, we could bring the prices down to very affordable levels, especially when it comes to such basic needs as food. But since we have no solidarity, even eating becomes an uncertainty for some people in Israel in 2022.
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Medium published my new article “Ill Will Is Scorching the Earth — Literally”

Flames of the forest fire of Ponto de Vilomara, on July 17, 2022, seen from Sant Fruitós del Bages, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

The current heatwave in Europe is scorching the land and killing its residents. So far, according to ABC News and other sources, “There have also been more than 1,000 heat-related deaths in Spain and Portugal” alone, not counting the death toll in France, Italy, and more is coming as the heatwave moves toward the UK. Worse yet, we are only in the middle of July; there is plenty of time for more heatwaves to come. According to scientists, unless we curb emission of greenhouse gases, heatwaves will grow even hotter and more frequent. They may, or they may not, but either way, we are the ones who determine what happens.

We need to understand that being at the top of the pyramid of creation means that everything we do trickles down the structure, from top to bottom. When it reaches the bottom, the inanimate level of reality, from which everything grows, it changes it. If we ooze ill-will, it creates negative changes throughout the system, which manifest in increasingly extreme climatic and geological events.

In other words, when human relationships go out of balance, everything goes out of balance. When our relations become extreme, everything becomes extreme; when we become violent, everything becomes violent. Each summer, the ramifications of the linkage between our relations and our world become more extreme, until we acknowledge that everything that exists, exists in a connected, hierarchical system and that whoever is at the top determines the state of the rest of the system.

It is not as if previously, we were better people than we are today. It is simply that there were fewer people, and therefore fewer elements that exude ill will.

Also, relationships between people in the past were less toxic than they are today. While there are fewer wars today than ever, the levels of suspicion and alienation between people are skyrocketing, to the point where people can no longer trust their own family members. As a result, wars between countries are rarer than ever, but divorce rates, domestic violence, and violence in the community, are at an all-time high.

Even the internet, which we invented purportedly in order to connect people, is being used to abuse, deceive, and exploit people. The world-wide-web proves that everything we create, we use against others. When there is such a negative element in a system, and that element is at the top of the system, how can the entire system not go awry?

Therefore, if we want the weather to cool, the sea-level to drop, and the storms to subside, we must cool the fire and calm the storms between us. Mutual concern, mutual responsibility, or at least the knowledge that we are dependent on each other, are necessary in order to restore balance in our world at all levels, from the ground we walk on to the hatred in our hearts.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “To Treat Drug Addicts, Build a Society that Heals Them”

Over the past five years, there has been a fifty percent increase in the number of homeless people in Israel. One of the surprising problems with homeless people is that even when they have a place to stay and adequate living conditions, they often prefer the street to housing because only there can they find drugs and alcohol. It is as though their addiction is pulling them out of the homes, into the street, and away from hope of a decent life.

Once someone is addicted to drugs, it is nearly impossible to reverse his or her situation. Drugs are so tempting to addicts that there is virtually nothing that can stand against them.

The solution to the problems of addicts is not on the personal level, but on the social one. If a society has a strong anchor that can lift such people and turn them into a constructive part of society, they might stand a chance. Regrettably, I do not see such an anchor in the current Israeli society; it has nothing to offer the addicts.

Worse yet, at the moment, I do not see a society in Israel. Once we build a society, we can build a society for homeless people and drug addicts, prostitutes, and all the other disadvantaged people in the country.

By society, I do not mean institutions or regulations. Society means people who feel connected to each other, who feel a bond and support one another. A society means people who get up from their seats to meet one another. If we had such people, we could build something.

When you bring a drug addict into such a society, he or she sees how people live, what they want, what are their goals, their future, and what satisfies them. Then, instead of focusing on their personal situation, drug addicts can see hope, and this will vitalize them and calm their incessant need to get away from reality through drugs.

In a sense, it will make addicts “hooked” on social life rather than on drugs. A society where people care for one another has such a magnetic power that people who come near it will not be able to disconnect from it. Drug addicts who come to such a society reject the drugs that they use to disconnect themselves from reality because it disconnects them from the “potion of life” they feel all around them.

Therefore, if we want to solve such problems as homelessness, drug addiction, and prostitution, we should not focus not on the victims, but on the society around them. That society will determine whether they are healed or remain afflicted.
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Medium published my new article “Confidence in US Institutions Down — but US Is Not”

A recent survey released by Gallup analytics firm has found that the average level of confidence in US institutions among Americans is “at a new low,” and getting even lower. The alarming results show that 62 percent have little or no confidence in the medical system, 69 percent have little or no confidence in the Church, more than 70 percent have little to no confidence in public schools, 75 percent mistrust the US Supreme Court, even more mistrust the presidency, nearly 90 percent mistrust the media, and at the very bottom: Congress, garnering the mistrust of no less than 93 percent of the American people. A similar survey, by the way, conducted by the prestigious Pew Research Center, has found similar results, as well as emphasized President Biden’s low, and dropping approval rate.

When someone feels this way about one’s country, there is little you can say to that person. I believe in the accuracy of the findings, and I can only accept that this is how Americans truly feel.

However, I would say that we need to look beyond America and see what is going on elsewhere. I do not deny the problems that American society and American institutions face, but compared to where many other countries stand, America is in a good position.

I see other countries in freefall. In fact, the whole world is on a downward trend, and so the US is only part of a global slump. Nevertheless, compared to the rest of the world, it is better off than most. Even with the high inflation, I do not think that America is worse off economically than even the countries that are regarded as the strongest, such as China and other East Asian countries.

People like to ridicule America and point the finger at it, but they forget that it is precisely its diversity and democratic tradition that keep it out of danger. As I see it, it is too soon to wish America to RIP.

Another point in favor of America is its flexibility. It is not Russia or China, where it is difficult to change things. Its judicial system, with the relative independence given to the different states, allows the US to adapt and adjust itself to changing circumstances. Therefore, despite the confusion currently engulfing much of American society, I have faith that it will come out of it, and come out strong.

From my perspective, America’s strongest point is its democratic vigor. While politics is very far from me, I do think that we can look at how America absorbs and tolerates so much, yet builds itself and changes itself according to the changing events around the world. It can do this precisely because it is a democracy, because it senses the will of the people and builds itself accordingly.

In conclusion, despite the current slump, I think America’s resilience will help it through the decline. Those who cry out “Wolf!” cry out because they know there is no wolf, and when the dust settles on the upheavals and the false alarms, America will still be standing strong.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Connection Between Ice Cream and Self-Hating Jews”

When the multinational corporation Unilever recently announced that it had sold the rights to produce Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to the current licensee in Israel, it was thought the deal would end the year long pro-Palestinian boycott of the product sales in Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, as well as in East Jerusalem. However, then the Jewish founders of the ice cream brand—the main promoters of the boycott—reminded the world that they will not rest until Israel is isolated by concocting a new way to cause trouble.

The frozen relationship between the Ben & Jerry’s Jewish founders and Israel again became evident. As part of the company’s independent ideological board, they decided to sue Unilever to block the sale to the Israeli licensee that would allow the unrestricted distribution of the product in Israel as a whole. They claim that selling their brand in the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is inconsistent with the company’s values and integrity.

This division between Ben and Jerry’s Jewish founders and Israel exactly highlights our main problem as a Jewish nation: the separation between us Jews. It is our separation that weakens our foundation and portends gloomy ramifications for our future. It is our internal division that invites attacks and boycotts and gnaws away at our strength.

Why can Jews be antisemites? It is because we Jews have a point that connects us to humanity’s corrected and unified state—“love your neighbor as yourself”—which we once discovered under Abraham’s guidance some 3,800 years ago. Together with that point, we also play host to the shattered egoistic desire, which opposes the point of unification, detaching us all from each other.

Every Jew accommodates this duality: an egoistic desire to receive, which seeks personal benefit at the expense of others, coupled with the altruistic point of unification that is attached to humanity’s peak unified state of development.

Whoever feels closer to the central point of unification is drawn to develop differently than those swept into the rat race of the masses, to positive connection in society. Whoever resists such development, letting the ego determine his or her goals and pleasures in life, is against unification, and is thus, according to its deeper definition, an antisemite.

Beyond differing political views, there are disputes about Jewish practices, legitimacy of certain denominations, distribution of funds and donations, and more. These are all weighty issues worthy of serious discussion. However, above and beyond all our disagreements and differences we must agree on this: No matter what, we need to stick together as one nation.

If we want to advance good causes, we need to start by setting an example of unity to humanity and by doing so, we will spread harmony to the entire world. It will give us the taste of our lives, as it is written in the book Maor VaShemesh, “When there are love, unity, and friendship between one another in Israel, no calamity can befall them and by that, all the curses and suffering are banished.”
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My new article on Linkedin “Our Folly Has a Purpose”

One of the most perplexing questions haunting humanity is why the most intelligent species on the planet cannot manage its life intelligently. After every self-inflicted cataclysm, we analyze, reflect, and draw conclusions in order to avoid its recurrence. Yet, every time, without fail, we fall once more into the same pitfalls of vanity and shortsightedness that lead to yet another cataclysm. Why is it that the most intelligent species must keep treading this march of folly?

The surprising answer to this question lies not in our makeup or in our intellect. The answer lies in our purpose, the purpose of our existence.

If we were developing according to Darwin’s laws of evolution, meaning naturally, we would not be making any mistakes in our behavior, just as animals know when to do what, and their species survive millions of years with very few changes.

But for humans, there is another goal besides physical existence. We are destined to become omniscient, knowing and understanding everything about Creation: why it exists, how it persists, and how it will achieve its goal.

To understand how everything works, we need to consciously connect with everything. Just as evolution advances from the simple to the complicated, from single-celled creatures to trillions of cells working in unison to sustain large bodies such as ours, our consciousness must gradually evolve from focusing only on ourselves to focusing on all of humanity, then on the entire planet, and finally on all that exists.

We are already connected, but we are unaware of it and behave as if we are not. While animals follow their instincts, and therefore do not break the connections between all parts of reality and cause no harm, we follow our whims and whatever comes up in our minds. Since our minds do not perceive the connectedness of all of reality, and even resist perceiving it because of our ego, we act as if we can ignore the rest of reality and do whatever we want. The result is the chaotic world we live in, where each one is trying to impose one’s will on everyone else or destroy them.

The purpose of the chaos, therefore, is to make us acknowledge our folly. It is to make us see that whether we like it or not, we are responsible for everyone, and each of us is responsible for all of us. Unless we acknowledge our connectedness and begin to behave with due consideration, we will destroy everything.

Moreover, unless we acknowledge our connectedness and begin to act the part, we will not perceive what we are intended to perceive. We will not be able to understand the world we live in, how it persists, and why. Indeed, we have come to a point where our physical existence and our spiritual development are interdependent. Only if we develop our minds will our bodies be able to survive.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “For Hezbollah – a Tough Hand; for Our Brothers – a Soft Heart”

The Jerusalem Post just reported that Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan has asked Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the UN Security Council “condemn the Hezbollah drone operation targeting the Karish gas rig in Israel’s territorial waters last week.” While the drones were shut down before they could do any damage, Erdan insisted that the attack “may lead to an escalation in the region and [therefore] the international community must sharply condemn it.”

In my opinion, any condemnation, however strong, will accomplish nothing. Hezbollah has proven time and again that the only language it understands is that of power. Therefore, we should retaliate with deadly force, with missiles aimed not at the drones, but at the places that send them. At the same time, we must enhance our solidarity and cohesion. Only such a two-way movement will solve our security problems.

When I speak of firing missiles, I do not mean exchanging fire, as it happened previously. I mean making them realize that we have had enough, and we are not willing to tolerate their aggression any longer. We have enough conventional military options to make sure this happens, and we should use all of them and not take anyone’s opinion into consideration, just as no other country would hesitate to use all its power against an aggressor who has declared his intention to wipe out the defending country and has repeatedly tried to do so.

On the military level, our problem is not Hezbollah, but our own hesitance against it. Hezbollah has declared war on Israel, not the other way around, so why are we not treating it like an enemy that has declared war on us and says explicitly that it will not rest until we are gone? Why are we not destroying it? Would any other country avoid doing so?

At the same time, we must not neglect our inner fortitude, which comes from our cohesion. This is the key factor in our struggle. When it comes to solidarity, we are our only enemy. Internal division within the people of Israel has always been our biggest woe and our only real enemy, since as long as we are united, no one challenges us.

Currently, our hearts are soft toward our enemies, and tough toward each other. Unless we reverse the direction of our hearts, we will continue to suffer blows and our enemies will grow stronger and more brazen.

Internal unity, therefore, based on solidarity and cohesion within our nation, is our “ultimate weapon,” not because it destroys our enemies, but because it destroys their enmity. If we act decisively on both fronts, military and social, we will succeed and the world will support us. If we neglect either, we will not succeed and the world will condemn us, as it does today, and Hezbollah will keep winning.
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Medium published my new article “Large Hadron Collider Can Reveal More Particles, Not the Secrets of Existence”

A general view of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment is seen during a media visit at the Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in the French village of Saint-Genis-Pouilly near Geneva in Switzerland, July 23, 2014. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy

On July 5, after more than three years of upgrade and maintenance work, “the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) detectors switched on all subsystems and started recording high-energy collisions at the unprecedented energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts,” reported CERN’s web site. Just one day later, Reuters jovially declared that “Scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered three subatomic particles never seen before.” Some years ago, when the LHC first observed the Higgs Boson particle, it was hailed as the discovery of the “God” particle, the link between energy and mass.

But the Higgs Boson particle did not answer all our questions, and neither will these three new particles. Expensive toys will not answer our most fundamental questions. If we want to discover the secrets of creation, we need to use a completely different method than smashing particles against each other at fantastic speeds. It may help us discover new particles, but not the force that creates them.

The force that creates all particles, and all things in nature, lies within nature itself. To discover it we need to employ a principle called “equivalence of form.” Equivalence of form means that you can detect something only if you, too, have that same something within you. It can be a force, a property, or a quality, but if you do not have it in you, you will not detect its existence outside of you.

This is how our senses work. The length of our ear canal, for example, determines the frequencies we hear. Babies are more sensitive to high pitched sounds than adults because their shorter ear canals detect shorter wavelengths, which are higher frequencies. Put differently, the frequencies that are equal in length to the length of our ear canal are the frequencies we hear. Other senses work in different ways but along the same principle of creating similarity between the outside phenomena and their detectors in our body.

Accordingly, if we want to discover the secrets of creation, we must build within us the “sensory organs” to detect them. This may sound complicated, but understanding it is quite simple. The secret of creation is balance between reality’s two extremes. We may call them positive and negative, attraction and rejection, hot and cold, life and death, winter and summer, love and hate, giving and receiving, or any other name that describes two opposites.

Sustaining life requires balance between the two forces. Without it, one force takes over and demolishes everything. For example, the moon stays at a fixed distance from Earth because there is balance between the forces pushing it from Earth and the gravitational forces that pull it toward us. If that balance were to be disrupted, the moon would either drift into space or crash into Earth.

Currently, we cannot understand life as it truly is because we are governed by only one force: reception. There is barely any giving in us, and the little there is, is powerless against the narcissistic forces dominating humanity.

As is clearly evident, we are driving humanity toward destruction or a great calamity. What is less known, however, is that we are behaving this way because of the imbalance within us between the positive and the negative. If we could balance them, we would not only restore the balance in the planetary system, we would discover much more than we can see today, much more than the LHC can discover, since our entire perception of reality will change.

At the moment, we perceive the entire world as driven by egoistic urges. It is not. It is driven by both egoistic and altruistic urges, or it would not exist, as with the example of the moon and Earth. While minerals, plants, and animals all want for themselves, as do we, nature restricts the intensity of their drives to a level that does not disrupt the balance. In other words, animals maintain the balance between positive and negative through nature’s restriction of the negative in them.

The only ones whose egoism is unlimited are humans. Therefore, we are the only ones disrupting Earth’s balance. Worse yet, because we have no genuine giving within us, we cannot detect that it exists outside of us; we have no equivalence of form with that quality in nature. In consequence, we are destroying our habitat, and we do not understand the world we live in.

The strongest telescope and the most powerful microscope will not detect what requires different properties in order to detect it. To understand reality, we do not need more powerful machines that smash particles against each other. In fact, we need not smash anything. On the contrary, we need to cultivate within us the opposite quality to smashing, the quality of building, of positivity rather than negativity. Then we will not need mammoth toys like the Large Hadron Collider, since ‎we will discover what really keeps our world running‎.
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My new article on Linkedin “Europe Supports Terrorism against Israel”

Less than a year ago, Israel presented evidence that the Palestinian organization Al-Haq is a terror supporting organization. As a result, the European Union cut off funding to the organization. A week ago, the EU suddenly announced that it had found no evidence to support Israel’s argument and announced that it would resume funding. Shortly after, nine European countries issued a joint statement that they, too, will resume funding of Al-Haq and other organizations that support Palestinian terrorism against Israel, claiming that Israel had presented no evidence to support its claim.

At the same time, the Israeli organization NGO Monitor said that it did provide European governments ample proof that these organizations finance or otherwise support terrorist activities. The organization decried the countries’ “deliberate ignoring of materials presented to them for years.”

I have no doubt that the organizations that Israel pointed out do support terrorists and terrorism. However, I am just as confident that trying to get the EU or its countries to stop funding them is utterly pointless. The simple truth is that the EU, as an organization, and the member states of the EU, support these Palestinian organizations because they, too, want to revoke the State of Israel.

We can complain to them and we can protest, but as long as we do not advance the one thing we must advance—our internal cohesion—and present it to the world as an example of unity, we will not see any favorable approach toward Israel.

Currently we are setting an example of division. Accordingly, the entire world is uniting against us and with our enemies.

If we are divided, the world wants not only to revoke Israel, but to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth. There is no in-between here; it is either or.

By “unity,” I am not referring to unity with Israel’s enemies against adversaries from our own folk. This does not show the world that we are united, but rather emphasizes our division and increases the world’s hatred toward us. By “unity,” I mean uniting with our own people despite the chasm of views between us, and without erasing it, so as to show what we are overcoming. This will give the nations the example they need in order to begin to unite among themselves, and they will thank us for it.

We need not be afraid of criticism. We must be confident that all we need is to be a light to the nations—an example of solidarity, mutual responsibility and love of others. If we do this, the world will cherish us and thank us.

The world unites with us when we unite with one another, and unites against us when we turn against each other, as is happening now. Our success, therefore, depends entirely on the connection between us. If we nurture our unity, we will thrive. If we do not, the world will see our existence as redundant and disruptive, and will seek to do away with us.

Through the connection between us, we determine where the world’s forces will go. When we are united, the world directs its energy toward connection and everyone enjoys the benefits of unity. When we are divided, the forces of the world turn against each other, wars and destruction ensue, and the whole world blames us for it. This is the simple equation of our lives.

For more on the link between Jewish unity and antisemitism, read my publications The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, and Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour.
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My new article on Linkedin “Neither Biden nor Obama or Any Other Leader – There Is Only One Superpower”

Contrary to the hype surrounding the landing of Air Force One with President Joe Biden on board, I am not excited about his arrival in Israel. I never had any faith in him, much less in Obama, and the same is true of any world leader. However they perceive their leadership, I know their hearts are governed by the same singular power that exists in the world: the power of connection.

Because Israel feels dependent on the United States for its security, there is some concern that the evident decline in US global power and dominance will have a negative impact on Israel’s position in the world. In my opinion, this is the wrong approach. We are Israel, the nation that coined the terms “mutual responsibility” and “solidarity”; we owe our strength to our unity, and to nothing else. When we are together, we are invincible. No one will defeat us when we are united because no one will want to fight against us. On the contrary, everyone will root for us as long as we root for each other.

While the leaders of Israel and the United States are making their statement during the official reception at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel-Aviv, reaffirming their mutual commitment to Israel’s security and to the collaboration they intend to deepen, I know that there is only one thing to which Israelis must commit: to one another. There is only one superpower in the world: the superpower of connection.

When the Jewish people first united into a nation, their only adhesive was faith in unity. But with it, they had achieved all that they had achieved. When a nation is united, they learned, nothing can overcome it and no mountain is too high.

Therefore, I place my faith in our unity. If we restore the solidarity and mutual responsibility that our ancestors had cultivated among them, we will achieve greatness. Our economy will thrive, our enemies will disappear, and the world will want to learn from our example. It will be just as it was in the days of the Second Temple, before the conflicts tore us apart. In those days, writes the book Sifrei Devarim, people from other nations would “go up to Jerusalem and see Israel … and say, ‘It is becoming to cling only to this nation.’”

As then, so now, if we want to achieve greatness, we should not look to foreign leaders to assist us; we should open our hearts to one another and let the superpower of unity prevail.
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