My new article on Linkedin “The Soil Does Not Want Us Here”

Over the past three days, there has been a massive forest fire (in Israeli proportions) raging in the hills around Jerusalem. The fire is already the largest in recent decades, and perhaps the largest since the establishment of the State of Israel. There are rumors as to how this fire started, but there is only one reason that it got so big: The soil does not want us here. If we do what we must do in the land of Israel, we will receive a different “treatment” from the land, as well. Otherwise, it will reject us and eject us.

It is summer, and summertime is fire-time. This summer, there have been unprecedented fires all over the world. However, while fires across the world happen mostly naturally, most of the fires that erupt in Israel are the result of arson perpetrated by our enemies.

Nevertheless, not every arson becomes such a major forest fire as this one. It is no coincidence; the ground itself is telling us to leave; we have worn out our welcome.

We came here, specifically to this land, the land of Israel, to be the people of Israel, the people who wear the motto “Love your neighbor as yourself” as a crown over their heads. The world supported our coming here. It voted in favor of our coming here on November 29, 1947. If the vote were held today, no one would vote in our favor.

We have exhausted the world’s support through our insistence on internal bickering instead of forming a united nation that sets an example of bridging differences with love. Instead of living out our legacy, we have become an example of the opposite. This is why the world has turned against us.

Now, the land itself has also turned its back on us. It will make our lives here progressively unbearable. Our neighbors, too, will haunt us with the world’s support, and we will feel that we have nowhere else to turn but to each other.

We need not wait for matters to become so dire. We’ve always felt that unity will carry us through anything. This is why we have always united when war broke out and our enemies sought to push us out to sea. Now that our daily lives are becoming warlike, we must continue to employ this tactic or our lives will become a losing battle.

We needn’t come to it. If we use crises as springboards to enhance our unity, we will see that this is why they happen in the first place.

Israel is always at the center of the world’s attention. If we unite in the face of hardship, the world, too, will unite in the face of hardship. If the world unites in the face of hardship, it will overcome anything and people’s lives will be peaceful and meaningful.

Then, the world will know that it was right in placing us together in our land, that we have earned the right to be here. Then, too, the soil will welcome us—its long lost children who have been away for centuries due to their own division.
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My new article on Linkedin “We Can’t Uproot Hatred for Us Unless We Uproot It from Within Us”

Just recently, the semi-official Iranian outlet Tasnim News Agency reported that Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, stated that Iran is “confident that the decline and collapse of the Zionist regime is beyond a wish and is a reality that could happen in the near future.” With this statement, Iran is trying to boost its own, as well as its Palestinian proxies’ spirits after the latest military campaign in Gaza. But such announcements do not reflect strength but rather weakness.

However, military might is not what this post is about, but rather the intense hatred that Iran exhibits toward Israel and what Israel can do about it. In truth, we have tried most everything we can to appease the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world but nothing is working. In fact, experience shows that whenever we give our enemies what they demand, they add contempt to their abhorrence rather than become more peaceful and friendly.

We should already know that we will uproot the hatred in our enemies’ hearts only when we uproot the hatred from our own hearts. That is, because we hate each other, our enemies hate us. This has been the case with the Jewish people since its inception, and it will never change. As long as we keep hating one another, the world’s hatred toward us will not diminish.

The “decline and collapse” that Salami talked about are not only weakening us from within; they are fueling his, and everybody else’s hatred toward us. It is a social collapse, not a physical or an economic one. It expresses the collapse of our cohesion and solidarity, our sense that we are one nation that is bounded by mutual responsibility among its members.

Our sages wrote that when we feel alienation from each other, the world attacks us, and when we unite, no harm comes to us. For instance, the book Shem MiShmuel states, “When unity restores Israel as before, Satan will have no place in which to place error and external forces. When they are as one man with one heart, they are as a fortified wall against the forces of evil.”

But our vocation is not only to unite, but to set an example of unity for all the nations. This is why whenever we quarrel among ourselves, even if only verbally, the nations punish us. The Talmud (Yoma 9b) explains that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel and destroyed the First Temple because the people of Israel spoke to one another “with daggers in their tongues.” But when the people of Israel display unity, everyone wants to learn from them how to unite. accordingly, the book Sifrey Devarim writes that in the days of the Second Temple, during the three festive pilgrimages, gentiles would “go up to Jerusalem and see Israel … and say, ‘It is becoming to cling only to this nation.’”

Once again, we see that our own division, our social decay, is our only problem. If we return to the motto of our nation, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” by simply trying to implement it, we will dissolve all the hatred toward us. As long as we are obstinate and regard being right as more important than being together, we will have no future in the land of Israel or anywhere else in the world.
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My new article on Linkedin “There Is Really Only One Vaccine”

With the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) calling on countries to “halt on COVID-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September … as the gap between vaccinations in wealthy and poor countries widens,” you’d think that if poorer countries had high vaccination rates, the pandemic would be over. It wouldn’t. That is, we should still take the shots if we can, but we should also not expect them to eliminate the virus. There is really only one vaccine that can do this. Since the pandemic is a symptom, we should vaccinate ourselves against the pathogen, and not against the symptom. The pathogen for Covid-19, as well as for all our countless crises during this horrific summer, is our own nature. If we cure the wickedness in our own nature, we will heal the world, heal humanity, and heal ourselves.

When it comes to healing human nature, we need to look no further than ourselves—the Jewish people. Our ancestors conceived a method for correcting human nature and strove to spread it far and wide. This is why they aspired to make the people of Israel “a light unto nations.” When Abraham discovered that the division among his Babylonian countryfolk stemmed from their growing self-centeredness, “He began to call out to the whole world” that they should be merciful and kind, writes Maimonides in Mishneh Torah.

Even before Abraham, but certainly after him, writes Ramchal, our ancestors wanted to correct the entire world. “Noah was created to correct the world in the state that it was at that time … so [his contemporaries] would also receive correction from him,” writes Ramchal in his commentary on the Torah. Also, he continues, “Moses wished to complete the correction of the world at that time. …However, he did not succeed because of the corruptions that occurred along the way.”

Our sages throughout the ages declared that unity is the way to go. “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” wrote King Solomon (Prov. 10:12). Rabbi Akiva stated that “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the great rule of the Torah. His disciple, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, wrote in The Book of Zohar (Portion Aharei Mot): “These are the friends as they sit together and are not separated from each other. At first, they seem like people at war, wishing to kill one another … then they return to being in brotherly love. …And you, the friends who are here, as you were in fondness and love before, henceforth you will also not part from one another … and by your merit, there will be peace in the world.”

All of our spiritual leaders wrote likewise. In the 20th century, the great Rav Kook reiterated the linkage between Israel’s unity and the correction of the world. In the book Orot HaKodesh, he wrote, “Since we were ruined by unfounded hatred, and the world was ruined with us, we will be rebuilt by unfounded love, and the world will be rebuilt with us.”

It is already clear that great catastrophes are encroaching on humanity, but we have yet to recognize that they all have a single root: our own division. If we, the people of Israel, realize that our division has global consequences, perhaps we will be more attentive to the message of unity that our sages have been trying to communicate to us for centuries without success.

For elaboration about the connection between Israel’s unity and the world’s prosperity, please read 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 “Israel-Poland Relationship—We Should Focus Only on Correction”

A few days ago, the Polish parliament approved a Holocaust anti-restitution law “designed to end claims for property restitution and compensation for property confiscated by the country’s Communist regime in the 1940s and 1950s, including that of Holocaust survivors,” wrote Jeremy Sharon on The Jerusalem Post. Two days later, Israel recalled its envoy from Poland to protest the new law, and the US and Israel declared that they were coordinating their response to the anti-restitution law.

We needn’t be familiar with the details of the restitution arguments to know that antisemitism is widespread in Poland. It is also well-documented that Poles participated in killing Jews during World War II. At the same time, I think that focusing on the guilt of the Polish people and downgrading the level of the diplomatic relationship with Poland over this issue will not make Poland less antisemitic or help commemorate the Holocaust.

I think that if we want to do some real good to ourselves and to the world, we should focus on correcting the future, which means, first and foremost, correcting ourselves. This is the only step we can take that will yield good results. Everything else will have negative outcomes.

The people of Israel, whether they are aware of it or not, were once in possession of a method that changed human nature from the evil inclination that is in us from our youth, as the Torah writes (Gen. 8:21), into a nature of giving and bonding. This method enabled Abraham to unite the nomads who had gathered around him to hear his teachings about kindness and mercy. This method helped Moses turn the Israelites who had fled from Egypt into a nation after having committed to unite “as one man with one heart.” This method made us “a light unto nations” in the 3rd century BC, when Ptolemy II, king of Egypt, invited seventy sages from Jerusalem to translate their wisdom from Hebrew to Greek.

At the same time, the abandonment of this method had brought upon us Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the First Temple and exiled the people of Israel to Babylon. The abandonment of this method also brought upon us the Seleucid Empire, whose Hellenistic culture threatened to dissolve Jewish unity, and which inflicted upon us a bloody civil war.

In the end, the abandonment of this method of unity brought upon us Titus and his Roman Legion, which destroyed what was left of Jerusalem after we destroyed each other within the city walls. Had we not relinquished Abraham’s method of connection, which transfers self-centered individuals into caring human beings like Abraham himself, our chronicles would have been very different.

But we should not wallow in our sorrow; we should fortify our future. As then, so now, our strength lies in our unity. If we rise above our (intense) hatred for each other, no enemy will persecute us. If we seek to cover our hate with love, as King Solomon had suggested (Prov. 10:12), we will forge a solid union that will shine as a beacon of hope for all of humanity to see that foes really can become friends.

When our example brightens up the dimming light on humanity’s international relationships, the world will justify our presence in the land of Israel and will support us in every way it can. At that time, we will not need to fight for restitution; we will fight against our own egos, to raise unity over hatred, and the world will support our struggle to guarantee that we succeed.

The Holocaust claimed millions of our people, including most of the members of my family. If we want to do justice to their memory, to give their lives a lasting meaning, we must make the legacy of our people a living reality—a reality of union over division, love over hate, and be a living proof that people of different cultures, tongue, values, and goals can become one solid nation. We will be a proud and respected nation only when we prove that “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not an empty motto, but our everyday reality and our life’s purpose.

For more on this topic, refer to the book 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 “The Engine of History”

Over billions of years, the universe evolved from a tiny speck into a mammoth structure whose vastness no human can perceive. On a miniscule planet in the midst of the vast universe, life began to evolve some four billion years ago. Over the eons, life evolved smoothly in its course, generating minerals, plants, and animals. There was no apparent reason for the process, but it went on to develop increasingly complicated creations. Only very recently, in the last 5,000 years or so, did the reason manifest: The universe evolved toward creating man, who is to evolve and become like the maker of the universe, and thereby complete the circle of creation—from maker, to man, to maker.

The purpose of creation was initially known to few, but they developed manners of explaining it to many. The wisdom those few had learned became known as the wisdom of Kabbalah, which means reception, since it teaches how to receive the ultimate knowledge, that of the maker of the universe.

As the wisdom evolved, so did humanity. When Abraham came along and developed his wisdom, writes Maimonides in Mishneh Torah, he wrote it in books such as The Book of Creation and other books that did not make it to our time. Nevertheless, his teachings reached countless people in his homeland Babylon, Canaan, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Near East. His teaching was simple: Be kind and caring to others, and you will discover the secrets of the maker of the universe, or as Maimonides depicted it, “the leader of the capital.”

While Abraham was teaching, Babylon went through a profound social crisis and its people became arrogant and alienated from each other. The book Pirkey de Rabbi Eliezer describes Abraham’s impressions from watching the builders of the Tower of Babylon: “Abraham, son of Terah, went by and saw them building the city and the tower.” He tried to speak to them and tell them about the benefits of caring over alienation “but they loathed his words,” says the book. Yet, when “They wished to speak each other’s language” as before, when they were still united, “they did not know each other’s language. What did they do?” asks the book, “They each took his sword and fought one another to death. Indeed,” concludes the text, “half the world died there by the sword.”

Later, the chronicles of the people of Israel in Egypt tell the story of Moses’ struggle to unite the people of Israel, redeem them from Egypt, and teach them Abraham’s wisdom. Like Abraham, Moses did not intend to keep the wisdom exclusively for Israel. He wanted the entire world to benefit from it. In his commentary on the Torah, the great Ramchal writes, “Moses wished to complete the correction of the world at that time. This is why he took the mixed multitude, as he thought that thus would be the correction of the world … However, he did not succeed because of the corruptions that occurred along the way.”

Other historic events followed key points in the development of the wisdom of Kabbalah. The writing of The Book of Zohar took place soon after the ruin of the Second Temple, when the Jewish people began their two-millennia long exile, and Christianity was but a nestling faith. A long history of persecution and oppression was to begin, and the fall of Rome was nearing, along with the Hellenistic culture that ended the Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel.

For more than a thousand years, The Book of Zohar had been hidden. Toward the end of the 13th century, it reappeared and a new era had begun. The Middle-Ages were coming to a close. When a young kabbalist by the name of Isaac Luria came to Safed, in Northern Israel, in the middle of the 16th century, he began to teach Kabbalah like none other had done before him. At around the same time, novel ideas were spreading throughout Europe: The Renaissance was gaining ground, and Martin Luther’s Reformation was challenging the authority of the Catholic Church.

The teachings of Isaac Luria, who became known as the ARI, remained in the twilight for centuries and very few were privy to them. It was only in the 20th century that the wisdom of Kabbalah became more accessible. In the 1940s and 50s, a kabbalist by the name of Yehuda Ashlag explained in detail the teachings of the ARI in his comprehensive six-volume The Study of the Ten Sefirot, as well as the The Book of Zohar in his Sulam [Ladder] commentary. As before, the years when Ashlag, who became known as Baal HaSulam, worked on his commentaries were fateful years for humanity. In Ashlag’s time, three major ideologies struggled for world dominance: Capitalism, Communism, and Nazism. The result of their struggle was the Second World War with all its horrendous consequences.

The teachings of Baal HaSulam, for all their relative clarity, compared to his predecessors, still did not become known far and wide as he had wished. As he said, the generation was not ready for it.

Now it is. We are the first generation that is beginning to implement the principles that Abraham had taught and that Moses wished to spread around the world. In our generation, the wisdom of Kabbalah—the wisdom that teaches how the world was made, how it operates, and how we can become like its maker—is taught throughout the world, and everyone is welcome. Anyone can read the books, watch the lessons, practice the method with others, and achieve what the wisdom enables.

The engine of history, which has driven every process since the dawn of time, is now open to everyone, like an open-code program that anyone can come and learn. The texts have been translated into dozens of languages, the lessons are accessible online and for free, and curious people from around the world are bonding around Abraham’s tenets: Be kind and caring to others, and you will discover the secrets of the maker of the universe, or as Maimonides depicted it, “the leader of the capital.”
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My new article on Linkedin “National Unity Day – An Alibi for More Division”

A suggested National Unity Day is garnering support on all sides of the political spectrum in Israel. The day, which started as an initiative to commemorate the memory of three teenagers who were kidnapped and slain by terrorists, has evolved into emphasizing the value of unity, giving, and mutual responsibility throughout the country and with all Jews all over the world. I am happy to see that unity is on the agenda, but in my eyes, dedicating a day to unity is nothing but a permit for division for the rest of the 364 days. Unity must be our daily work. Every day when we do not try to strengthen our unity is a day when we are not the people of Israel.

Unity is our motto. We forged our nationhood by agreeing to unite “as one man with one heart,” and all our struggles from the inception of our people to the ruin of the Second Temple were efforts to unite the people. Our nation did not arise the way other nations do. We started as an aggregate of strangers who followed Abraham because of his idea that kindness and love of others are the keys to a good life. Over time, as we practiced these qualities among ourselves, we forged unity. Gradually, the assortment of strangers became a nation.

But it was a nation like no other: Whenever unity prevailed among us, we felt as a nation and our unity shone as a beacon of hope that all of humanity might one day be united, just as we succeeded in doing despite our different origins. Whenever division took over, we became a throng of strangers pressed together against their will, and we reverted to mutual hatred that no other nation exhibited. In those times, we were the epitome of evil, the nations loathed and despised us, and wanted to do away with us. In the end, we succumbed to hatred and the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and exiled us for the next two millennia.

Now that we are back in the land of Israel and have established a Jewish state, it is our duty to work on unity every single day. It is our obligation to the world to reignite the beacon of hope, to show that strangers can form a bond that is stronger than any other connection, and that peace is not an empty slogan but a feasible aspiration. Dedicating one day a year to this most sacred task, to the vocation of our people, is a mockery of our calling. What will we do the rest of the year, hate one another as we do today?

A National Unity Day is an alibi for more division; we need the genuine article. Anything less than true bonding of hearts will not do. Unless we strive to be “as one man with one heart,” as our vocation mandates, we will not be the authentic people of Israel, the nation that hallowed the motto “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and which the entire world is anxious to see arise.
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My new article on Linkedin “When Our Adult Children Leave Home”

From the moment our children are born we invest everything we can in them knowing that the day will come when they will move on independently with their own lives. This transition can be a difficult one for families to make. So what is the best way to carry on relationships with adult children who have left home? What preparations should be made ahead of time towards this stage in order to keep the family connected?

From childhood, it is worthwhile to establish the habit with children of never letting a day pass without them contacting us. It does not matter where they are and what exactly they are doing, at least once a day they will call us to exchange impressions in regard to everyone’s well-being. We do not need to be the ones to call them because they might be busy and we might disturb them. It’s far better if they get used to calling us. This way, when the time comes for them to leave the house, they will have the established habit of daily contact.

From us as parents, they will hear what is happening with the rest of the family. In this way, the family connection will be maintained. Of course, physical contact will also need to be maintained, and these should become a regular routine. The home-cooking that we will prepare for them to take home will provide yet another feeling of connection to us throughout the week as well.

In general, the stage of leaving home for independent adult life is something that needs to be prepared for years. Independence is built through building an atmosphere where children learn to feel responsible, mature, and where they actually function as if they are already living in their own home, even though they are still with us. And when the day to leave home finally arrives, our job should be to provide our children with a sense of confidence and security, a feeling that they can manage on their own. We will always be there to support them, but the responsibility passes to them.

Anyone who grows up in a home with an overly pampered atmosphere, in which everything is done for them, will have a hard time getting used to independent living. Such individuals are left handicapped, not knowing how to organize basic things like food, laundry, and regular life responsibilities, not to mention complex concerns like long term relationships and starting a family of their own. Such a person will feel ill-equipped to take life in his or her own hands. In fact, if we do not provide proper education ahead of time, it will be difficult to make up for the accumulated deficit at the time they leave home.

What can be done if such a situation is the reality? Sit with your children and write a sort of life guide—a guide that is as detailed as possible, that will contain cases and consequences, what to do when things happen in a certain way, how to deal with some difficulties they are likely to encounter in life, and how to react when certain kinds of problems arise. Everything that has not been absorbed into their minds and hearts during their childhood years must now be written.

We as parents should also be prepared to face the new situation of our children leaving home, and how to adjust to being empty-nesters. When they move out on their own and have not communicated with us for a long time, we will probably feel very hurt.

Perhaps we have no right to feel hurt because this is the result of the way that we educated them. Their behavior does not mean that they intend to hurt us, but it is now only our ego that demands attention from them. Apparently, we failed to instill in them good examples of concern for others and reciprocity in relationships.

After addressing our adult children’s deficits and our own loneliness, what we can still do is to call them daily to gauge how they sound, whether they need anything, and to offer help or to give good advice. After a period of time during which they get used to us calling them, we can say something along the lines of: “We do not know if we can call tomorrow, but we would be very happy for you to call us.” And so, little by little, the habit of mutual bonding will be formed.

In a nutshell, it is a natural part of life that when our children grow and progress, they will become independent and start a new life on their own. What we need to always keep in mind is that our job is to give them a sense of security, guidance for their future life, and a sense that we are behind them no matter what. There should be a clear guarantee that although they leave our home, they never leave our hearts. And such an affirmation will be reciprocated.
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My new article on Linkedin “National Lazy Day – What a Great Idea”

Tuesday this week, August 10, to be exact, was National Lazy Day, an unofficial holiday that celebrates the “inner couch potato,” according to the website Time and Date. We are taught to despise laziness and admire diligence, but the current state of the world is a direct result of our excessive hard work. Maybe if we took a break once in a while, we’d give Earth a break, as well, and all of us would be a little safer and calmer.

Considering our current attitude toward the world, laziness is good for us and for everyone else. Since everything we do is for ourselves—amassing wealth, power, possessions, and preferably at the expense of others—the less we do, the better for everyone, eventually also for ourselves. In fact, if we could impose a month-long break on all of humanity, everything would suddenly blossom. Birds would sing, the weather would calm, and there would be no floods, no fires, and no wars, if only we could take a break for a few weeks.

We need to start being accountable to nature and understand that we are the only harmful element in it, and a very potent one at that. This is why we must impose that pause on ourselves. Because of our harmful nature, our sages instruct in the Talmud, “Sit and do nothing—better” (Iruvin 100a).

Doing nothing doesn’t mean we have to sit on the couch all day. We can take the children to the beach, go for a walk, do something in the garden, etc., each according to one’s circumstances. The point is not to “produce,” “manufacture,” since this is where we harm others and nature.

If we want to participate in more productive activities, we must first contemplate why we want to do them, and mainly who will benefit from them. Beyond tending to the basic sustenance of ourselves and our families, everything we do that is excessive is also detrimental.

Therefore we must reflect on why we want to do what we want to do, who stands to benefit from it, and who stands to lose. If we find that in the end, it is a self-centered act, it’s best that we avoid it. But if it is in order to help others, then we are more than welcome to work on it as hard and as long as we can. That is, if we can invert the intention of our actions, the beneficiary of our efforts from ourselves to others, it will be a blessing to the world and to us. Any other motivation to act will lead to negative results. In that case, it is better to be lazy and avoid unnecessary work.
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My new article on Linkedin “Being an Environmentalist Pays Well”

A recently released report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) states that “Human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years. … Human-induced climate change,” the report asserts, “is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since [the last report in 2013].”

This summer, there is not a region in the world that has not suffered because of the changing climate. According to the IPCC scientists, the horrible future they have been predicting is already happening, and from here on, it will be all downhill unless we do as they say.

With all due respect, I think that cutting emissions, switching to renewable energy sources, prohibiting the use of plastic, and all the measures that the distinguished panel is suggesting will not improve our situation one bit. It will only create well-paying jobs for people who make a career out of telling us off. It is not even a matter of the panel’s inability to impose its suggestions on countries. It is that the remedy they are prescribing is the wrong remedy since their diagnosis is wrong from the very beginning.

We can test their suggestions—burn less fossil fuels, produce less plastic and so forth—but by the time we recognize the futility of their ideas, we will be much worse off than we are today, and things are already quite dire. Instead of wasting time, resources, and lives, we should work on the only element that we know is malfunctioning: people, or more precisely, relationships among people. Even if we do not see the connection between the exploitative nature of our relationships, our exploitation of nature, and the growing instability of the climate, it is still worth trying to experiment with connection because 1) it will improve our relationships, which is a definite plus, and 2) we haven’t found another remedy. In fact, we are so uncaring that we cannot bring ourselves to experiment with restraining the use of fossil fuels. Since we insist on over-consumption, environmentalists suggest we use renewable energy sources. But this is completely useless.

Also, we already see that our planet is a single system where everything affects everything else. We also see that everything is balanced in nature and runs in its course, except for us. In other words, we understand that the problem lies only with us. Now we need to understand the depth of the problem—that it isn’t that we are burning the wrong kind of fuel, but that we are injecting our volatile temper into the system that sustains us: Planet Earth.

Nothing in nature fights. Animals hunt or struggle over prominence in order to reproduce. But once an animal has eaten and is not in the midst of mating season, it is quiet and peaceful. Conversely, we are ever belligerent, always looking for the next peak to climb, and the next climber to throw off the mountain on our way to the top. Since our species is at the top of the pyramid, our negative mode of thinking spoils all other levels of nature and upsets their balanced and harmonious existence. Succinctly: Every problem—from climate catastrophes through earthquakes, to plagues and wars—stems from the corrupt human nature. Fix humanity, and you have fixed the world.

By fixing, I mean fixing our relationships. If we change our attitudes toward each other from hostile to caring, we will change the whole of society. Instead of wishing to exploit others, we will seek to support them. Instead of wishing for other people’s failure, we will wish for their success, and they for ours.

Because of our positive relation toward each other, we will stop depleting natural resources since that would be unfair to other people and to future generations. Likewise, we will not want to extinguish wildlife, cut down forests, pollute the air, water, and soil because these would be detrimental to others. Soon, we will realize that we want to use only what we really need and dedicate the rest of our time and energy to supporting, encouraging, and nurturing others. In this way, by caring for each other, we will heal society and restore the balance in the climate and the soil.

Admittedly, caring for others does not pay well to those who make “fighting” climate change their career. They will tell us that we should look elsewhere for solutions, and not at our relationships, but they will be wrong and misleading. If we want a good future, we should insist on caring for each other’s future, and then our own will be secured, as well.

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My new article on Linkedin “The Hidden Purpose of Online Antisemitism”

The Internet and social media in particular have rapidly become the most widespread and visceral field for antisemites. The five major social networking platforms in the world—Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube—ignored 84% of reports submitted to them about antisemitic posts, according to a new study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British-American monitoring organization.

But the creators of the study turned everything from head to toe. These networks have never tried to address anti-Jewish content on their platforms. On the contrary, this type of posts are good for them, they evoke a response from the audience. Antisemitic materials get feedback; create lively engagement and debates around them. They generate a chain reaction of public interest. So antisemitic content is given a free pass; anyone can go ahead and write whatever they want to stimulate hateful dialogue.

Contrary to how it may seem, antisemitic posts work for us as an auxiliary force against us. Antisemites help Zionists. One might ask how is that possible? I can attest myself that if I had not felt in my own skin anti-Jewish rejection and animosity in Russia, I would not have immigrated to Israel. That is why I thank the antisemites. I owe them.

When I was a young student scientist and began working at a medical institute, I could not progress anywhere in the field and facility only because I was Jewish. Whenever I forgot my identity, antisemites made sure to remind me of it and told me straight to my face, “It’s not for you! We cannot give you permission to work in this lab because it is secret.” In this way I was repeatedly taught that Russia was not my place, and this pushed me to emigrate to the land of Israel.

Social networks are a great arena for development. Not in them, but with their help. Instead of fighting hatred against Jews on social media like Don Quixote following an impossible quest and struggling to fix what has no fix in that way, we must accept the antisemitic pressure as a gift that propels us forward to wake up and be the way Jews should be. What does that mean?

As Jews we need to remember that we are not the weakest link in humanity. On the contrary, we are the strongest of all because we received the wisdom of connection to fulfill a specific spiritual role for the sake of the whole world. Our role is to pass on this wisdom to the entire human race.

In ancient times we brought spiritual social laws to all of mankind. All the nations of the world drew from these laws for their well-being, and now we must strive to return to that status. If we hold on to the original principles of the Israeli nation, those based on the laws of the Supreme Power, rules of good and complementary connection between people over instinctive egoism, we will be able to provide the medicine to cure our sick society in general.

But if we insist on holding to shreds of mixed ideas of Communism, Socialism, Marxism and other “isms,” which have no power to lift humanity above the egoism inherent in it, then we will continue to get confused and drift away from our source. We need to bring love into the world—not fleeting love as we know it, which has no roots, not artificial love like in pop culture—but true love from the heart, one capable of overcoming our evil instinct.

The Supreme Power is behind everything in reality, including antisemitism. So we have nothing to address directly to those who write against Jews, nor should we admire the abusers and promoters of offensive content. We need to admit to the existence of and admire the force at work in reality; we must take the tenets of the people of Israel like “Love will cover all crimes” and “love your neighbor as yourself” and implement them between us and begin to present them to the world, introduce them to everyone. When this treasure becomes public domain and is at everyone’s disposal, antisemitism on the Web and everywhere else will cease.
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