In the News (cursorinfo.co.il): “On April 12^th, the World Health Organization released a report on the number of people in the world suffering from depression. According to the report, one in ten is depressed one way or another. …

“Even today in the United States, depression is the second ‘most common’ reason given for hospitalization, in Sweden – the first.

“It is projected that by 2020 depression will be the number one killer. WHO notes that today 45 to 60% of all suicides in the world make depressed patients.”

My Comment: We are a desire for pleasure. Moreover, this desire, egoism, is constantly growing within us. It compels us to advance and pressures us through dissatisfaction. In our time it is becoming more and more difficult to find enjoyment. So depression and dissatisfaction continue to grow.

In the future, pleasure will disappear and we will be unable to fulfill ourselves with anything. Then there will be the recognition that we need to change our nature: enjoyment through bestowal rather than reception. The wisdom of Kabbalah is designed for this.
[181564]

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In the News (from lenta.ru): “Pottery shards found in a small Israeli fortress reveal an answer to one of the most important issues of Biblical studies—whether basic texts of the Old Testament were written before the Babylonian exile or after it. Inscriptions on potshards attesting to the literacy of the Jews speak in favor of the first version. This was reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. …

“However, Israeli archaeologists have studied the inscription (in Hebrew) on the clayshards from the fortress of Arad (southern Judah), dating from about 600 BC – and found a high level of literacy among the Jews of that era.

“It turned out that the text on 16 potsherds belong to a minimum of six authors, who did not need the help of scribes. Among the records were instructions to the deputy quartermaster of the fortress about the issue of provisions for a detachment of Greek mercenaries. The literacy of junior officers far from Jewish centers of culture indicates that Jews could read the sacred texts long before the Babylonian exile.”

My Comment: From the days of Abraham, comprehensive learning and education were practiced in his group, as well as reading of books written by him. The books from more ancient Kabbalists, from Adam to Abraham, as Rambam wrote, just didn’t reach us. But it indicates that in the period of the First Temple there was no uneducated child who did not know how to read and write and did not know all the sacred texts by heart.
[181553]

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Opinion (The American Conservative): “A people’s religion, their faith, creates their culture, and their culture creates their civilization. And when faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, and the people begin to die. Is this not the recent history of the West?

“Today, no great Western nation has a birthrate that will prevent the extinction of its native-born. By century’s end, other peoples and other cultures will have largely repopulated the Old Continent.

“European Man seems destined to end like the 10 lost tribes of Israel—overrun, assimilated, and disappeared. And while the European peoples—Russians, Germans, Brits, Balts—shrink in number, the U.N. estimates that the population of Africa will double in 34 years to well over 2 billion people.What happened to the West? As G. K. Chesterton wrote, when men cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, they believe in anything.

“As European elites ceased to believe in Christianity, they began to convert to ideologies, to what Dr. Russell Kirk called ‘secular religions.’ For a time, these secular religions—Marxism-Leninism, fascism, Nazism—captured the hearts and minds of millions. But almost all were among the gods that failed in the 20th century.

“Now Western Man embraces the newer religions: egalitarianism, democratism, capitalism, feminism, One Worldism, environmentalism. These, too, give meaning to the lives of millions, but these, too, are inadequate substitutes for the faith that created the West.

“For they lack what Christianity gave man—a cause not only to live for, and die for, but a moral code to live by, with the promise that, at the end a life so lived, would come eternal life. Islam, too, holds out that promise. Secularism, however, has nothing on offer to match that hope.”

My Comment: But beyond the promise of eternal life is the ability to attain in this world something that is not promised, but which the wisdom of Kabbalah offers as a method for the revelation of the Creator to His creatures in this world.
[182614]

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In the News (aljazeera.com): “The resolution, adopted by the United Nations cultural agency’s 58-nation executive board last week, condemns the Israeli government’s stewardship of Jerusalem and decries the renovation of “so-called Jewish ritual baths” and the alleged creation of ‘Jewish fake graves.’

“Sites are either referred to by their Arabic or English names, or, in the case of the Western Wall Plaza, the holiest site where Jews can pray, are put in quotation marks.

“The Western Wall is in East Jerusalem’s historic Old City, which was occupied by Israel along with the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Middle East war, though Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed the Jerusalem Law, which in 1980 declared the city ‘complete and united.’

“However, the vast majority of the international community – including the United States, the European Union and the UN – do not recognise Israel’s claims to sovereignty over East Jerusalem.”

My Comment: The Jewish people emerged under the leadership of Abraham in ancient Babylon through the union of separate families, clans, and tribes. They agreed to become a single society whose purpose was to attain the relationship of “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). In such relationships between people, the property of love that manages the world manifests. This characteristic is called the Creator.

As a result of the egoism that dominates us, we exist inside the property of love, as in an impenetrable bubble. Within it, we feel our world, in its egoism. Kabbalah calls to us to unite in spite of our egoism, to break through the membrane of this bubble and discover for ourselves the upper eternal and perfect world.

Humanity subconsciously waits for unification of the Jewish people to show the example (to be a light to peoples of the world) of how it is possible to unite in the integral world. As long as we don’t fulfill this Mitzvah (commandment) to bring the whole world to unity with the Creator, the world will hate us. The more that we reject our mission, the more we will be witness to greater and greater hatred of the world toward us.
[181790]

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Opinion (brainpickings.org): “Questions like why our world exists and what nothing is have occupied minds great and ordinary since the dawn of humanity, and yet for all our scientific progress, they continue to do so, yielding only hypotheses rather than concrete answers. …

“Alan Lightman points to fine-tuning — the notion that the basic forces propelling our universe appear to be fine-tuned in such a way as to make the existence of life possible — as a centerpiece of how modern scientists have attempted to answer these age-old questions. …

“‘On one thing most physicists agree. If the amount of dark energy in our universe were only a little bit different than what it actually is, then life could never have emerged. A little larger, and the universe would have accelerated so rapidly that matter in the young universe could never have pulled itself together to form stars and hence complex atoms made in stars. And, going into negative values of dark energy, a little smaller and the universe would have decelerated so rapidly that it would have recollapsed before there was time to form even the simplest atoms.’ …

“‘Out of all the possible amounts of dark energy that our universe might have, the actual amount lies in the tiny sliver of the range that allows life. There is little argument on this point. It does not depend on assumptions about whether we need liquid water for life or oxygen or particular biochemistries. It depends only on the requirement of atoms. As before, one is compelled to ask the question: Why does such fine-tuning occur? And the answer many physicists now believe: the multiverse. A vast number of universes may exist, with many different values of the amount of dark energy. Our particular universe is one of the universes with a small value, permitting the emergence of life. We are here, so our universe must be such a universe. We are an accident. From the cosmic lottery hat containing zillions of universes, we happened to draw a universe that allowed life. But then again, if we had not drawn such a ticket, we would not be here to ponder the odds.’”

My Comment: The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals a different cause for the universe and life within it—the existence of a higher intelligence. It reveals the reason and doesn’t put forth a new theory.

In addition, the question still remains in the theory proposed about the cause of matter, energy, and information. So Mr. Lightman, in my opinion, is wrong.
[179697]

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Question: The Prime Minister of Israel summoned the then Defense Minister  Moshe Ya’alon to explain his comments in front of senior officers of the IDF. Ya’alon stated that the officers should express their views even if they are different from the views and the opinion of the senior command and the political leaders. His words provoked different responses on part of the government and the army, starting from full support to the idea of firing Ya’alon. (Ya’alon resigned from his post a few days later.) How do you relate to such pluralism?

Answer: This isn’t pluralism but indiscrimination that exists only in our army. Military men should engage in their profession. For some reason we are witnessing an unfortunate tendency of military men preparing their political futures. This is totally unacceptable because while still in the army they begin to adapt to certain streams or political parties, whereas the army should be totally indifferent and independent of anyone, subordinate only to the government. No matter what it commands, the army has to carry out its orders and think only about how to do so in the best possible way.

If military officers begin to argue about why politicians think one way or another, it isn’t an army anymore but another parliament. This must cease, stop, and there should be a law that a person who is released from military or police service cannot hold a position in the government. He can engage in any type of administrative work in the free market, no matter where and how, but under no circumstances can he be part of politics.

Comment: In that case we wouldn’t have had half of our prime ministers since most of them were ex-military officers!

Answer: And we don’t need them. What was the benefit of General De Gaulle’s becoming Prime Minister? He lost the love of his people. We should understand that it isn’t the same thing. For some reason we believe that a person who knows how to command will also know how to run a state well. Studies show that it is the exact opposite because the laws in each case are totally different. This is the reason that it should not be allowed.

Question: Why is it that in the Israeli army everyone wants to express himself and to show his independence?

Answer: The point is that all the Israelis have come from different places and were initially organized only in kibbutzes. All the members of the kibbutzes served in the army, they were accustomed to this way of life, and then gradually made their way to politics. This happened because our state was founded at time of war, but today it is simply impossible.

Question: Is the fact that everyone feels that he is the boss related to the spiritual level?

Answer: “Everyone should be happy with his fate and with what he was given! It is the duty of the workers to work and for a brave man to be a warrior,” said Shota Rustaveli. This is how we should advance.
[183880]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/17/16

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In the News (svd.se): “Not even Europe and the United States are immune to the anti-democratic plague that is spreading across the world. Human rights eroded while many countries hold elections to cover up abuse, concentration of power and corruption. Belief in European cooperation and peace-building through economic integration is replaced by aggressive nationalism in country after country. …

“The dream of the end of history as a festival of democracy is over.

“Global democracy has been declining for a decade. … The third wave of democratization that began with Portugal’s democratic revolution in 1974 has now fallen ten consecutive years, and no improvement is seen on the horizon.

“Billions of people live in bondage in their states which are ruled by corrupt leaders who only care about fulfilling their hunger for power. … Laws that restrict civil rights movements are spreading throughout the world aspiring to destroy their rivals. An anti-democratic cartel in the human rights council in the UN is trying to block decisions regarding freedom of speech by visible heads.

“More and more countries cease to respect international law and bilateral agreements. Journalists are being killed much more often. Elections became a form of art mastered by numerous illegitimate leaders. Dictators love elections. …

“We must realize they force Europe to choose nationalism over internationalism, chauvinism over humanism.

“We must realize that powers that are interested in European collapse and put collective nationalistic pressure on free mass media do exist!

“Faith in the non-liberal democracy in Europe needs to be stopped. It casts long historic shadows and stimulates corruption. It is very harmful for economics and triggers violence and conflicts. Belief in non-liberal democracy undermines European collaboration and serves our enemies’ interests.”

My Comment: Since this is the time predicted by Kabbalah to realize our nature as evil, to realize that we cannot build anything better; if we do not change our nature, we will destroy ourselves. So we are left with no choice but to start the education of the population, rather than complaining about bad people trying to govern the good people…
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Comment: British Prime Minister David Cameron convened the first summit to combat corruption in London with the goal of creating a global movement that will defeat corruption. It seems that humanity is not learning anything; after all, these endless summits and forums like the G8 and G20 always collapse.

Answer: A politician of the stature of David Cameron cannot think otherwise. He can never be imbued with any idea other than how to take hold of the “steering wheel.” According to his understanding, everything revolves and exists only to attain this goal.

Question: Which is to say, the world will not fight corruption?

Answer: The world will not, can not, and does not want to fight corruption. For a person in power, nothing is sacred except two things: his children and his money. A person has no control over death, yet he wants to control his money and his children.

Question: How would you deal with corruption?

Answer: I personally have no one to fight. I understand the abominable egoistic nature of humanity, that there is nothing worse, and I see how weak we are against it. It “plays” with us.

Yet there is a method that makes it possible for us to rise above our nature, at least to such a degree that a more or less respectable “institution” could be created from worldly society that would live according to good laws. Otherwise the world will deteriorate into an abyss. But we can make a good, comfortable, beautiful, and happy life. Then it will be good for all, including Cameron.
[184140]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/15/16

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Question: The Council of Jewish Organizations in France expressed indignation that the Cannes Film Festival has planned the screening of an Arab film, Munich: The Palestinian Story. In the film, the terrorists who kidnapped and murdered the Israeli athletes are called freedom fighters, and all responsibility for the crime is thrown upon the German police. How is such a distortion of clear facts possible?

Answer: Today the entire modern world has become like this. If everyone says, “The Jews drink blood” and accuse them with charges that are devoid of logic, so why would the Cannes Film Festival be different? In our time, culture has become a means of political expression.

Comment: And people easily believe it.

Answer: Certainly! So they exploit culture. The controlling authorities have taken the so-called independent communications media into their hands, and now they are also taking the control of culture in their hands. They are also giving their attention to the areas of life in which it is still possible to operate on a person and manipulate him.

Comment: In spite of all this, the Jewish Agency, which is an “agency” of our external publicity, is investing great efforts in propaganda.

Answer: These organizations cannot do anything, they don’t have the power. The only thing we can do is conduct an audit of who we are. Are we to blame for what is happening? It is impossible for us to constantly justify ourselves and blame the nations of the world for being the “bad guys” and say we are the “good guys.”

We must dig deeper to understand who the Jews what Israel, how we relate to the implementation of the program in all of nature and the world. After all, we really manage this, without knowing it, and our bad attitude towards each other is bad for all the people who accuse us that we are the source of all evil. Therefore, we ourselves are building with their own hands is in itself, and no one is to blame.

And the peoples of the world have no way of confronting what we are doing in the world.

It is necessary to dig deeper to understand who the Jews are, what Israel is, and how we are connected to the implementation of the program of the development of all of nature and the world. After all, we really do manage this program without knowing it, and our bad attitude toward one another is bad for all the people who accuse us of being the source of all evil. Therefore with our very own hands we are building such an attitude toward us and no one else is to blame. The peoples of the world have no opportunity to confront what we are doing in the world.

Question: Are we capable of changing this attitude?

Answer: We can change this attitude if we listen to what the wisdom of Kabbalah says, otherwise there is no way.
[183945]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/17/16

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Question: The “Islamic State” terrorist organization has developed an application for kids for Android smart phones. This software enables children to learn the Arabic alphabet, but in a special way. The letter “Dal,” for example, corresponds to the word “Dbaba (tank),” “Saad” corresponds to “Sruch (missile),” “Meim” to “Midfa (cannon),” and so on. What can such a method lead to?

Answer: It will turn the children into soldiers. Any tyranny wants to recruit children to its army, so it is all very clear.

Of course, I feel sorry for these children. I doubt whether they will grow up to be normal members of society because their mental condition is affected by such methods.

Children need affection. They need to learn to cooperate, to sing and dance together, they need care, and they need to play. This approach should continue until the age of nine, and from the age of nine until 13, they gradually need to learn about life, but the study shouldn’t be based on hatred since it may harm a child’s psychology.

Education cannot be based on hatred because it is against the main law of nature that is aimed only at unity and love. We see how it is revealed more and more in the world today between all of the parts of creation. By wanting to separate and to divide nations and states, we go against nature, and therefore first and foremost, we suffer from this.

Question: How will this be echoed back?

Answer: It is already echoing.

There are two billion, if not more, supporters of Islam today all over the world. What happens to them? Are they happy? Do they have a normal state? Do they have a well-established system of mutual help? Everything is distorted, corrupted, and destroyed because today’s Islam is not the original Islam but rather a movement that demands sacrifices. And this is what they are prepared for.
[183548]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/11/16

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