Question from Facebook: Why is loneliness given to us and how do we correct it?

Answer: Loneliness is given to you for you to feel that everything is in your hands, nobody pressures you, you are in charge of your condition, and you can do everything.

Start to use your loneliness correctly and you will see how good it is because in reality this state is given to you by the Creator so that you can turn to Him.
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From KabTV’s “Answers to the questions from the Facebook,” 3/10/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does the State of Israel have a right to exist? Why or why not?“

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, there is a program that runs through nature’s and humanity’s development, which guides us all to a state of complete unification, eternity and perfection at the end of our development. In this process, the State of Israel has been given a right and ability to exist, however on a very specific condition: that the people of Israel fulfill a key role in the process.

What is the role of the people of Israel? It is to pioneer a method of unifying above division among each other—i.e. to reach what is described as “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) and “love covers all transgressions” (Proverbs 10:12)—in order to become a conduit for unity to expand worldwide—i.e. to be “a light unto the nations” (Isaiah 42:6).

According to our role, to bring unity to the world, we have been doing the opposite until today. We are unaware of the duty we have toward the world, and due to the lack of awareness and efforts to unite, we experience increasing division among each other. As a result, we become a source of the world’s problems, conflicts and separation.

Therefore, if the people of Israel fail to develop from this moment onward in a unifying direction, then the period of the existence of the State of Israel will come to an end. If the people of Israel in the State of Israel, in the land that we have been given, fail to motion toward serving the world with a positive example of unification, and continue developing in the opposite direction, then the State of Israel will have no right to exist. Then, as has taken place before in history, the Jewish people would become pressured to exit this land and disperse around the world. Moreover, according to the exponentially-growing hatred toward the Jewish people and the methodical delegitimization of the State of Israel unfolding from one day to the next, I think that the decision to eliminate the State of Israel could very well happen soon.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why can’t Palestine recognise Israel?“

The people of Israel alone determine the attitude that the nations of the world have toward them. The nations of the world have no free choice in how they perceive Israel. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, Israel are people with free choice, because it was the people of Israel who were granted the ability to rise above the egoistic human nature—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others—that runs on autopilot within each and every person. If the people of Israel make the choice to rise above the divisive egoistic drives and unite, then an abundance of goodness will flow out to the world through them. Likewise, if the people of Israel fail in making that choice, letting egoism continue to grow unabated, then no agreements will help them: it will be bad for them and for the world.

Free choice is the choice to connect among each other and by doing so, reveal the upper force—the force of connection and love—here in this world. If we fail to make that choice, then the negative side of the force of connection and love—division and hatred due to egoistic desires growing without any effective regulation—will ripple out to all humanity in depth and width. This is the root of any positive or negative attitude toward Israel from the nations of the world.

Today, since the people of Israel are not making any effort to realize their unifying role in the world, then anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sentiment—including denial of the State of Israel—grows in order to pressure the people of Israel to fulfill their duty in the world.

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Question: When reading Talmud Eser Sefirot, I fall asleep, but when I hear The Zohar, it fascinates me. Is it worthwhile to continue reading The Study of the Ten Sefirot, or is it intended only for men?

Answer: If you are a woman, then generally you do not have to read The Study of the Ten Sefirot; instead, read the articles and letters of Baal HaSulam and Rabash.

Question: In the Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot, it is said that if a person learns Torah and doesn’t attain what is necessary after 3 to 5 years have gone by, he will no longer see success on the way. Why is the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah a last resort?

Answer: These things were said so that those people who truly yearn to learn the Torah will know that it was given to a person for the correction of oneself and the revelation of the Creator to him in this world. Therefore, if a person studies Torah for 3 years and doesn’t see any result, this means that he must move to the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Question: Baal HaSulam said that the soul of the great Ari was clothed in him. Was this the same soul or did he just achieve the same degree as the Ari?

Answer: No, it is the same soul. This is called the “Conception of the Souls.”

Question: The wisdom of Kabbalah is also an inheritance, a heritage. From whom did Baal HaSulam inherit it? Who was his teacher?

Answer: His teacher was a Rabbi from Porosov, a small city near Warsaw, which is where he lived. But when Baal HaSulam understood that he had gone beyond his teacher, he decided he should leave Poland and travel to Israel, and that is what he did.

Question: Thanks to the scientific approach, I read Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Kabbalistic texts with a feeling that I don’t even understand a single word in them. Isn’t this terrible?

Answer: This is terrible. You should read with feeling and understanding. It is said that “the heart understands,” meaning that there should be a particular combination between feeling and understanding, from understanding to feeling and from feeling to understanding. One supervises and defines the other.

Question: When one reads a book of Kabbalah, does it mean that one experiences the states of the author while reading?

Answer: I suppose so. As is understood, you cannot experience what the author experienced, but you can to a small degree.

Question: Can a student immediately approach the study of the writings of Baal HaSulam? Or must he first grasp and understand, meaning approach them?

Answer: I would begin with the articles of the Kabbalists above all, which were written for the wider circles of society. These are “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” “Peace in the World,” and so forth.

Question: For a Kabbalist, what is the significance of the disappearance of the beastly part (death)?

Answer: It has no significance. If something happens to me, I will accept this with absolute calmness. The only thing that concerns me is to give a good lesson with full intensity and shaking up the lazy students that are with me all over the world. Nothing else worries me. I hope this will be for a while longer. At least, that is what I am living for.

Question: Can I show someone summaries of the books that I have written in my own words or should I burn them?

Answer: You can leave them with you. Even if someone would see them or hear them, it is okay.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 3/10/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How could modern America become anti-Semitic? “

It is becoming anti-Semitic in many ways, not the least of which is through the education system. Colleges are notorious for fomenting hatred against the Jews.

I spoke about it many years ago, that the next Holocaust would be in America because it is the most developed, modern and multicultural country in our times. As America was still becoming established, it endured its labor pains through struggles with African Americans and Latin Americans. However, when America more or less became established, then anti-Semitism started appearing more and more.

When I visited America 20 years ago, I spoke with American Jews, explaining how anti-Semitism was going to ignite in the US. They all exploded in laughter when I said that. Today, the same American Jews I spoke to clearly see and agree that anti-Semitism is an intensifying problem in America. However, today I’m saying something even worse, that the next Holocaust will be in America. They still don’t understand that and say, “in the meantime, it’s still okay.” That’s also what the Jews in Germany said as they were being escorted to the trains to Auschwitz.

I have extensively spoken and written about the reason for anti-Semitism, which is that the Jewish people need to perform a special role in humanity—to unite (“love your friend as yourself”) and be a conduit for unity to spread to humanity (to be a “light unto nations”)—and anti-Semitism appears as a force to pressure the Jews to perform their role if they make no moves in that direction by themselves. This is the role that the Jews acquired when they gathered from all parts of Babylon some 4,000 years ago, under the guidance of Abraham, who led them to attain spiritual unity, where from unity among themselves they reached unity with the upper spiritual force.

The Jews lost connection to their spiritual unity some 2,000 years ago as they entered the period of exile. In our time, there is a renewed sense of urgency for unity to reawaken in humanity. As such, all fingers point at the Jews, albeit subconsciously, for them to implement the method of connection that they received in Abraham’s time. This is the reason for the exponential rise of anti-Semitism in our time, and especially in today’s most developed country, America. As myriad problems hit people around the world due to a lack of social cohesion, the need for unity above divisions becomes more and more prominent, and the more people feel pain in their lives, the more they subconsciously feel that Jews are behind that pain—for failing to come forward with the method of unification of all peoples.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “As an American Jew, I am horrified by the anti-Semitism and racism that seems to have slithered out from under a rock since Donald Trump was elected. At what point does it make sense to leave the US? What would have to happen for you to leave?“

It won’t help you to leave America. Don’t think that by leaving America you will do yourselves and the world any good. In order to make a positive impact in the world, which will also put an end to anti-Semitism and racism, you will need to start understanding what the nations of the world demand of you and what you need to correct. Your good future depends only on that. Therefore, I recommend, as quickly as possible, to recognize what is the role of the Jews toward all nations of the world, and let us approach this work because by doing so, we secure a good world for them, for us all, and our future generations.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does Tisha B’Av commemorate?“

Tisha B’Av is a very important and prominent state in the development of creation. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, Tisha B’Av commemorates the ruin of the Holy Temple, i.e., the shattering of the vessels, the state when we lost consciousness (i.e. the shattering or ruin) of our connection as a single entity (i.e. the Holy Temple). In the wisdom of Kabbalah, we learn extensively about this state of shattering and how important it is, because there cannot be correction and connection without corruption and shattering. Therefore, on one hand, there is great joy in the opportunity for correction that the shattering brings us, and on the other hand, there is sorrow and crying from foreseeing the oncoming shattering, knowing that we needed to resist it, i.e. to maintain our connection as a single entity despite the forces emerging to shatter this connection. This coincides with the spiritual principle that, in spirituality, we always encounter two opposites in the same place.

Therefore, together with the joy at the opportunity for correction that the shattering brings us, we need to simultaneously be sorry about all the ruins that have taken place, out of necessity, due to their spiritual root. However, what is the destruction that we need to be sorry about today? It is that today, after the 16th Century, the time of the great Kabbalist, the Ari (Rav Isaac Luria), which marked the beginning of the opening of the process of correction to humanity as a whole, then all we need to be sorry about is our negligence to willfully engage in this process of correction. That is, we shouldn’t be sorry about ruined Holy Temples from 1,000s of years ago, but that each day we fail to actively engage in the process of correction, we fail to build the new Holy Temple—a correction of the shattering in our connections. That is what is truly considered the ruin of the Temples.

Therefore, what do we need to take into consideration during Tisha B’Av? It’s why we cause the ruin and shattering of the Temple today. We shouldn’t cry about what happened 2,000 years ago. We don’t really know what happened back then. By crying about it, it’s as if we position ourselves as great righteous people and think poorly of the people back then, and that they lost the rule of the Temples. What we need to understand is that this ruin played out according to a necessity for a certain order to unfold. However, since the time of the Ari, the 16th Century, when we position ourselves against the process and the method of correction—the wisdom of Kabbalah—then the ruin is the shattering of human relations, the division that is spreading worldwide among humanity. We thus don’t relate to Tisha B’Av as a historical occasion, but as a state that is playing out in our daily lives.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Tisha B’Av: It’s been nearly 2000 years since the destruction of the temple, how come Jews still mourn it yearly on its anniversary?“

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the mourning at Tisha B’Av shouldn’t be about the ruin of the First and Second Temples that took place in the past, but the sorrow should be in relation to the failure of the Jewish people to make moves in establishing the Third Temple.

How does this work? Firstly, we need to understand that the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t relate to corporeal depictions in the Torah, but according to the language of root and branch, relates to the inner processes of human correction that are presented through its writings. Therefore, the meaning behind the establishment of the Holy Temples is the establishment of a united people above division. That is, using the method of correction that guides people to connect on a basis of “love your friend as yourself,” a group of people known as “the Jews” reached a state of spiritual unity (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]), and this is what the Torah describes as the construction of the Temples.

The ruin of the Temples that Tisha B’Av symbolizes means the detachment of the Jewish people from their spiritual unity “as one man with one heart,” and their exit into a state of exile, i.e. a state of dispersion from their spiritual unity.

This destruction and detachment is a necessary state in the process of humanity’s development. Why? It’s because we need to reveal the force of our shattered connections as a preparation to correct those connections. Therefore, on one hand, we need to resist the destruction before it takes place, and hold onto our connection as much as possible. On the other hand, since the destruction took place, we need to see that it could not take place in any other way. We thus enter a period of preparation until we are worthy of reconnecting on a new level, i.e. worthy of correction. This explains the laughter of Rabbi Akiva, a great Kabbalist, after the destruction of the Second Temple. Rabbi Akiva saw how it became possible to establish a much greater connection, one not just for the people of Israel, but one that includes the whole of humanity—the complete and final correction. In other words, he saw that the scene was set for the establishment of the Third Temple.

Therefore, if we work on developing our connection, everything should become more corrected without further destruction, wars and so on. If the people of Israel can use and spread the wisdom of Kabbalah, then we can correct ourselves and live in an upgraded harmonious reality.

However, if we fail to implement the method of correction to rise above our divisive drives and establish a new, heightened state of unity in our times, then we experience many delays and enemies on the path, such as the foreboding trend of anti-Semitism. For that reason, the people of Israel suffer from not wanting to accept the method of correction—to correct their connections to be “as one man with one heart” in “love your friend as yourself.”

Therefore, we don’t need to cry about what happened, since everything that happened in the past was necessary and there is nothing we can change about it. What we need to cry about is the fact that we fail to build the new Temple, i.e. a new movement to unite above the growing division of our times, because that is in our hands to establish—the Third Temple—and our idleness in doing so brings about myriad forms of suffering in the world, and also negatively rebounds on the people of Israel in the form of rising anti-Semitism. Therefore, there is no sorrow in terms of what happened, but sorrow in terms of what we’re failing to implement.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why are people blaming the rise of anti-Semitism in the US on Trump’s election?“

Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), the greatest Kabbalist of our era, explains how anti-Semitism is a sensation that exists in all nations, and that before people translate the hatred they feel toward Jews into all kinds of circumstances in our world, the hatred itself precedes all reasoning.

“It is a fact that Israel is hated by all nations, whether for religious reasons, racial reasons, capitalist reasons, communist reasons, or for cosmopolitan reasons, etc. It is so because the hatred precedes all reasons, but each merely resolves its loathing according to its own psychology.”
– Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, “The Solution.”

Therefore, today there are people blaming the rise of anti-Semitism in the US on Trump’s election. Tomorrow, someone else will be blamed, and yesterday, anti-Semitism was due to something else.

Anti-Semitism is a historically reoccurring phenomenon that has taken place over 1,000s of years, so how could you explain its existence 1,000s of years ago? Was it because of Trump? Of course not. Everyone explains it according to however best suits them.

I think Trump is less anti-Semitic than those who shout at him that he is anti-Semitic—less anti-Semitic than American Jews themselves who hold government positions, especially liberal Jews.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is the Right or Left where most American anti-Semitism comes from?“

Anti-Semitism is equal to everyone. However, for the time being, there is more anti-Semitism coming from the left, because the left can cover itself more and say “no, we’re liberal, we’re for equality,” etc., but it’s interesting to see that after all that, they’re more anti-Semitic than the right.

Also, why does the right support Jews, Judaism and Israel? It’s because, for the time being, it fits with their struggle against the left, the liberals.

These things, however, can overturn, because as I mentioned, anti-Semitism is equal to everyone.

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