Yes, there is. In the Middle Ages, people felt a much deeper dependence on the Jews than people today.
Today, we have medicine, chemistry, technology and other means by which we can use nature to our benefit. Humanity has accumulated much more knowledge, and many more people today engage in fields that Jews more typically occupied in the past.
However, the fact that Jews no longer uniquely hold certain positions and engagements in society does not lessen antisemitism in our times. On the contrary, antisemitism is rising and taking on a new evolutionary form.
The hatred of Jews in our era is not due to Jews’ disproportionate success in fields such as science, technology and medicine. It is rather due to a certain kind of force that the Jews possess: a hidden force that is rooted in what made Jews a united people in their establishment, a force capable of uniting humanity above all differences and divisions.
Before all the rationalizations of Jew hatred in our world today, there is a deeper feeling of hatred toward the Jews that antisemites themselves often cannot understand at its core: that as the Jewish people once united and became a conduit for the positive force of connection dwelling in nature to spread and cover human society, likewise today, the more people feel increasing troubles and dissatisfaction in their lives, the more they feel that Jews are somehow behind their problems.
Antisemitism today thus becomes sharper, subtler, more threatening and more global. If the Jewish people unite above their differences like they did when they first became the people of Israel, they become a conduit for the positive force dwelling in nature to spread and heal the world of its problems.
Therefore, antisemitism can be uprooted if we Jews start functioning according to what made us Jews to begin with: to start uniting above our differences, and by doing so, unclog a certain inner pipeline to human consciousness—to let the positive force of nature enter the world, and to let unity cover the growing differences and divisions in human society.
Based on the video “Antisemites in the Middle Ages Vs. Antisemites Today: Is There a Difference?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Question:Is there always a confrontation of forces in the spiritual work?
Answer:No, it only seems that way to us so that we use these forces correctly. They come from the same source, but they do not agree yet within us, so their confrontation occurs only within us.
We need to treat them exactly the same way and correctly, rationally, and effectively use both the force of reception and the force of bestowal. There can be no love without hate. [308638] From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Men’s Games” 4/2/12
Abraham, who researched the laws of nature, saw that the growing human ego of his time was a sign of a maturing society. He understood that nature grows the egoistic desire in people in order for people to positively connect above it. This is because by taking hold of two forces—our innate egoistic force, and the altruistic force above it—we can reach an understanding of the laws of nature, how the two forces of separation and connection act in nature.
There is a very special state between these two forces that we can attain, and which Abraham attained. Abraham started teaching the method of attaining the two forces in nature to the Babylonians of the time, and a special group formed around him.
What we need to understand from this story is that a group emerged in ancient Babylon, and the people in this group developed a sensation of two forces in nature—the egoistic force and its opposite altruistic force, the force of connection that connects the two. The people who attained these two forces received the name “Israel,” and later became known as “the Jews,” which means “unity” (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]), because these people received a desire for unity that they further developed into a unified sensation of the two forces. The other Babylonians of the time did not receive the drive to unite, as they were content enough remaining within the natural egoistic approach to the world, and they become known as the “nations of the world.”
“Nations of the world” is the term defining the egoistic force of human nature. When the altruistic force appears in certain people, then this altruistic force also starts urging a more accelerated growth of the egoistic force within the person. As a result, we find a group that includes both forces: the positive and the negative. Due to the growth of the two forces within, that group’s members become more developed. The group with the smaller egoistic force simply does not need as much of a desire, because they have enough in order to live their lives without developing the connection to the altruistic force.
Since the Jewish people initially emerged from the attainment of the two forces in nature, we then also find how this nation is in constant contradiction with one another and with themselves. It is because they host these two opposite forces, and they are thus people who cannot easily get along—neither with themselves nor with others—because they play host to a fundamental inner conflict. Therefore, until today, we bear witness to every Jew consisting of both gentile and Jewish parts, and they thus host an inner restlessness.
This is the root of Jewish self-hatred, i.e. in each and every Jew resides a force of self-hatred, a big egoistic force, and without balancing it out with its opposite altruistic force, then the self-hatred becomes apparent.
Based on the video “What Is the Origin of Jewish Self-Hatred?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Question:What are optimal connections and the optimal state between people?
Answer: The optimal state is when a person reaches a benevolent attitude toward another person. Not because today they are beneficial to each other and tomorrow they are not or someone outbids someone, but because my nature must become completely good.
Why? What is my benefit? Well, if you pay me, I understand that. If I benefit from this, I understand. But just to be kind to each other so that this relationship would be eternal and I would not be able to spoil it, how can I achieve this?
This requires the next degree because if I treat you well, I will reach a higher degree, adhesion with the upper force, attainment of eternity and perfection. In this case, you become a means on my path to reach my perfection and eternity. In this case, I am ready for this, I value this.
In principle, this approach is also egoistic at first, Lo Lishma (for one’s own sake), and then it turns into an absolutely altruistic quality. When I begin to realize what my attitude toward others is correct, pure, eternal, and real, which in itself carries a great upper force, then I am already completely protected from my egoism and I will never become your enemy. [308336] From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Why do We Need Countries?” 2/4/12
Question:You constantly say that the Creator talks to a person all the time and that everything that happens around us is a theater. If this is a theater, then how do you play your role correctly?
Answer:In spiritual work, you play with yourself against your ego. You have to play the next level as if you do not have egoism in you, as if it has already been corrected.
The best thing is not to resist what is in you—listen to good advice. Instead of fighting at the lower level, raise yourself to a higher level, and it becomes easy and good for you. You play this state together with your friends.
Indeed, this is a theater! The theater causes a surge of the higher force on you because you are trying to reveal it within yourself. It exists around you in nature; it is a universal field of information and energy.
You do not have to fight with yourself. You just have to rise above yourself all the time! Do not pay attention to your egoism, do not live in it, and do not engage in beating yourself up, that I am such and such. Break away from the ego as if you are already above it. It will become easy for you. And it is very difficult to be in it.
This technique is very simple. The one who remembers it allows himself to save time and energy. [308456] From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Realize Your Destiny?” 3/11/12
Indeed, throughout history, the Jewish people have seen fellow Jews turn against their own people. Titus’ Chief of Staff, Tiberius Julius Alexander, who was Philo’s nephew and whose father donated the gilded gates to the Temple, commanded both the destruction of Jerusalem and the massacre of 50,000 of his native Jewish community in Alexandria. In the 15th century, Tomás de Torquemada, of Jewish descent, was Spain’s first Grand Inquisitor, and the architect behind the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
During World War II there were Jews who fought and spied for Nazi Germany. Stalin’s personal assistant, Alexander Poskrebyshev, was a Jew and assisted him in everything, including his plan to exile all of Russia’s Jews to Siberia.
More recently, we have the infamous Bernie Sanders example where, as a Jew, he believed that Israel killed “over 10,000 innocent people” in the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, when even Hamas’ highest casualty assessments were a quarter of that number.
Jews are said to be unique, but this profound self-loathing is not only unique, it is also very dangerous.
From the very beginning, we Jews were different. Even in the days when we were called “Hebrews,” we lived by different moral and social codes. While the rest of the nations lived by the sword, the ancient Hebrews exercised brotherly love and attempted to love their neighbors as themselves. And while the world nurtured individualism, the Hebrews fostered selflessness.
Our ancestors were an eclectic “bunch.” They did not come from a specific tribe or locality, but were a collection of individuals who took to the idea that mercy and brotherly love were the tenets by which to live. Unlike their Babylonian and Canaanite contemporaries, they did not try to hurl ego against ego to see who was left standing. They had come from just such societies and no longer wanted to live this way. Instead, they acknowledged that the ego, which they termed “evil inclination,” is indeed evil, that it is an inherent trait (“evil crouches at the door”), and that the one way to overcome it is to cover it with love. To put it in the words of King Solomon (Proverbs, 10:12): “Hate stirs strife, and love covers all crimes.”
Granted, it is not easy to constantly aspire to correct your ego and love your neighbor as yourself. From the very beginning, some Jews could not live up to that ideal and left the creed. In fact, after the exile in Babylon, the majority of the Jews abandoned their faith and mingled with the nations. The few who did return to the land of Israel became the Jewish people we know today. They were the ones entrusted with passing on the ideology of their forefathers: the idea that “love covers all crimes” is the way to live, and that “love your neighbor as yourself” is the great klal (all-inclusive law) of the Torah, the Jewish law.
When Israel’s remaining Jews had declined into unfounded hatred, they could not keep their unity, the Temple was ruined, and the Jews disintegrated into exiled communities. It seemed only fitting that the one who ruined the Temple, Tiberius Julius Alexander, was himself a Jew.
Soon after the ruin of the Temple, anti-Semitism in its more contemporary form of blood-libels, conspiracy theories, and accusations of disloyalty, began to dominate the nations’ attitude toward the Jews. At best, the aristocracy tolerated them for their economic and financial acuity. At worst, they were murdered and driven away.
Devoid of the ability to live up to the tenet they themselves had engendered, the Jews became as selfish as their host nations, and a great many of them could not understand why they should maintain loyalty to their religion. These assimilated Jews became our nation’s fiercest enemies, holding profound rancor toward their kindred. They knew that they were born into a creed that was meant to be “a light unto nations,” but they did not want to be the chosen people and resented the fact that the world expected them to be different, more ethical than others, when in fact they weren’t.
Non-Jewish anti-Semites have it relatively easy; they simply hate Jews and they rarely need to rationalize it. Jewish anti-Semites have a much harder life: they feel constantly obligated to justify to themselves and to the world why they hate their own people.
In doing so, they perpetuate and deepen Jewish disunity, driving us further away from the brotherhood that had originally propelled us into nationhood. And when we cannot form brotherhood, we cannot be “a light unto nations” and we therefore intensify the nations’ hatred toward us. This is the reason why the worst catastrophes happen to Jews in countries where we are the most assimilated and least united, as it happened in Spain and later in Germany.
We all have a part within us that resents its origin and objects to our task. Just like our forefathers, this is something we all have to overcome by uniting above our egos. If we let that Jew-hater within take over, we will increase the separation among us and the hatred toward us will grow even more.
The deeper the world falls into unbridled egoism, the more it needs a method to cope with it, and the more it will turn against the Jews. Being the ones who once had a successful way of working with the ego—by uniting above it instead of making futile attempts to crush it—the world will blame us for its woes, not realizing that all it really wants is for us to connect and set an example of unity.
While we may be unable to change the self-hating Jew without, or within us, we can use them as reminders of our task: to unite by covering our hatred with love, in order to share it by way of example with the world. We owe the world our unique method of connection. Until we implement it in order to share it, we will remain the world’s pariahs, whether we espouse socialism or capitalism. Our way to freedom lies not in hating one another and bonding with the world; it lies in loving one another first, and then bonding with the world.
Answer: Because they know how to handle money correctly, and have for thousands of years.
Question: What does it mean to handle money correctly?
Answer: To earn, to keep, to save, to turn money into a bank-type enterprise, and so on. That is what they can do. But it takes a long time to learn.
Question: And this can be learned?
Answer:I think Jews are not the best in this matter, but life forced them. They could not sit in one place, they could not work and create large enterprises because they were taken away from them, set on fire, smashed.
Therefore, they had only one opportunity left—to work with money. A lot is written about this. I believe that this is what led them to a relatively independent material well-being. [308332] From KabTV’s “Blitz of Questions and Answers” 1/6/23
Question:How much should we earn? You fight, you struggle, and you cannot earn anything significant.
Answer: Start thinking that you want to earn less. And then you will see that you have even more than you wanted.
Question: How can you enjoy working?
Answer: To do this you need to enter the craft. Whatever you do, you should strive to be a master of your craft, and then you will enjoy working.
Question: Where can I get energy for success?
Answer:It depends only on the importance of the goal. If you want to achieve something, you will have energy. But the most important thing is to understand that this is your goal, and you have to achieve it. [308292] From KabTV’s “Blitz of Questions and Answers” 1/6/23
A Jew is one who develops the quality of bestowal and love of others, as is written in the Torah, i.e. to reach a state of “love your neighbor as yourself” and “love will cover all crimes.”
The positive force that we receive is in order for us to rise above the negative egoistic force, which exists in each of us. If so, in such a way, we do not hate the negative force, but we relate to it with understanding.
The negative egoistic force is our human nature that we were born with, and we also receive its opposite altruistic force, which we crown over the ego. The control of the positive altruistic force over the negative egoistic force brings us to a unique degree where the desire to receive (the negative force) will join the intention to give (the positive force), and with these two forces, we will do good to each other.
Eventually, between these two forces we will start researching, acknowledging, understanding and perceiving nature. We will see that these two forces come to us from nature, and with their attainment, we come to perceive and sense nature’s uniqueness. Our goal is to attain the unity in nature, which consists of both positive and negative forces, and to be adhered to their absolute source.
Based on the video “Who Is a Jew?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Question:There are two categories of disturbances. One is when something happens in the outside world, and from these disturbances, a person runs to the group. This is it, he is together with his friends. Another category of disturbances arises as a result of connection: people have connected and difficulties appear. What is the difference between these two types of disturbances?
Answer: The first kind is just a beginner’s disturbance. But when you feel disturbances in connection, these are already disturbances that occur throughout the entire path, the entire ladder up to the world of infinity.
It is written in The Book of Zohar that even Rashbi’s disciples felt great hatred for each other before writing The Zohar, that is, before exploring the upper elevations, which they then described.
The problem in the connection between friends is manifested throughout the entire path. It seems to us that this is only for now, and then it will disappear. But this is constant spiritual work until the final correction (Gmar Tikkun). [308404] From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Two Kinds of Disturbances” 3/11/12
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there a difference in the sensation of an anti-Semite from the Middle Ages and today?“
