Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is consumerism a bad thing?“

Consumerism never fulfills us. On the contrary, we become emptier the more we run after materialistic pleasures, where each fulfillment we receive after each purchase soon after turns into emptiness.

Our nature, the desire to enjoy—where we constantly seek to feel pleasure, using anything and anyone around us just to input pleasure into ourselves—eventually leads us to a desperate state.

Desperation from never finding true fulfillment will awaken our understanding that we’re trapped: our pursuit of happiness leads to unhappiness, a lack of fulfillment and dissatisfaction, as Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes, that we die with half our desire in our hand.

“All their possessions are for themselves alone, and ‘he who has a single portion wants a double portion,’ one finally dies with only ‘half one’s desire in one’s hand.’”—Yehuda Ashlag, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Volume 1, Part 1, Histaklut Pnimit (Inner Reflection)

What we once enjoyed no longer fulfills us, and we constantly seek newer and different kinds of pleasures to try and fulfill ourselves.

We make it easier for ourselves to buy material goods. We make it cheaper to travel. But we find ourselves in a catch-22, because when our purchases and our travels were harder to achieve, they held more value.

Now, with a few taps of our thumbs, we can have goods delivered directly to our homes the same day, and access entertainment to keep us busy for hours. There is nothing left to desire.

What’s next? Our desire grows, we feel emptier, we start feeling out of control, that our desires are controlling us, and become increasingly frustrated.

Then comes a major crisis.

The accelerating consumerist treadmill is quickly reaching a state where we will be unable to keep up with its speed, and will fall flat on our faces. As a result, we will need to seek a different way to fulfill ourselves. The entire basis for our every enjoyment, that we enjoy egoistically, for our personal benefit, will need to undergo a fundamental transformation: that we enjoy altruistically, for the benefit of others.

How is such a transformation possible?

It is possible because our desire to enjoy simply wants to enjoy, and it doesn’t care about what it enjoys from.

Consumerism is built on the premise that by advertising various ways to enjoy, we will pull out our credit cards and pay for pleasure. However, if society advertised that we could enjoy by giving pleasure to others, then we would simply change the way we fulfill ourselves: by giving instead of by receiving.

Today, there are many people and groups focused on fulfilling themselves by giving. Baal HaSulam writes about 10% of the human population being naturally altruistic, i.e., people who feel an innate sense of pleasure by giving to others. Such people and organizations already provide an example of how we can change our means for enjoying ourselves.

Therefore, by shifting the way we enjoy—by giving instead of by receiving—the desire and the fulfillment will remain, but the means will be different.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, this state is called “bestowal in order to receive.” It is a step higher than “receiving in order to receive,” which is considered as the lowest form of human consciousness.

The same human ego operates, albeit differently. It will become possible to undergo this transition when we will understand it as the solution to the egoistic dead end we reached in our consumerist attempt to enjoy ourselves.

Together with this awareness, the “recognition of evil” of our inability to fulfill ourselves by means of consumerism, we would need to establish our social influences—advertising, the media, the rewards and payments we receive for our work—to honor and respect giving and disregard receiving.

Baal HaSulam describes this phenomenon in The Writings of the Last Generation, as “free competition for every individual, but in bestowal upon others” and that “disclosing any form of desire to receive for oneself is dishonorable and such a great flaw that such a person is regarded as being among the lowest, most inferior people in society.”

In other words, Baal HaSulam explains that when human society reaches an altruistic state, medals and prizes would be awarded to people who exemplify exceptional acts of giving in order to encourage altruism throughout society at large, and disregard any displays of self-aimed enjoyment.

Human development is marked by the constantly growing desire to enjoy, and it is monstrously overgrowing. We’re recognizing our inability to enjoy egoistically, and the idea to enjoy altruistically starts surfacing.

We are headed toward a state where we will receive no fulfillment from receiving, and will then discover that we can fulfill ourselves by giving.

People would enjoy by, for instance, wandering around the public, seeking how they could contribute positively to people and to society at large. It would happen simply because we would find no satisfaction anywhere else. We would seek what and how to give in order to fulfill ourselves.

Such a different mode of fulfilling ourselves—altruistically instead of egoistically—would bring society to a state where we would start understanding how there is much greater benefit, happiness, confidence and satisfaction when we seek to enjoy by giving, and not by receiving.

We would then come a step closer to the laws of nature, which function altruistically—a force of giving and love dwelling between all connections in reality—and we would be closer to realizing nature’s connections in our social connections.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why don’t Israelis living in Israel feel anti-Semitism?“

We Jews are people with an augmented ego, which lessens our feeling of others, and increases our feeling of ourselves.

Where does this augmented ego come from?

It comes from us Jews having once experienced heightened states of unity, starting from Abraham’s diverse group of Babylonians who discovered the law of nature together (“love your neighbor as yourself”), which granted us the name, “Israel” (“Yashar Kel,” i.e., “directed at the single force of love and bestowal dwelling in nature”), and having since fallen from that sublime unification into deeper layers of the ego than other nations.

Therefore, feeding the ego with the enjoyments it demands becomes our primary concern, just like anyone else, but with a naturally more intensive self-aimed direction than others, lessening our sensitivity toward others in the same vein.

It’s important to understand that we’re discussing a natural phenomenon, describing the natural characteristics of a certain people—a quality that emerged specifically due to our ancestors having once experienced heightened states of unity, harmonized with nature—and since we were in higher states of love and giving due to our connection based on an idea of unification, we have since lost consciousness of that unity, and have now sunk into deeper depths of the ego.

Another way to describe this augmented ego is that we once felt greater pleasures than this entire world has to offer, spiritual pleasures, and since we detached from spirituality, we now seek heightened pleasures, but locked off from spirituality, in our corporeal desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge.

Therefore, after years of being dispersed among other nations, we feel ourselves today in the State of Israel as in our own fortress. We feel as if we’ve returned home, secured ourselves with a strong army, and we hope it remains calm enough as it is now, and don’t want to hear about anything else.

It’s a problem, because with such an attitude, we simply put shields up around ourselves as best as we can, and ultimately wait to be attacked in order to start uniting against any threats to our illusory calm.

By doing so, we fail to acknowledge that there are certain laws of nature acting, which have their own demands: that human society starts taking active steps toward uniting—positively realizing the interconnected and interdependent form of nature itself—and we Jews hold the key to a new positive direction to such unity, since we have attained unity before in history, amid times of social division similar to today.

As Israelis living in Israel don’t feel anti-Semitism, Jews abroad also don’t see the many signs pointing toward another Holocaust.

Continuing along the same lines we are currently treading on won’t help. Today, we can see clear historic patterns showing how we’re on another path to widespread tragedy.

It is all up to how much we Jews will want to open our eyes to see that a transition to a harmonious future, or an ongoing decline into a cataclysm, rests in our hands. Until we will wake up to what makes us Jews—our unity (“love your neighbor as yourself”) above division (“love will cover all transgressions”), in order to be a conduit for unity to spread worldwide (“light unto the nations”)—no positive shift will take place.

Just as the greatest Kabbalist of the 20th Century, Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), called out to the Jews in Warsaw in the 1930s to leave Poland, because he foresaw the carnage that was coming, and they refused to listen to his advice, thinking that everything would turn out alright (they ended up in the Holocaust), and moreover, they forced him out of Poland… so it is today.

However, the difference between the rising anti-Semitic sentiment of the 1930s and the modern world is that today’s anti-Semitism is global. Today, even countries with basically no Jews have strong anti-Semitic tendencies, like North and South Korea.

Thus, it all depends on how much the final solution to anti-Semitism awakens in human consciousness: where we Jews will understand the deep-rooted cause of anti-Semitism, and start adjusting ourselves to more unification among each other. A little awakening of our duty to unite, and we would already see the start of a major positive shift in human consciousness.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What’s wrong with the media?“

Accelerated by the Internet, the media has become steroid-pumped with power, acquiring freedom, influence and control like never before.

Anyone can promote anything they want. If you are paying, you can control the media, and by doing so, control public opinion: society’s psychology, awareness and subconscious.

Individuals and groups guided by wealth and power motives thus methodically change public opinion, even using the media to manipulate legal proceedings and government elections.

People of law, such as judges, police and lawyers, have become involved in the media’s brainwashing machine, and all human systems have come under the media’s influence.

The media has become the influencer following us everywhere we go, in our hands and pockets, ears and eyes, all day, every day.

And who or what controls the media?

Money. Not an ideology. Not a plan aimed at educating and raising society to better connect and enjoy happier lives. No, just money.

Money is the worst fuel for a system. It is just quantitative units, where the more of these units you have, the more value you have.

How the Bought Media Has Contributed to Society’s Decline

Since so many people pump money into the media, and the media plays such an influential role in shaping public opinion, the media is increasingly feeling the power it has, and it has begun using its power in the most aggressive and egoistic way possible. Today, there is regular behind-the-scenes buying-and-selling in the media, manipulating power at the highest levels.

The egoistic use of the media is a major disease-like problem spreading throughout human society. It confuses people, since anyone can promote whatever they want, as long as they have enough money.

The more money a person aspiring for a position of power has, the more he can influence his opinion on society. Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s statement at a recent ADL conference contextualized the severity of what this means: “If Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem.’”

Since we value money and power so much, then we live in a world where those with more money—not wisdom, knowledge, expertise and experience, but money—control.

We see situations today where judges, i.e., people who need to be “untouchable,” have become influenced by the media to pass judgments with the fear of what could be done to their image in the media.

If we would start setting boundaries to limit the media that we consume, so that it would aim at benefiting the public and not merely the self-interests of those who take advantage of it, then we could prevent any further blind acceleration toward an oncoming wall.

The Solution to Bought Media – The New Media Review Organization

Although it seems unrealistic to discuss any kind of regulation on the media today, it would become more realistic if another major financial collapse struck.

The world as we know it today would come to a complete halt.

Picture the scenario that the stock market crashes. Money flow stops. Our exchange system—buying and selling by means of money—stops. Advertising stops. Nothing fuels the systems we’ve built to connect us. Everything stops.

Our constantly flowing competitive, materialistic and self-interest energized value system, based on money, gets shocked.

Since money stops moving and we wouldn’t be able to buy or sell anything, we would stop valuing money, and then we would be able to see how much money got out of hand.

At that point, we could envision a collective of people around the world forming, creating a new media review organization. Due to seeing the error in the way the media was bought by anyone who was paying beforehand and how our money-focused lives led us to a shattering, we would be more inclined to reach an agreement that the media needs to be reviewed and filtered in a way that cannot be bought by money.

Their role would be to make the media informative, and not act out of interests. It would start by closing off the Internet as we know it, so that there would be no fake political, economic and national promotions.

This new organization would define laws and boundaries for filtering out anything that could incite the public, with the focus on giving the public the information it needs, events described as objectively as possible.

The main team would of a diverse group of people from all backgrounds. They would be expected to argue regularly, but the leading principle they would be continuously reminded about would be that they need to reach a common agreement on what’s most beneficial for the public, and thus, the organization reviews and passes on information to the public in an unbiased manner.

They would also engage in learning about how to work together as equals, regularly checking to make sure that everyone in the decisive committee had equal weight.

Where Does That Leave Us Today?

The question is, do we need to wait for a financial collapse, where everyone becomes desperate from not being able to live the materialistic lives we currently live in order to undergo this change?

It all depends on how much we can raise awareness of the kind of connections we need to establish in human society. If we aim to connect human society to be as interconnected and interdependent as the technological, economic and cultural connections naturally revealing to us, then we would experience harmony. Likewise, on the contrary, anything we do that doesn’t head toward better connecting people will have negative side effects.

The media crisis we find ourselves in today comes to show us that we are nearing the end of an era of unconscious human development, one where the egoistic system based on money is positioned between all of us. It is a system that has no value other than the ego of the person who outcompetes others.

The more we suffer today from this system increasingly malfunctioning, the more we will have the opportunity to consider what it would take to wake up from our coma-like state and realize unity.

Human society today is gradually nearing this new awakening. All society needs is that its mental and emotional development match the connectedness of its technological and economic development, and then distances between people will fill up with the unifying force dwelling in nature.

Also, as I regularly explain, the Jewish people hold the key to pioneering this process of unity, and it depends on Jewish unity (“love your friend as yourself”) before expanding to the unity of humanity (“light unto the nations”).

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What reasons do people give for hating Jews?“

There are all kinds of stated reasons for hating Jews, whether it be holding too much power in countries we’ve assimilated into, ruling the whole world, being greedy, envy of our disproportionate success in the world compared to other nations, oppressing Palestine as a Jewish State, the fall of Germany in World War I, the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 19th Century Russia, drinking children’s blood in the Middle Ages, denying Muhammad’s prophethood and murdering Jesus Christ.

More fundamentally, however, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the reasons many people give for Jew hatred are preceded by the sensation of hatred in and of itself. As Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes in his article “The Solution“:

“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.”

In other words, hatred of Jews doesn’t depend on the many varied actions and behaviors of the Jewish people.

Hatred of Jews is rather a sensation embedded in nature that emerges within people.

How does the sensation of Jew-hatred surface?

In order to answer this, we need to understand the foundation of the Jewish people, the Jewish role in the world, and how non-Jews respond in relation to whether or not Jews are performing this role.

The Foundation of the Jewish People

The Jewish people emerged in ancient Babylon some 4,000 years ago. It was a time when Babylon was experiencing a crisis of social division, with conflicts and hatred tearing up the ancient Babylonian society. During this period, Abraham, a Babylonian priest who discovered the path to unite above the growing divisions, i.e. reaching the revelation of the single force of love and bestowal that exists in reality above the growing ego, began openly teaching his method to anyone who wanted to learn.

Since social division was felt as a burning problem, many people flocked to learn with Abraham. He guided them to the discovery of the single force of love and bestowal above their divisive drives. The group he led became known as “the people of Israel” (i.e., “Israel” coming from “Yashar Kel,” which means “straight to God,” i.e. straight to the single force of love and bestowal that exists in reality), and later they became known as “Jews” (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]).

Therefore, the Jewish nation was founded not on a biological basis, but on an ideological one.

People from all over ancient Babylon who felt a problem with social division and a need for unity gathered under Abraham’s method and united above their divisive drives. By doing so, they became known as “a light unto the nations,” as the attainment of the one, unique and unified force of nature above the human ego, which causes all the divisiveness and problems in society, has a positive domino effect that “upgrades” human consciousness: it leads to more positive connections, more consideration, support, love and care, among humanity in general.

The Jewish Role in the World

As it was then, so it is today, but on a much larger, global scale.

The overblown human ego, social division, conflicts and hatred are all experiencing an exponential boost, bringing about myriad problems and crises. For instance, despite more human population than ever before on the planet, and all the technological and cross-cultural connections that have been established worldwide, human society feels more and more isolation, stress, depression, emptiness and anxiety.

The more people feel such problems, the more people subconsciously feel that the Jews are the cause of these problems.

That is where the sensation of Jew-hatred comes from: that the Jews have a role in the world, to unite (“love your friend as yourself”) above division (“love will cover all transgressions”), and by doing so, be a conduit for the single unifying force of love and bestowal to spread throughout the collective human consciousness (“a light unto the nations”).

The Response to the Jews from the Nations of the World in Relation to the Jewish Role

If we function correctly in relation to our role in the world, uniting among each other in order to pass unity to the world, then we will experience a positive reaction from everyone in the world.

If, however, as it currently stands, we fail to acknowledge or make any effort to unite among each other, we then block the positive unifying force from reaching humanity, and hatred stirs up in non-Jews toward the Jews as a natural phenomenon that serves to pressure us to perform our role.

It is thus my hope that we will realize our role in the world sooner rather than later, sparing the world and ourselves much suffering.

We simply don’t see what it would mean if we make some steps toward uniting, how much all the tension in human society and between nations would calm down, how all the exploitation, manipulation, hatred and abuse in humanity would be replaced by mutual support, consideration, love and care for our fellow human beings.

This is why I put in so many efforts to disseminate the message about the role of Jews in the world, and the cause and solution to anti-Semitism, since humanity’s future of happiness or torment depends specifically on this.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can we understand the difference between “Mitzvot” and “Halachah”?“

Mitzvot are actions that a person conducts according to what is written as Halachah, in order to increase a person’s connection with the Creator.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is Halacha?“

Halacha is how a person progresses from his current state to a state of similarity with the Creator, i.e., to a state with an intention to bestow, adhered to the Creator according to the force of bestowal that the person acquires.

The person’s ultimate goal in life is to become like the Creator.

Halachot are the laws that the person needs to observe in order to become like the Creator.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Have you ever experienced anti-Semitism?“

When I lived in Russia, it was a time when anti-Semitism was completely forbidden. Whoever would say a single word against Jews would be put into prison. Then, gradually, it started coming out little by little.

I experienced a situation in Leningrad where someone erupted on a Jewish man on the street, and I got myself involved to try and break it up. I was taken with the men to the police station, and noticed how the police were actually pro-Jewish.

Afterward, when they imprisoned the guy who attacked the Jewish man, I asked the investigator, “Why are you putting him in prison? He’s also got his reasons.”

The investigator replied, “I don’t get involved with what he feels or not. I get my instructions from above. Anti-Semites help Zionists. Jews are a positive force in our country. They work in respectable professions that are good for the country, such as doctors, engineers and lawyers. Therefore, we are pro-Jewish.”

In other words, what he said was not to ask him whether or not he likes Jews. He hated them, but he saw them as beneficial for his country.

In those days, Jews were not in key leadership positions and in the financial banking sector as they are today. They filled those places considered as respectable professions. It was only when the Jews started entering places like the finance and banking sector that the tides of anti-Semitic sentiment started turning.

Today, however, I feel anti-Semitism everywhere I go.

I recently traveled around Europe, visiting and teaching groups of my students in Berlin, Prague, Nuremberg, Moldova, Rome, and most recently where we held a European Kabbalah Convention in Bulgaria.

Everywhere I went, I felt feelings of blame from the nations of the world.

For instance, most recently in Bulgaria, I arrived with nine of my students, and we traveled to a house that we rented in a rural village. It was a lonely house, and there were a few small stores and restaurants, with a local café where people sat from morning till evening.

Even in such a comfortable setting, I felt how they looked at us. I could feel how the attitude was not toward fellow human beings, but that it was an attitude to Jews.

There were no physical signs. It is a feeling that emerges from nature itself, and I understood them well.

Since the Jewish people were founded on an ideological basis of uniting (“love your neighbor as yourself”) from among the divisive social atmosphere of ancient Babylon around 3,800 years ago, then today too, the nations of the world hold a subconscious demand upon the Jewish people to unite. As social division tears through modern society more and more, making people feel increasingly isolated, depressed, anxious and stressed, the more people suffer in today’s modern world, the more they subconsciously blame the Jews for their misfortunes.

Today, anti-Semitism has re-ripened into a global form that has spread over many developed countries and cultures. For instance, South and North Korea, countries with basically no Jews, are generally anti-Semitic countries. The hatred emerges from within human nature, which ultimately wants to access the Creator, the force of bestowal and love that fills reality, but there is a force blocking them from that sensation.

That force is known as “the Jews.”

Therefore, in all anti-Semitic sentiment, and in every anti-Semitic action, I see only a cry from the nations of the world toward the Jews in order that the Jews fulfill their function in the world: to unite “as one man with one heart” and be a connecting plug between humanity and the upper force of love and bestowal.

However, before I see the Jews as a people to blame, I see myself principally as the one to blame.

I see everyone as parts of a grand mechanism that I activate, and whether the connection of the mechanism’s parts are well-oiled, functioning smoothly and harmoniously together, or the contrary, malfunctioning with all kinds of breakages and defects, depends solely on me.

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do you believe that nearing the end of the day Israel will be destroyed?“

Indeed, we are in an era of growing hostility toward Israel running parallel with an exponential rise in anti-Semitic crimes and threats around the world.

However, the extent of destruction, or its opposite, a bright and blossoming future, for Israel depends solely on the people of Israel.

If we determine a goal before us, where we want to reach unity of the people of Israel in order for a spirit of unity to spread worldwide, then we’ll see all negativity toward Israel disappear, and in its place, witness a refreshingly new positive response from the world.

We cannot imagine what such a change would look like. For instance, world leaders who currently hold anti-Israel stances would suddenly start feeling the need to help Israel. The effect of this critical mass of people uniting would shift the tectonic plates of human consciousness into a positive “click,” and everyone would think, feel and interact more harmoniously. Moreover, the people of Israel would be felt as hubs in the human network of this newfound harmony.

Therefore, destruction or progress of the people of Israel depends solely on our behavior. If we take steps to unite, it will work to ours and everyone’s favor, and if we reject such steps, hatred and resentment toward us will continue rising to extents that could be far worse than the Holocaust.

Despite our widespread recognition as a smart and progressive people, we also have a distinctive foolish side: we forget our past. After the end of the Holocaust, we should have made a summary on how to never reach such a terrifying state ever again, but we did nothing of the sort.

While we make egoistic strides in the world, behaving as any other nation does, we fail to recognize that we’re actually in a coma-like state in relation to the ideology that made us the people of Israel to begin with: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” which our ancestors achieved under the guidance of Abraham some 3,800 years ago. After uniting for a brief period, our relations soon after shattered into unfounded hatred, and from the ruin of the Temple onward till today, we experience mutual rejection—our Achilles heel.

For the time being, there is mercy on us. We can still maneuver our lives in Israel and around the world relatively peacefully, regardless of the increasing anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiment. It is my hope that we make the most of the time we have left to unite and become a positive example of unity for the world. Otherwise, the tides could turn very quickly, and we could suddenly find ourselves trapped on a road to destruction.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How should the Israel-Palestinian conflict be solved?“

The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the people of Israel’s hands.

In order to understand how Israel holds the solution, we need to understand who are the people of Israel, what is their role in the world, and how the world responds to Israel in relation to the fulfillment or lack of fulfillment, of their role.

The nation of Israel was founded as a group who gathered from all parts of ancient Babylon under a common unifying concept: “love your neighbor as yourself.” Since this nation was based on an ideological foundation, not a biological one, then the world feels it as a strange phenomenon.

As the nation of Israel once attained unity above the growing divisions in ancient Babylon, so it is today: there is a subconscious expectation from the nations of the world toward Israel that they usher in the same positive force of love and connection that they once attained, and pioneer an example of a new society led by values of love, unity, mutual support and consideration. The more human society feels torn apart by division and hatred, the more it feels the people of Israel responsible for the world’s misfortunes.

Therefore, Palestine is only one of many characters frowning at Israel. Accordingly, Israel needs to respond to all of its enemies the only way it ultimately knows how to: by turning to its long-ignored power of unity.

First, the people of Israel need to understand that beneath all the surface reasons the world points out its hatred to us, whether it be oppression of Palestinians or too much power in countries we have assimilated into, there is fundamentally a much more significant and subconscious demand upon us.

It is a demand for our unity.

Neither Jews nor non-Jews know about it, because it is an ideological foundation that was lost around 3,800 years ago, and while we were all born and raised through a range of egoistic desires, we have no idea what it means to live in a unified state. Since we lack any feeling or experience of the kind of unity that our ancestors once attained, then we feel no lack for unity like we feel no lack for a sixth finger on our hand. We simply fail to see that if we unite, we will solve not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but our unity will have a positive rippling effect throughout humanity, solving myriad other problems too.

The people of Israel have no ears for this message. Those who understand it, Kabbalists, are very small in number, and so there is no solution in sight on any mass scale.

The solution is solely that the nation of Israel listens to what the nations of the world want from them: to implement the unity that the nations of the world are crying out for behind all the surface anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism. We will then all live in peace.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What will the state of Israel look like in 2050?“

No one can answer this question definitively because we’re in a process of free choice.

What does it mean that we’re in a process of free choice?

It means that we can either move forward unknowingly into traps and blows that will force us to examine the way we live our lives, or we can build a society that will let us carry out what depends on us: to unite with each other, balancing our relations with those of the integral and interconnected laws of nature. Ultimately, if we fail to progress the latter way, then we can consider ourselves done for.

Let’s say that by 2050, we need to have transitioned to a much more unified society, with a certain amount of disclosure of nature’s quality of love and bestowal dwelling among our relations. To the extent that we tried to unite, we would experience a positive reaction from nature, and to the extent that we failed to make efforts in the direction of unity when we could have, then we would experience suffering. And the suffering would be in order to show us that we’re going the wrong way if we’re not trying to unite.

Nevertheless, what can be said is that the nation of Israel will continue living on. Why? It is because the nation of Israel needs to carry out the above-mentioned correction of the world, i.e. unification in order to be a conduit for global unity.

The nation of Israel carries the method of the world’s correction at its foundation. It received the method of correction from Abraham in ancient Babylon, based on the premise of “love your neighbor as yourself,” and in order spread its unity to humanity at large (to be “a light unto the nations”).

We thus need to consider what depends on us, how we can realize the correction—to awaken a spirit of unity among each other in order for a sense of connection to ripple throughout the world.

Therefore, I cannot say what will happen in 2050. What will happen is what we will decide—the extent to which we will implement our unifying function in the world.

Filed under: Israel, Q&A, Quora - No Comments →