Entries in the 'Torah' Category

A Lesson As Change Of States

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When you disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah you give a lecture or a lesson. How do you feel the audience sitting in front of you and how much can you give them?

Answer: A lesson is very different from a lecture because a lecture more abstract, as from a watering can water all the flowers in a row without distinction, and they grow individually according to their own potential. A lesson, on the other hand, is measured. When I take the average level, enter it and turn myself into two levels: an inner level (which isn’t personal but collective) and an external level. The external level is conveyed in a language that is more common and the inner level in a language of those who have undergone the state that is being described to some extent.

Question: Do you feel the threshold of how much you can give in a particular lesson?

Answer: No. When I speak on such a level I am not afraid. First, I still hide inside myself and even my inner level is still mine.

Second, the way we usually display things is not harmful. It can deter a person who is still unfamiliar with it, but his feelings change internally and he goes through different changes of states. He needs to go from one state to another and to feel that he is in a whole world in which there is room for everything we speak about and he is like a central point, an observer and an usher carrying it all out.

There are quite a few people who cannot focus themselves that way. They have other reactions, which are coarser and slower with regard to what we study. Thus, during a ten minute lecture, they feel two or three states while someone else may feel twenty or thirty states.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/2/14

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Everything Is In The Hands Of Man!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When the innocence and fairness of Job is tested time after time though suffering, three friends approach him to express condolences. They hint that he has done something bad and that it cannot be such that blows came from nothing.

But Job does not agree with this, continuing to insist on his innocence. These friends represent the question that we often ask ourselves: Have I personally done something bad for which I receive punishment, or it is something else?

Answer: Nature does not ask whether we did or did not do something. We imagine fate as evil following evil and good following good. But the law of nature does not act according to this formula. If initially it is said that “man’s heart is evil from his youth,” he automatically finds himself in a negative account.

Question: It turns out that the friends’ advice to look for evil in oneself is wrong?

Answer: He will not find it. He will just come up with different formulas by which one should behave, but will not explore nature itself. He does not take into account that the law of “love thy neighbor as thyself” applies to him.

For example, in our world there are different laws of behavior and culture, such as how to behave in the family, in society, in nature, and etc. Where do these laws come from? Are they based on the knowledge of nature, the good? No. Typically, people come up with them according to their calculations, and we must respect them.

It turns out that we initially form relationships between ourselves in a distorted way and then do not know where bad luck comes from. How do we come up with this nonsense in that we say that the Creator gave, the Creator took, the Creator is blessed, and I have nothing to do with it? I feel I’m a saint. I accept this fate as it comes from Above and do not see my participation. How will new misfortunes not come my way?

Question: People tend to think that if misfortune happens to someone, then obviously he did something bad individually. And you describe the system, meaning look not at individual destiny, but the destiny of society.

Answer: It is difficult to consider an individual’s fate because our vision is limited. There are notorious sinners, who feel well. And if I look with my egoistic eyes, I see people enjoy by deceiving others and stealing throughout their lives. They have everything, are even respected, and after death are called righteous. The question is whether or not he can serve as an example. Of course not! One person’s individual life cannot be an example.

Question: If misfortunes come to a person one after another, in the end, he will curse the day he was born. Many people feel that death is better than such a life.

Answer: This is an escape from responsibility, from purpose, and an unwillingness to hear. It is necessary to form public opinion that will help a person hear that there is a goal and that he needs to organize his life. It is neither blind fate nor destiny. Everything is in the hands of man!
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/28/14

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Esau and Jacob: A Battle for Leadership

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The Torah says that Jacob followed his mother’s advice and pretended he was his brother Esau. By that, he deceitfully received Isaac’s blessing. What is this story about?

Answer: Isaac represents the left line. Esau and Jacob stand for two lines that derive from him. Neither one of them can exist without the other.

Jacob was the one who was meant to receive the blessing, since he was chosen to define and execute the entire process of correction. He is the one who provided everything to achieve the corrected state at the end of the process.

However, Isaac gave birth to Esau because it is absolutely impossible to advance without his line. In essence, Esau’s line is the line of desire, emptiness, a need and a demand to be fulfilled. In other words, Esau signifies a sensation of emptiness, suffering, and pursuit.

That’s why Esau went to the fields (field of life), which stands for the foundation of human existence in the capacity of a relatively free subject. Without this basis, human life has no meaning whatsoever. Without the quality named Esau, one cannot transition to a state called Adam (Man), and so remains at the animate level. This explains why Esau was Isaac’s firstborn to whom he was supposed to transfer everything he had.

Conversely, for Isaac’s wife Rivkah, it was not so because the program of creation was originally inherent in Jacob, not in Esau. In essence, Jacob is not Isaac’s descendant, rather he is Abraham’s. He is Isaac’s son, but not his firstborn.

This arrangement vividly demonstrates that the program of creation is an auxiliary factor, whereas the matter of creation is the basic thing. The same applies to nature. Even though Israel (“a head for me” – לי ראש) is the head of humanity, still humanity is the basic material of the desire that has to lead to unity, to adhesion with the Creator.

Question: Does it mean that Esau (an empty desire that requires fulfillment) represents the contemporary world?

Answer: The darkest and strongest forces have to be converted into the lighter ones. The Jewish people are obligated to bring the masses to merging with the Creator. The Creator is waiting for Esau, whereas Jacob is assigned to fulfill his role.

It’s a battle for leadership, for which of them is more important. It’s about splitting the functions and identifying what type of connection with the Creator each of them bears. The combat continues until the very last state, at which time the competition between them turns into connecting and replenishing one another. Egoism cannot achieve this result on its own.

In fact, Jacob didn’t really understand why he was involved in this hassle. He was a mama’s boy; he didn’t have immense desires, nor bottomless needs as did Esau. On the other hand, Esau is huge, strong, and mighty, but at the same time he is unhappy and empty. We have to understand his unenviable role. If we look at miserable, unhappy, suffering humanity that earns billions of dollars without any clue of what to do with it, it’s quite hard to envy them. Esau stands for the general masses that have to be brought to order.

Esau demands an answer from Jacob. The foremost anti-Semites, such as Henry Ford, understood this fact and wrote about it. Nevertheless, the Jews still want to escape to America and assimilate there. They do whatever is possible not to be identified as Jews.

Question: Jacob also made slight efforts to resist his mission, but his mother forced him to pursue it. In fact, who is “the mother”? Who pushes the Jewish people to act as Jacob?

Answer: Mother is a property of Bina. It’s a quality of bestowal and love that clearly realizes that otherwise it will never be implemented on the scale of all humanity.

This particular mother has two children, both of whom were born from love called Bina. They are only divided for the purpose of showing humanity the way to unite the properties of Esau and the qualities of Jacob, and demonstrate to humanity how to correctly direct these qualities. The property called Jacob has to cover Esau’s qualities with intention. If it happens, everything will work out well.

In general, neither of the brothers can be blamed for anything. Only by acquiring genuine freedom of will can we implement it into life. I would say that currently we are going through this state. Although it’s not current per se, rather, it started in the Ari’s time, in the 16th century.

Nevertheless, we are quite tardy. Look at what’s going on in the world! We have to fulfill Jacob’s mission as soon as possible. Otherwise, Esau will press on us even stronger. The most essential thing is to realize that it is us who trigger the pressure by doing nothing.
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From KabTV’s “Weekly Torah Portion” 11/14/14

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The Kabbalists About The Nation Of Israel And The Nations Of The World, Part 13


The People Of Israel Must Carry Out Their Mission

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Section 69: But if, God forbid, it is to the contrary, and a person from Israel degrades the virtue of the internality of the Torah and its secrets, which deals with the conduct of our souls and their degrees, and the perception and the tastes of the Mitzvot with regard to the advantage of the externality of the Torah, which deals only with the practical part …by that one dishonors and degrades the internality of the world, which are the children of Israel, and enhances the externality of the world—meaning the nations of the world—over them. They will humiliate and disgrace the children of Israel, and regard Israel as superfluous, as though the world has no need for them, God forbid.

Furthermore, by that, they make even the externality in the nations of the world overpower their own internality, for the worst among the nations of the world, the harmful and the destructors of the world, rise above their internality, which are the righteous of the nations of the world. And then they make all the ruin and the heinous slaughter our generation had witnessed.
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The Force Of Spiritual Resurrection

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Isaac forbade Jacob to marry any of Canaan’s daughters. Why is it so important not to “mix?” What does it mean?

Answer: According to the general system, Jacob had to descend solely from the middle line. As a result, he had to originate the property of Israel and reach a big state, adulthood (Gadlut), and give birth to the twelve tribes of Israel. In other words, he was the one who had to generate a complete, correct, and balanced system that had to be shaped in a way that could sustain ascents, shattering, and dissolving into Esau, meaning into humankind, and be reborn, thus reviving all of humanity.

Today, we are the ones who have to complete our spiritual resurrection. However, it doesn’t mean that we have to finish self-correction first and only then humanity’s turn will come. Not at all! We are included within humankind. To the degree of our self-correction, and the level of the spiritual revival of every single one of us, the part that corresponds to each of us will instantaneously be altered. So, we progress according to what we must modify in others.

Question: Is it our responsibility to act on the other nations’ territory?

Answer: Yes. We are carrying their correction on our shoulders and they will start helping us as soon as we succeed. Should we start acting correctly, they will immediately join and follow us, and will ask us to tell them what they are supposed to do.
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From KabTV’s “Weekly Torah Portion,” 11/14/14

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The Ideal Of Love And Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator, the ideal of love and bestowal, should constantly be depicted before us in a clear and accurate manner. We should realize that we can understand this ideal and reveal it to some extent.

This means that the Creator is something that we feel outside ourselves. There is no condition of attaining creation, and everything is felt in our attributes and our desires.

The uppermost attribute is the attribute of Keter, in which we feel the Creator; it is the attribute of love and bestowal as a result of the work of the nine lower Sefirot.

Thus we have to tune ourselves according to this tuning fork, according to the tenth upper Sefira and constantly adapt all the other Sefirot to it.

This isn’t easy, since the right intention is attained in the group during the study by drawing the Upper Light from the point of Keter, and by using all the other attributes. Everything we do in this world when establishing the mutual connection between us is necessary in order to constantly check ourselves through this connection.

The uppermost part of Keter has to be detached from us. We have to purify it more and more each time, to raise it and separate it from us. It has to become more and more transparent in our feelings.

Then there are eight Sefirot: Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod, our desires that can be corrected, and Malchut, which cannot be corrected.

The uppermost Sefira – Keter, the lowest Sefira -Malchut, and everything that we can imagine between Malchut and Keter is between them as eight Sefirot. It is with regard to this system that we work.

At every stage in his development, a person has to think only about how he can raise Keter by revealing Malchut more and more and trying to see it like Keter in the previous eight attributes.

Keter shines downward, and at the end of correction, it spreads in a way that it gradually merges with Malchut with the help of the work in the eight Sefirot between them for 6,000 years or 125 levels. The eight Sefirot between Keter and Malchut is the network of our mutual connections.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/26/14

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The Truth Above All

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” 19:11: Ye shall not steal; neither shall ye deal falsely, nor lie one to another.

“Ye shall not steal” means that you shouldn’t take upon yourself what you cannot correct since it belongs to someone else and not to you. It is about the attainment of the limit of a person’s ability to work in order to bestow.

You have to take the uncorrected parts of your desires, since otherwise you will not be able to work with them in order to bestow. Therefore you have no right to cross the border (the corner of thy field), which separates the ten whole Sefirot from the tenth part, and you should determine that this part is not mine. Even if these are your desires, if you cannot correct them, they cannot be yours.

“Neither shall ye deal falsely nor lie one to another,” means that you have to see the clear border between the desires that you work in (the upper part of your soul, GE) and the desires of the lower part of the soul with which you cannot work in order to bestow, and with regards to which you restrict yourself and don’t touch.

In other words, no matter what relationships you have with others, the truth is above these relationships and their different outcomes. This means that the truth, the Creator, His place, His greatness, the law of the world and the universe, is above everything and above everyone.

Therefore, a person cannot work when the truth is under his control. He has to constantly place himself under the system of values that don’t belong to him in any way. They should always come first and he should accept them above all his decisions and his solutions.

Question: If we speak about the connection between people, is there always a force called the Creator between us? Does that mean that it is independent of the actual connection but that there is a connection for the sake of unity?

Answer: We have to establish a full and absolute connection between us called the Creator. If we focus on this connection, it will gradually be revealed among us. This constant intention for the maximum revelation of the Creator is our continuous movement forward to the extent that we learn the method of connection, unity, and correction, which is the Torah.

Therefore, “Neither shall ye deal falsely nor lie one to another,” means that there cannot be a connection between us without the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/26/14

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Who Corrects the Tenth Part of a Desire?

Dr. Michael LaitmanTorah, “Leviticus,” Kedoshim 19:09-10: And when ye reap the harvest in your country, do not reap up to the end of the edges of your field and do not pick up the harvest that has fallen. And not to strip your vineyard clean and do not pick up the separated remaining berries in your vineyard, leave those for the poor and the stranger, for I am the Lord thy God.

A field means the material desires of a person, which one should cultivate. While correcting them, one uses them for unity and interaction in the overall system of interconnection between all people.

Do not pick up the harvest that has fallen, means that you aren’t able to completely correct yourself. The first nine Sefirot correct themselves through our efforts, request, interconnection, and the work with others. The tenth Sefira is not only impossible to correct, but even to ask for it is impossible. We aren’t able to ask for this egoism to work towards bestowal, since it’s our foundation that separates us from the Creator.

Suppose we have a desire of a certain thickness. It can soak up the properties of the Creator until the last section, up to the tenth. A tenth part doesn’t accept the properties of bestowal.

If we were to correct all nine parts, then in the end we would come to a state where there would be only one-tenth remaining, which will be corrected by the Creator. This will be His very last deed, which will end 6,000 years of our correction.

The inability to self-correct the tenth part is manifested in all prohibiting actions. We are talking about the desires on the different levels. There are desires on the inanimate level, where you want to make vegetative desires by raising oneself from the ground to the next level as a plant.

There are desires that become animate from vegetative, and those desires from the animate level you raise the level of Man. In all of these corrections, there are always actions that are forbidden to you, and all of this is related to the tenth.

But there are times when you can take some desires from the tenth part that is called “remove the top of the milk” and move it back to the first nine Sefirot. Therefore, prohibitive desires are relative. This means that you yourself can’t use them, but the poor passing next to your field can.

It’s also a correction. You leave the forbidden desire of yours to the poor, and when the poor uses it, it corrects your tenth. You can’t lift this part from the property of reception to the property of bestowal, but the poor can.

In turn, the poor person who receives this food from you isn’t able to use his or her tenth part of it, and should give it as a donation (Maaser) to the Temple or to something similar. This is how the chain of our interconnection must work.

Question: How will one feel that this is the tenth part with which I can’t work?

Answer: You will feel it when you don’t have any more strength to do anything else. If you feel you’ve given your 100%, then you only have a tenth left.

Working with the Light at high levels, a person feels and controls all his desires and one is able to see through oneself. In our state we don’t perceive it as yet,; however, a Kabbalist, who is in the spiritual environment, is able to clearly separate the first nine Sefirot from the tenth. One feels what is possible to do and what isn’t. This is first.

Second, one feels the edge of one’s field here as one’s Malchut, one’s desires over which one has no control and therefore leaves them.

In order to better understand this action, imagine that you’ve ordered a person in our world to kill one’s own son, as Abraham was ordered. Can a normal person do it? Never. There are certain boundaries (the edge of the field), which we can’t transgress.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of Eternal Book” 3/26/14

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When And Where Does One Take Time For Happiness?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In the last few decades, the subject of the pursuit of happiness in human society, in Israel, and in the world has become a trend. A large number of books, courses, and workshops have appeared on this subject. In the book Ecclesiastes by King Solomon, the pursuit of happiness goes hand in hand with the pursuit of truth. What kind of truth is he talking about?

Answer: The truth is different all the time. Every generation determines general rules for itself according to which it determines what is called truth and what is called falsehood, good and evil, pleasure and suffering. A hundred or two hundred years ago, what was considered happiness was having a job, a place to live, a family and children.

If a person could provide his family with food and a roof over their heads, then he was happy. He didn’t want anything besides this. Besides everyday clothing, if he had an additional suit, then this was wonderful! After that they came up with the wardrobe, which was small in the beginning. And now everyone has his own room in an apartment and his own closet. But even that is not enough; we need a walk-in closet for clothes!

We have reached saturation, but a person is still involved with consumption. Our lives have become a race. Where do we feel pleasure? I live in an area where the population belongs to the strong middle class. At seven in the morning, my neighbor runs to his car holding a baby in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He puts the coffee down, sits the baby down, and drives the child to the daycare center, after which he travels to work.

He doesn’t come home before eight or nine in the evening. When does he feel happiness? Is it the one day of the week where in the evening he goes somewhere with his friends? Or is it once a year when he travels for a week’s vacation abroad? Where is the pleasure really? He looks at others and says, “Everyone is doing this, and so am I.”

Question: It follows that there is no happiness in the world?

Answer: Happiness, in “Vanity of Vanities” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) is bestowal to others! If we bestow to each other and build a life where everyone is connected in a positive manner in society, then we will fulfill each other, not with things, but with happiness. At present, I want to have the feeling of happiness through the acquisition of something that I bought and then enjoy. How much can I look at it and enjoy it?

Happiness must constantly be renewed. Happiness from a new car lasts for a month, from a house it lasts for a year. How can I arrange life such that my desire to be happy all the time will be renewed and its replenishment will be new? It is this way when I get up every day like a child with wide-open eyes!

In childhood I lived in a house with a big yard. In the yard grew trees and flowers; we had a dog. In the evening I already imagined how I would jump out of bed in the morning and run to the yard to meet friends. I want to live in a mood like this!

Question: In the book Ecclesiastes by King Solomon, the same sentence repeats all the time: “That which hath been is that which shall be, and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). This is a very sad discovery.

Answer: If you just want to enjoy the world then you always get emptiness.

Question: Is it really necessary to reach a state of absolute lack of pleasure in order to understand the necessity of renewal? Is it impossible to get pleasure from both things and connections with people?

Answer: One doesn’t interfere with the other, but I don’t think that a person can be in two worlds. If you are split in two, then neither of the two desires will be called fulfilled. Ultimately we need to show ourselves and others where the true source of happiness is found. The renewal of relationships between us will bring us a feeling of happiness, and this will always be the same vitality that fills the sails of our boat with advancement towards better states.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/23/13

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A Well For A Thirsty Humanity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The Torah tells us that Isaac found two wells in the land of Grar that had been dug in Abraham’s time and had been covered afterwards. These wells caused many quarrels with the local shepherds and after a while a new well was dug that caused no disputes.

Then Avimelech, the king of Grar, offered Isaac a treaty. Why did the nations of the world become so nice all of the sudden and want to make a treaty with the Jews?

Answer: It is because Isaac had begun his corrections.

A well is a hole in the ground, in a land that is full of water. A hole that is full of the water of life is called a well of life. Water is the essence of the attribute of bestowal that is hidden in the land, which means in the desire. In other words, your desire begins to flow so that you receive the water of life through it, which is the attribute of bestowal that brings life to everyone.

Basically, the story of the wells shows us that if we begin to fulfill our mission to organize the Israeli nation in order to correct the world, it is enough. We actually don’t have to correct the world, but only correct ourselves.

In chapters 66-67 in the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Baal HaSulam says that the moment the Israeli nation begins to correct itself, which means it adapts itself according to the Creator, the Light will immediately begin to flow from it like water from a well, and this Light will correct all the other nations. This way the whole world will become a better place. After all, the world cannot correct itself nor can it do anything.

Just imagine there is a nation that totally controls and manages the world and the other nations cannot do anything and simply wait for this nation to do something.

The problem is in the way it is revealed, and the interruptions can be great. At the moment, we can still somehow escape those who oppose Israel. But what if this picture is revealed and suddenly everyone would see that there are seven billion people in the world and there are about ten million on whom everything depends?

I would say that the seven billion are like a body that runs on life software, and this software is the Jewish people. Its mass doesn’t belong to the actual body of the world, but rather to the software, and it operates on a different level.

On the whole, the actual software is merely a virtual component with regard to the matter. It is a schema, a system. We can say that the software of the protein material is Israel and the actual protein material is the nations of the world. If this software is incorrect, just imagine what diseases and problems are caused in the material!

The whole history of mankind is basically the continuous cooperation between the world and the Israeli nation, just like two coils in the DNA chain. The nations of the world and the Israeli nation are in continuous communication, contact, and effort between them. Israel wouldn’t be able to reach the state of the third well without the pressure of the nations of the world upon it. There are those who dig the desire and others who cover it up. This development is necessary in order to reach the water of life, the attribute of Bina.

The first well basically refers to Abraham, the second to Isaac, and the third to Jacob. When Jacob connects, he becomes the middle line and then we reach the water of life.

Question: What does that have to do with life today? Do we have to discover this well now, this water of life?

Answer: Yes. We begin to spill out the bestowal, and this depends only on the connection between us. The unity of the Israeli nation is the key to everything. It is the only thing that can dig a well for the world.

To dig a well means to delve into our desires. They are negative, bad, and they reveal all the negativity that is concealed within a person, his nature, and his distance from the Creator. But we have to do it. We have to create strong feelings of the deficiency of the Light within us, the attributes of love and bestowal. This is called an empty well or a hole. By the way, there is a difference between these two concepts. What a person looks for depends only on the person himself.

When we dig a well, we attain the state, the depth in which we feel the greatest pain with regard to love, bestowal, and connection. Then the water that is the source of life appears.

Just like animals who feel where there is water, so did people in those times feel where they had to dig and how deep in order to find water. By the way, there is plenty of water in the desert because there are huge subterranean lakes. We only need to know where to dig and there is nothing to fear. You can go anywhere since you will always find water.

Question: Is this self-search the closeness and the connection between us?

Answer: Yes. It exists to the extent that we make efforts in order to discover the attribute of bestowal called water.
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From KabTV’s “Weekly Torah Portion” 11/14/14

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