My new article on Linkedin “Remembering the Holocaust: What Is New About Old Antisemitism”

Record antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world has become a regular headline. But there is an important difference between it now and in the past. The perfect storm caused by the interplay of all-powerful social media platforms and the link between Covid-19 conspiracy theories against Jews and criticism of Israeli policies has triggered antisemitic violent rhetoric worldwide. A staggering 3.5 million posts with antisemitic content were posted on social media last year according to an annual report of the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs released just before the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The number of antisemitic posts on five different social media platforms increased by 1,200% in May 2021 compared to data from 12 months earlier. This was prompted by Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Walls, which was launched in May in response to Hamas firing thousands of rockets at densely populated Israeli cities.

The recently published findings of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency on the state of antisemitism worldwide point in the same direction. 2021 was the most antisemitic year of the past decade. In addition to anti-Zionist diatribes, antisemitism took the form of conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the pandemic and comparing vaccination regulations to Nazi Germany’s policies. Reminiscent of the past, Europe was the epicenter of nearly half of the antisemitic incidents reported last year; North America followed with 30%.

There were some quiet years, but today Jew-hatred is reaching new levels all over the world. Antisemites are eager to find what they see as the final solution. Of course, if we consider the consequences of the Holocaust, the situation today is much better. But if we look at what has happened in the last ten years and even in the last 20 years in the United States and in Europe, we can clearly see that the situation is not changing for the better.

The peoples of the world cannot escape antisemitism; it is in their genes and in their blood. It is a law of nature. Jews can ask nothing of them until the Jews themselves bring correction to the world. They hate Israel until Israel corrects them.

If Israel does not unite and become a role model to make all the nations of the world rise up against their egoism, that is, against the hatred among them, then the nations of the world will unite and rise up against the people of Israel. One of two.

It is written that “the externality of the entire world, being the nations of the world, intensify and revoke the Children of Israel – the internality of the world. In such a generation, all the destructors among the nations of the world raise their heads and wish primarily to destroy and to kill the Children of Israel, as it is written (Yevamot 63): ‘No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.'” Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book of Zohar“).

So what is on the horizon for the Jews in the world? The answer depends solely on the Jews. In the meantime, we are approaching a situation where everyone will gang up against the Jews until the Jews open their eyes and realize that they have no choice but to activate the spirit of connectedness between them. And to rise above their selfish calculations since this is the only way to save themselves (and the world). Only in this scenario will antisemitism cease, “And all the nations will acknowledge and recognize Israel’s merit over them, until the realization of the words: ‘And the people shall take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord'” (Isaiah 14:2).

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It looks like the coronavirus epidemic got completely out of our control thanks to the new strain omicron. The virus walks around the world without any boundaries. The number of infected people is growing exponentially day to day and as a result the testing system is collapsing. This means that now it is even impossible to know how many people are sick.

The virus is spreading like wildfire. It is believed that omicron will end the coronavirus epidemic since everyone will get sick with it.

On the other hand, there is a danger that it will finally undermine the health care system, which because of the excessive workload, will not be able to take care of any patient of any kind.

So, what will the omicron do to us ultimately? I think this calamity came to calm us down, to stop us from being occupied with useless work in which there are no necessities, to get us thinking about how to make our lives more modest, but also more reliable.

It turns out that the pandemic is not a blow, but a cure. It forces us to think about what we live for and how to come to a more peaceful life, how to make a person more balanced, closer to normal life, and down to earth instead of rushing around the world and spending so much time on airplanes. Let’s get some rest.

I think that the coronavirus has taught us such useful lessons that have never been seen before in the entire history of mankind. It can be seen from the news that people are concerned about a serious problem instead of talking about nonsense. People are no longer eager to travel from country to country because they don’t know what to do with themselves.

So far, we still lack the wisdom to properly organize our lives in this difficult time of the pandemic, but let us hope that in the end it will straighten us up and make us realize what we live for, how is it worth living, and for what. We will make a lot of clarifications thanks to this virus.

These will be personal clarifications for everyone and at the level of the family, city, country, between countries, and all over the world. They should concern our relationship to inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and, most importantly, the relationships between us, people. Such viruses, which will come again and again, will do their job and lead us to the truth.

The human organism is full of viruses. I hope that due to all these virus attacks, we will get smarter, grow up, and will be able to organize ourselves properly. The virus will force us to do this.
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From KabTV’s “A Conversation with Journalists” 1/6/22

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Question: What makes this lesson part of the convention? How is it different from any other morning lesson?

Answer: The lessons at the convention are one single connected chain that is aimed at a specific intention and at a specific purpose. In this respect, the convention is a serious moving organism.

Yesterday we were studying how to annul ourselves. We are studying it today as well, but according to a completely different principle. How I connect with the group in order to change myself? Meaning, I begin to relate to the group as a means through which I can change myself.

You can say, “But this is an egoistic use of the group.” Of course I am using the group. But I would not call it egoistic, because with the help of the group I want to get rid of my egoism, to suppress it. This is a completely different condition.

I have no other option if I want to change myself. I just cannot do anything else. What should I do if I want to come closer to the Creator, to become like Him, to reveal the Creator, to feel Him, and to enter the quality of eternity, infinity, and perfection? I want to know all this. It sits within me. This desire is given from above to each of us.

In order to actualize it, I have to do an action that is opposite to my nature, and only the group can do that. If I try to become gradually incorporated in it, even though I cannot and do not want to, then some kind of illumination descends upon me, this is what Kabbalists say. I begin to receive the upper force and it changes me. This is how I come closer to the Creator.

Therefore, the group stands between me and the Creator. It is necessary in order to rise to Him, to become more similar to Him. How do I become like Him? Through the fact that I form myself within the group by annulling myself before it.

Then I begin to see that the Creator is within the group. This is called “I dwell within My people.”

The people are the group that aims to become closer to the Creator. That is how we advance.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Annulling before the Friends” Lesson 2

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Question: It often turns out that everyone understands the material in their own way. Should we consider these differences?

Answer: I do not think we need to pay attention to how everyone acquires the material. We need to talk only about the right actions between us, which nature, the Creator, requires from us. And then we will really rise.

But to check each one himself and convey it to others, no. We need to show each other inspiration, the right actions.

I do not think we should be the same. On the contrary, we should be different, but should all strive to set the right example for others. Only the right example on the part of my friends can raise me up. This is how we act.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/6/22, “Approaching the Creator Through the Network of Connections Between Us” Lesson 1

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Our virtual lessons affect us well, if not even better, than the physical ones. They help us feel that we can indeed be close to each other despite physical distances. We can feel how much we are coming closer virtually and spiritually. And the physical distance we simply do not take into account.

But, on the other hand, we need to reach a point where we connect together and are what we call in adhesion with each other, glued together.

Therefore, we constantly have to measure the distance between us and try to fill it, not just annulling, but filling it so that the desire to attract friends to ourselves fills the huge hollow spaces between us, which will be appearing constantly.

So, the result of our development is feeling the distance between us all the way to the point of the abyss and understand how we can fill it so that it does not separate us, but unites us. Precisely because of the fact that we feel the differences and the distance between us, we develop the sense of attraction between us, as it is written: “Love will cover all crimes.”

This is the most important advantage, the most important result of all our efforts: discovering the distances, the differences, between us and filling them with love.

Moreover, these differences will be huge and we will see more and more of them between us. This is not like in our world when children practically do not differ from each other, but as they grow, they show their own character, their habits, and natural inclinations, and we see in each of them not only their parents, but maybe even their distant ancestors.

We must reveal all this and through connecting above it, create a perfect Kli (vessel) in which we will be connected in good connection despite all our differences and despite the fact that we initially reject and even hate each other.

Then we will feel glued to each other so much that if at some moment I do not feel an inner drawing, connection, or adhesion with my friends, I will feel lost and will fall from the degree of the spiritual world into our world. This is a disaster.

Therefore, our entire work is to ask the Creator to fill the space between us. According to this, we will begin to feel how the distance between us is shrinking. This sensation of coming closer will be called movement in the spiritual world.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Asking the Creator to Fill the Place Between Us” Lesson 7

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Question: You said that if each friend is included in the system of the ten, then at some point it becomes the system of ten Sefirot. How can we do it?

Answer: If each one of you starts canceling yourselves before the others, you will reach the state where the system of your interconnection will take some definite form. This will be perceived by you as a system of ten Sefirot.

You will begin to feel and sense in the properties of bestowal between you that a completely different form of interaction is being organized, interaction through bestowal, not through receiving, which you have always had and are accustomed to.

This form will be called the spiritual form of your state or your soul, and what you will begin to discover among yourself is your spiritual world, the upper light, in which its source, the Creator, will gradually manifest itself.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends” Lesson 4

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Question: If a friend understands what is the result of his environment, he sees that there are complex conditions and therefore moves away from the work, then what should be the attitude toward him? How can we help him?

Answer: We must do everything to help him, but by normal means: show how much we want him to be with us and to not leave, display how connected we are with each other and how much we realize that without our unification we cannot comprehend and reveal the Creator since He is revealed precisely within our unification as the central point where everything came from and where everything must return to.

We must find out all this together with him and influence him with our thoughts, prayers, and conversations, including with him so that he remains in the group. All the same, he will not go far even if he floats away somewhere for several years.

I told you how the students of Rabash returned, after having left him for 10 to 15 years, and suddenly by coincidence returned one Saturday morning. The door opened and the man entered as if he had just stepped out to pour himself a cup of coffee. He does not feel like he had been away for ten years! How can this be in human society? But in the Kabbalistic group it can. Just like that, I fell back into place. Therefore, we do not need to worry, everyone will come and undergo their corrections. But it is desirable that we help each other.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends” Lesson 4

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Comment: Why do altruists very often cause not gratitude, but resentment? Experts say, it is because we doubt their selflessness and see the calculation behind everything. Thus, the good deeds turn into a fat minus. Psychologists call this mass phenomenon “the syndrome of do-gooder derogation.”

It is believed that the most reliable way to avoid belittling good deeds is to do them in secret. If others accidentally find out about them, and this will eventually have a positive impact on your reputation, just consider it a bonus. Oscar Wilde said very beautifully: “The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously and have somebody find out.”

My Response: Yes. Others “accidentally” find out, in quotation marks.

Question: Does it mean that our world is built in such a way that we cannot do any altruistic action?

Answer: We can’t in any way. This is our nature. We can only make a mess everywhere, we use, break, and violate. We cannot act in any other way. Therefore we must think about the way to limit ourselves reasonably to such an extent that we violate everything around us as little as possible.

This is possible only through educating a person.

Question: Does a good deed at the level of our world exist?

Answer: A good deed at the level of our world is when we treat our world as our home, common to all of us, and we are like one family, and we take care of everyone.

If a person has such an attitude, then of course we will put this world in order. We have passed some peak of excessive consumerism, destruction, and distortion of everything possible, and now we have to put it all in order a little, i.e., limit ourselves in everything that is not necessary.

Question: Can a person come to this?

Answer: Nature will force him. There is such a thing as necessary and sufficient. Mutual restriction by all of us, which is voluntary and accepted by each of us in order to make our planet comfortable for ourselves and future generations, is necessary.

Comment: But people say: “This is what we want.” There are many such movements.

My Response: They do not really do anything. We cannot do it by force and we cannot do it by shouting in the squares either.

Question: How can we do it?

Answer: By educating people! All these environmentalists and Greenpeace only create a lot of noise and cause hatred and distrust.

Question: What should be the basis of this education?

Answer: To turn all of humanity into a family and the entire Earth into one comfortable apartment for everyone, into our home.

Nature will force us to do this. We are in such a state. Perhaps we will go through something else. For example, there could be a world war and half of humanity or most of it will be destroyed. It will come to this anyway. Nature brings everything to balance.

Question: Do you realize that this is a very long educational process considering who a person is?

Answer: This is a long process, but it depends on the understanding of the need for it.

Question: Who can be a teacher in such schools, such universities of life?

Answer: One who has risen a little above his egoistic natural level can be a teacher.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the main aim of education?“

The main aim of education should correspond to the main aim of our lives.

Why do we exist? We exist in order to achieve a certain goal. As individuals, we each picture a smorgasbord of goals to ourselves, but outside our individual worldviews, there is a much larger universal goal that involves us exiting our individual worldviews and entering into connection with the entirety of nature. Likewise, unlike the transient sensations we could feel whenever we might achieve various individual goals we picture to ourselves, when we achieve the universal goal of connecting with nature in its wholeness, we attain the complete sensation of eternity and perfection. We can and must achieve this goal while we are here in our world.

Therefore, education should provide every person with the method, means and guidance necessary in order to achieve this goal, to ultimately guide us to become happy, fulfilled and complete beings living in a perfectly-connected society.

Unfortunately, our current forms of education have no such aim. We teach people similarly to how animals teach their offspring: to survive, to raise a family, and to produce more offspring. We thus fail to progress beyond the animate level of existence.

While it might appear that we make sophisticated progress in areas such as science and technology, since we make no progress on a deeper level, to discover the eternal and perfect reality, then we remain at the animate level of existence. Our progress is thus no more than efforts to make our animal existence more optimal and comfortable.

Rising above the animate level of existence and becoming human in the fullest sense of the term means rising above our narrow egoistic desires and attaining the same overriding altruistic intention that exists boundlessly in nature.

Therefore, education should aim at elevating us to a new level of existence by showing a different perspective of life than what we are used to: that there is an exalted purpose to our being here—to become balanced with nature—and it is worthwhile aiming ourselves at that purpose.

While we raise ourselves to become more sophisticated individualists, nature gradually reveals to us that it has different plans: it brings us to tighter and tighter interconnectedness and interdependence. The more we progress without developing altruistic ties in our growing globally interdependent world, the more we will find ourselves suffering and intolerant of our lives.

Therefore, nature gradually brings us to the realization that we need to revise our educational aim, and together with it, the method and the means to implement it, because we increasingly see how our past approaches to education no longer help us navigate in a world requiring us to realize our mutual dependence in a positive and balanced fashion.

Based on KabTV’s “Close-Up” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on August 24, 2009. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic: “Faith Above Reason” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 112

Selected Highlights 

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