Lesson 1: Introduction
[With Chaim and Gilad]
Chaim Ratz: Hello. We’re happy to be with you. It’s our first session of a course that is called “What Does It Mean to Be Jewish Today?” Interesting topic, huh?
Gilad: Very interesting topic, and we’d love for you to be as active as possible. You have a question and answer forum on the website and we’ll take your questions live. So throughout the lesson—anything, any questions you have, anything you want to find out, you want to discuss—please post it in the Q&A forum. We’ll be happy to open things up, to make it as interesting, as relevant as possible.
How did we get to having a course on the meaning of being Jewish? This book, Like A Bundle of Reeds: Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are the Call of the Hour Today, this is the reason why we are here. I’ve been translating Dr. Laitman’s books for over ten years now and I’ve been the executive editor of Laitman Kabbalah Publishers for about that long as well, if not longer actually, and this is his most recent book that talks about this topic—about being Jewish.
In this book he presents a very, I would say, serious prediction of the trend, the direction in which humanity is going and how it relates specifically to Jews and the role of Jews in the scheme of things. It’s a very serious and a very central position that Jews take in this scheme. In light of the fact that everything he has predicted in this book which was published a year and a half ago is coming true, even sooner than he expected, then we thought it is urgent that we make known the message in this book as quickly and as broadly as possible, because we think it is indeed the call of the hour.
Just to show you what we are referring to, today there was another anti-Semitic incident in Brooklyn, and in Israel Tuesday morning there was another terrorist attack. But these aren’t isolated cases. Anti-Semitism has been rising exponentially over the last few years and this year it’s taken a completely obvious manifestation worldwide.
We’ve made a Google doc that shows a selection of anti-Semitic incidents that have happened throughout 2014. This does not even scratch the surface of what is actually happening. It shows you the situation. Just scroll down slowly so they can read the titles.
[Headlines of anti-Semitic incidents are shown on the screen.]
For those who can’t see [reads selected headlines]: Middle school students debate whether Holocaust happened. It was in California. Swedish authorities refused to let Peres’ plane proceed. Beer pong, the famous college game, is taking a dark and insensitive turn: “Jews vs. Nazis.” 18,000 anti-Semitic tweets on Twitter after Maccabi TA’s win the Euroleague. Residents of a small Guatemalan town want Jews to leave. American Studies Association approves boycott of Israel. And many more.
We just heard about the Princeton boycott, with 60 professors voting to boycott Israel.
Where is all this coming from? In this course, its… We see a lot of anti-Semitism and we hear a lot of interpretations, from Jews, from non-Jews, both trying to define where this comes from, because if you look at anti-Semitism, it’s hard to find that actual point of why there is so much anti-Semitism in the world. In the advanced world, in the modern world of today, saying something that is completely detached from reality. One race just hating another for being what they are? It’s completely…
It’s totally irrational, but just to give another glimpse into how real this is, we’d like production to play a clip that’s been running on the internet for a while now. And it shows that there was a conference of Jewish students who all got together to discuss the situation in American universities and colleges, and it’s pretty dire. Just watch the five-minute clip. It has its sobering effect on you. After that everything we say will take on a very real meaning.
[Clip: Hear the Voices of America’s Jewish Students plays on screen.]
Henry: UC Berkeley—The issue is that we do experience a lot of anti-Semitism in a lot of different ways.
Michael: Harvard University—To be completely honest with you being against Israel has become the cool thing to do.
Kevin: Kent State University—At Kent State University there’s a professor that calls his students his little Jihadists. He’s on the terrorist watch list actually. Quotes from article: A Kent State University associate professor of history is standing by his call for Jihad in a statement that Israel is a ____ that is the spiritual heir to Nazism.
Shawn: Florida State University—They were screaming ‘Intifada! Intifada!’ and by the end of there were three Israeli flags that were stomped on and covered with mud. It was gruesome.
Brandon: Loyola University Chicago—It’s still scary. We had a birthright table that was protested. There were tears afterwards, a lot of people crying. It was brutal.
Jason: University of Oregon—Anti-Semitism is definitely affecting my college career, whether it be the swastikas that were drawn on our mailbox or the anti-Semitic president of the student body…
Ian: University of Cincinatti—There are people running for political office that are delivering letters to students around the university and some of these people running for office are running on campaigns of “With Jews You Lose.”
Gideon: University of Arizona—What happened to me last semester, March 2—I remember the day, I always will—this guy came up to our house and he tried to come in with alcohol. I don’t know who he is. I’m not going to let someone in. It’s a risk. I told him politely to leave. At that point he starts backing off with his hand raised saluting Hitler. He runs into a house next to our house and comes out with twenty guys. At that point I see that a fight is about to start. I, as president, run over to stop them in their progress of coming into our house, with a couple of other guys. I start talking. “We don’t to fight. We don’t want anything like that at all.” At that point I am struck from behind and knocked unconscious. I don’t really remember much after that. I was hospitalized. I was in the hospital for three weeks—ICU for ten days. I had a skull fracture, low back fracture, bleeding in the brain and a concussion. It’s sad to see, honestly.
Shane: University of Calgary—There were about eight hundred of them on one side and about six of us on the other side. Fifty of them crossed over the road and actually got in our faces, started yelling, “Kill the Jews. Hitler was right.” They started saying “baby-killer” and stuff and we just started being attacked. I had a concussion, my sister was punched in the face, grabbed by the hair and pulled to the ground. My mom was punched in the stomach and pushed to the ground. The group that actually hosted that rally is a group on our campus. Walking around campus, I do fear for my life. I’m constantly paranoid, watching behind me. I’m actually afraid to walk by myself sometimes.
[More comments by same students.]
This year I’ve come back. Some of my Orthodox friends won’t wear Kippah any more. He always wore Kippah. I asked him why don’t you have your Kippah on? He said, I’m afraid to walk around with that on. I do not feel comfortable at our school walking with that on.
An Israeli student gets up. She’s very pro-Palestinian, very pro-Israeli. Let us help you. We want to work with you. She tries to work into our Arabic class the next day and gets booed out of class.
David: University of Maryland, Baltimore County—At UMBC there’s a lot of hate rhetoric going on about “Free Palestine. Go back to Israel you f___ing Jews.” There’s been a lot of graffiti, even on the bathroom walls. You can see it everywhere.
We’re threatened as Jews on campus. We are, first of all, not even recognized on campus because we’re a Jewish fraternity. And the problem is that this anti-Semitism is institutionalized. It’s tenet[?] of what we deal with. It’s every day. It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t show up in the newspapers because it’s to be expected.
I felt like our campus was poisoned by both anti-Semitism, but also a dark level of hatred.
It’s something that makes Jewish students feel very uncomfortable on campus whether they’re willing to say it or not. And thank goodness that there are people who are willing to speak out about it.
One of my best friends, when ____ was on campus and going through the Senate, was walking to class and she was spit on by another student simply because he saw that she was wearing a Jewish star around her neck. Anti-Semitism, hatred of the people of Israel, is real, and I can only hope that in the future we are able to get through it together.
“I can only hope that in the future we are able to get through it together.” This is indeed the only way we’ll ever be able to get through it.
I grew up in Australia and I remember as a kid, I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, Croffield[sp?] in Melbourne, and I always remembered that being Jewish was being slightly different in a way, but I don’t remember like that.
It’s never been like that.
Just watching that clip. You don’t have to say many words after it. You can really feel what the students are going through and it’s a serious problem.
Whenever Dr. Laitman lectures about anti-Semitism, he always says, “But if everyone says you are to blame—everyone, the whole world—maybe they’re right.” It’s a frightening thought, because you know you don’t want to be devil that you are presented as, but maybe they have a point. Maybe Jews are to blame to an extent. What is going on here? This is why he wrote the book.
To understand anti-Semitism, to understand not just the role but the position of the Jewish people, because it’s always somehow being at the focus of attention. So to understand the position of the Jewish people in history and in today’s world, we need to go back. We need to go thousands of years back. We need to go back to ancient Babylon. We need to go back into the first chapter in the book that talks about Abraham—THE Abraham—and how he came to be the father of the three Abrahamic religions and what it means.
You’re saying that in order to understand the reason of anti-Semitism today, let’s go all the way back and see where Judaism was formed and how religions were formed. That will help give us a better understanding of how it evolved to where it is today. We’re going to be reading precepts[excerpts] from the book Like A Bundle of Reeds, right?
Yes, we are going to read excerpts from Like A Bundle of Reeds. We’ll tell you the page, and in any case you’re going to see the text on the screen. But if you have the book, it may be easier for you to read from it. In general, it’s recommended you have the book. You can download it…
Anyone who signed up for the course actually got a link to download the book, so just check your email.
Basically what Dr. Laitman explains is this. First of all, Dr. Laitman’s background: He has a professorship in ontology and the theory of knowledge, which basically deals with the state of human existence. He has a PhD in philosophy and Kabbalah, and a masters in bio-cybernetics. So he is an all-around person. He is very knowledgeable. He studied Kabbalah for twelve years as the prime disciple of Rabash, the first-born son and successor of Rav Yehuda Ashlag, author of the Sulam commentary on the Zohar. So his knowledge of Kabbalah is beyond extensive. What he does is explain the world situation using both Kabbalah and science and contemporary sciences in general and social sciences. He combines everything.
Let me add, to clear up any misconception, this isn’t the Kabbalah that talks about mysticism or red strings or anything like that. This is authentic Kabbalah.
Kabbalah is a science that explains reality. It explains the forces that govern reality and manages it and it has nothing to do with other more worldly presentations and misconceptions, as you put it under the title “kabbalah.”
Let’s get into the story. About four thousand years ago there was a man whose name was Terach. This man was living in Babylon. At the time, it’s somewhere between today’s Iran and Iraq in what is now known as the fertile crescent. It was an area that was very fertile. They had a great life. They had everything—food, a very developed culture. They also developed their spiritual paths. They had numerous spiritual paths. Actually most of today’s spiritual teachings originate in that area.
One of the leading spiritual icons of the time was Terach. He was an idol-builder, he built statues, he sold them, he explained spirituality to people. People would come to his shop and would buy these statues from him and he was very successful. He had a son whose name was Abram and he taught him everything he knew. Abram was an inquisitive youth who kept asking questions, because he couldn’t figure out how a statue that he himself built could have any impact on someone else’s life. And not only that, other people would come and sacrifice before these statues and hope that by sacrificing anything from wheat to flour to doves to bigger animals, by sacrificing before them, somehow their lives would improve. It just didn’t make any sense to him. So he started asking questions.
At this point I want to stop for a minute and say that the sources Dr. Laitman uses in this book are authentic Jewish sources that go anywhere from the Gemara, Midrash, Jewish sages through the ages, Maimonides. It is the Jewish explanation of the development of the Jewish people, the Hebrews, and the perception of reality as it is explained in authentic Judaism sources. Historians have all kinds of ideas about what really happened. This book does not try to argue or compare other schools. It states what the Jewish sources state and some of what non-Jewish sources, such as Christian sources, also state primarily about the Jews. We’re not going to have a historic discussion that talks about all kinds of trends and whether or not Nimrod actually lived in Abraham’s time and all kinds of things that may or may not have happened.
We’re presenting what the Jewish, traditional, authentic sources present. That’s the idea of the book. We want to present this idea because at the bottom the book is not history. What’s important here is to understand the concept, the concept that states that if we do one thing, that we will soon explain, all of our problems will be solved—not just anti-Semitism, but all of the ills of contemporary human society throughout the world. And this is why we think this book is so important.
Let’s just jump for a minute into Slide # 3 in the PP presentation.
[Seaker reads passage.]
So Abraham started thinking, ‘What is going on here?’ He realized that what was missing here was a key element, because people were worshipping idols in order to improve their lives. They were beginning to feel insecure. They were beginning to sense that something was not going right in their lives. So they were looking for the element that could improve… humans have been doing it ever since. But Abraham thought that this was more serious; he was looking for the source for what is going on here. What makes things tick?
He started asking about what makes the world go around. It wasn’t money at the time. What he realized is that there is one force that makes everything happen, and it makes the stars move in their tracks, and the sun go u,p and people to be born and to die, and to fight each other. Everything results from just one unique and uniform force that is a creating force. A creating force by its essence has to be a force of giving, a force that emits. That force is the Creator, because It creates everything. And from that point on he referred to that force as the Creator, because that’s what It does. That’s why he called his book Sefer Yetzira, the Book of Creation. It explains about the force that creates reality. When he realized that, he also realized that he couldn’t keep to himself, so he started circulating. Please go to Slide #5.
Maimonides [Rambam] was a 12th Century sage. He was very well-versed in all the authentic sources. He wrote extensively in the MishnehTorah which is his primary composition about how Abraham discovered this force. So he writes this:
[Speaker reads passage]
Show Slide # 7
[Speaker reads passage]
Why wasn’t it the path of truth? Because, the problem was that people were not actually having a good life. If you look at slide # 4, you will see that the problem with Babylonian society at the time was that their society was falling apart.
They were growing increasingly alienated toward each other, they started hating each other, and their society was disintegrating. Up until then they were in a situation where they felt connected. They all lived in a pretty big community, but it felt like a community. But now that was missing and when that happens you start feeling insecure because you can no longer trust your neighbor, you can no longer trust your child’s teacher, you can no longer trust the people you trade with.
It actually sounds quite familiar. What you’re describing happened a few thousand years ago. It sounds very relevant and up-to-date about what is happening today.
Actually today’s world is called modern-day Babylon by many people, and this is actually why Abraham’s discovery of that one force is so relevant to today, because he offered a solution that was rejected at the time, and people went another way. Eventually, as we see, we ended up being in Babylon.
It wasn’t rejected by everyone.
Well, it wasn’t rejected by everyone. Some people went with Abraham, actually some tens of thousands according to Maimonides, but again out of a population of around three million people in that area at the time, so this was not a lot. And they were confronted by the ruler of the time, Nimrod, who by the way, his name is very symbolic, because the Nimrod comes from the word ____, to rebel. He rebelled against the Creator, against the idea of one force.
What Abraham discovered was that that force—if you went with the law, with the principle then everything would be okay. The principle is very simple. Everything comes from one force which makes all the people basically one entity. So from that he realized that unity of people was the key to the solution, that if people united, everything would be okay. And that coincides with how they felt prior to this emerging alienation between them. As long as they felt united, they felt good.
So basically this sense of unity isn’t just being moral or something. It’s more than that. It’s actually being similar to that force. So it’s like, if you have gravity you can either take it into account or not, but it’s recommended that you do, otherwise you won’t be very successful if you build something without taking that force into account. It’s similar here.
There is a joke about the optimist who says, ‘Sure I can fly.’ He jumps off a ten-story building and as he gets to the lower floors and looking into the windows at people there said, ‘See? So far, so good.’
That’s pretty much our situation. So that’s what Abraham discovered and he realized the situation was pretty dire. He started disseminating as far and as wide as he could , but he was confronted by the ruler, Nimrod, who had a completely different frame of mind. In that confrontation, Abraham was forced out of Babylon, and he started moving with the people he did manage to convince who later became his students, and of course his family. They moved out of Babylon into what was then the land of Canaan. Along the way they continued to disseminate. You can see it throughout the first chapter of the book, how Maimonides describes…
That’s actually the tents we heard about in the Bible, Abraham opened his tents in four directions to invite anyone who wants to join in .
Yes, he and his wife Sarah had two tents. They taught the men and the women separately for reasons we will not get into at this point. That’s what Maimomides describes, actually not Maimonides, but ____. Abraham and his wife Sarah were teaching people about the power of unity and about how all we need to do is unite above the alienation we feel—the egoism that was intensifying all over that old world.
So he was actually talking about the very same expression that Hillel later said, ____, Love thy friend as thyself. He was basically talking about that very same principle.
Exactly. That’s what he was teaching and Maimonides describes how he wrote books about it and how he tried to circulate wherever he went and people joined him. Some left of course, and more joined, and eventually there were tens of thousands of people who went into the land of Canaan and they established what was then known as the house of Abraham. Then Maimonides goes on to describe how Abraham didn’t just teach his contemporaries, but he also bequeathed his teaching to his sons and to his students who continued after him. He describes how this is what Isaac and Jacob taught.
Eventually a nation was formed, and this is something that’s crucial to understand, that Judaism is not a genetic affiliation. It is a spiritual path, a spiritual affiliation. The people who first founded the Jewish nation came from everywhere in the ancient world. All you had to do to become part of the ancient Jewish nation, which was not called Jewish at the time—it was Hebrews, Israelites; but it became eventually what we now know as Jews. So those people were not from a certain genetic lineage; they had no specific hereditary traits. All they had was an idea that they all agreed to.
This is why still today anyone can become Jewish. The thing is though that if you become Jewish, you cannot un-Jew yourself. Once you’ve adopted this idea you can’t go back. There will always be a part of you that sticks to that idea, because you’ve perceived the idea that everything is one, you can no longer believe that not everything is one. That was a significant divergence from everything else that was going on in that ancient world, which believed in card-reading, etc. Everything that had to do with divination came from that ancient world.
It’s interesting. So actually the foundation of the Jewish nation, of the Jewish people, is just a common desire to understand reality, to not be satisfied by idol-worshipping or card-reading or other such thoughts and ideas of materializing this concept. But people who understood that there is maybe a greater force, a more conclusive force, governing reality—regardless of where they came from or their background—they shared this common desire and came to study with Abraham. They followed Abraham and they later became what we know today as the Jewish nation.
Exactly. Actually the word Jew in Hebrew is ____. It comes from the word Yehudi, meaning united or unique, meaning that there is one, unique force that governs everything. That’s the meaning of the word Jew. That’s what it means to be Jewish. And even today, according to Dr. Laitman, if you have no perception of that unique force, then externally or biologically you may be a Jew or non-Jew, but if you don’t have that perception or at least an aspiration to perceive that, then internally you’re not Jewish. It doesn’t matter if you were born Jewish or born non-Jewish, but if you do have that inclination, then even if you were not born to a Jewish mother, then you are internally, at least in part, Jewish.
We have a question from the audience. She says: If anyone can be a spiritual Jew, then who are the hereditary Jewish people?
They are people whose forefathers were internally Jewish. That’s an interesting question; I’m going to have to elaborate. Because Abraham discovered everything is one entity, the concept of life and death doesn’t exist in that perception of reality. What exists is an evolution of desires. That’s exactly the topic of Chapter 2. We’ll get to that in the next lesson.
Just to give you that explanation in brief, an evolution of desires means that you overcome your current desires, your current egoism, and you unite them within you and between you. As you become on, you’ve attained a certain part in you that will eternally be one. That part remains because there is no beginning and end, but everything is an evolution of desires. That’s the whole of reality. Then a part of each of us, really, has that level of oneness that was attained previously. We are unconscious that that part exists in us, we are unaware of it, but it’s there, buried underneath.
Today’s biological Jews are people whose forefathers did attain it. So there’s a part in every modern day Jew that has that inkling toward unity, toward discovering that unified force.
I think that especially today, even though that force is concealed from most Jewish people, we can see that when we have hard times, then that point awakens. I think it was very evident in Israel in recent ____, the operation in the Gaza Strip. For those of you who are following on the news what’s happening in Israel, I don’t really know how the sense of the atmosphere that was going on here… it’s really weird to say, but it was the best time Israel has had for years. I saw many reporters on the Israeli news saying that at those times specifically, the people of Israel… it awakens this sense of unity in them, mutual support, people were driving all around Israel to support the soldiers. People were inviting strangers to come sleep at their houses if they were in danger. It was like, exactly what you were talking about, this sense of unity, or desire for unity, it was reawakened.
Yes, but that was the result of some external pressure.
Exactly, and it seems like we constantly need to wait for these external pressures for this to awaken, and I think maybe we can…
This trait of the Jews is noticed not just by Jews, but by many non-Jews, from the entire gamut of those who are pro-Jews and those who hate Jews. Winston Churchill noticed it and he wrote about how Jews have this “corporate spirit” as he called it. It’s also quoted in the book. He [Churchill] sensed that it came from a higher source so he was afraid to touch it. He had some kind of respect for. Hitler had a loathing for it. He wrote in Mein Kampf that Jews unite only when they are pressed and when they are persecuted; otherwise they are totally disbursed and they hate each other’s guts.
What does it come from? It comes from that discovery, from the fact that way back a part of us experienced unity and realized that unity is the key for everything good.
Let’s go to slide # 14.
[Speaker reads passage.]
I think that goes in line with a question from the audience. It’s not really a question, but a statement, and I think it matches what you just said. She says: It feels like Jews are coming together worldwide with all the anti-Semitism going on, even outside of Israel.
So if we have anti-Semitism and we have that specifically pushing Jewish people together, then maybe these things are related. Maybe one causes the other for a reason.
It’s very true. Rav Kook, the first chief Rabbi of Israel, wrote that Hitler, Haman and he named some other anti-Semites from the Ukraine—at that time it was the beginning of the 20th century—all bring Israel to redemption. The thing is that when Israel don’t unite by themselves, they are pushed into unity by hatred. Why is it so important that Israel unite? Because, as you mentioned initially, when we unite we are in synch with that most fundamental force of reality. Without understanding that most fundamental force, you cannot understand, especially today, how to manage the world. We see what’s happening all around us.
Chaos is emerging everywhere. There is crisis in every aspect of human existence—family, economy, society in general, education, you name it, international relations. We don’t know how to manage our world any more, and why? Because once the world becomes so inter-connected, so globalized, as it is today, you cannot make a decision that concerns the U.S. alone. Russia cannot invade the Ukraine and expect to get away with it. It just doesn’t work. It affects everyone. You cannot leave West Africa to deal with ebola by itself. If you do that, you end up getting a worldwide pandemic. The world left West Africa to deal with AIDS on its own. We know the result. It’s like that in every realm of human existence. Love at avian flu, look at Japan’s earthquake and tsunami from 2011. It’s still affecting us today. That reactor is still leaking, by the way.
Today you cannot leave any part of the world to deal with its own problems because we’re all connected. You can see it on the material level but it’s beyond that. That connection exists on every level of human existence—the ones we’re aware of and the ones we’re not.
It seems like we have two things in parallel. On the one hand we have global crises, as you said, on all levels—education, economy, social crises, we have depression rising, and so on. But on the other hand, we have this advancement of the world that’s pushing toward hyper-connectivity, that’s pushing the world to become united. Basically what we’re discovering is that if we don’t learn to get back together, then we’re not going to get by. No one’s going to get by. So it seems like we have these two trends that are going in parallel. If we don’t work on the trend of becoming more united—worldwide even, learning how to work together—then it seems like the other trend is increasing and increasing and increasing. It’s these two forces emerging in parallel.
Exactly. You have an emerging conflict. There’s a beautiful clip running on You Tube for a while, explaining how people connect today through the net, but they don’t connect, and what happens is that they miss out on life. So what you get is skyrocketing depression rates and all these other troubles.
On the one hand you have intensifying alienation, to the point of narcissism, and on the other hand you have intensifying connectivity. Look at Facebook. Everyone has four hundred friends, at least. How many of them do we know personally? How many of them do we care about? How many of them care about us? If I have a problem, would I turn to my Facebook friends for help or to my physical friends for help? How many of those do I have? And this is a worldwide problem. It’s especially prevalent in the Western world, the developed world. So it’s not a surprise that in the developed world people are more depressed than anyone else, because friendships aren’t real any more. In other words, human connections aren’t real any more.
So what we need now is to find another way to restore unity, to restore the sense of solidarity of human beings. This is exactly what Abraham discovered almost four thousand years ago. This is exactly what he taught to his students. That’s exactly what they were teaching to their students and to their children. This is exactly what kept the Hebrews going until the ruin of the second temple some two thousand years ago.
They had fights, no doubt, well documented. But all those fights were treated as stages in order to overcome intensified egoism, as we can see in our world today, in order to intensify their unity. As they intensified their unity, they attained a higher and deeper level similarity with the power of unity that governs the world.
We have a question from the audience. Is unity our necessity?
Absolutely. Today it’s a necessity. Just imagine if we become a little more disintegrated, alienated than we already are. We’re looking at a disaster. People are already talking about a third world war. There may not even be a third world war because armies won’t be able to work together in order to fight a war. It may just be everyone against everyone.
The situation is only getting worse, as we can see, so unity is really the call of the hour. It sounds naïve. How can we unite? How can people unite these days? People hate each other’s guts. They can’t marry, and if they marry they can’t maintain their marriages.
It’s true. People are having great difficulties to unite, to connect with other people. On the other hand we can see that they’re not getting fulfilled from anything else. They’re not getting fulfilled from being alone. Depression is caused, number one, by loneliness. Loneliness is one of the most harmful diseases. It’s thought to be more harmful than smoking and drinking and obesity. It’s interesting to see that on the one hand people maybe have this rejection from coming together; on the other hand it seems like even physically we’re built for human connection.
Research finds today that all our biochemical systems are built for positive social connections. I’m actually doing my thesis on distribution of positivity in a network of people. Many scientists today, in positive psychology, network science, and so on, are beginning to realize that we’re actually wired for positive social connection, that it’s built into our system. On the other hand we can see that we are projected with other ideas that aren’t bringing us anything good. They’re leading us to those negative places that we were talking about.
There’s a question from the audience. With all the anti-Semitism that’s going on, please elaborate on what it means to be the chose people. It’s a very good question, because from what we’ve been talking about so far, it seems that the whole world has to unite, meaning with societies everywhere. And we see that we have a need for unity all around the world. So what does it mean to be the chosen people. Chosen to do what?
When Abraham discovered the power of unity he wanted to make all the Babylonians know about it and implement it. He discovered a way by which to overcome the alienation, the hatred that was thriving among them, and they could not maintain the solidarity of their society. Eventually, as we know, Babylon dispersed. It took them a few centuries to do that, but eventually this is what happened. Today we see it even worse.
That created two trends in reality. One is a trend of disunity and growing alienation, each to his own, and one trend is the trend of the Israeli people to unite above the growing differences, above the growing hatred. In other words, not to ignore it, but to rise above it and create unity. They improved on their method until they developed a complete method that we now call Kabbalah—ever since the writing of The Zohar it’s been known as Kabbalah—but it’s basically a method to enable people to unite above their growing egos.
Moreover, it’s a method that uses the growing ego positively, as a means to enhance unity. What happens when you enhance unity is that you become similar to the force that creates reality and by that you understand how to manage your life.
Two thousand years ago, the Jewish people lost its ability to rise above the ego and maintain unity. That caused the ruin of the temple and the dispersion of the Jews throughout the world. Anti-Semitism, at its core, is a grudge against Jews for not teaching people how to unite, because at that time when Abraham discovered it, the Babylonians weren’t ready. He also couldn’t disseminate to that many people because he was forced out of Babylon. But the need for it is always there. It provides a method by which we can control our lives and make them good.
This is why anti-Semites say that Jews are to blame for all the troubles in the world, because once you don’t understand the world, you don’t understand the most fundamental power of reality, then of course your life is going to be a mess. If you’re trying to drive from New York to Philadelphia blindfolded, you’re not going to get there, no matter what. You’re going to have accidents. All it takes if for you to open your eyes so you can see the road ahead of you and you’ll get there.
But the only ones who had their eyes open were the Jews. Two thousand years ago the Jews lost that ability, but the unconscious sensation that Jews hold a secret remains in every non-Jew. The secret is the secret to unity—how to attain it. Just imagine that you have this feeling in your gut that there is this person here who knows something that’s vitally important to my existence and who is keeping it away from me. He is not letting me know that thing that is so important to my life. How would we feel about that person? This is the essence of Judaism.
Think of Mel Gibson’s rant, when he was stopped a few years ago. ‘Jews cause all the wars in the world.’ Exactly! By not providing the key to rise above disunity. But Jews don’t know that they have this power, so what’s required now is for Jews to learn about this power and to disseminate it, just as Abraham did all those years ago.
Maybe we should reiterate that. That’s a very important point. You’re saying that because Jews, when they were actually formed, even before they were Jews, in the time of Abraham like we talked about in the beginning, they searched for that power of nature—you can call it the power that governs reality and so on—and they found that it’s the force of unity, a force that unites people. Then as they developed into the Jewish people, they became the owners or the experts on that method of unity, and they reached the ability to unite above their own personal desires— personal self-interest as we see too much of today—and that made them spiritual. Then two thousand years ago, what was the destruction of the temple was actually the destruction of their ability to be able to unite.
Half of [?] the whole Torah describes their struggles and how their ego increases and then they fight and then God says, ‘If you don’t follow me, I will punish you.’ In other words if you don’t rekindle that unity, reconnect that force of unity [adapt yourselves to the force of nature], then I will punish you. What does it mean to be punished? It means that you will suffer. Why? Because you’re not united.
Exactly, not following that force of nature. Baal HaSulam once mentioned that you can’t go against the law of nature. It’s just like walking off a roof. If you’ll be punished by falling down [and expecting not to fall], yeah, so it’s not really punished, it’s basically not following the laws of nature and suffering the consequences. [Like the optimist.] Yeah.
So we don’t want to be optimists. We want to be realistic. Today the worse the world is becoming the more anti-Semitic it’s becoming, because anti-Semitism is not a question of hating Jews or not hating Jews, it is a question of people needing to discover the key to managing the world, to managing our lives today. The book explains exactly why it is unity that is the key and how we can re-attain that unity and spread it out.
I just want to add to what you’re saying that one of the prayers at the end of every ____ We Are to Praise. What you were talking about now it clarifies. It says there that Israel has to be a light to the nations and that really explains what that thing means, to be a light to the nations.
A light to the nations actually means that we provide the nations with the power of unity—we don’t provide anything, we don’t have the power of unity—but we provide people with a way to unite and to attain that power of unity by themselves. In that sense we bring them light This is a different concept from what people normally think, or from people who say that the role of the Jewish people to be a light for the nations is no longer relevant.
It’s very relevant. It’s more relevant than ever before and it has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with managing our lives according to a new paradigm. It’s a four thousand year old paradigm, but it’s never been tried by most of humanity. It’s a paradigm of unity. It’s a way not just of life, but of perceiving reality. It’s a way of acquiring that perception. It’s a method. When you provide that method and help people attain reality as a single entity, and provide them with a way with which to manage their lives, accordingly their lives become synchronized with reality and everyone understands… That’s why it’s written, ‘They shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest.’ And all of the nations shall flow unto Him, meaning what every person in the world needs to know the creating force of reality. But only the Jews ever had that touch, that knowledge. They’ve lost it. So now they have to find it again and spread it out, because Babylon today is everywhere. There is nowhere to go. The whole world is Babylon and if we don’t choose Abraham’s way it’s going to be bad.
We have a request from the audience: Perhaps you could talk about Tikkun Olam, Repairing the World, and its relevance to our world today. I’m very interested in this.
This is the meaning of Tikkun Olam. The world is screwed up today, it’s malfunctioning, it’s broken up, everyone’s broken to pieces, everyone feels isolated and alienated and what-not. Tikkun Olam means re-uniting the world. Think of a puzzle. We are all one picture, totally broken into pieces. We have to find how we all fit together as one puzzle, that only together can we create a complete picture. When we create that complete picture, we will discover reality. This is the picture we are missing today, in its fullest sense.
I think also that Tikkun—Tikkun in Hebrew means to put together, to fix, and that’s exactly what we need to fix, what was shattered, broken, meaning if something was broken it used to be whole. That can also refer to what we’re talking about now, about the need of the Jewish people to become one, to become one as in not everyone being the same, but to become one as in all working together, like a human body that has different organs, different roles.
A very important point. When we talk about unity, we’re not talking about sameness, not at all. If Gilad and I are identical, there’s no need for both of us. It talks about complementing one another and actually using each other’s differences for mutual benefit. This is very important. Only when we mutually benefit from each other’s differences do we want to unite, because then the more different he is for me, the better it is for both of us.
I need to give a semi-related example that makes that a powerful point. There were a group of researchers, two different groups that were finding a solution to some problem that came through their research. They were finding a solution to the same problem.
One was a group of E. Coli experts and the problem was E. Coli related. The other group was very diverse. They had only one E. Coli expert and a group of other experts as well, a physicist, a chemist, a biologist, and so on. The E.Coli experts organized a brute attack on the problem and found a solution in three weeks. How long did it take the other group to find a solution? [Three days? Three hours?] Ten minutes. True story.
This resembles what you were saying, that Jewish people are very diverse, all around the world. There are a lot of people that are very, very different. And what we’re talking about here isn’t making everyone the same. In Hebrew there’s a phrase: Achdut ____, unity, but not everyone being the same. Especially with Jewish people from all around the world, from all ____ and so on, if we really unite, our potential is endless. It’s really unbelievable potential.
In that we can be a light for the nations. We can be a role model of embracing our differences and creating unity above it. And in that we can be an example for the world. The world is looking at us anyway—at Jews—so why not serve as a role model of uniting above differences? That is what the nations expect from us, according to what Jewish sources write.
In the next lesson we’re going to talk about how this came about—how everything is basically an evolution of desires, of egoism basically, and how to rise over it. That will be the topic of our next lesson. We hope that we helped educate a little bit.
Helped deepen the understanding, maybe, of what’s happening today and why it’s happening. It’s only the first lesson. We still have a few more lessons to go, and throughout the course we are going to deepen… There are probably a lot of questions that you still have, a lot of things that we didn’t get a chance to answer.
A comment from the audience is: Please tell us what we can do practically, on a day-to-day basis, to attain unity.
We will. This is part of the course. It will be there. We just want to explain how we came to it, the background, and therefore what we need to do.
[Info given re time and date of next lesson.]
The topic for next week is The People of Israel’s Birth: tracing the Jewish roots and why it is relevant today. It’s actually deepening what we were talking about today—Abraham and the beginning of Judaism and so on—and we’re going to go into that a bit deeper, as an evolution of desires.
We will conclude with a quote from the book.
“If a person takes a bundle of reeds, he cannot break them all at once. But if he takes one at a time, even an infant breaks them. Likewise, Israel will not be redeemed until they are all one bundle.”
Midrash Tanhuma
Thank you for being with us and we really hope to see you in the next lesson. Until then, goodbye.
