The World is Ready For a Message of Unity

  At the beginning of the month I was invited to LA for a marathon shoot of 24 short episodes explaining the wisdom of Kabbalah and its relevance to our lives. This couldn’t have been timed better since I was already in town for a convention and a lecture that followed, so I delightedly took on the challenge of shooting 24 episodes in two days (though my part in each is about 5 minutes). The World is Ready for a Message of Unity On the second day of the shooting, I had a special treat. I sat before a panel of six students that consisted of the council of the USC interfaith program, who “grilled” me with questions regarding Kabbalah for seven hours straight. Naturally, anti-Semitism and the role of the Jewish people arose in their questions, and being students, they didn’t hesitate to ask whatever came into their minds. The panel consisted of a Roman Catholic, a Methodist, one who didn’t disclose his faith, a Muslim and two agnostics. All students said they were observant in their faiths, yet were interested in learning about other faiths and traditions, which was why they joined the interfaith program. Through their questions, I explained about Kabbalah, but I also dedicated time to discussing the role of the Jewish people in the world, and why so many people feel that there is...

Anti-Semitism UPROOTED

How the Jewish People and the World Can Win (or Lose) Together Pariahs A few days ago, two Jewish boys were beaten up in Queens, New York, and the word Hamas was written all over them. The media took no notice. But if Jews were to do the same to Arab boys, would the media treat it likewise? It is not a hypothesis that the world is against us, nor is it a residue of past fears that should have been long gone by now. Anti-Semitism is as vibrant and as vile as ever not only in our neighborhoods, in some of our neighbors’ eyes, or on graffiti next to the shul. It is everywhere: on the bus, at school, at college, at work (albeit in a more implied manner), and, of course, in the media. The social media is inundated with unreserved anti-Semitism. In France, names, residential addresses, and pictures of Jews were posted on a Facebook wall with an invitation to hurt them. To date, some have already been attacked. The rest are hiding. In Belgium, an elderly Jewish lady was refused medical care and was advised to go to Gaza for treatment. Anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic demonstrations are held in dozens of cities throughout the world each day since the beginning of July. According to the Anti Defamation League (ADL), in just three weeks between July 8...

10 Things You Ought to Know About Being Jewish

Originally published in the Jewish Journal by Michael Laitman 1) Jews didn’t start out as a distinct tribe or a clan. According to Maimonides, the first Jews, which were then known as Hebrews, followed Abraham because they liked his ideas about mutual responsibility and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Gradually, the entourage grew and officially became the nation of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. 2) Unity among Jews. That thing which we don’t have was actually a prerequisite for the reception of the Torah (law). The great 11th century commentator, RASHI, wrote that at the foot of Mount Sinai the Hebrews stood “as one man with one heart,” and this is why they received the Torah. Also, they didn’t really have a choice, or as the Babylonian Talmud (Masechet Avoda Zarah) puts it, they were told, “If you receive the Torah, good; if you do not, there will it be your burial.” 3) Since we haven’t taken it upon ourselves to unite, we’ve been busy fighting one another. The Bible describes all the internal disputes that the Israelis had among themselves and with God. But actually, these quarrels enhanced our unity and made us stronger. But when we finally lost it, we were exiled. In fact, numerous texts place the emergence of unfounded hatred as the single cause of the exile from the land of Israel. Many Jewish...

The Struggle to Stop Fighting [Opinion]

If a person takes a bundle of reeds, he cannot break them all at once. But taken one at a time, even an infant will break them. Just so, Israel will not be redeemed until they are all one bundle. (Midrash Tanhuma, Nitzavim, Chapter 1) Even as a child I was troubled with deeper questions. As a child with a passion for knowledge and a penchant for research, I became intrigued with “life, the universe, and everything” (to paraphrase on Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). I was fascinated with nature, and intrigued with human nature. And one of the issues that touched me to the core was anti-Semitism. As I wrote in my latest book, Like a Bundle of Reeds, a shadow followed through my childhood years, and even through my teens. It was the specter of the Holocaust, that thing which many chose to never mention, though it was always there. When I grew up the questions surrounding anti-Semitism kept haunting me, and became a very tangible issue through my years as a refusnik (Soviet Jews denied permission to leave the USSR during the 1970s). But once outside of the Soviet Union, and being a new oleh in Israel, more worldly challenges demanded my attention, such as learning a new language and providing for my family. It just so happened that in Israel I became a...