The Land Of Israel: Dispersion And Assimilation, Part 6

The Split of the Jewish People.

Question: The famous rabbi, the Maharal of Prague, wrote about the spiritual descent of Israel: “The Second Temple had special quality: Israel wasn’t divided, they had only unity between them.

“Therefore, the First Temple was destroyed due to sins, that is, filth, and the Creator cannot dwell among them in filth. However, the Second Temple was destroyed due to unfounded hatred.”

What is the reason for the destruction of the First Temple?

Answer: The reason, in principle, is that during the First Temple, the division of the people into different groups and estrangement, alienation began, and during the period of the Second Temple the people already reached hatred for each other.

Question: Baal HaSulam writes in one of his letters: “And maybe our sages had this in mind when they claimed about the destruction of the Second Temple that there was no idolatry there and were experts on the Torah, and said: ‘Because of unfounded hatred.’” Could it be because they could not fulfill the basis of the Torah, which is love your neighbor as yourself?

Answer: They could carry out any actions, but they could not observe the intention to unite, to love their neighbor.

Question: As Baal HaSulam wrote, the conflict between the Sadducee sect and the Pharisees led to the final fragmentation of the people. The Sadducees were a wealthy corrupt elite: judges and priests who worked in the Temple. The Pharisees were the spiritual leaders of the people.

The Pharisees were for peace between dozens of sects who fought among themselves. But this was already the peak of the Jewish discord, after which there was a long exile of 2,000 years?

Answer: The problem is that it still had to collapse.

We see that the whole story is the development of egoism, which destroys everything as it grows. The people continuously work to rise above it, but the ego is again growing and destroying what is built.

To date, we have gone through all four exiles: Egyptian, Syrian, Babylonian and Roman. And now we are ready for liberation.
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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel,” 7/8/19