Ynet: “Have We Lost Our Way As A Nation?”

From my article in Ynet: “Have We Lost Our Way as a Nation?”

Is the decision to deny our historical relationship to the Temple Mount only the warning shot before the impending de-legitimization of the State of Israel worldwide? Is the real reason for this decision the conflict between the Palestinians and the settlers in the West Bank, or is it that we have lost our way as the nation of Israel? (Rav Laitman about the true legacy of the Jewish nation).

The great anxiety regarding the fate of the State of Israel does not allow me to sit idly. UNESCO decision that denies the close connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is not what bothers me, but the fact that it this is a first step and a good way on the road to denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

The Jewish people have a long term memory. Our historical connection to the Jewish legacy or to the land of Israel will not be cut off by international organizations and diplomatic declarations. We still remember very well the Holocaust we have undergone, the great tension just before the UN declaration of the foundation of the State of Israel, the great joy in the city squares, and Mota Gur’s moving announcement that “Temple Mount is in our hands,” at the end of the Six Day War. We have forgotten only one important thing: our role in the history of mankind.

The United Nations and the uniting nation

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the relationship between Israel and the nations of the world has not changed one bit in the last 3,500 years. The Jewish nation was founded in ancient Babylon when different individuals, families, and tribes who were alienated from each other agreed to follow the revolutionary spiritual idea as led by Abraham, the father of the nation. The social division at the time reached unprecedented peaks due to the erupting ego, and the mutual hatred and repulsion became part of daily life. Abraham, a unique Babylonian scholar, refused to accept the situation as inevitable, and began to explore nature and the system of creation. By studying himself and through his deep search, he discovered that humanity is connected by a network of ties, and the basis of this system we can see are only two forces: positive and negative. The positive force is constantly working to bring together and connect all of the individuals into one whole, while the negative force operates to separate and divide them.

Abraham concluded that the internal regularity that exists in one individual is true with regard to the systems of nature. He concluded that the immediate solution for the Babylonian society in crisis was to restore balance to the bad relations between them through strengthening the positive force in nature. Thus, he gradually guided the Babylonians and taught them how to develop the unity between them as the supreme value and to rise above the egoistic nature that separates them. “Abraham began to call the whole nation and to let them know that there is one God in the world. Because they used to gather around him and ask him questions he used to tell everyone according to his level of understanding until he brought him back to the path of truth, until thousands and hundreds of thousands gathered around him, and they are the people of the house of Abraham. And he planted this great idea in their hearts and wrote books, and this idea grew and increased among the children of Jacob and their followers and a nation that knows the Lord was founded in the world.” (Rambam, “Strong Hand”). Thus, the method of connection between people developed: the ancient method called the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The Babylonians who listened to Abraham’s advice and reinforced the foundations of mutual guarantee and love of others discovered a natural phenomenon they did not know before. They discovered that, when their relationships ascend to the level of unconditional love, a feeling of harmony and wholeness spreads among them, a kind of upper force that connects all the separate individual forces into one, which they called God. The hundreds of thousands of Babylonians who made up this group and were aimed straight to the force of connection that was revealed among them, Yashar El, called themselves the people of Israel.

The force that is concealed in the Jewish nation

Since the day the Israeli nation was founded on the basis of unity, they were given the mission to spread the method of connection among the seventy nations of the world, the Babylonians who chose not to follow Abraham and who dispersed all over the world. Since the entire world is connected by a harmonious network of ties that strives for constant balance, the fate of Israel and the nations of the world—the two opposite parts that operate in the system—are dependent and connected to each other. The part called the nations of the world constantly demands from the part called Israel to be a light to the nations and set a good example of unity above all of the divisive factors “since the secret of the unity of the world is concealed in Israel,” as Rav Kook says.

A lot has been written about the direct and indirect connections between Israel and the world in the authentic Kabbalistic sources and especially in The Book of Zohar, which was written 2,000 years ago: As long as Israel kept the force of connection between them, the positive force streamed through them to the world and it was good for everyone. But when they began to quarrel with each other and lost the sense of unity and mutual guarantee, the nations of the world rose against them with the subconscious demand for the vitality the force concealed in the Jewish nation arouses.

The world subconsciously feels that the source of all of the evil and the root of the suffering it undergoes is directly connected to the fact that the nation of Israel is not fulfilling its role. The fact that Israel are the most hated nation in the world, either for religions reasons, or racial reasons, or capitalism, or communism, or cosmopolitanism and more, the hatred that is at the root of all these reasons is that everyone excuses his hatred according to his own psychology, as Baal HaSulam says. This feeling of hatred is brewing among many and forming a trend reflected in the hostile attitude toward Israel. The UNESCO decisions regarding the Temple Mount may deteriorate to even more hostile decisions and even to the understanding that the world was wrong when it voted for the establishment of the Jewish state in the heart of the Middle East, and that now it is time to go back on their decision and act to deny the legitimacy of the only Jewish state in the world.

Rav Yehuda Ashlag warned us about this a hundred years ago when he said, “We need to give the gentiles the wisdom of connection, justice, and peace since it is only with regard to this that they are our students, and this is what they have been waiting for since our return to Israel. And the wisdom of Kabbalah is attributed only to us, and it shows to all the gentiles the justification of Israel in returning to their land and even to the Arabs. But our return doesn’t impress the gentiles today in any way and we have to hasten because if we don’t, they will sell the independence of Israel to satisfy their own needs, not to speak of the return of Jerusalem.” (The Writings of the Last Generation” by Baal HaSulam).

We determine our own fate

UNESCO, the UN, the EU, and other bodies that condemn us and vote against us are a kind of reflection of our failure in fulfilling our role. In other words, we provide UNESCO with the grounds for their decisions, and the nations of the world only execute these decisions. The world’s attitude toward us depends only on us, and it is up to us to determine whether the world will continue to demonstrate hatred and anti-Semitism, or whether they will understand and respect our presence in the land of Israel!

About two years ago, I met in Paris with Mrs. Irina Bokova, the UNESCO general secretary, as part of my efforts to spur a positive change of attitude of the organization toward the state of Israel. Although I had already foreseen the outcome of the meeting before my trip to Paris, I still felt it was important to try. Unfortunately, the outcome of the meeting proved what our teachers, the great Kabbalists, have said: there is no point in expecting any kind of change on the part of political factors. The decision regarding the future of the State of Israel, for better or for worse, is in our hands.

“And when the children of Israel shall be completed with full knowledge, wisdom and overcome springs to mind over the Israeli border and pour all the nations”

“The aim of Israel is to unite the whole world as one family,” (Rav Kook). All we have to do is decide to make a profound change in our interpersonal relations, to connect as one man in one heart, and stop worrying only about ourselves. The positive force that we will create between us will balance the dividing forces, and thus we will bring perfection to the network of connections between people. The force of connection will permeate among the nations of the world and obligate them to begin a similar process, too, to connect and acknowledge us as the source of connection and goodness. “The nation of Israel was made to be a kind of transmitter through which the sparks will flow to all of mankind all over the world until they develop and are able to understand the pleasantness and the tranquility there is in love of others. And when the children of Israel shall be completed with full knowledge, the flow of the springs of wisdom will grow stronger beyond the border of Israel and will saturate all the nations of the world,” (The Writings of Baal HaSulam).
[195515]
From Ynet article 10/18/16