What Causes Anti-Semitism On The Left? (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What causes anti-Semitism on the left?“

Anti-Semitism emerged together with the emergence of the Jewish people in ancient Babylon about 4,000 years ago. Likewise, there are no causes of anti-Semitism specifically coming from the political left or right, as they both stem from the very causes of the phenomenon of anti-Semitism itself.

Hatred toward the Jewish people has been a regularly recurring phenomenon over the course of history, starting in ancient Babylon, and taking place in many additional ways to how it appears from a particular political standpoint.

What happened in ancient Babylon?

It was a time of great social turmoil marked by the shattering of the Tower of Babel, where the Babylonians felt an outburst of the human ego (desires for self-aimed benefit) and stopped understanding each other.

Due to the calling of the time, a Babylonian priest, Abraham, discovered a way of rising above humanity’s divisive inclinations to reveal the single and unified force of nature. He taught and promoted this method of uniting above divisions to whoever was interested.

Abraham called the people who gathered around him, “the people of Israel”: “Israel” from the words “Yashar Kel,” i.e., directed at the unified force of nature, God (according to Gematria, “nature” and “God” are one and the same).

Essentially, Abraham showed people a path to the discovery of the unified single force of nature via exercising relations of “love your neighbor as yourself” and “love will cover all transgressions” in society.

After attaining newfound unity above the social division of the time, the group that gathered around Abraham endured a further outgrowth of the ego over the following 200 years, which ruptured their unification.

This period became known as the “ruin of the Temples.”

The ego that grew in those times once again divided this people, as they failed to overcome it with positive connection.

Their hatred rose so much that Rabbi Akiva, who was the leader of the people of Israel during the ruin of the Second Temple, requested an end to the hatred. No one heard his calling, and consequentially the people of Israel dispersed.

Since their dispersion, the people of Israel have lived through a period of exile.

The people of Israel share no biological connection. They emerged based on an ideological connection as a people who realized “love your friend as yourself” and “love will cover all transgressions” upon the social division of the time. Without holding onto this ideological connection, they feel nothing holding them together.

However, if they are hated by other nations, then they assemble. On the contrary, if they’re not hated by other nations, then they continue dispersing around the world.

Today, the human ego has become overblown to enormous proportions. It stands behind the increasing division and hatred in societies, nations and between nations, and it becomes expressed as an ever-increasing amount of interest groups, parties and factions.

As social division intensifies, the increasing need for unity among the nations of the world becomes expressed as a feeling of hatred toward the people of Israel.

Why does such hatred appear specifically targeted at the people of Israel?

It surfaces naturally and justifiably, because since we once attained the heightened state of unity above division, we innately hold the method to be able to unite and thereby calm down the tensions abounding in the world.

Since we fail to yet realize this method of our unification, then we block unity from spreading to other nations. They feel its lack. The myriad problems and crises bubbling around the planet due to increasing social division further intensify the hatred and blame that fall upon the people of Israel.

Here, too, the people of Israel have an additional problem in that they’re unaware of what they’re not bringing to the world. Therefore, as anti-Semitic sentiment increases, neither anti-Semites nor Jews know how to point out the core reason for the phenomenon.

They point out leftist or rightist political views, from the State of Israel’s oppression of Palestine through to the Jews’ disproportionate influence on governments and the financial sector, in order to justify their hatred. But the hatred itself precedes the reasoning that it dresses.

If we continue developing without providing a method for uniting above the hatred, then we’re headed toward yet another Holocaust that will be not only in Europe, but worldwide.

We have the choice today to replace the goading, negative form of anti-Semitism with a new, positive form of unification above our differences.

By implementing our method to connect ourselves and people around the world, we would start opening up new sensations and perceptions of the reality we’re in, simultaneously bringing about harmony, happiness and peace in the world. If we will fail to do so, we will continue experiencing growing anti-Semitism.

It is my hope that we’ll start realizing the immensely valuable treasure we have in our hands: a method to unite and bring unity to humanity as a whole.