Rabash

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 10/3/19

On a cold, rainy night in 1979, I could not sleep, my thoughts troubled me. Suddenly I found myself at the wheel, driving without direction. A large sign cut through my thoughts: “Bnei Brak.” I went in. The streets were deserted. At the corner of “Chazon Ish” Street I ran into a passerby. “Where do you study here?” I asked. He looked at me and answered, “Drive to the end of the street, where you will see an orchard. It’s on the other side of it.”

This is how I came to meet my teacher for the first time, Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag (the Rabash), the eldest son and successor of Baal HaSulam – the greatest Kabbalist of the twentieth century. From that moment on my life was never the same.

For the next twelve years I served as his personal assistant and disciple, and I absorbed from him everything that I know in the wisdom of Kabbalah. Every day he would lock himself up on the second floor and write. This is how his profound articles were born, which paved the way for anyone nowadays to carve the spiritual path most suited to them. No one before him had written in such a simple and practical manner. Like a father who guides his children along the path, he takes his readers by the hand and guides them until they discover the true meaning of life.

“And once I have acquired the clothing of love,” he wrote to his students at the end of the well-known letter “Love of Friends,” “Sparks of love promptly begin to shine within me. The heart begins to long to unite with my friends, and it seems to me that my eyes see my friends, my ears hear their voices, my mouth speaks to them, the hands embrace, the feet dance in a circle, in love and joy together with them…” (the Rabash).

After his departure in 1991, people who felt a burning desire in their hearts to reveal their purpose started coming together. Gradually, the “Bnei Baruch” Kabbalah Education & Research Institute was formed, named after Kabbalist Baruch Ashlag. Every morning we study the writings of the Kabbalists, such as The Study of the Ten Sefirot, The Zohar with the Sulam commentary and the writings of Baal HaSulam and the Rabash. We work to share the method with anyone interested, just as my teacher gave me the wisdom of his father.

Today we mark the 28th anniversary of the passing of my teacher, the Rabash, the greatest of the generation. I hope that we will succeed in following his path faithfully.