The Role Of The Nation Of Israel

Question: What is the role of Israel today and of the Jewish people in particular?

Answer: The role of Israel was first discovered in ancient Babylon when one of the great sages of that generation, the Babylonian priest Abraham, provided an answer for what was happening there.

At that time, Babylon was undergoing the same processes that the world is undergoing today: a small society of three million people, which was almost the world civilization at the time, suddenly began to sink into mutual hatred because of the sudden eruption of the ego.

Until then, the Babylonians lived as a small society between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and everything was fine. But when the great ego erupted, it turned out that, on the one hand, they were integrally connected to one another, and on the other hand, they couldn’t exist together egoistically. Therefore the term the Tower of Babel symbolizes the ego that literally grew up to the sky.

This is what is happening today. On one hand, we discover that people are mutually connected to one another and on the other hand, they hate each other. The two forces that mutually operate inside us require a solution, since otherwise we will reach a dead end.

One of these two forces, the force of nature, ties us together and shows us the globalization and mutual connection between everyone to everyone. This force closes us integrally and shows us that we are one whole body. The second force is the egoistic human force that tears us apart from the inside, separates us, and doesn’t allow us to be one whole.

These two forces were first studied in ancient Babylon and there were two answers to the question of “what should we do?”

The first answer was given by Nimrod, the king of Babylon, who decided that the Babylonians had no choice but to break up and move away from one another. He disintegrated his kingdom fearing that his subjects would begin to destroy each other. This is where the concept of building the Tower of Babel comes from and its outcome was the dispersion of the people and the mixing of tongues, which was a sign that people ceased to understand one another.

That was one way of solving the problem, but today we, the modern Babylonians, have nowhere to go since we have no other planet. Therefore, we cope with the question that we have to answer.

The second solution was given by Abraham, one of the leading priests in ancient Babylon. Abraham understood that the ego separates us from the inside, while the external forces of nature, which bring us closer, were given to us on purpose so that we will ascend above them and resemble nature. This means that we will work against our ego on the connection between us.

How can this be done? How can person oppose his own nature? Abraham suggested organizing small groups of people that would begin to connect, and in their attempts to connect, they would draw the external force of nature that would be revealed internally among them and correct and raise them above themselves.

The main goal of nature is to bring humanity to a state of “love thy friend as thyself,” whether we like it or not. The problem of our separation should be solved immediately, and only in this manner.

About five thousand followers joined Abraham. The great 12^th century philosopher, Rambam, writes about this and it is also contained in earlier writings like inMidrash Raba and other sources.

The Sefer Yetzira (Book of Creation) is the only remaining book written by Abraham, and it tells us about the whole system of nature that affects all of human society.

Led by Abrahan, 5,000 people left Babylon and came to the land of Canaan, the modern land of Israel. Abraham taught them how to ascend above the ego in the connection between them according to the ancient Jewish commandments of “love thy friend as thyself,” “don’t do unto others what is hateful to you” and “be as one man in one heart,” etc. This group is known by the name Israel, which means Yashar-El, straight to the Creator, resembling nature. After all, the Creator is not a picture on the wall or a grandfather sitting on a cloud. The Creator is nature! All of nature is called the Creator.

The 5,000 people who left Babylon with Abraham were called the nation of Israel, stemming from the word “Yashar -El,” straight to the Creator. It is a nation that did not grow out of biological roots like all the other nations but according to an ideology, a purpose that defines where it is headed and how it is going to establish society.

Although we are the biological descendants of those people, unfortunately, we don’t resemble them at all because we have lost that ideology. Therefore our current state is called exile from the spiritual level they had achieved.

When the Jewish nation left Egypt and wandered in the desert, it constantly worked on its connection. Their ego kept on growing, just as the ego of humanity grows from one generation to the next (which is what makes us different from animals), and the people worked on it.

This continued until the ego suddenly erupted as it developed. It happened on the eve of the destruction of the Second Temple in the last year BC. People could not ascend above it in the good connection between them and they fell to the egoistic level.

A Temple refers to holiness, bestowal, love of others, and to the incorporation of everyone into one whole. When the Jewish nation fell from that level, it determined the rest of its history of 2,000 years of exile.
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From the interview with V. Kanevsky in Toronto, 8/5/14

Eliminating Disparities In A Nation

Question: You talk about the necessity for consolidating all people into one family, but isn’t this the dream of the European far right, “We are a family, and they are not”?

Answer: The problem of the far right faction is that it places its own people in a special place above all the rest of the peoples. However, we aren’t talking about elevation above others here, but about unity among the people. So, what’s wrong with that?

Suppose that I am French and other nations don’t interest me. France is absolutely enough for me, and I don’t want those who are not considered French to live in France. Moreover, this refers to French according to culture and not nationalism.

Belgians will come and even Jews. The main thing is that we have a generally uniform culture, a shared view of things. So, France is our common nation. We agree with its constitution, with its legislation, with its customs, norms, and language.

So, if a particular sector enhances this unity, then it doesn’t matter what it is called: right, left, center, etc. This approach is good as long as it is not realized at the expense of other nations. I don’t look at the others. I simply want my nation to live in peace and quiet, to be happy and prosperous.

What is bad about that? A person cares about his nation. He wants his people to live as one family. Even though he doesn’t have a broad vision or the moral force to be concerned about the inhabitants of other nations, and even though this is called “nationalism,” it is in a good sense. He is not a chauvinist. He has no hatred towards others, toward foreigners. He is only concerned about his own people, and not at the expense of others either.

It is true that, in a case like this, the nation is not ready to enter into some kind of partnership as in the example of the present European Union, but there is no need for it either. First its people pass through the new education, strive for equality, to unity, to a common general level accepted by all. Gradually, people will absorb new values in that they, themselves, already want to attain some kind of optimal average, a basket of necessary products and services that are uniform for everyone.

Certainly, we don’t say one size fits all. Prosperity can vary by two or three times as much. However, in sum, this is a small difference, the social “play” and not a social abyss as it is today.

Question: If the extreme right will accept an approach like this, will they increase their success?

Answer: Certainly, for this it is necessary to change the legislation in the appropriate direction. In a big way, it is necessary to record what is essential. All of the inhabitants of the nation must accept its culture. They must be, let’s say, French, regardless of religious faith. The person must be loyal to the homeland to which he has come.

For example, the African-Americans in the United States don’t act against their nation. They specifically feel themselves to be Americans. Yes, they have differences of opinion with other sectors, but they live in their nation.

In accordance with this, in Europe, even if you are a Muslim, you must maintain your allegiance to the nation in which you live. Otherwise, you invalidate your right to live there.

Question: Is national unity like this a prerequisite for world unity?

Answer: No, but now we are talking about a specific region, about European nations in which the tension between sectors has grown, and in this context the European Union is not found on the agenda for the meantime. It is possible to speak about economic and military cooperation, but this is not unity. Rather, these are joint activities on a contractual basis.

On the other hand, true unity represents a transition to familial relationships. This is something that is much denser, more intimate, deep and comprehensive, when all of Europe truly becomes a common home for its inhabitants. However, they are not ready for this today because they are very distant from each other.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 9/9/14

Under The Blazing Sun

Rabash, writes in the Torah, there are three modes. On the one hand, the Torah is called a resource that helps specifically as a resource for the strength of the person, and after that comes the Light that Reforms that corrects a person, and the Light that fills his corrected Kelim. That is how he completes the level.

However, until the completion of correction, this struggle continues. Written in the words of the prophets is the terrible war of Gog and Magog that happens in the last stage of correction, and this doesn’t just affect the physical world, but the same thing happens in spiritual work. Physical wars become a projection of spiritual processes and observations.

To the degree that one advances, the closer one comes to the Creator; a person is thrown into a burning fire of states as if he is approaching the sun. So, he is thrown much more strongly from ascents to descents. In this way, he exhausts his strength.

He must understand that all of this is done to help him leave the depths of his ego, from sinking deeper and deeper and more strongly into it, in order to move on to “for the sake of bestowal,” to the sacred, to spirituality, to greater and greater bestowal and love.

The gap between these two poles, between the descents and the ascents, grows more and more. Until a person hasn’t completely drowned in the sea of his evil forces, he cannot scream and ask for his correction.

So, the Torah exhausts a person’s power. If he is not illuminated by Light, but is under the control of egoistic forces, Klipot, his desire to receive, then he cannot do anything. Our mind only serves our feelings and is not prepared to help us.

So, a person must prepare himself for states like these from the start to the degree possible, as far as he is capable. However, in any case, he will fall and get up again, fall and get up.

The group must supply him with the right environment so that through it, he immediately will begin to ascend in that he draws energy like from batteries. Throughout the entire time of ascent, he charges the battery so that when needed he can use it.

That is how it is necessary to relate to an environment. For this purpose, the Shevirat HaKelim (shattering of the vessels) was made for we apparently cannot get along without an external battery like this. We invest our energy in it, accumulate our investment, the effort, and after that, it is possible to use it. It is impossible to advance without a battery of energy like this.

This is the guarantee of our mutual love “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Guarantee is not something that someone else needs. Rather, we need it ourselves. This is because we cannot get out of the descents if we don’t rise all the time in levels of mutual participation and connection.

So, these descents are necessary to teach us how to behave correctly so that we won’t flee and shatter into fragments. I understand that there are descents where it is impossible to get out of bed, where you feel physically dead. Everyone goes through states like these and stays alive. There is nothing to be concerned about or to fear.

However, ultimately it is necessary to understand, organize together, and struggle with them. We are standing before a mountain of thoughts, Mount Sinai (hatred) that you cannot ascend without mutual guarantee.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/22/14, Writing of Rabash

True Prayer

Baal HaSulam, Sages Fruit, Article “Wrong Time to Gather the Herd”: It’s prohibited to separate oneself from the society and ask for oneself, even for the sake of pleasing the Creator.

One should address the Creator, having the purest thoughts and ideal desires that are not for one’s own sake, but for the sake of others or for His sake. But if one prays to the Creator on one’s own, alone, the prayer won’t rise to Him. Rather, it will stay with the person who prays.

We can continue screaming for a thousand years, but it won’t help us at all. The spiritual system doesn’t hear solitary requests. A single person is unable to raise the desire to be connected with others, the desire that elicits the correction from Above. This demand has to be raised together with other similar desires, as part of a common desire to unite. Then the Light that fulfilled these desires before the shattering took place, when all desires were one whole, will automatically descend.

Praying for the entire society is the only possible type of prayer. Those who are detached from their surroundings as well as those who pray only for their own sake harm and destroy their souls. The Light won’t respond to such an appeal. It is said: The Creator says to all proud men: “We cannot dwell in the same abode you and I.”

It’s impossible to get out of one’s surroundings if one doesn’t wear the vestments of pride. One’s separation from the group automatically implies that one becomes more selfish. Detachment from the group is a result of various spiritual “moves,” not physical ones. No matter how justified one’s separation looks, it always is an outcome of one’s increased pride, wickedness, and egoism.

Praying alone makes one involuntarily abandon one’s community, thus ruining one’s soul, an aspiration towards the Creator. A sensation that one’s soul is implanted into a corrected community, in each of our friends not as a discrete part, but as an inseparable element of the whole system signifies a complete correction of the body (the general desire).

The category “we” becomes the only one that really exists. The sensation of “I-ness” vanishes since it is given to us only to make us understand that we are placed outside of the spiritual ladder.

“I-ness” exists only in this world. The lowest spiritual degree, as well as all other 125 spiritual steps, is based solely on “we” and the sensation of “we” becomes higher with each next step. The “I” disappears at the level of this world that is called the imaginary world since it exists only in our shattered desires.

Spirituality is felt only in the “we.” This notion includes me, you, him, and other friends connected together. It is quite a weak spiritual level of the world of Assiya at which clarifications and shatterings still occur. The world of Yetzira is nothing like that. There, in the world of Yetzira everything is truly connected into one whole. The world of Beria is a preparatory link for attaining a complete correction in the world of Atzilut.

This explains why we should never forget that spirituality can be felt only through the connection among us. It is said, the minimal Kli (vessel) is comprised of two. Ten people constitute an ideal structure. This is stated in The Zohar and Rabash’s articles.

For thousands of years, humanity did not have such wonderful conditions! We have to take advantage of our developmental stage and implement the transition from “I” to “we” as efficiently as possible.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, Lesson 4

Networking On Correction

Question: If we connect in caring for a friend’s healing, the outcome will be positive and then we will feel proud of that. It turns out that it would be an egoistic receiving of reward.

Answer: It makes no difference. We must look at things realistically since the egoistic awakening and the reward are also necessary. We need to be sure that we are a force. We are not on the level of working without feedback, yet when the mere effort or working for the Creator without a reward is the reward for us.

At the moment, we cannot even do that and don’t feel the system on a level that allows us to work in a void. I operate and all my efforts disappear, while I must feel bestowal and certain limitations. Therefore, we need feedback.

Question: How can we improve the quality of our concern for our sick friend?

Answer: First of all, the concern we feel for him should teach us to be together in one thought, on one level. At the same time, we must hope that we will learn to add ourintention to this thought, that we unite thanks to our concern and use this connection on the next level in order to think about the Creator and to establish the necessary conditions for His revelation. The Creator is not revealed in each of us, but in the connection between us.

Thus, when worrying about a sick friend, each one should feel not his own personal concern for him and how we should spur each one to feel that, but how we all are mutually connected. We want to feel the network of connections among us and the revelation of our concern for a friend in it. This is the only thing we care about since our networking is working on the correction.

The main thing for us is to feel the connection since it is our only collective soul in which the Creator later will be revealed. Thus, we move on to the next level, to the system that is external to us, and begin to feel the cobweb of the actual connection, not ourselves and our egoistic desires that are in its meeting points and its connection.

If we begin to work this way, we begin to affect the whole system. By reviving the cobweb of the connections between us, like the web system on the Internet, we begin to prepare it for the revelation of the Creator because the force that goes through the system that ties, revives, regulates, and manages everything is called the Creator.

When we begin to tune into this system of mutual connections, we will be able to feel the Internet web system that was created by people. Our connection will begin to affect it according to the law of equivalence of form and people all over the world suddenly will begin to wake up.

Can you imagine how everything will change? Just as a person’s thoughts constantly change, so will the mechanical, electric system of the mutual connections between people begin to change. The general egoistic human brain—the mutual connection that includes everything that is revealed today in the Internet web system—will begin to change in form thanks to the fact that we are becoming active parts in our spiritual system.

People all over the world suddenly will feel the new current that the system of the relations between them has entered: a new force, new thoughts, and a new moral state. They will feel it since the spiritual system will affect the lower web system like a root affects the branch. Therefore, we soon will discover very interesting options.

However, going back to the question about the sick friend, it is important that we understand that he is the factor that spurs us to collective bestowal unto the whole system so that we will be able to connect and bestow unto the Creator a form of bestowal that He expects of us so much.

We really want our friend to be with us constantly and to recover and return to the group. We constantly must think about it seriously together. The Creator provides us with a reason from above so that we will connect and focus all our thoughts and actions on our unity and eventually for the sake of the Creator.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Writing of Rabash

The Common Point In The Heart

Question: What does it mean to be Moses with respect to the friendsin the ten?

Answer: Moses (Moshe in Hebrew) is the one common point of the entire ten. You collect your points together and feel as one single point. This is your Moses which draws you out of egoism. The concept of Moshiach, that is, one who draws, pulls out, comes from the verb “Lishmoh,”to pull, to draw out.

Question: If one of the friends is in a descent, does it mean that the others are Moese for him?

Answer: They pull him out, yes. But this action is not called Moses.

Moses is specifically the sum of all aspirations of the points in the heart aimed at attaining the Creator. In other words, they are aimed so the property of bestowal and lovewill start to develop inside this point. But it is merely a point, and only to the extent that you begin to attach egoism to yourself, like AHP to Galgalta ve Eynaim, will you begin to grow.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, lesson 3

A Wonderful View From The Upper Floor

“Circles” are bestowals that arrive from above. But when this bestowal comes to us, to the desire to receive, which is not equivalent to its form and is unable to accommodate its characteristics, then it is perceived by us as something bad. It is like when your mother forces you to do something that you don’t want to. She is bestowing good to you, but it seems as if it is something bad.

Our role is to pass through so many “lines,” so many capillaries in our collective body, that we will reach each and every cell. Every living body works like this. All of creation, the still, vegetative, and animate exist in complete and wondrous harmony between “circles” and “lines.” We only need to correct a person’s attitude.

And this correction must begin from below, from the lowest strata. We see that changes have already begun from above, the governments will be obligated to make “circles” for the distribution of benefits to everyone, like social security, and so forth. But all this comes from above in the form of “circles”—as in the upper worlds, so also in our world. A corrected nation is one that somehow organizes its work in the form of a circle regarding the people.

Therefore, we need to begin integral education from the lowest strata. First of all, this is because they suffer more than everyone, and improving their condition is possible only though the Light that Reforms. They have nothing else to rely on, and therefore we can reach them.

Besides this, correction must be from below to above, from the smallest and simplest deficiencies and desires, which begin to be linked in the form of a circle. When I am linked with a group of ten, with my group, then I fill it with this. The group, which transforms into a complete unit, a “1,” rises to a higher level, to a new qualitative level, and begins to work as a line in the circle that exists on a higher level.

We always rise like this. A circle that is constructed by us on a lower level is equivalent to a direct one at the next stage. That is how we rise all the time, by transforming the line into a circle.

At the moment that we begin to be linked to a circle, we reach wholeness and receive bestowal, the Light. We don’t lack anything. As Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation,” a person sees friends suffering from diseases of poverty, and after correction he suddenly sees that they are all successful, healthy, and rich. A change like this takes place at the time of ascent to a new level, a new state.

We do not understand how this is possible, but it will happen. There is no other way to correct the world except to correct the perception. Infinite bestowal exists in the world, we only need to ascend and see the entire world from a higher level. Don’t try to make some kind of change or correction to the world on your level, this will not help. The more you invest, the more you will suffer and lose.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/11/13, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Everything Is Within The Group Of Ten

Question: A strange feeling of pride for the group of ten is appearing within me. Previously, I thought that I was better than anyone. And now something appears in me that has made it possible for me to feel this group of ten. This amazed me. What is this?
Answer: We begin to feel that the group of ten is like a body in which we truly feel the upper world, specifically within it a new life is revealed, new characteristics and connections that will be called the world of Infinity.

Everything is latent within the group of ten in its structure within its revealed characteristics. We don’t need to run to some place and look for something somewhere anymore. Everything is only within it! Within it are found good and evil, we and theCreator. Within it we discover the whole world; through it we can see the world correctly. Everything is in the group of ten.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, Lesson 3