Why Don’t We Eat Chametz (Leavened Food) On Passover

Question: Why don’t we eat Chametz on Pesach (Passover)?

Answer: Because Chametz symbolizes the connection between flour and water. Flour symbolizes the attribute of the egoistic desireand water symbolizes the attribute of the altruistic desire.

Therefore, on Passover we are at final stage of the domination of the ego and we begin to feel that egoism controls us in everything since we lack the attribute of Hassadim, the attribute of Hesed, the attribute of the water, which is what the Matzah symbolizes.

Matzah is the connection between flour and water. They are mixed for a very precise period of time, for 18 minutes, so that the flour will not begin to rise. If they are mixed too long, we have to constantly knead the dough without stopping…

This process symbolizes our work with egoism, the process in which we have to keep working with it, giving it new forms over and over again, moving to altruism. And then it is possible.

But in principle, it is impossible to work with the Chametz for more than 18 minutes, which means that the connection has to be minimal, just as it appears in our egoism. What is altruism? That we want to show good intentions toward someone so the ego will benefit from it? The Matzah symbolizes the lack of water, the lack of Hassadim, the lack of Hesed, in our egoistic attitude, and so it is called the “bread of poverty,” which means the poverty of a wide heart, in the openness between people.

It is customary to eat Matzah on Passover eve because it is on this night that we reveal to what extent we don’t have the attribute of love and bestowal among us, the attribute of Bina, or the attribute of Hesed. We are ready for anything as long as we can exit this egoistic state, and so we eat Matzah on the night of our liberation from egoism.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/13/16

The Jews Are Responsible For Anti-Semitism

Comment: According to a recent survey in France, about 60% of French citizens believe that the Jews are partly responsible for the growing anti-Semitism in France. 56% believe that the Jews are very influential and that they are richer than the average Frenchman; 40% say that their presence in the media is exaggerated and 13% claim that there are too many Jews in France. Generally speaking, the French don’t like the Jews.

Answer: Of course, that’s the way it has always been. The French dislike the Jews more than all other nations. But now the inclination toward anti-Semitism will grow all over the world because the world has reached a state in which it is obliged to correct itself and this cannot be delayed any longer. The general global egoism cannot develop any further, and so it begins to devour itself. And consequently more and more hatred is manifested.

People will suffer from the growing egoism and will not find a way to get rid of it. They will instinctively feel that the Jews have the key for the correction, but are not fulfilling their mission. Therefore along with the growing egoism, the subconscious hatred toward the Jews will grow, indicating that they are responsible for everything. The truth is that they are to blame, not for the sufferings, but for the fact that they don’t heal humanity of their sufferings.

Comment: But the Jews themselves don’t really understand that.

Answer: The Jews don’t understand that and neither do the nations of the world.

Question: So what do we want of the Jews?!

Answer: Nothing. We want Kabbalists who understand the essence of egoism to explain it as soon as possible to everyone, even to those who don’t want to hear. We have to go out and cry out on every street corner, everywhere, and in every possible way, through the media, in every language, all over the world, both to Jews and to the peoples of the world.

This is the only way that we can make people gradually listen to us. There will be more and more blows; we will feel bad and they will feel bad, and eventually everyone will listen to why the nations of the world hate the Jews, and especially the Jews will hear why the nations of the world hate us.

Then the Jews will begin to study the wisdom of Kabbalah and will unite, setting an example for the other nations of the world, which will gladly begin to unite around the Jews. It is like sourdough that you add to dough which begins to ferment. And the Jewish people perform the role of the sourdough. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah says and we cannot escape it.

But now the starter is not performing its function, and so people feel natural hatred towards us. When one of the nations calls out to a Jew: “I hate you and I will kill you,” they mean” just show us how to connect and unite and we will follow you.”

Question: Why do the people of the world believe that the reason for their troubles is the lack of connection between the Jews?

Answer: It is instinctive; they don’t actually know why and how.

Question: What is the magical thing?

Answer: The source of power is in this connection, the wellbeing of the whole world, because it is actually in the connection between them, between all the parts that are opposite from creation, especially on the highest level, on the human level, that there is a great force that will bring goodness, warmth, and wellbeing to our world. This connection reveals perfection and eternity.

The Jews have to be the first to unite and set an example for the whole world that demands it from them. This is exactly what we Kabbalists have to tell the whole world. We should show, teach, and set an example, which means to be Light unto the nations of the world.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/3/16

France Prefers Muslim Refugees

Comment: France is a Christian and Catholic nation, yet mainly accepts Muslim refugees, while Christian refugees standing in crowds at the border of Iraq seeking entry to France are refused.

The newspaper Figaro conducted a study and found that the left wing of the ruling Socialist party doesn’t want to look as if France prefers Christians.

Answer: A corrected humanity should consider everyone absolutely equally, yet this is not happening anywhere in the world. A Christian, Catholic, or Protestant nation must first and foremost take in the Christians who are suffering throughout the Middle East before they are killed. Their number there is not so great.

Comment: They are killing masses of Yazidi families who have fled Mosul.

Answer: The Muslims are intentionally killing Christians; so they should be taken in first.

Comment: They are sitting in Iraq and waiting for exit visas, but they aren’t getting them. Instead, the authorities conduct rigorous testing and require proof of the vulnerability of their position.

Answer: In the meantime they are accepting right-wing extremist Muslims.

Comment: The newspaper Figaro asks: “Why does such a large nation like France, which agreed to accept thirty thousand Syrian refugees according to the German quota, refuse to bring Christians in?”

Answer: They want to portray themselves as liberal, but in the meantime Christians are being killed. How is it possible to understand the world of today? People are playing a double-sided game: Even though I am like this inside, on the outside I need to look otherwise. This is a very interesting paradox, I will accept those who are murdering and those whom they are killing I will leave behind.

So we have nothing to be indignant about that among the Jews living in the Diaspora, the same thing happens. They are against Israel and in favor of the nation ceasing to exist, that the people of Israel would completely dissolve among the other peoples so no memory of them will remain.

It is believed that within just one or two generations American Jews simply “die,” i.e. become completely assimilated among Americans.

It is more accurate to say that specifically within one or two generations we will feel very serious blows in America and among the American Jews when the Creator will return them to their root with the help of a brutal force.

This will be revealed in the form of a holocaust or bigger problems. The Jews will begin to return to their roots because they will have nowhere to escape.

Those who reject Israel and are disconnected from it are decreeing upon themselves very great blows, and their return to the land will happen through an intractable power. This is mentioned in the Torah: “Even if your exiles are at the end of the heavens, the Lord, your God, will gather you from there, and He will take you from there.” (Deuteronomy 30:4).
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/10/16

“Failure As A Driver Of Success”

In the News (Harvard Business Review): “Among the old winemakers there is a saying: ‘So that the vine will become beautiful, it must suffer’. Before you get a great wine, they subject the vine to stress, moistening the ground to the limit of the survival of the vineyard. After the vineyard goes through a ‘test’ like this, the grapes produce wines that are complex, delicate and select.

“In the Japanese and Chinese languages, the character for the term ‘catastrophe’ has the double meaning of failure and new possibilities.”

My Comment: This means the use of stress, up to disasters, develops new growth opportunities. It has been said: “Whom the Creator loves He sends hardships.”

Kabbalah explains it simply: because our egoistic nature is opposite to the Creator, the property of love, our goal in life is to change ourselves to similarity with the Creator. The Creator sends us adversity that forces us to change. Otherwise the ego would not budge. It is perfectly observed in the history of Jewish people.

Our methodology of Kabbalah quickly and correctly helps us understand the pressure of the Creator and use it for “new opportunities” of development into a likeness of the Creator.
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A Spiritual Person

Question: In your opinion, who can consider himself a spiritual person?

Answer: This is someone who transcends himself with the help of the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, creating within him a new feeling called a “soul.” A person who does this, perceives spiritual substance through the characteristic of bestowal, meaning not within himself but outside of himself. In our world there are few people like these, nobody recognizes them, they are not revealed to anyone, and don’t teach anyone.

The only organization that is seriously involved with this is Kabbalah La’Am (Kabbalah for the People), which acts as an international Kabbalah Education Center, setting for itself the goal of teaching the wisdom of Kabbalah to other people because it receives this mission from above. We try to create the right conditions so that every person who wants to attain a spiritual state and feel the world outside of him can do this.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

The Night Of The Exodus From Egypt

Question: How does Kabbalah explain “the night of the exodus from Egypt”?

Answer: The night of the exodus from Egypt is a result of all previous development of Jews whereby they brought themselves to the state that allowed them to become a nation and understand that inside them is theego, Pharaoh, that rips them apart, leads to the conflicts with each other, and makes them feel distant from each other.

Look what is happening around: discords in the family, society, and government. We would do anything in order to suppress an alleged enemy. We need to start feeling our state as Egypt, as the reign of the Pharaoh, meaning our egoism that prevents us from being one nation, one family. Precisely this is called night.

This is why on the Passover night we gather together with our families and consider ourselves as one family, one nation. We want to demonstrate that we are ready to unite, to be together with the aim of rising above our egoism and coming to the freedom from it. This is the exodus from Egypt and the entrance to the land of Israel.

Between them there is a period of 40 years of passing the desert whereby we correct ourselves. By this correction we prepare ourselves for the entrance to the land of Israel as we can’t go straight away from the egoism and hatred to love. After all, love is the same egoism just in a reversed form. And 40 years long periods of preparation represent a distance from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow, from hatred to love.

Egyptian night is a pitch dark, terrible night of an absolute lack of understanding of what is happening and what will happen. People see that because of the mutual hatred, they cease to exist as a nation, as a family. They understand that this dead-end state leads them to death.

But at the same time they don’t see the way out of it because the power of egoism seems to be historically eternal and absolute. In everything the person turns to he sees his egoism, and he feels that he does everything only for his own benefit. It controls our every action: internal, external, our relationships, etc.

Everyone keeps such a distance from another where he would be able to defend himself and to receive maximum from the other. It means that the egoism all the time regulates our relationships with each other, nature, animals, the world, and life.

The terrible state of communication only in an egoistic manner is revealed to us as the darkness of Egypt. Exactly in this state, in the middle of the night a force suddenly appears in us, which leads us forward to the exit from the egoism and gives us a feeling that we can rise from it.

A culminating point of inversion appears and the most terrible darkness suddenly starts transforming into some hope, light: An exit exists somewhere, I have to run! And I run after this dream, after this internal power that suddenly erupts in me. And the light appears!

It is a special night, the night of exiting the egoistic slavery to altruistic eternity and perfection. This is why we celebrate it.
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From a TV Program “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/13/2016

Responsibility For What Is Happening

The Torah, The Book of Numbers, 33:55, 33:56: But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come about that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live. And as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you.

We need to alienate from ourselves our own desires, meaning to correct them within ourselves. The desires do not disappear anywhere; it’s impossible to cut them off and to throw them away. There exists an enormous desire created by the Creator, as it is said: “I created the evil desire (evil inclination) and gave the Torah for its correction.”

The intentions for this desire can be either egoistic or altruistic. The desire itself is inert. In its original application it is an absolute zero, but it is given to us in a negative form. Therefore, we need to correct its negative application into a positive one, which can be achieved by changing the intention. This is called driving out the nations that exist within your desire.

Those whom you let remain of them [will become] pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, [that is, these desires won’t let us perform any spiritual actions of bestowal, love, and mutual connection] and they will trouble you in the land in which you live. This reminds very much of our current state. After all, we do not work on ourselves!

Today the so-called nation of Israel are those who were given the opportunity to reach spiritual correction. However, we don’t do anything! Therefore we constantly receive pricks and punches, knives onto our backs and necks—what our neighbors do to us. And that’s because we don’t do our job! There is no need to blame them, only ourselves! We need to find the correct formula in order to change the state that passes only through us.

If we do not follow what Kabbalah says, we will suffer, we won’t achieve anything. We need to do something about ourselves.

We find ourselves at the epicenter of the “potential atomic explosion,” and we don’t understand what we evoke upon the entire world through ourselves. We have to acknowledge our responsibility for what is happening.

Comment: But doesn’t this concealment come from the upper degree?

Answer: Concealment is given specifically so that we can correct ourselves quickly, in connection with others, to feel the upper state and bring it upon the rest of the humanity.

This concealment is for our own benefit. If it didn’t exist, we would function automatically, following the instructions from above mindlessly, with no feeling or reason, as if we were a wound up mechanism. In that case we would be called angels. But man needs to be higher. He needs to rise to the level when he himself chooses to be similar to the Creator and brings His idea into the world.
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From a TV Program “The Secrets of the Eternal Book”

New Life #717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me

New Life #717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

Reality is a whole; therefore, it is difficult to talk about part of it without knowing the entire picture. The burning bush in the wilderness represents the internal revelation of Moses after burning his ego and matching his characteristics to Divinity, like to a similar absorption frequency; he and the Creator broadcast on the same wavelength.

Fundamentally good is not inherent in us; the evil inclination is, so we can not consider anyone but ourselves. After the forty years Moses lived with Pharaoh, he came to Jethro for forty years and learned about the quality of bestowal, Hesed (Mercy), and how to attain it above the egoism that is exposed. Then, he can return to Egypt to work on the ego.

The goal of humanity is for all of human nature, including all egoism, to resemble the wholeness of the upper force whose nature is love.

The return to Egypt symbolizes the return to the ego of Moses that still needs correction. None of us recognize the Pharaoh within ourselves. Pharaoh symbolizes the absolute dominance of the general ego in us. Moses symbolizes the small desire for the characteristic of bestowal, the discovery of truth.

The people of Israel represent the desires that can be corrected to the attribute of bestowal and love within the general ego. The ego is the entire field of reality, and Moses needs signs and wonders to show the ego that he has power. So, Moses takes the rod, whose function is to aim him in the spiritual way, to put the ego below, and go above it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me,” 4/19/16

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