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This week, I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of education and family relationships in the light of Kabbalah. I spoke with Tali Amsalem - a specialist in alternative medicine, ten year old Amit, and eleven year old Roni. They’ve all been studying Kabbalah with us for several years already.

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A question I received: The state of Israel has fallen into a depression. The newspaper Yediot Ahronot stated that “According to data received from hospitals, there has been a 23% increase in the use of antidepressants and medicines against fear.” Are you in favor of using these medications?

My Answer: If a person is afflicted by depression or fear, or any other kind of illness, he should treat it through any means possible, and once it stops controlling him, he should start studying Kabbalah, because one way or another, there is and will never be any other medication. It’s written: “It [Kabbalah] will cure any affliction.”

It’s because the only thing that was created is desire. And then it received an intention – to use the desire either “for one’s own sake” or “for the sake of something outside of oneself” (for the sake of another, one’s neighbor, or the Creator). When the intention is “for the sake of another,” it makes the desire similar to the Creator - bestowing. And then, according to the law of equivalence, this desire becomes a vessel for the Upper Light, health, goodness, vigor, and eternal life!

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 How Can the Global Suffering Be Avoided? [03:35m]: Play Now | Download

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News Story (translated from Cursorinfo.co.il): Israel is a unique nation trying to survive a deadly battle. It’s a nation that worships life at a time when it’s surrounded by enemies that worship death. And it has to solve a two-sided dilemma: How to use the advantages of the “society of life” in the battle with the “society of death”?

A mandatory condition in this battle is a tacit social contract according to which every Israeli pledges to risk his life whenever necessary, under the condition that the other citizens will do the same. The spirit of this tacit contract is that we all agree to place our lives in danger for the sake of our mutual survival.

For Israel, breaching this social agreement is much more dangerous than HAMAS and Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. Breaching this unwritten document leads to a situation where less and less young citizens want to become soldiers who protect the country and risk their lives doing so. As a result, the country’s leaders also have less and less moral right to send people into the heat of battle. Less and less Israelis feel protected, and it’s not because the enemy has gotten stronger, but because the social contract is disappearing from our life.

My Comment: And its only solution is in the mutual guarantee of helping one another survive. Then, in such a connection, we will discover a special fulfillment - the perception of the Upper Governing Force. We will understand that everything was created for the sole purpose of revealing this force to us. When we connect to it, we will feel that we exist eternally and perfectly. However, we can go through this path by means of the Light instead of suffering. See Baal HaSulam’s articles “The Arvut” (”Mutual Guarantee”), “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah” and “The Freedom.”

Following Israel, the whole world will feel that it is in the same situation - that its existence is endangered. And whether by the path of suffering or by the path of revealing Kabbalah, it will have to come to the Light.

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 Weapons of Mass Destruction [03:25m]: Play Now | Download

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Three questions I received on the notions of nationality and Israel

Question: If a person is physically born a Jew, does it mean that he will always reincarnate as a Jew?

My Answer: Yes, because his soul came from Babylon and took the path of correction, then ascended to the level of complete personal correction during the times of the Temple, and then fell from that level to the state of all the souls in this world, in order to spend 2,000 years together with them (and even worse off than them), while being in exile from spiritual life. Precisely this soul must ascend and help everyone else do the same – help all the souls attain the full correction.

Question: If the answer is yes, then is it because the nation of Israel was chosen to carry the plan of the Creator, and this would mean that all the other people will also continue being born with the same nationalities that they started with?

My Answer: Yes. However, we don’t know about the other ten tribes, where they are and who they are today. It’s possible that today they are several billion people - those who were on the spiritual level and fell from it during the times of the First Temple. We learn about this fall and its correction from the breaking of two Partzufim, DACHGAT and NHY, in the World of Nekudim, their common fall and then their common correction. See parts 6 and 7 of Talmud Eser Sefirot.

Question: What if a person converts to Judaism and works very hard trying to attain the Creator? Does he also become a part of the nation of Israel (physically and spiritually)?

My Answer: There is no such nation. These people are ancient Babylonians who began correcting themselves back then. The others, who continued developing egoistically, went on to develop from the 70 forces of Zeir Anpin of the World of Atzilut, and this is why they are called “nations” - and each one has its own form of egoism.

The former are called “Hebrews,” which comes from the word Ever, meaning “across” (across the Machsom), “Jids” - because they await the correction or the Mashiach, and Yehudi (Jew), which comes from the word Yehud, meaning union (with the Creator). This is what set them apart from their brothers, the other Babylonians. So one doesn’t just “convert to Judaism,” the way we see it in our world, but rather spiritual Judaism is when one corrects oneself to the level of the Creator, one attains the Creator through studying Kabbalah. Just like in ancient times, those who are the “nation of Israel” today are those who separated from the other Babylonians by starting to correct their egoism.

You should see the world as that same Babylonian civilization, a part of which temporarily corrected itself, and today everyone must become corrected and become like the Creator. There is no such thing as corporeal Judaism, just like there are no religions, faiths, and so on. All of these things are incorrectly, egoistically understood Kabbalah. Where did people even get such notions, even if they’re mistaken? They came up with them either because their soul hinted at them from within, or from the fall of Kabbalah to the egoistic level. Who were the ancient nations? They were pagans or believers like Romans and Greeks. Everything else came from the spiritual fall, in order to accelerate the development of the Babylonians and bring them to the necessity to become equal to the Creator.

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 The Role of the Nation of Israel [04:31m]: Play Now | Download

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News Story: The day after shutting down Maxim magazine in Israel, the SBC media group signed an agreement to issue the magazine Kabbalah L’Am, which focuses on questions of Kabbalah for nonreligious readers

(Translation of the article)

Lior Livrovsky, 28.05.08 18:48: It was originally published as a newspaper by the Kabbalistic center of Rav Laitman and the Bnei Baruch Association. The newspaper’s editors, Avihu Sofer and Eli Vinokur, will be the editors of the magazine, which will be published mutually with the Bnei Baruch organization.

Today, the SBC media group announced that after two trial issues, published in the last two months, they have finally signed an agreement with the association Kabbalah L’Am to publish an almanac under the same title, dedicated to questions of Kabbalah and intended for non-religious readers.

This news came the day after the announcement that the Hebrew version of Maxim magazine for men will be closed down, which was first published on Ice News and shut down just eight issues later. [Read more →]

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On April 22, 2008 a rather negative review of the book Meeting Kabbalah, published in Hebrew by the Bnei Baruch organization, appeared in Israel’s most elite newspaper, Ha’aretz. Meeting Kabbalah is a collection of my talks with Israeli writers, actors, musicians, singers and social activists.

When we asked the newspaper’s editorial staff about the negative review, its reviewer, Tomer Persiko, responded with five questions, in which he disagreed with our statements. Here they are:
1. You assert that all methods besides Kabbalah are based on lowering a person. Have you tried all these methods? If not, then what are you basing your statements on?
2. You insist that Kabbalah has existed since the times of Abraham, but modern researchers say that it was founded in the thirteenth century and their works confirm this. Do you have proof of your opinion?
3. You insist that The Book of Zohar was written by Rashbi in the second century CE, while modern researchers say that it was written by a group of Kabbalists under the guidance of Rabbi Moshe de Leon in the thirteenth century, and they produce proof of their assertions. Do you have proof of your assertions?
4. You assert that Kabbalah is a science, but in what sense is it a science if it is based on metaphysical assumptions (for example, the existence of the Sefirot), whose existence cannot be proven?
5. You insist that “the only way a person can reach a connection with the Creator is through a group,” meaning - a Kabbalistic group under your leadership. But you are not willing to accept homosexuals into your group, and advise them to reach a connection with the Creator on their own. How can you respond to this contradiction?

How would you respond to these five questions?

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The Israel Book Week, an event in which most cities and suburbs of Israel host community book-selling exhibitions, is starting today and will continue until June 7.

The entire Bnei Baruch organization is preparing to meet with its many readers, as well as see many new faces, at this special event. Our stands will display all of our publications in all available languages, including Hebrew and English. Anyone who is in Israel during this period can check out where the Book Week is being held in their area, and come receive a free gift at our stand: a book of selected articles written by Bnei Baruch writers in the last year.

 Kabbalah Books [03:00m]: Download

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A notice in Ynet, a popular Israeli online magazine: Good Deeds Day

“On Tuesday, June 17 2008, we invite you to stop for a moment in the flow of life and take part in an Israeli community effort. You can volunteer in your area together with you friends and colleagues in a way that suits you. Each one of you can take part in the day when tens of thousands of Israelis will open their hearts to one another, and we will all feel what mutual responsibility toward each other is. What do you think?”

My Response: This is a wonderful initiative, but in order to produce results, it needs to be connected to the Governing Force, the Creator. Even without mentioning Him, we must explain to people that everyone is interconnected and dependent on everyone else. The whole world exists according to the rule of “love thy neighbor,” and only humans break this rule with our egoism, which is why we suffer.

We can ascend to an existence of mutual responsibility and love for all eternity, and not just for one day. With this aim, we should continue explaining how to achieve harmony with nature, which operates by the principle of interconnection, and we are willing to work together with you in this endeavor. However, without such an explanation together with your efforts, they will be empty. There have been many initiatives like yours, and they all turned into nothing more than a national party.

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 What Can We Do to Change the World? [03:12m]: Play Now | Download

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A question I received: What is the spiritual root of the Holocaust?

My Answer: When the discrepancy between the nation of Israel and its spiritual root reaches a critical point, it produces an impact effect from the correcting, reforming force of the Light. Baal HaSulam writes that even in our time, by not wanting to fulfill our task of correcting ourselves and the world, we are attracting upon ourselves the next blow.

 

 The Role of the Nation of Israel [04:31m]: Play Now | Download

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Questions about an article I wrote in 2000:

1. Did this interview really take place?
2. If it did, do the below quotes accurately portray what you said?
3. It’s hard to understand how a Kabbalist - someone who is a complete altruist - could recommend military rule, preemptive strikes and abandoning the peace process. For example, you said:

“It is not a government of national unity that we need, but a military rule that will have absolute power, assume the responsibility and come forth with an intense preventative strike against Syria, our main enemy. Then we would completely destroy its military machine and the camps where terrorists are trained.”

In other parts of the interview you recommended the following,

“These days we don’t need a Knesset (parliament) whose seats are filled by our natural enemies - the Arab deputies (who don’t hide this fact), and the peacemakers who have paralyzed the people’s will to live on this land.”

4. Finally, even if we agree, and accept the fact that we can’t see the proper course of action because we haven’t yet crossed the Machsom (barrier), shouldn’t a Kabbalist understand that such statements won’t influence Israel’s politics? Did you truly expect people to pay attention to your advice?

My Answer: This wasn’t an interview, but an article I wrote called, “The Threat of Destruction,” and yes, I am for preventative actions, like what Israel did in the Six Days War. It’s obvious that if you’re being attacked, you have to defend yourself. But the question is: Who will be the first to strike? The aggressor? Or the party for whom the strike is intended?

Imagine that a group of criminals have surrounded your son and are about to kill him - and you’re advising him to wait for peace. Or that your daughter is about to be raped! Would you stand around and reason about it, or would you take all the necessary measures to prevent the attack?

Evidently, in our case, you don’t feel close to the victims, the way you would with your children. Egoists, who can’t perceive others as themselves, are calling for inaction and hence are the evil of this world, allowing the killers and rapists to multiply.

King David spent 40 years in continuous warfare, killing and at the same time writing Psalms, which are recognized as the height of love for humankind and the Creator…

And as to no one taking notice of my advice, you’re incorrect about that. People, just like you, took notice back then and are taking notice now. And I didn’t expect anything less. Reactions such as yours bring understanding. You can love only once you acquire power, severity and mercy – in equal measure. It’s because love is the most corrected property – the fourth phase of the Creator’s revelation.

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