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According to the principle that half of a disease’s cure is in its correct diagnosis, combating antisemitism first requires accurately understanding antisemitism’s deep- seated cause.
The cause of antisemitism is rooted within the Jewish people’s lack of acknowledgement of their role in the world, the role to unite above our differences and be a conduit for such unity to spread throughout the world. Therefore, to combat antisemitism at its causal basis means to implement a single, comprehensive solution: the education and promotion of the nearly forgotten and neglected method for forging unity above division.
In order to better understand what is behind antisemitism’s recent intensification, we must look at the process and purpose of human development. Humanity’s history is one long continuum in the development of the human desire to receive pleasure. Every succeeding generation that enters this world does so with a greater desire to receive, i.e., a bigger ego. This desire for gratification drives humanity to exploit all levels of nature—inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human—for self-benefit.
In our times, the world has reached record heights of development in science, technology, culture and other areas, all of which were supposed to bring about increased plentitude. However, instead of everyone living the good life, we find ourselves increasingly dissatisfied and struggling. We have reached a state where it seems as if there is nothing in this world capable of fulfilling humanity’s insatiable desires. We are unable to envision a clear path that would lead to a better and happier life for everyone.
Why is this so? It is because a new demand from nature has started pressuring us according to our current level of development: a demand to rise above our exploitative relations and to positively connect to one another. If we meet this demand, then we will experience a major transformation, nothing short of a harmonious existence for all people.
The human ego—the desire to enjoy on account of others—has spiraled out of control and needs correction. The more this ego intensifies the hatred people feel toward each other, and the more this hatred pains them inside, the more this will cause them to instinctively turn that hatred against the Jews. This deflection of hatred against Jews temporarily helps them by releasing the inner pressure, because without it, their growing hatred would erupt with greater force among themselves.
Therefore, antisemitism is a natural phenomenon that existed before and beyond political divisions, and we need to respond to it accordingly. Antisemitism cannot be ended with any small fixes within or between political sides, nor can it be ended by Jews abandoning the State of Israel, as some of our critics—especially in the Arab world—demand.
Antisemitism exists on the level of the forces of nature that permeate humanity. We Jews—the people of Israel and the nation that will prevail under the condition of unity among us—need to rise above the current divisions between us in order to form a united force and spread that unifying quality and light of connection throughout the world. Jews need to correct the human ego by showing how to unite positively above it. We possess a method that can save humanity from the increasing ego in our era.
By implementing our method to connect among ourselves and among people around the world, Jews would start opening up new sensations and perceptions of the reality we are in, simultaneously bringing about harmony, happiness, and peace in the world.
Therefore, I make no special connection of antisemitism to the Left, the Right, or to anywhere else on the political spectrum. The phenomenon goes much deeper than politics. The natural evolution of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature have culminated in turning humanity into a self-destructive and threatening part of nature. It is not that the Jews are the worst people in the world and therefore “deserve” all the blows they receive. It is simply that Jews have a method detailing how to unite humanity, and by doing so, the ability to save humanity from today’s excessive and dangerously destructive human ego.
Thus, we should thus not waste energy thinking about how to make small fixes here and there. Instead, we need to put all our effort into achieving unity. I am certain that if the few million Jews on the planet today would think about how to unite in order to do good to all of humanity, the unifying tendency would expand throughout the world and everyone would join in.
In short, humanity is inevitably headed toward a state of perfect connection. Humanity will be able to unite on condition that the people of Israel unite. Today however, Jews are more divided than any other people. Therefore, antisemitism will gain strength and acquire forms that will unpleasantly compel us to unite. Eventually, an inner perception will form within Jews that we need to unite. And by finally doing so, we will save ourselves and the whole of humanity from all hatred, division, and crisis.
Humanity instinctively feels that the Jewish people hold the key to a better world. As the world endures escalating divisions and conflicts, there is a subconscious expectation upon Jews to unify and act as a conduit enabling unity to spread throughout humanity. We have the choice today to replace the negative, goading force of antisemitism with a positive, proactive push toward unification above all our differences. So, being a light unto nations comes in the form of a practical assignment: We must make peace among ourselves as Jews and then set a correct example for others.
The world is always examining what we do, so whenever we display disharmony, it serves as a bad example that becomes reflected outwardly in the world. If we quarrel among ourselves, we project this disharmony onto other nations and they also begin to fight. The stark truth is that, deep within themselves, the nations sense that their fights somehow originate with us, just as it is expressed toward us in the myriad forms of antisemitism.
Antisemitism thus surfaces as a natural phenomenon among the nations of the world in order to pressure the Jewish people to revitalize the unifying process for positive global change. This is an expectation on Jews that emerged from the times of Abraham when we were unified by a common intention to love, give, and connect above the innate egoistic and divisive drives.
Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) describes this phenomenon at length in his “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“:
“In such a generation, all the destructors among the nations of the world raise their heads and wish primarily to destroy and to kill the children of Israel, as it is written (Yevamot 63), ‘No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.’ This means, as it is written in the above corrections, that they cause poverty, ruin, robbery, killing, and destruction in the whole world.”
Based on the book “New Antisemitism: Mutation of a Long-Lived Hatred” by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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