How do you feel as if you are one nation with someone who thinks the exact opposite of you, with someone who behaves in ways that infuriate you, and who makes you feel that they are driving your very country to collapse?
Let’s pause for a moment.
Imagine that we are husband and wife. We share a home, a bed, a kitchen, children, a family. Suddenly, we disagree about a political issue.
So what? Does it mean that the next day we wake up and think that we cannot live with someone like that?
Pluralism is beneficial for society, and a diversity of opinions leads to development. No one should suppress anyone else. However, above all, there must be an agreement that we are one family. Moreover, the peace of the family is more important to us than any individual opinion.
Tomorrow we might hold different opinions, and that too is a blessing. But the highest and constant value is that we are a family.
If someone begins to regard their opinion as more important than the relationship itself, with their spouse or their children, then the family falls apart.
The survival of a nation depends on it constructing, first and foremost, a sense of family. In our nation, we need to create processes that connect our hearts until we feel warmth and closeness among each other.
In Israel, where I live, this has yet to happen. It has not happened since the founding of the state. We are a gathering of exiles, at most brothers in hardship. The truth is that even that no longer seems to hold in recent times.
“Love covers all transgressions,” it is written in the sources. Such is the direction we must take. First, we build love for Israel. Afterward, we sit down to discuss our opinions.
Everything will look different then. We will be able to solve problems from a higher perspective.
We might also even discover that the effort to make room for others in our hearts caused the problems themselves to dissolve, creating a new reality.
Based on “New Life 153 – The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Part 2” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.