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Jewish spiritual leaders throughout the ages warned us time and again that unless we united, we would suffer. However, time and again, we would not listen. Today, the price for not listening will, in all likelihood, be too heavy to bear.
“The prime defense against calamity is love and unity. When there are love, unity, and friendship between each other in Israel, no calamity can come over them. … [If] there is bonding among them, and no separation of hearts, they have peace and quiet … and all the curses and suffering are removed by that [unity].”(1) These words of wisdom that the author of Maor VaShemesh [Light and Sun] wrote centuries ago are just as true today, if not more so. Similarly, the book Maor Eynaim [Light of the Eyes] stresses, “When one includes oneself with all of Israel and unity is made … at that time, no harm shall come to you,”(2) and the book Shem MiShmuel [A Name Out of Samuel] adds, “When [Israel] are as one man with one heart, they are as a fortified wall against the forces of evil.”(3)
Our forefathers knew that Jewish resilience depended on their unity, although they often failed to maintain it. Moses demanded that the people unite “as one man with one heart” if they were to merit receiving the Torah—the law of unity by which they became a nation worthy of being a role model people, “a light unto nations” (Isaiah 42:5, Isaiah 49:6). Likewise, King Solomon stated very clearly how people should relate to the hatred that erupts among them despite their efforts to unite: “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Proverbs 10:12).
Perhaps this need to reiterate the importance of rising above conflicts rather than repressing them can explain the existence of statements in The Book of Zohar as this one: “All the wars in the Torah are peace and love,” or this excerpt: “‘Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to also sit together.’ These are the friends as they sit together, and are not separated from one another. At first, they seem like people at war, wishing to kill one another … then they return to being in brotherly love. …And you, the friends who are here, as you were in fondness and love before, henceforth you will also not part from one another … and by your merit, there will be peace in the world.”(4)
Having experienced the Holocaust, we cannot be certain that it will not happen again. If it happened once, it can happen twice, and the globally mounting hatred toward Jews and toward the State of Israel proves that the fear of a second Holocaust is well-founded.
This, once again, reminds us of the necessity to return to Abraham’s method of uniting above our differences, and of our duty to set an example to the world. A century ago, in the face of growing antisemitism in Germany, even before the Nazis came to power, some leading Jews already linked the hatred toward them with the disunity among them. Dr. Kurt Fleischer, the leader of the Liberals in the Berlin Jewish Community Assembly, argued in 1929, “Antisemitism is the scourge that God has sent us in order to lead us together and weld us together.”(5) However, the awareness of the linkage between antisemitism and internal disunity did not penetrate deep enough.
Before World War 2, and in fact, even before World War 1, there were Jewish leaders, both secular and religious, who predicted a calamity more horrific than ever before. In the early 1900s, Rav Abraham Kook, who later became the first Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel wrote, “In Israel is the secret to the unity of the world.”(6) He stressed the role of Israel in achieving this unity: “Humanity deserves to be united into a single family. At that time all the quarrels and the ill will that stem from divisions of nations and their boundaries shall cease. However, the world requires mitigation, whereby humanity will be perfected through each nation’s unique characteristics. This lack is what the Assembly of Israel will complement.”(7)
During World War 1, Rav Kook felt compelled to outline the connection he saw between the world’s troubles and Israel’s unity. In his book, Orot (Lights), he wrote, “The construction of the world, which is currently crumpled by the dreadful storms of a blood-filled sword, requires the construction of the Israeli nation. The construction of the nation and the revealing of its spirit are one and the same, and it is one with the construction of the world, which is crumbling in anticipation for a force full of unity and sublimity, and all that is in the soul of Israel.”(8)
Rav Kook also saw the perils that the world’s growing antisemitism posed to the Jews. He wrote, “Amalek, Petlura [antisemitic Ukrainian leader], Hitler, and so forth, awaken for redemption. One who did not hear the voice of the first Shofar [a call to unite], or the voice of the second … for his ears were blocked, will hear the voice of the impure Shofar, the foul one. He will hear against his will.”(9)
Zeev Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionist movement, “began to warn that the near future for Polish Jews was black and that a great disaster was about to befall them: ‘The volcano will soon start to emit its annihilating flames. … I see a terrible picture. The time to save you is running out. I know that you cannot see this because you are occupied with day-to-day concerns. Listen to me at this hour, the midnight hour, for God’s sake. Let each person save himself as long as there is time because time is running out.’”150 Ben-Gurion “Judaism is being destroyed and strangled. … Germany is only a prelude.”(10)
But the most vociferous among the leaders who warned about the impending calamity was Rav Yehuda Ashlag. Back in Poland, he was a dayan [an Orthodox judge] in Warsaw, at the time the largest and most prominent Jewish community in Europe. After he immigrated to Palestine, he became a prolific author of books and essays on the future society and the role of the Jewish people in the world. Ashlag did not settle for publicly announcing that all Jews must flee Europe. While still in Poland, he arranged for the purchase of 300 wooden shacks from Sweden and a place for them to be erected in Palestine. However, his plan was thwarted by opposition from leaders of the Orthodox Jewish community in Poland, and he and his family were excommunicated. The tragic result of this affair was that of all the Jews who contemplated immigrating to Palestine with Ashlag, only he and his family did so while the rest of the families remained in Poland and perished in the Holocaust.(11)
After the war, Yehuda Ashlag did not forget his lost family and tribe’s members who perished in the Holocaust. He also did not mourn them passively. Instead, he continued his proactive attitude of illustrating the role of the Jewish people in the world and what happens when we do not do our part. In The Writings of the Last Generation, he asserts, “I have already screamed like a crane about it back in 1933, in my book The Peace pamphlet, warning that wars today have come to such proportions that they endanger the life of the entire world….Needless to say, today, after the discovery and use of atom bombs, and the discovery of hydrogen bombs, there is no longer a doubt that after one, two, or three wars, the entire human civilization will be totally ruined, leaving no relics.”(12)
At the end of the introduction to his commentary on The Book of Zohar, Ashlag dedicated several pages to the role of the Jewish people and the consequences of not carrying it out.154 He begins by saying that humanity is divided into concentric circles that expand from within outwards. From the perspective of the correction of the world from disunity to unity, writes Ashlag, the people of Israel are regarded as the innermost circle. This means that the correction begins with them and spreads from them to the rest of humanity. In other words, as long as the people of Israel do not begin to shift from separation to connection, neither can the rest of the world. This, in itself, explains why so many people in the world blame Jews for everything that is wrong with the world and with their lives.
Ashlag elaborates that since the correction spreads from the inside out, anyone who joins the correction process and helps shift the world from division to cohesion is regarded as being in a more internal circle and makes a greater impact on the world’s correction. “Do not be surprised that one person’s actions bring elevation or decline to the whole world.”155 One who works on increasing unity in the world affects the entire world and not just one’s close environment. Today, when globalization and interdependence are a recognized fact of life, the validity of his words is in plain sight.
When Ashlag speaks of unity, he is not referring to being well-mannered. Quite the contrary, he speaks of revealed hatred—just as we see appearing today throughout the world—yet covering it with love, in line with the principles by which the ancient Hebrews aspired to live. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the astounding recommendation of Henry Ford in his antisemitic composition The International Jew: “Modern reformers, who are constructing model social systems … would do well to look into the social system under which the early Jews were organized.”(13) Returning to this principle, Ashlag explains, is the only way to maintain sustainable unity and establish a prosperous society.
After he explains the structure of humanity, Ashlag details what would happen if Israel do not do what they must, namely initiate the world’s correction through unity above hatred. In The Book of Zohar known as Tikkuney Zohar [lit. corrections of The Zohar], he refers particularly to Tikkun [correction] number thirty, which states that if Israel do not carry out their task, “then they [Israel] make all the ruin and the heinous slaughter that our generation had witnessed [a reference to the Holocaust] …”(14)
Ashlag continues to reference Tikkun number thirty, which says about Israel that when they are immersed in selfishness, they cannot even do good deeds with the right intention. In the words of The Zohar, “And their mercies are as the flower of the field; every mercy that they do, they do for themselves.”(15) And concludes his quoting, “Woe unto them who cause him to leave the world and not return to the world, for they are the ones who make the Torah dry…”(16)
Continuing to explain that the well-being of the entire world depends on Israel’s willingness to unite and let the spirit of unity flow to the rest of the world, Ashlag stresses even more the outcome of not doing so. Again, he does this using our own Jewish sources, in this case the Talmud: “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 Tikkunim [corrections], that they [Israel] cause poverty, ruin, robbery, killing, and destructions in the whole world.”(17)
Ashlag quotes Prophet Isaiah in order to describe what will happen if Israel do carry out their task, unite, and stream unity through the rest of the circles of humanity: “Then, all the nations of the world will recognize and acknowledge Israel’s merit over them, and they will follow the words (Isaiah 14), “And the peoples will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them in the land of the Lord.” And also (Isaiah 49), “And they will bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters will be carried on their shoulders.”(18)
This will be the end of antisemitism, the end of war, of all wars, and the dawn of a new and blissful era. But today’s reality is quite different. For centuries we have been plagued by internal hatred and division that have brought our nation to ruin. We must realize that until we are an example of mutual responsibility and solidarity, the world will continue to blame us for its misfortunes.
(1) Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Halevi Epstein, Maor VaShemesh, Portion Nitzavim.
(2) Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, Maor Eynaim, Portion VaYetzeh.
(3) Rabbi Shmuel Bornstein, Shem MiShmuel [A Name Out of Samuel], VaYakhel [And Moses Assembled], TAR’AV (1916).
(4) The Book of Zohar with the Sulam commentary, Aharei Mot, items 65-66, 14:20-21.
(5) Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transactions Publishers, 2001), 95.
(6) Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook (the Raiah), Orot HaKodesh, 2:415.
(7) Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook (the Raiah), Orot HaRaiah [Lights of the Raiah], Shavuot, 70.
(8) Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook (the Raiah), Orot [Lights], 16.
(9) Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook (the Raiah), Essays of the Raaiah, 1:268-269.
(10) Reinharz, Shavit, The Road to September 1939, 19.
(11) Ibid.
(12) Aaron Soresky, “The ADMOR, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag ZATZUKAL—Baal HaSulam: 30th Anniversary of His Departure,” Hamodia, 9, Tishrey, TASHMAV (September 24, 1985).
(13) Yehuda Ashlag, “The Writings of the Last Generation,” The Writings of Baal HaSulam, trans. Chaim Ratz, (U.S.: Laitman Kabbalah Publishers, 2019), 2:577.
(14) Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” The Writings of Baal HaSulam, items 66-71, 1:129-133.
(15) Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” The Writings of Baal HaSulam, 1:130.
(16) Henry Ford, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem (US, The Noontide Press, Early 1920s), 8.
(17) Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” The Writings of Baal HaSulam, 1:131.
(18) Ibid.
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