The Answer Is Clear If We Ask the Right Question

In the end, what everyone wants is to have a good life. A good life means more or less the same for everyone: a decent place to live, food on the table, good health, education for the children, and most importantly—the certainty of a bright tomorrow. When we ask ourselves what is preventing us from leading such a life, it is clear to most people that only our ego, in all its forms—pride, tyranny, exploitation, bullying, cruelty—prevents us from leading a good life. However, instead of asking how to overcome the ego, we ask how to protect ourselves from other people’s egos, in the best case scenario, or worse, how can we impose our own egos on other people.

The tricks that the ego plays on us are nothing new. For thousands of years, it has been pitting us against each other. For thousands of years, we have been killing, exploiting, abusing each other, and rejoicing at our neighbor’s pain. No other being does that, only humans, because only humans possess the inner serpent called “ego.”

There is a reason why we are not asking the obvious question: How do we overcome the only obstacle on our way to happiness? The thing that obstructs us, namely the ego, distracts us and diverts our attention into seeing other things or other people as the problem. But if we rise above our feelings and think logically for just a moment, we will realize that if we felt close to one another, if we felt like family rather than like enemies, we would not fight against each other.

The tricks that the ego plays on us are nothing new. For thousands of years, it has been pitting us against each other. For thousands of years, we have been killing, exploiting, abusing each other, and rejoicing at our neighbor’s pain. No other being does that, only humans, because only humans possess the inner serpent called “ego.”

Past societies were not as venomous as is ours today. In some cases, they truly lived like a family. But the ego does not remain static; it intensifies and poisons everything on its path. Humanity has tried every option. It tried the extreme left and the extreme right, capitalism and socialism, anarchy and rigid orders, monarchy, democracy, theocracy, and the list goes on and on. Nothing has worked and nothing will work as long as the ego governs our minds and hearts.

While humanity has been embroiled in incessant fighting, one man, who lived nearly 4,000 years ago, asked the right question: How can humanity defeat the ego in our hearts? The answer he found made him so happy that he realized how to help humanity, that he began to spread it wherever he went. That man’s name was Abraham, and the message he gave to all of humanity was that instead of trying to defeat other people’s egos, or even our own ego, we need to focus on the positive, on nurturing non-egoistic connections.

Abraham, who became known as “the man of mercy,” thanks to his novel idea, began to accumulate followers who understood that he was right. Pressured by the self-absorbed authorities in his homeland, Babylon, Abraham took to the road and headed for Canaan. Along the way, he accumulated more followers who saw the beauty in his idea. They were not a nation, at least not yet; they were a crowd of people who sympathized with their teacher’s idea. It was only when they began to implement Abraham’s method among themselves by nurturing care and consideration instead of alienation and selfishness, that they began to form a never-before-seen manner of unity.

Today, we are ready to ask the right question: How do we overcome the ego? Today, the ego will not be able to lure us into false ideologies that lead nowhere except to more misery.

Through their unity, these people discovered something that people did not know before: Everything is connected. Because they added the element of giving to their self-centered nature, they could feel that everything in reality not only receives but also gives to everything else. In this way, they established a balanced and harmonious society that became a model for the rest of the world. That society became known as the “people of Israel.”

However, they did not maintain their solidarity. Their egos kept growing, as the ego grows in each and every person, so eventually, they, too, succumbed to it. Nevertheless, Abraham’s legacy remained in them, and very few among them kept that teaching alive in books and teachers.

Today, this wisdom is opening up to the whole world, since the world has exhausted its options. The futile efforts to find a way to overpower the ego have opened people’s minds to a wisdom of connection that does not try to suppress the ego, but to enhance connection. My teacher, RABASH, as well as his father, Baal HaSulam, were such teachers, and I try my best to make their teachings accessible in any language and in every place. Today, we are ready to ask the right question: How do we overcome the ego? Today, the ego will not be able to lure us into false ideologies that lead nowhere except to more misery.

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Who Gave You the Right?

Once a week, filmmaker Semion Vinokur interviews me on a program called Novosti (News). In the program, Semion asks about current affairs and presents viewers’ comments. In the previous show, he presented a poignant question from a viewer who called herself (or perhaps himself) Her. Below is a translated transcript of the question with Semion’s follow-up questions, and my answers.

Question: Her writes to you as follows: I keep hearing in your clips that you say that only the Jews can change the world. Why do you take such a responsibility on your nation? And also, who gave you the right to do this? Please answer my question and don’t tell me that it is written in the Torah.

The Jews must know what distinguishes them, and accordingly, reveal their uniqueness to the nations of the world.

Then, together with the rest of the nations, they must take upon themselves the transformation of all of humanity, of nature, of everything that exists.

Answer: Because the method for correcting the world lies with the Jews. It was handed to us thousands of years ago.

Question: You see, we are only making ourselves stand out!

Answer: Can we make ourselves stand out more than we have been standing out throughout history?

Question: Yes, but it brings upon us resentment!

Answer: I understand this, but it is better to understand that this is the truth, and that you are hated precisely because of this. In other words, I accept their conclusion and say, “Yes, you are right, the problem is with us, we are to blame.”

Question: So we cannot run away from this?

Answer: No, no. However, killing us will also not make things easier on the world; it is better if we listen and reflect on how we can really use this eternal truth.

Question: There is no proof of what you are saying

Answer: If we, Israel, do what we must, there will be proof.

Question: But in the meantime, for many people, these are just words.

Answer: Of course, but on the other hand, they can say, “Oh, so this is why we hate them, that means we are right to hate them.”

Question: But what if a person doesn’t hate Jews? Many people don’t hate Jews, and we are basically telling them, “You do hate Jews!” We make a lot of clips of this kind with you, and the responses are always along the same line: “Chosen? The chosen people? Who gave you the right? Why are you so sure of that?”

Answer: But they themselves are saying it, all of humanity! Humanity has a special attitude toward Jews, a special opinion, a special demand. This matter has been with us for thousands of years; it is time to stop covering it and pretend like it doesn’t exist.

Question: So what should a non-Jew do if he wants to hear what you are saying?

Answer: He should simply listen to what I am saying.

Question: Even if he is not Jewish?

Answer: It makes no difference whether he is Jewish or not.

Question: But you are saying that the Jews have to do something specific!

Answer: Right. The Jews must know what distinguishes them, and accordingly, reveal their uniqueness to the nations of the world. Then, together with the rest of the nations, they must take upon themselves the transformation of all of humanity, of nature, of everything that exists.

Question: Transformation from what and into what?

Answer: Transformation from humanity’s absolute egoism, as we see today, into its opposite, into connection.

Question: Is this the task of the Jews?

Answer: Precisely this is upon the Jews to do.

Question: What about the rest of the nations?

Answer: The rest of the nations of the world should listen to what the Jews are saying because perhaps they [Jews] have a point, perhaps this is what can save us.

Question: But very few Jews speak about connection and changing our nature; the majority of Jews say nothing of the kind.

Answer: The majority do not know about their responsibility or understand their task; they are like everyone else.

Question: Their task is to connect and present it to the world?

Answer: Yes.

Question: OK, we will keep discussing it, as always; perhaps they will listen, and perhaps not.

Answer: They will listen, for sure.

Question: What makes you so hopeful?

Answer: I hang my hope on the fact that the world will not change just like that. It will not transition into a new state instantaneously. But in the end, nature will force all the nations of the world, and primarily the Jews, to think about what it really means to correct the world, and what we should come to, and first of all the Jews.

Question: Clear, but it is not simple.

Answer: It is not simple, but we are running out of time.

*For more elaborate explanations on the role of the Jewish people in the world, look in my books, Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour, and The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.