Our Interns From All Over the World

Hello dear friends. Today we have a very special gathering. We invited friends from all over the world came to welcome our interns here at our headquarters, and it's so exciting to have them here with us in the studio. They're taking part in the lessons and meals, and we've arranged special excursions for them. It really is a great example of Arvut - how we support them, and they support us. This is really a sign of Arvut, and that's what we'll be reading about today.

To our friends watching this - you're also welcome to join us. Our hearts are open, and our doors are open. Everyone will eventually take part in this program in their own time. This is the first cohort and we hope the friends will get closer to us and everything that goes on here. Friends normally come during a convention and that's a completely different happening from our everyday life. We think it's very interesting for our friends to see how we run everything from here.

Baal Hasulam is explaining how we all need to reach Arvut. But who is he talking about - the group, Israel, or the whole world? He's explaining the whole process of correction of the world. It starts with people with a point in the heart - Rav has often said it's all the people connected to Bnei Baruch in the world, Then it will penetrate to Israel and eventually to the whole world.

There is a whole strategy he explains in Letters 21 & 22 - he's talking about unity between the people in that group called Israel. They were a bunch of tribes he brought together for this - and they must share it with the world. The accounting isn't with one person but rather the whole world because everyone must reach connection.

Us "Israelis" are simply a passage for the rest of the world to attain this. How or when this will happen isn't written. It depends on us - this is what our free choice is all about.

Clip: The additional sense is a sense for attaining the Creator

"And these are the words of Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, when he said: "The world is condemned according to its majority, etc." He was referring to the role of the Israeli nation, to prepare the world for a certain refinement, until they are worthy to accept God's servitude upon them, no less than Israel themselves were worthy, at the time of receiving the Torah, which is called in the language of the Sages, who had already achieved a majority of victories. In a way, they decide on the scale of duty, which is polluted self-love." Letter 21

This means that there is some transition from the feeling of this world that we perceive with our five physical senses, like all creatures in this world, and there is the perception of reality with an additional sense. This additional sense is called attaining the Creator, the attributes of the Creator, the attribute of bestowal, which is achieved through our efforts to connect.

And no matter how hard we try, time after time, time after time we discover that everyone, men, women, even children, no matter who they are and what they are from, if they try to move away from the desire to receive and get closer to bestowal, the connection, the love between them, they begin to feel through these qualities, the world in a new way, that we can’t even describe it now to someone who doesn’t have this sense, the sense of feeling others. Of course it’s not easy, everyone who is greater than his friend, to be greater than his friend, then from the beginning his inclination is greater than his, that is to say, he has more evil inclination, rejection, all kinds of excuses, reasons why he doesn’t need it, he has criticism of this whole method of moving from feeling the physical world through five physical senses to feeling the spiritual world through five spiritual senses and… we will try. Michael Laitman

Question from the studio - This seems like such a simple thing, why doesn't the whole world want it?

In the next letter he explains what Arvut is - and it's all unnatural. If this is about creating a business - there's an egoistic goal to go after. There so many people who would even sacrifice their lives for a goal like that. But here - where the goal is divinity - getting to a state of complete bestowal where nothing comes back to you. Then questions arise. This work needs to be very important to us - and that's not natural. We can only yearn to understand that we can't do it and then ask for His help in rising above our nature.

Whoever has a point in the heart - the whole world is dependent on them. Because the world can't be corrected until that person is corrected. Rav said in the morning lesson that at the end of the day when Bnei Baruch does its work and connects - something will spurt out and influence Israel, and then the whole world. So everything depends on us. And each person here should think that everything depends on me.

Question: Do we need to have physical centers all over the world?

Ideally yes but I'm afraid to answer. Because we had centers but then came Covid and we closed them all. At the moment we don't have enough students in each city to justify having a center there. Our headquarters here in Petach Tikvah serves hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Most of our friends are in virtual groups and we want to create a situation where people can come together physically from time to time. At the moment we see people gathering in Moldova for example. We can all feel the value of physical gatherings but we're not sure how all this will develop.

We see that the virtual conditions keep getting better thanks to the Creator, and we see that our students are truly advancing. But it doesn't last forever - there must be in-person meetings from time to time. That's what we're trying to figure out right now. During Covid we were only focused on having a ten, so the friends are scattered all over. From now on we're trying to make sure that members of a ten are closer to each other physically.