• The Torah is 100% true and must not be altered in any way.

• It contains a spiritual program for all humanity and nature—not a historical account.

• Proper understanding requires both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah (the wisdom of Kabbalah).

• The Torah is designed to help us resemble the Creator and reach our highest state of development.

• Using the Torah correctly leads a person to discover the force (the Creator) projecting our reality.

• Without correct guidance, the Torah appears as stories, laws, or history—but this is a misunderstanding.

• The real purpose of the Torah is to serve as a tool for inner transformation.

• It is called “Torat Or” – the Torah of Light, because it brings the correcting Light that changes a person.

Oren: My first question is about the Torah or the Tanakh: do you belong to those who think that everything written there is true or not true?

Rav Michael Laitman: It is written 100% true, and we are forbidden to change anything in it in any way, in any form.

Oren: Where does this absolute certainty come from—that everything is 100% true? Why are you so decisive in your feeling?

Rav Michael Laitman: Because I understand, at least a little, how to open this book and see that it actually contains the general program of all humanity, of all of nature. And how we can, through proper use of the book, resemble the Creator and reach the highest degree of our development.

Oren: So first of all, you’re certain that what’s written there is 100% true, and nothing—not even a comma—can be changed.

Rav Michael Laitman: Yes.

Oren: Throughout your words, you’ve said that we need to know how to approach this book, how to use it correctly, how to open it. You also said that besides the written Torah, there was also an oral tradition passed down from generation to generation, which is essentially guidance on how to approach the book?

Rav Michael Laitman: Yes, and much more than that—how to prepare ourselves in order to realize what is written.

Oren: Is that what’s called proper use of the Torah?

Rav Michael Laitman: Yes. Otherwise, we don’t understand anything of what’s written there.

Oren: So you're saying, there’s a situation where I open this book that I received in first grade at my Torah Party, and what I understood back then, or what they taught me at the time, is not everything that’s there. Because you said there has to be proper use of the book. So that means there’s also an improper reading of the book?

Rav Michael Laitman: Yes.

Oren: If I understand you correctly, then proper use of the book brings a person to a place where they begin to discover and actually identify the force that is projecting this whole thing we call life.

Rav Michael Laitman: Correct.

Oren: There are two things here that confuse me. On one hand, there’s a book that was written thousands of years ago by a group of people, by the students of Moses. And on the other hand, there’s my life here and now. And you're telling me that I’m living inside a movie, I just don’t know that there’s a force projecting this movie, and I’m like inside a kind of 3D world. That’s how you explained it in one of our previous talks. So you're saying the book is a means to discover the projector?

Rav Michael Laitman: Yes. That’s the goal.

Oren: I don’t understand the connection between a book that was written thousands of years ago and the movie of my life now—or the force that is projecting it.

Rav Michael Laitman: The book itself is like a kind of software. If you approach it correctly—because the "activation" of the software is found in the Oral Torah, in the wisdom of Kabbalah—then through the proper preparation, with the right teacher who guides you, you can, through the book, begin to recognize the scriptwriter.

Oren: What’s the connection to the stories that were written thousands of years ago?

Rav Michael Laitman: No, those are not stories from thousands of years ago. They didn’t write to us about events that happened back then. They wrote only about the forces that govern reality, and how, through these forces—as we identify with them, as we acquire them and are transformed by them—we can come closer to and know the Upper Force. It’s not history at all. Heaven forbid, there is no history there, even though that’s how it looks to someone who receives the book the way you did in first grade, without any guidance.

If you relate to the Written Torah without the Oral Torah, then you really don’t know what you’ve received, because you weren’t given the code to read it, to receive it. You didn’t read it in a way that, along with the reading, you change, that you enter into it and understand what it’s talking about. So you're right—through your ordinary eyes and without preparation, it seems to you that it’s about history, geography, or maybe laws of society and behavior. Indeed, there are many beautiful and good things there that seem worth learning, and humanity has taken many things from it. But that’s not the book’s intention at all—that’s not its true inner content.

Oren: So what is the intention of the book—what is its true inner content?

Rav Michael Laitman: To change the person. To elevate the person to the level of the Creator. Because the book is the tool to draw the Upper Force in order to correct the person. That’s why the Torah is called “Torat Or” — the Torah of Light.
"Light" means the force that corrects us.