Around 3,800 years ago, Abraham the Patriarch reached a perception of the oneness of nature, a perfect unity of everyone and everything as a single whole. He taught the ways of attaining the perception of nature’s oneness to anybody who was willing to learn back in ancient Babylon, and the Babylonians who advanced as a group implementing his methodology became initially known as “the people of Israel,” and later as “the Jews.” Every Jew today has a part of that perception, but it is yet to reveal itself, i.e. it exists only in potential.
Revealing the full extent of the perception that Abraham once attained would bring humanity to a state that Kabbalah calls “the end of correction,” i.e. the end of our development from perceiving in an incomplete, transient and divided manner, to perceiving a world where everyone and everything connects as one. We would then discover reality in its entirety: all worlds, created beings and various forms as one system filled with a single light, i.e. with a single force of connection. In such a state, we would perceive the true, whole and perfect reality.
Moreover, reaching such a perception is not a matter of whether a person is a Jew. Being Jewish is not about being born to a Jewish mother, as is commonly accepted in today’s world. A Jew is someone who yearns for connection (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]). Anybody who aspires to positively connect with others is on the way to becoming Jewish. The first stage toward reaching a state of unification is the condition that Hillel stated—”Don’t do to others what you hate”—and afterward we aim to reach the condition of “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
People who are born as Jews have certain remnants with exalted and powerful potential that come from a completely different perception of reality than the one we experience today. Also, humanity’s future development will lead to everybody having to reach the same perception as Abraham, where we perceive everything and everyone as one, and toward that perception, it does not matter whether someone was born a Jew or not.
Who is a Jew? A Jew is one who wishes to unite everyone, and who feels the whole of reality in addition to feeling oneself. We are Jews if we feel that everything and everyone belongs to us equally as to everyone else, and we yearn to attain the perception of our lives’ source, the discovery of everything and everyone as one.
Based on the video “Who Is a Jew Today?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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