The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.

Daily Lesson, (Morning) April 26, 2024.

Part 2: Baal HaSulam. “The Love of God and the Love of Man.”

Reader: We are reading the writings of Baal HaSulam, the article, “The Love of God and the Love of Man.” The study materials are on our websites and you can also ask questions through there. Also down here, whoever wants to ask a question, please stand up and hold the microphone close to your mouth and speak loud and clear. 

Reading Article: (00:37) “The Love of God and the Love of Man.” 

“‘Love your friend as yourself,’ Rabbi Akiva says this is a great rule in the Torah” (Beresheet Rabbah 24).

Reading Subtitle: “Collective and Individual.”

The above statement—although it is one of the most famous and cited sayings—is still unexplained to everyone with all its vastness. This is because the word Klal [rule/or collective] indicates a sum of details that relates to the above collective, where each and every detail carries a part within it in a way that the gathering of all the details together creates that collective.

If we say “a great Klal in the Torah,” it means that all the texts and the 612 Mitzvot [commandments] are the sum total of the details that relate to the verse, “Love your friend as yourself.” It is difficult to understand how such a statement can contain the sum-total of all the Mitzvot in the Torah. At most, it can be a Klal for the part of the Torah and sentences that relate to the Mitzvot between man and man. But how can you include the greater part of the Torah, which concerns work between man and the Creator in the verse, “Love your friend as yourself”?

M. Laitman: Clear? No questions? Okay, next.

Reading Subtitle: (02:48) “That which You Hate, Do Not Do to Your friend.”

If we can somehow reconcile the above words, there come the words of Old Hillel to that foreigner who came to him and asked him to convert him, as it says in the Gemara, “Convert me so that you will teach me the whole Torah while I am standing on one leg.” He told him, “That which you hate, do not do to your friend. This is the whole Torah, and the rest is its commentary, go study.” We see that he told him that the whole Torah is the interpretation of the verse, “Love your friend as yourself.”

Now, according to the words of Hillel—the teacher of all the Tannaim [sages during the early CE centuries], and by whom laws are interpreted—it is perfectly clear to us that the primary purpose of our holy Torah is to bring us to that sublime degree where we can observe this verse, “Love your friend as yourself,” for he says explicitly, “The rest is its commentary, go study.” That is, they interpret for us how to come to that rule.

It is surprising that such a statement can be correct in most issues of the Torah, which concern sentences between man and the Creator, when every beginner evidently knows that this is the heart of the Torah and not the interpretation explaining the verse, “Love your friend as yourself.”

M. Laitman: I don't see any questions. Does anyone want to ask? 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (05:40) Here when Hillel was the Rabbi of all the other sages, and he said that the whole Torah is love your friend as yourself, so why wasn't it in the land of Israel that everything would be written, all the books, all the guides, if he was the teacher of all the sages? 

M. Laitman: All the sages, meaning the sages of Israel. 

Student: So, at least in the land of Israel it will be written down in every corner, and people would only live according to this value. Was there ever a time like that? 

M. Laitman: There were times that yes, that's how people lived. You don't have to engrave it in the rock. 

Student: And then it disappeared, and now it doesn't exist at all.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: And they don't value his words like before?

M. Laitman: That's how it should be. That's how it should be. Okay, no more questions. Let's go.

Reading Subtitle: (07:02) “Love Your friend as Yourself.”  

We should also examine and understand the meaning of the verse itself when he says, “Love your friend as yourself.” The literal meaning of it is to love your friend to the same extent that you love yourself. However, we see that the public cannot be like that at all. If it had said, “Love your friend as much as your friend loves you,” there would still not be many who could fully observe it, yet it would be acceptable.

But to love my friend as much as I love myself seems impossible. Even if there were but one person in the world besides me, it would still be impossible, much less when the world is full of people. Moreover, if one loved everyone as much as one loves oneself, he would have no time for himself, for it is certain that one satisfies one’s own needs without neglect, and with great passion, for one loves oneself.

It is not so concerning the needs of the collective: He has no strong reason to stimulate his desire to work for them. Even if he had a desire, could he still keep this statement literally? Would his strength endure? If not, how can the Torah obligate us to do something that is not in any way achievable?

We should not imagine that this verse was said as an exaggeration, for we are warned and insist on “You will neither add nor take away from it.” All the interpreters agreed to interpret the text literally. Moreover, they said that one must satisfy the needs of one’s friend even in a place where one is himself deficient. Even then he must satisfy the needs of his friend and leave himself deficient.

The Tosfot interpret Kidushin 20, “One who buys a Hebrew slave, it is as though he buys a master for himself.” The Tosfot interpret there in the name of the Jerusalem [Talmud] that “Sometimes he has but one pillow. If he lies on it himself, he does not observe, ‘For he is happy with you.’ If he does not lie on it and does not give it to his slave, it is sodomite rule. It turns out that against his will he must give it to his servant. Thus, he has bought himself a master.”

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:53) What does it mean to love a friend like I love myself? How should it be expressed? 

M. Laitman: If you get a certain desire, then first, ensure that you use this desire to relate to the friend.

Student: What do you mean? 

M. Laitman: Simply, you ascribe to your friend greater importance than you ascribe to yourself.

Student: That's expressed with his spiritual desire, with his deficiency, or also corporeality?

M. Laitman: Typically you speak of spirituality. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:01) Love your friend as yourself. Like a storm, to love the friend, I need to overcome the evil in me. And to overcome it, I need a friend. If I do not feel the friend next to me, how can I overcome such things?

M. Laitman: You are right. You have to feel him close. 

Student: How to bring the friends closer so I would feel them next to me all the time?

M. Laitman: I can't say. You have to constantly think. From the thought, we will feel that we're coming closer, and from coming closer, we'll know how we can correct ourselves in order to cause those things that we want for ourselves, also for others. Then the others, through these exercises, they will become more important to us than ourselves, and that's how we'll keep going. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (14:00) First of all, I'm highly impressed by what the friend said here about the suffering she feels for being distant from the Creator. I wish I could say this one day. Regarding love for the other, and don't do to the other what you don't like done to yourself, continuing on what the friend said, love and hate are determined by my will to receive. I love what brings me good, and I hate what does not bring me good. How can I come to a state, it's the same thing that I wish upon the friend, because again, love is the will to receive. Love your friend as yourself. I wish the friend the same self-love of the will to receive, or is it a different love? 

M. Laitman: It's a different love, a different hate. 

Student: Do I also wish upon my friend the same sufferings that we talked about, because it's part of love?

M. Laitman: You are exactly at the state that from it and onward, you need to ask for an explanation from Above, from the Creator, and you'll feel that you're getting such, or others, getting responses that will bring you to a state that you can combine all of those answers correctly. It'll come, but actually, you're advancing in the correct way. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (16:27) It seems as if we insist on looking for trouble. Everything people are talking about, I wish the friend to feel suffering, the previous question. We need to know that we are allowed to feel pleasure from it, it's a path that should be enjoyable. Rav said that you can enjoy the letters, that's the only thing we can enjoy, we're allowed to enjoy the letters. We can enjoy the words of Torah that we study, we can be in joy, and if I don't wish suffering upon myself, I wish suffering upon my friends, neither them nor their reward. It's a very difficult state, suffering. No one should feel any suffering in any blows, in such horrific things. Suffering can kick a person out of the path, it's very difficult. People are talking about it as if it was cards, dominoes, something to play with. It's not like that. The Creator brings one suffering, it can throw a person off the path. I think we don't understand enough what is suffering in this puzzle we're discussing here, no?

M. Laitman: I hear you, what you said. All right.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (18:19) What does it mean, anyone buying a Hebrew slave is as if he's buying a master for himself? Who's the slave? Who's the master?

M. Laitman: That's when the landlord that buys a slave, he has to be careful that that slave won't be a Hebrew slave. Otherwise, he'll need to serve him.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (19:16) It says he should fulfill the needs of his friend, even if he's deficient. What are we sacrificing in the Ten for the benefit of the friends? 

M. Laitman: In the Ten, we need to sacrifice ourselves in order to come closer to adhesion. So, actually, we're not sacrificing anything. What seemed to us that we're acquiring something, now we're starting to understand that it's actually like being in prison. That's why when you sacrifice for the sake of connection, by this we're just acquiring something. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (20:43) Question from a friend. How using torments of love toward the friend and the Creator, can we shorten the time of our advancement? 

M. Laitman: Through suffering, we don't shorten anything. The suffering is not a means for hastening our correction. The happiness, connection, those are the means to speed up our correction.

Student: Even torments of love?

M. Laitman: Suffering of love is something relative, because it's very personal. And really depends on how a person himself experiences it, how he accepts it in the correct manner. 

Question (Women Ukraine 2): (22:02) The task of love your friend as yourself is not clear. I love myself egoistically, and I need to love the others altruistically. How is it even possible? And what exactly should we do? 

M. Laitman: That's impossible to love the others. But if we really ask from the Creator, and all of us together, then He can perform this miracle for us. That's it. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:13) We are now discussing love your friend as yourself, love the other as yourself. I don't want to run away from responsibility, but I want to share that to take it from the right line is to say, to thank the friends, to say thank you. I learned that from experiencing it, it is extremely difficult, and one friend in the Ten that I loved, one of the few that I loved, he sent me the article by Baal HaSulam “To Serve Me,” and what I realized from the article is that I have to thank the friends because either them and the Creator there's nothing, and the friends are the field the Creator has placed, and the Creator wants to teach me and for me to adapt my will to receive, to be in order to bestow, so be grateful to the friends. Rabash says, love the friends, don't wait for them to love you. And Baal HaSulam says, “He who turns his enemy to his lover is a hero of heroes.” So, even if we're not there, it has to sit in our hearts.

M. Laitman: Good.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (24:46) I hope the question is on point. This rule requires clarification. The way I see it, what's closer to a person? Let's say, I love my child, my kid,  because he's not in me, he's not me, but it's an example. So, why doesn't he give that example as well? Love someone else like your child?

M. Laitman: Because a child, it could be all types of relationships. I can't say why not, but you see, that's what our sages determined. Just like a person loves himself, he can't love anyone else. That's why we compare love of the others towards the love of yourself.

Student: I understand that in this case, spiritual love is stronger than love to your relatives. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:31) It says that to love his friend the way he loves himself, it's not a possibility. How is the Creator expecting the impossible of us? 

M. Laitman: It's very simple. For the whole world, all of humanity is built from the egoistic will to receive. So we have to invert it only with the help of the Creator. That He will perform the work. He created us in order to receive. So, let Him correct the desire in each and every one of us. 

Student: So, it means He created us this way for us to ask?

M. Laitman: Yes. That by that, we'll be able to come closer to Him. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:51) Can I say that love your friend as yourself is a mechanism for correction? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Meaning it's the goal, that's what we aspire to? That's what we yearn for. We have to use all our vessels to approach it? 

M. Laitman: Yes, yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:20) Rav, what is the distinction between buy yourself a friend and buying a slave in the work between us? What's the difference?

M. Laitman: The friend is supposedly, you acquire something that's close to you, close to your heart. And buying a slave is that you look at him like you look at a horse or a donkey. That he should help you with whatever you need.

Student: Okay, because you said to a friend that a person needs to beware not to buy a Hebrew slave. What does it mean not to buy a Hebrew slave in the work between us?

M. Laitman: Where is that written?

Student: You said it. When they asked about the matter of a Hebrew slave, they said that a person needs to be careful not to buy a Hebrew slave.

M. Laitman: That's not what I meant. Let it go. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (29:48) When there's an atmosphere of greatness and importance of the Creator between two friends, then they're willing to do almost everything for one another. That's the correct foundation? Is that the correct foundation for realizing spiritual love? 

M. Laitman: Could be the foundation, yes.

Student: Because they understand that without the Creator they can't realize it? 

M. Laitman: Yes, yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (30:24) Is there a level of suffering that we should experience to get to the depth of our soul and cry out for the miracle of love thy neighbor as thyself, to be realized? I'll tell you why I ask. I suffered as a child, being abandoned by my dad, and left in this world not knowing what love is, and I suffered with all kinds of relationships. In the Ten, I suffered, I couldn't love, and I remember crying in my shower and praying to love my Ten because I couldn't love any of them. And I reached this point where I began to wonder, all the people in the world, I can't love them, unless I cry and ask for love for them. Should we get to this point where we are suffering, and we feel this suffering so that we understand how important this miracle is for our salvation?

M. Laitman: I agree with you. But I can't give an answer. I can't give an answer. Friend, you have to help me understand everything she said.

Friend: Our friend is asking, do we need to reach a certain, a deep level of suffering in order to understand from it, the miracle of love your friend as yourself, that only in crying to the Creator it will come out of it? She related that during her lifetime, she suffered from childhood until today, and only as a result of the many sufferings she experienced, she could understand the importance of loving your friend as yourself.

M. Laitman: That’s correct, that’s one way but you could also do it through the light that reforms.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (33:33) You said that suffering does not accelerate our advancement. Rather, joy and happiness do accelerate it. What is happiness for a Kabbalist? 

M. Laitman: To speed up the advancement towards the Creator. To be happy. To be happy, meaning to feel that you're coming closer to the Creator. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (34:16) The friends are with me now only in the meetings or the lessons, but also during the day. They are like a cloud that accompanies you and sometimes this cloud is replaced with the cloud of the Creator, but I can't combine the two: The friend's cloud and the Creator's cloud.

M. Laitman: You need to feel them together. Think about it more. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (35:10) There are states where I succeed in feeling the heart of the friend and feeling the pain in it. In this place, you turn to the Creator with a request for healing. Because there's no distance in spirituality, the Creator's answer, the Creator's healing comes to both of us. Is that so? 

M. Laitman: Yes, it could be.

Student: That should be my main concern relative to my friends, relative to the friend's heart. 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (36:29) Good morning, friends. Two questions. One, is about love. Love, your friend, as yourself, is really a complicated task. My question is specifically outside of the Ten. The main work is in the Ten, to come to love of friends, that unifies the spiritual unit we're building. It's clear. It's understood what the Creator wants from us. There are many friends in the Kli, or I see in them, I see their purposefulness, and their yearning, and that gives me a great impression and inspiration and brings me closer emotionally to those friends. Is it wrong? Is it okay or not?

M. Laitman: It's okay. 

Student: Okay, another question. We are in Passover, Pesach. And we learned in one of the articles, something that bothered me, and I didn't have an opportunity to ask about, if you may, about Moses, who comes to the Creator and says, let my people go, let them come out of Egypt, release my people. And the Creator said something simple, ask the people of Israel to borrow the vessels from the Egyptians, meaning there were 49 gates of impurity in Egypt, and is the request to Moses from the Creator, something above nature, Moses has to ask the people of Israel, where he's revealed, he's revealed so that the people of Israel will accept this demand, this request of the Creator?

M. Laitman: I didn't understand. I got the whole…

Student: The Creator's request from Moses, tell the people of Israel to borrow the vessels from the Egyptians, meaning it's necessary to develop the Kli, the vessel, but they should look at it as something unusual, it's an exception, to complete the 49 gates of impurity, and it would be revealed to them, because otherwise they would be left in Egypt. We would stay with the 50 gates of understanding and never come out of there. So, that's the plea of the Creator to Israel. Ask the people of Israel, is this the revelation of the Creator to the people of Israel? And that's how they got convinced? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

M. Laitman: To what hour are we here? 

Reader: It’s 5.30. Just a few questions from the world Kli. I see Zichron with a special gathering in nature.

M. Laitman: Zichron? Please.

Question (Zichron 1): (39:57) The question is, the more I try to love the friends, to come closer to them, to feel them, I discover the torments, the suffering they go through, the pain they feel in corporeality. The question is, how do you use it? How to use it to come closer to the Creator? 

M. Laitman: What's the question? 

Reader: Do you want to repeat? 

Student: The more I try to love the friends, to come closer to them, I discover they are going through suffering in corporeality, pain. The question is, how do you use it? How to use it to come closer to the Creator? 

M. Laitman: What should the answer be? Well? Nobody can answer this? 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (41:36) It should be used to pray for them. Prayer is a bestowal. It is a bestowal of love. It's the best way to get the Creator's attention. 

M. Laitman: That’s it.

Student: So, by praying for the friend's suffering in corporeality, that brings me closer to the Creator? That brings the friend closer to the Creator? 

M. Laitman: Yes, of course. Him and you. 

Student: So, I have to use the suffering the friend is feeling, even in corporeality?

M. Laitman: Yes. Otherwise, how can you connect to Him? 

Student: Meaning, there's value to feeling the suffering and the pain that the friend feels in corporeality.

M. Laitman: Yes. What else do we have today? 

Reader: I'm going to go over the broadcast schedule for today and for tomorrow. 

M. Laitman: Good. 

Reader: And now, a song.

Song: (43:32)