Europe is turning to the right: How will this affect the European Union? • A Nation’s Forgiveness: What should the Jewish people ask for forgiveness? • Boycott Against Israel Supporters at UC Berkeley: How should the students respond? • A World Without Work: What will the unemployed do all day long? • Hurricane Ian: Why are we helpless against nature? • Never Religious, Never Secular, Lacking Structure: What should a person do when he has a foot on the inside and outside of religion?

Yom Kippur, the day of atonement and forgiveness. It has many names. In Israel, the streets are empty, the kids ride their bikes, and people start to examine the year, all the deeds from the past year and receive a stamp of approval. What does that mean? • Protests in Iran Continue: A 22-year-old girl was killed and people took to the streets. It seems that man is a slave to fear, and Iran fell under oppression, and now the Persians are waking up. How can we work with fear and oppression? • Bernard Shaw said that “Eventually our relationships deteriorated to such an extent that there is only one thing left to do, to agree that we extremely respect each other,” and he also said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself.” What is a Kabbalist’s opinion on these statements?

Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman discusses the month of Elul with Oren Levi. In Kabbalah, the month of Elul is for us to judge ourselves, examine all our actions, thoughts, and relations with others. It provokes us towards change, in asking for forgiveness from others and deciding to undertake to not act inappropriately in the future.

God, the Creator, HaVaYaH, the place, all these names refer to the upper force that created the desire to receive. The Creator fills the desire to receive to the degree that the desire to receive resembles the Creator who bestows. The Creator resides in the ties of bestowal between people who connect to each other.

We have to know the structure of reality in order to understand the meaning of Selichot. We are all connected in one system, but this system is shattered.We have to fix the network between us since it will not be corrected by itself and will only reveal more and more how torn it is. The right forgiveness is an outcome of the recognition of evil in us, in our attitude to love and mutuality, which should be in the corrected system. We ask for forgiveness for not having set a good example for others. It isn’t just lip service but an examination of where we have neglected the correction of the connection between us. There is no point starting a new year, a new change, before conducting serious soul searching and examining whether we have tuned ourselves correctly.

Human nature is egoistic, its inclination is evil, so from the start he causes evil to others. The question is only whether he acknowledges this, does he feel that his nature is evil, and does he regret it? Even if a person recognizes that he is exploiting others and wants to correct that, the question can be asked, what motivates him? When a person exploits someone, he becomes disconnected from the system because being part of the system means that he is concerned about the welfare of the system.

What are the laws of nature that are represented by the Selichot (Atonements) of the month of Elul? How is it possible to discover these laws and what forces will be revealed among our people if we begin to try connect among us?