The Purpose Of Life With Rabbi Manis Friedman

In this episode of talk with the most popular rabbi on UA-cam, Rabbi Manis Friedman from his channel titled: It's Good To Know. It’s Good to Know™ is taking the ancient wisdom of Torah/Kabbalah and bringing it into the modern times here on UA-cam. Rabbi Manis Friedman is a world-renowned author, counselor, lecturer and philosopher who uses ancient wisdom and modern wit to captivate audiences around the world.
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About us: Welcome modern-day mystics and fellow truth seekers. James and Justin here, your favorite spiritual analysts on all things culturally relevant. Doing our best to help team humanity connect with this divine, yet somewhat peculiar reality we all find ourselves in!!! Staaaaaaaaaaay Spiritual 🙏😲🙏😉🙏😁

[@demadddis96]

Thank you!

[@mastershear100]

Extremely interesting with definitely an eyes opener. Thank you.

[@NIF18]

This is some great, great conversation! Kudos to you two and to the Rabbi!

[@stayspiritual]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@mrozdoba]

My thanks to all involved for this video, for sharing so many wise words.
On the Israeli-Palestinian relationship:
I am an outsider, both to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict & to the worldwide protests. I claim no insider knowledge, no expertise & no authority. These words are my imaginings based on my own very limited life experiences & observations of the wider world. I offer them up merely as food for those hearts & minds so inclined to give them a moment's consideration. If they do not resonate, please ignore me.
When an ego feels under attack, a common response is to attempt to paint the criticism/critic as more extreme/incoherent than they necessarily are in order to make the criticism easier to dismiss.
I imagine some of the pro Palestinian supporters do indeed support Hamas & the vile atrocities they perpetrated against the Israeli people last October; I imagine amongst some there is much ignorance & inclination to distort the picture to varying degrees & in various ways. However support for Hamas's terrorism does not appear to me to be a typical outlook of the protesters. Many condemn those atrocities. At the very least there appears to be significant protest against the actions of Israel by those who condemn disproportionate use of force, attacks upon civilians & allowing hatred to drive action, regardless of the parties involved.
From observations of the protests, as reported both in the media & by those more directly involved, on both 'sides' of the conflict, I note that I have seen Jewish people amongst the pro-Palestinian supporters, I have seen some Rabbis offer their support to the protests & join marches calling for a permanent cease fire. I have listened to the likes of Gabor Maté speak on these matters, a Jewish man & former Zionist, who has worked on the ground with the Palestinian victims of Israeli state torture. These people do not give the impression of supporting Hamas's atrocities.
To conflate support for the Palestinians with support for Hamas's actions would appear to be an error.
Many of the protestors are themselves outsiders to the conflict. I agree the further one is from a situation the harder it is to understand the detail, the nuance; the easier it is to fill these gaps with imagination that is product of preconception & not necessarily congruent to reality. This is all true. Nevertheless, a sufficiently vast fire can be seen from a great distance.
An argument that I do not think was advanced in this discussion but that I have seen raised many times, is to question why protestors criticise Israel for claimed atrocities when other conflicts around the world that involve such horrors garner far less attention. The implication is that they are motivated by anti-Semitism & should be dismissed for this reason. Again, anti-Semitism exists & no doubt feeds into such protest, but that does not necessarily mean it is the dominant dynamic driving such behaviour, let alone the only dynamic.
We are tribal in nature. Whilst we are prone to see those most distant as other & be mistrustful of them, to the extent that they do not appear to be a threat to us the inclination is to pay them less attention. We give our greatest attention to those we see as close & with whom we are most involved. Israel is a major player in the global north, with close ties through trade, politics & social connections to much of the rest of what we think of as our society.
We are fallible & prone to cling to familiar misconceptions imagined as truth. We make many mistakes. Nevertheless, as social creatures we tend to value fairness & seek to explore what this means & how we can build fairer societies in recognition that fairness is a key concept in the establishment & maintenance of stable, prosperous societies that make best use of the potential of all within.
When those we see as one of our own behave in so extreme a way as to begin to make it obvious that they have strayed from this path, alarm bells ring. A predator at a distance may be perceived as a threat. A predator in one's camp sets alarm bells ringing immediately.
The Israeli-Palestinian situation is complex & with a long history. There is much collective trauma. Wars, & divisive social constructs such as apartheid, do not heal trauma, they create it. Trauma sustains hatred & hatred sustains conflict. Wars do not end conflict. At most they generate a 'victor', one party who, for a time at least, dominates in the game of control. The conflict & trauma remain. Hatred & trauma cannot be healed by imposition of further force. The onus is always on the dominant party to begin the healing as they are most able, at least in potential, once any immediate threat is contained.
The devil, as they say, is in the details. What constitutes containment will be argued. The tendency of those that hate is to seek to annihilate their imagined enemy. To paint needless control, force & destruction as needed. Nevertheless, the pattern remains; disproportionate use of force will merely sustain the conflict, not end it.
We choose our actions. Reality chooses the consequences. Reality does not pander to delusion or bend to propaganda.

[@user-jn6jm4bb6f]

You kind of missed the point.
The Rabbi actually says that the protesters must have a great cause with a large number of people in order to overcome the alienation and inject content into their lives.
I don't remember which actress was asked, "What do you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" She answered, "It don't give a damn!" When asked, "Why?" she replied, "I take care of my mother, who is disabled and in a wheelchair, and it's hard for me to move her around the city. Cars park on the sidewalk, and places are not accessible to the disabled. The offices that are supposed to provide her services do a horrible job. That's why I'm not interested in it at all; I have problems in my own city that are much more urgent for me than some conflict that is thousands of kilometers away."
And that's the point. The same protesters? They will never demonstrate with such ferocity for something that is in their very city- for poverty, for the homeless, for those who cannot afford medical care. Why? Because this goal, despite its importance, is simply too small, and they will be a small number of people, or maybe just them.
And if it's just them, then what's the point?
They are not trying to do the right thing, they are just trying to find meaning in their lives, but to be acceptable to as many people as possible, because after all, the goal is not to do the right thing, the goal is: "What do others say about me" or in other words: "Look at me, I'm not alone, I'm doing something that a lot of people do."......

[@mrozdoba]

@@user-jn6jm4bb6f Thanks for the reply. That's an interesting perspective; I imagine it applies in many cases.