Page 26 - C.A.L.L. #29 - Winter 2007

From the magazine “What is Enlightenment?” (April-June 2007), published by EnlightenNext,
which is “dedicated to liberating and harnessing the creativity and unparalleled positivity that
is released when people come together beyond ego”

Or Haganuz ("Hidden Light”)

Philosophy/Mission Statement: To usher in a global Messianic Age
through communal life guided by a unique synthesis of socialist and
kabbalistic principles, according to the revolutionary teaching of the
visionary Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag (1885-1954), and through
dissemination of Ashlag's teachings around the world.

A CASUAL VISITOR TO OR HAGANUZ would not, at first glance, find the community all that
extraordinary. In Israel, it is not uncommon to find a community in which all the members are
Orthodox Jews, with men donning long beards and sideburns and women covered from neck to
toe. You might first suspect something different, however, when you spot a bearded, skullcapped
man doing tai chi or another sitting alone in the woods in deep contemplation. Or perhaps you
wander into a classroom and see a rabbi in black Hassidic garb, hat and all, discoursing on
acupuncture and Chinese medicine to a class divided by a partition that separates the men from
the women.

And yet Or Haganuz is much more than a community of Orthodox Jews with New Age interests.
Here in this small pastoral community of sixty-eight families (some four hundred inhabitants) in
northern Israel, a high-stakes experiment in human potential is taking place. It is the first serious
attempt to apply the revolutionary communal teachings of Rabbi Ashlag, a spiritual visionary
whose work is responsible for the fact that Kabbalah is a household word all over the world.

"Rabbi Ashlag was interested in the transformation of humanity," explains Rabbi Uval Asherov, one
of Or Haganuz's founders. "He felt that we are on the brink of the Messianic Age, which would be
characterized by a fundamental shift in human motivation - from a desire to get and to have,
which originates from the ego, to a desire to give and to share, which originates from God." Ashlag
taught that such a shift in motivation, which was way beyond what humanity has been capable of
so far, has only been glimpsed twice in human history - once on the occasion of the revelation of
the Torah on Mount Sinai and another time during the reign of King Solomon.

Surprisingly, what convinced
Ashlag that we are approaching
the Messianic Age was the
advent of communist ideas and
their increasing popularity
about a century ago. "Ashlag
saw this as an indication that
there was global hunger for life
that holds giving and sharing in
higher regard than having and
getting," says Rabbi Asherov. "It
indicated to him that something
new was now possible."

But Ashlag was well aware of the limitations of Communism, as it denied the vertical dimension of
life and focused on matter. This lack of a spiritual dimension, he taught, was the reason why
Communism had to resort to force and brutality in order to impose its ideals. What would a
communist lifestyle look like, he asked, if it were not motivated by a desire for material equality, or
even social justice, but rather was seen as a way of living according to the will of God - a life of
endless giving? What if communist ideals were married to and practiced in the context of the
teaching of the Kabbalah? Ashlag predicted that if such a lifestyle would he widespread, this would

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