“I Shouldn’t Be Here”: Nova Survivor Yonit Keidar

TheJewFunction Episode transcript Hosts: Lio and Seth | Guest: Yonit Keidar Lio • 00:20 Welcome to TheJewFunction. I'm Lio, this is Seth. Hi, everyone. We have a very special guest with us today. By special, I mean that she could easily not have been with us today, but through divine intervention, or whatever you want to call it, she is. We don't really believe in coincidences, so there's probably a good reason why she's with us. She's a Nova survivor. She was at the party on October 7th, dancing at sunrise when the attack started. She was one of the few who managed to get in a car, pack in a bunch of people, and find a way through the fields and away from the massacre. But I think the important thing is that the outcome of this event completely changed the way she sees her life, and maybe our collective lives. We're very happy that she's with us and that she's going to share her unique perspective. I think everybody here is going to get to feel the heart of someone very special. So please, Yonit Keidar, welcome to TheJewFunction. Yonit • 01:41 Hello. Thank you for having me. Hi, guys. Lio • 01:46 We're very happy to have you. Yonit • 01:48 Happy to be here. Lio • 01:50 As we talked about before the show, we explore the reasons for Jew hatred. Why do people hate the Jews? They're such a lovely group of people. Why would anyone want to harm a Jew? I mean, I know some Jews I would like to harm personally, but perhaps more endearingly! I really don't feel this urge toward the Jews, although they can get on my nerves sometimes, and I'm sure we get on everybody's nerves every once in a while. But why us? Why exclude us specifically from the rest of humanity, and why for so long? Maybe even more curiously, how come they keep failing at eradicating the Jews? There are some other forces at work here, maybe a bigger plan behind this. And we're saying this without sounding one bit religious or mystical about it. We've spent quite a lot of time researching this topic, looking at historical patterns, reading hundreds of quotes from Jewish sages, and comparing them to findings from recent experiments with big data and network science, which seem to surprisingly confirm a lot of what we found. If you're interested in finding out more—I'm talking to the viewers here—please listen to the first 22 episodes. You'll find them at the top of the channel. You can also listen on Spotify. I think this will put a lot of things in order for you: the Jewish historical timeline, humanity's historical timeline, where they converge, and where we fit into the system. But with that said, Yonit, you have a unique story. You lived a regular, normal Tel Aviv life. I'm from Tel Aviv originally, so I know what that's like: growing up in the city, I'm guessing you left the party scene, found your way into high tech, and had a nice job, a nice life, everything. And then suddenly the whole world changes. Crisis, right? I wonder if we should play that clip of yours I told you about before we start. Maybe we start with that, and it will frame the whole conversation. Here's a little clip from Yonit's channel, which you can follow. I put it in the description. Let's go. Yonit • 04:49 Spinoza, three centuries ago, said, “God is nature.” The divine isn't outside the universe watching us. The divine is you and the universe itself. Number three: modern science. Einstein's entanglement, saying nothing is truly separate. You see, you have the mystical, the rational, the scientific—all three pointing to the idea that we're made in the image of the Creator, and creation is literally our nature. We create through imagination: the mind picturing what isn't yet real, and then through the attention of the heart, the emotional intention that gives that picture force. That combination is a power no AI or robotics can ever replicate. And this is what Mashiach energy actually always meant: not someone outside of us arriving to rescue us from the heavens, but a state of being we step into ourselves—sovereign, awake, responsible, creating. Redemption isn't a person we're waiting for. It's a mindset shift we're each responsible for making, individually and then together as a people. That's the whole shape of 21st-century Judaism: an ancient pattern of adapting under pressure, under persecution, and now meeting an AI age that's asking who we really are. Answering with a foundation that was here all along: mystical, rational, scientific, and entirely Jewish. Machines are handling the artificial now. It's time we mastered the rest. Wow, it's an amazing time to be alive. It really is. Seth • 06:48 That's incredible. Lio • 06:49 Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I'm very happy we have it. It's like a spoiler for the story you're going to share with us. So take us back, before these profound realizations, which for some people take a lifetime to arrive at, or which some people have to be born into a certain place to get. For you, it was different. Take us back and share your story with us. Yonit • 07:14 It's been a hell of a ride. Lio • 07:16 I'm sure you told it a hundred times. Yonit • 07:19 No, it's actually very interesting to look at it now. The Nova Festival on October 7th was a turning point in my life. As many of your viewers might know, the way we as humans evolve and grow is usually, unfortunately, through crisis—through everything breaking. Only then do you reach new, profound realizations. Like many others, that happened to me after everything collapsed. And this is the collapse we're all seeing right now, in our individual lives and as a collective: whether it's religion collapsing, institutions, education—everything—just as AI is coming out. That's why I say it's an amazing time to be alive, if you understand the power you actually have. And for me, that's exactly what happened. After October 7th, my life fell apart. Everything fell apart, one by one, like dominoes. I remember sitting in my garden and asking—I don't know, the heavens, let's say—does that also have to go away? Does that also have to fall apart? And I understood that yes, everything I knew, my entire worldview, had to fall apart in order to build something new. As far as the Jewish people go, first of all, I'm very secular. I was brought up secular. I still am secular. During this journey, I've always asked myself: am I going to remain secular? Am I going to become more religious? I don't have the final answer, of course. But I feel, knowing that 80 percent of world Jewry are secular, and being an Israeli, that it has never been easier, so to speak, for a Jew to be secular and still remain Jewish. Because in the diaspora, if you don't actively seek to be Jewish, it's very easy not to be. In Israel, even if you're secular your whole life, you can still be very much Jewish. And this converges with everything around religion that is thinning away because of all the science that's coming out, our understanding of our bodies, coherence between mind and heart, and the understanding that we are made b'tzelem—in the image of the Creator. Understanding that it's a co-creation of what we can realize in this life. All of these understandings took these three years to reach. What I always say is that I feel Judaism, or the Jewish tribe, is kind of like the VP—God gave us this role of being the VP of human development. The spotlight is on us. No Jews, no news. There's a reason for that. It's to propel us—and when I say us, I mean humanity—forward into evolution. I even go so far as to say that October 7th was by design in order to create this. Lio • 11:50 Because Elohim in gematria is ha-teva, nature. It's the same thing. It's a system of laws. Go on. Yonit • 11:58 There's a reason why all of this is happening. And there's a reason October 7th was felt in our bones, in every one of our bones, if we're talking about the Jewish people. But not only the Jewish people. It was such a horrific event that it touched all our allies as well. And it touched those who are not our allies, but in a different way. It moved us to change. Each person felt it differently and decided to act differently, but we all felt it. It was like the evil of the world came out of the earth, like it needed to purge. I feel like what we're experiencing now is that purge. Everything is out in the open. You see everything, and you can't unsee it. And that, too, is by design, because we're being pushed out of our comfort zone in order to grow, in order to evolve. We were talking just before about the acceleration of events, even nowadays: multiple times a day, something happens that sets you back, and you ask, “What's going on here? This is not the world I'm familiar with.” And that is also by design, because I feel we're reaching a tipping point. We've always had tipping points throughout history, and we've always needed to choose how we react. Do we evolve, or do we plummet? I think we're already seeing the division between those who choose to plummet and those who choose to evolve. And I think that division will become clearer and clearer, unfortunately for many people. But at the end of the day, those who will evolve will be those who also unite, who are smart enough—or intelligent enough—to unite. I see this in many survivors' stories. Even the hostages coming out of the tunnels all talk about unity. They all talk about what we need to learn from this and how we need to evolve. That was also my realization after October 7th. I had already started on a spiritual path before October 7th, but afterward I found myself asking, “Are the spiritual spaces a safe space for me as a Jew?” And the answer I received was no, in most cases. Seth • 15:05 Which spiritual spaces? Yonit • 15:08 I'm talking about global spaces, of course, whether retreats or the kinds of things we're seeing online. When you say “safe”— Lio • 15:21 Do you mean physically safe for a Jew to go to, or safe in the sense of whether this is the right way to— Yonit • 15:27 —evolve? No, I'm talking about acceptance of Jews. Because the spiritual world talks a lot, and very highly, about unity. When I came to ask, “Does that include the Jews?” the answer I received was no. And then I said—go ahead. Lio • 15:51 The funny thing is that so many of the spiritual traditions—what people consider spiritual, especially in the West—were championed by Jews. They were brought to the West by Jews, right? Ram Dass brought his brand to the West. You have Kundalini, championed by Jews, and all these different philosophical traditions. You mentioned philosophers and thinkers in your clip who themselves founded whole schools and disciplines. And yet it feels to us that it was— Yonit • 16:29 —sort of missing the point. Right. That's where there are spiritual people who talk the talk and those who walk the walk. Those who talk the talk are usually not inclusive of Jews. They know the language, they know the lingo, but they don't feel it; they haven't embodied it. And you can feel that. That's the separation I'm talking about. This separation is happening across industries and disciplines. Look at education. You once thought an educated person could never be antisemitic, and yet so many show that they are. It's very apparent. Lio • 17:23 Seth, I feel like you want to ask a question. Seth • 17:30 There's a nuance. First of all, your insight and the process that you went through is similar to something that the whole Jewish people are going through. I agree. Yonit • 17:43 Not only the Jewish people. Lio • 17:45 No, everybody—but Jews first— Yonit • 17:47 —so to speak. Yes, I agree. Seth • 17:48 Our worldview is that the purpose of creation is for black, white, yellow, red—for everyone, unequivocally. But this group has this role, like you said, the VP of— Lio • 18:06 Human development. Seth • 18:07 Human development. Because we went through Egyptian slavery and all these different things. Like you said, suffering speeds up the process. Somebody who lived in one village for 500 years was different from another group of people who were kicked around and churned through the different empires and had to develop and figure things out. Lio • 18:32 There's a saying in Kabbalah—just to add a parenthesis to what Seth's saying—that the entrance and exit of the light into the vessel makes the vessel. Light in a vessel alone means nothing; you have no discernment. Once it leaves and you suffer, you think, “Oh, I wanted that.” Now you have a discernment. Yonit • 18:50 Because it shows more shadows. Lio • 18:53 Because people are relational. We can only know something from its opposite. There's no other way. Go on, Seth. Seth • 19:00 Another thing I haven't heard you talk about yet—but I think it's opened up inside you already—is this: in addition to everything that happened, when people would normally find friends and supporters and begin a healing process, at the same time you, the Jews, were being gaslit by the whole world. So while you and the Jewish people are going through this healing process, you also have to stabilize yourselves in the chaos and hold these opposites. You experienced what happened on October 7th, and people are telling you you're the aggressor. These things can't exist together. On earth, there's no way for them to exist together, which maybe is nature's way of pushing us above the earthly level, to some kind of place where—what is it? Oseh shalom bimromav—He makes peace in the heavens. You can't put fire and water together on earth. Maybe we can't put jihadists and secular Tel Aviv people together on earth; it might not work. But perhaps there is a spiritual way to hold these opposites. I want to understand from you: how, in your heart, are you holding these opposites that are arising? It's enough to make a person want to tear out of his skin, because it— Yonit • 20:56 —just can't be inside. First of all, like many of us at the beginning, I was asking myself: “Is there any truth to these headlines? Is there any truth to the genocide claims, to all the claims?” Very quickly, I understood I couldn't follow all the headlines, research them, and fact-check them all. I needed to go within and decide for myself. I know my people. I've been in the army; I've served. I know who my soldiers—my warriors, I call them—are. Going into that more deeply, I understood that these are blood libels as old as time. You're asking how we hold these dual perceptions. It's very interesting, and I don't know if I have just one answer. It's something I grapple with myself. Here I'll talk a bit about the New Earth. Are you familiar with The New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle? He and Dolores— Lio • 22:19 Eckhart Tolle. Yonit • 22:20 Eckhart, thank you. They talk about the separation between 3D consciousness and 5D consciousness, and I think that's exactly where we are. I do believe that those who are led by fear—all that gaslighting, anxiety, and fear-based living you're talking about—are hopefully becoming a thing of the past. Now, with AI and our understanding of who we are as humans, we understand that we control our reality, right? With our imagination from the brain and the coherence from the heart, we create our reality. Those who not only understand that intellectually but embody it will join the 5D consciousness, a reality that will elevate us to, for lack of a better phrase, not caring about what's going on on the other side. Lio • 23:30 No, but that's true. It's not about not caring; it's about— Yonit • 23:35 We'll live in the same world, but it's like people who aren't partygoers, whom you usually wouldn't even meet. Lio • 23:42 You just don't meet them; they're not like-minded people. Right? There's a saying with Kabbalists: even after you learn—or rather, attain—another channel, everyone who doesn't have that channel stays on channel one. Then, if you have channel two, you can go to— Seth • 24:07 —channel two. Let me add to that. We have a Kabbalistic story about a dad walking down the street. His kid is hysterically screaming, and everyone is looking at the dad like he's evil. There's this rule that a dad is supposed to be good and care about his kid. When someone confronts him, the dad says, “The kid has a scratch in his eye, and he wants me to give him a stick so he can scratch his eye.” A needle, in other words. When you rise higher, you can understand things, but if you're on the lower level, the things you see with your eyes don't make sense. I also think that's what you're talking about. We as Jews have to live in two worlds. For example—I don't want to get into politics, I'm really trying to hold myself back—I saw a comment on another show we did. Someone asked, “You talk about peace all the time. Why do you vote for Bibi?” Someone else wrote a long reply, and another person just wrote “Survival” at the bottom. On one hand, we want to be total communists: we want everyone to love each other, we want to share everything. On the other hand, we're very much on the right when it comes to security and safety. There's no way, in a headline or just on this earth, to make these things match. You have to rise up to see the perspective. So the question—go ahead. Yonit • 25:43 You first, you were about to—because this brings me to sovereignty. This is a state of mind we're not familiar with as humans. We're familiar with the word, but what does it actually mean? I believe I see this sovereignty in Israeli Jewish people, because of what we've been going through. It ties in very interestingly to the spiritual path. When you start seeing yourself as sovereign, as dependent only on yourself for your safety, your protection, and being provided for, you suddenly separate yourself from that fear-based world. I tie this into Israeli Jews because Zionism and coming to the land of Israel, almost over a hundred years ago, changed the Jews. Our perception of ourselves changed. I've noticed a major, significant character change from a Jew in exile to a Jew in Israel. And this is not, of course, to say one is less than or more than the other in any way. Seth • 27:24 You can say it. Yonit • 27:27 Just to say that this sovereignty of—not giving a crap what people think of you, pardon my French—and doing what you need to do not only to survive and protect yourself, but to stand on your own two feet and thrive, means that a lot of the time you have to put aside all the chatter, all that fear. I'm not saying all Israelis are like this, but in many ways we're getting there. More and more people are realizing and waking up to that. Not necessarily spiritually, but after October 7th there was a shift in Israeli society, saying: “No more. We're not buying this anymore, and we're not apologizing anymore. We're not even giving explanations anymore.” Seth • 28:35 That's sovereignty. What don't you buy anymore? Sorry, you said, “We're not buying this anymore.” Yonit • 28:42 We're not buying the idea of a potential peace. That's what I meant. And then— Lio • 28:48 The apologetic Jew: “I'm sorry,” and then whatever you want to do to make other people comfortable. Yonit • 28:53 Yeah. We're not trying to be palatable anymore. Right? Lio • 29:01 It's interesting, because when you look at American Jewry, the opinions vary. I see it very much: some definitely rose to the task, some were pushed into this position, and others still think we can make more concessions. I just saw this poem—I think I sent it to you, Seth. “The Good Jew.” Did you see it? The guy is saying, “Let's become less and less,” right? First take off the flag, take off the Star of David, take off the yarmulke, don't say this, don't do that. A little bit about the tree—I saw that one; it was really good. No, that wasn't it. It was a guy standing by some storage door. I'll send it to you. But I want to do a quick summary. October 7th created a situation where a lot of Jews, in Israel for sure and some abroad, came to the realization that we cannot assimilate endlessly into the world. We cannot simply morph ourselves to fit their image of a Jew. We're our own people; we need to do what's good for us. That was a good realization. It's a departure from the diasporic mindset: this is who we are. Even some people in the diaspora are starting to feel that. It's a good first step, but that step by itself is not a correction yet. It's simply a means to an end, a necessary step. The question is how we get to all these beautiful things and levels of consciousness you've described. That's what we want. Seth and I—and everyone who follows the show knows this—were big seekers before. Unfortunately, we didn't require this kind of traumatic awakening. We were simply— Seth • 31:11 —searching for answers from very early on. There was a personal traumatic awakening; it wasn't October 7th, but— Lio • 31:15 Exactly. We all have our things, obviously, but it wasn't as traumatic. Kabbalists call it a “point in the heart.” It's like a point, a broken memory of that state of unity you described at the beginning. That's what really shattered when we talk about shattering, breakage, or falling—those myths described in every religion. The perception of unity broke. We're still connected, we still very much influence one another, but we don't feel it. So everyone feels like an individual. In some people, this fragment is more active. After many lifetimes of going through this process, it slowly rises to the top, like oil and water. Eventually it's so prominent that it won't relax until it gets fulfillment. It asks, “What's the purpose?” Yonit • 32:05 That's pretty much what I feel. Lio • 32:06 Exactly. You can get to it, as we said, through sheer blunt-force trauma or through a gradual process of awakening, each depending on their circumstances and everything they've experienced in all their cumulative lifetimes, for that matter, without getting too much into it. But the point is, once you awaken, that's just a starting point. That in itself doesn't make you corrected. It doesn't make you yet b'tzelem, as you said—in the image of the Creator. We're called Adam because Adam means we're going to resemble. We have the potential to resemble the Creator; we're not there yet. That's not what was created. I want to hear your perspective on this, because we don't often get into this point—it's quite advanced. In many spiritual traditions, and that's why I also asked you about not feeling safe or belonging there, the work ends with this intellectual realization that we're all united and should feel part of it. And that's the end of the story: “I'm a spiritual person.” But for Jews, that's not the work. Kabbalists prescribe a specific method in which you actually have to make efforts and act toward one another in a certain way, and eventually turn to the same force that creates everything to fix that, too. That's part of the plan. As you said, October 7th was planned. That's part of the plan to get you to reconnect with that force. Now, what's the nature of that? I want to hear what you feel is the way to reach that higher state—that connected, united state, yehudi from the word yihud, right? How do we get there? On paper, the blueprint is great, but how do we realize it? Yonit • 34:02 So actually I've mapped this out. Lio • 34:06 Amazing. Finally, we have a product manager! What do you do? Yonit • 34:10 I did product marketing. Lio • 34:14 There's a plan. Good. Yonit • 34:18 You're familiar with the dark night of the soul, right? Lio • 34:22 Of course. Yonit • 34:23 I'll bring up that diagram I have. Do you have it? Seth • 34:29 Are you going to share it here? Yonit • 34:31 Yeah. Lio • 34:31 I think you're the first guest to share a diagram. That's great. You can use the screen-share option. Yonit • 34:39 I'm opening it up. One second. Let me make sure I have the latest version. I think it's this. Can you see my screen? This is what I've mapped out. Can you see it clearly enough? Should I enlarge it? Lio • 35:07 Yeah, enlarge it a little bit if you can. What you're showing here is a five-step— Yonit • 35:17 —journey, let's call it. What we're experiencing now is number one, on the left: the collapse. October 7th happened, the world responded, and there was shock. Many Jews—and not only Jews—are still at this stage. They're still in the collapse, still asking, “What the hell is going on here?” Once you accept that this is reality, you go on to the second step: the descent. Understanding that you might be alone in the world, and starting to ask yourself, “Who am I?” By the way, I've gone through all of these. Number five I'm still working on, but I think— Seth • 35:58 —that's a lifetime thing. Yonit, this part, number two, I see that it requires a ton of bravery. People are constantly running away, and it's very hard, because if you don't face the dragon right in the eyes, if you don't feel like you're dead, you can't really— Yonit • 36:19 —start the process. That's the dark night, being willing even to go there. I lost all my friends. I lost my job. I lost my father. I lost everything. “Your father was there with you?” No, he passed away over a year ago, but during these past three years I lost everything I was. And a lot of it, I now realize, was to my benefit, because I needed to grow. I wouldn't let it go myself. As you said, I had crises in my past, but I didn't learn from them or move on. I'm sure you're familiar with that. October 7th happened to me because something needed to push me. I needed to be pushed. I bought my ticket the day before October 7th, on the 6th. I wasn't supposed to be there. I didn't plan on being there. So, yes, to your point, the descent is the hardest, most painful part. This is why you see the lowest point, under the life you thought you had, because everything breaks here. Everything breaks: understanding the betrayal, the fear of being alone, and the realization that you are basically alone other than the Creator, who is always with you. Seth • 37:49 Right. It's also a recognition of the truth, of what really is. We're all shattered pieces here. And if you can't face the truth, you constantly live in some illusion. Yonit • 38:04 You continuously ask yourself, “What is the truth?” This is the part where you ask questions that, until now, you've just gone with the flow on. Going back to AI for a second, the very existence of AI has propelled us to ask ourselves that question again: who are we, if not the productive beings we thought we were? The age we're living in is forcing us into that descent, into those questions. And as Jews, al achat kama vechama. Lio • 38:44 In almost every show, we talk about how humanity collectively has everything it needs to live a life of abundance, and yet we're unable to do it. In fact, it gets worse by the day. Why? How come? What's going on? Unless we ask and begin to explore, nature will keep pushing us down into that pit. If you don't do it here, it will do it to your flesh, basically. Yonit • 39:10 Right. I'll add to that the issue of intergenerational trauma that Jews have. Here's a personal story about this necklace and October 7th. I wore this necklace on October 7th. I don't know if you can see it, but it's a pearl necklace. It belonged to my grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. I only realized on the 10th, a few days later, that I'd worn it on the 7th. It felt like I'd been here before, and this has to stop with me. I get shivers every time I talk about it, because I'm not the only one who feels this connection, who feels that this needs to stop. And the only way to really stop it is not more Holocaust education—we've seen that that doesn't help. It's changing ourselves. We have to change something in us. Lio • 40:16 There you go. Can you take your diagram off? We'll go back to it, but it's spotlighting that. I think this is really the most salient point. Education isn't doing it, because we're educating ourselves about the wrong things. We both grew up on the stories—probably the same stories you did. What they tell us in school, the tours you go on: somehow there's always this victim mentality, pride that we survived, and all that. But there's never a real explanation for it, a real reason. When we started to explore it scientifically and rigorously—really looking at what's going on and the patterns emerging from history—it looked like a different story. The enemy the Jews are supposed to lead the charge against is the enemy inside each and every one of us. That's the— Yonit • 41:24 That's why I feel the diagram I showed is the journey each one of us needs to go through as individuals in order to come out the other side as sovereign individuals, and embody all that we're talking about. Embody this new way of being. That's what I'm calling the 21st-century Jew. Seth • 41:50 So go back to the—when a person is somehow—and I remember when this happened in my life. I always felt that my fear, all these horrible things, were always about to get me. I couldn't eat. I remember that time; everything was affected. But when you finally say, “That's it. I'm going to turn around. I'm going to look him in the eye. I'm going to grab my fear by the throat and stare it in the face. What's the worst that could happen?” Once you get to that point, where you're at your lowest, you're dead inside, and you're still alive, it's like, okay. Now take us to step three. Yonit • 42:33 Exactly. Let's go to the reframe. Hell of a thing, really. Number three is the reframe. Once you're done with the descent—and of course it says here this is a spiral, not linear—after the descent there's a void, and you need to start telling yourself a new story, a new narrative. That's the reframe: seeing reality with new eyes. We were right all along, understanding why our ancestors were so adamant about the Holocaust. I used to tell my mom, “Stop it. It's not relevant anymore. Quit it. I can't hear it anymore.” And now I find myself saying the same thing to my son: “Give up.” But this is the re-narration of the fact that we're part of a people. You're not only an individual. You're slowly finding your new identity. And number four—I said the descent is the hardest, but actually— Lio • 43:51 —number four is pretty hard, so we need to readjust the graph. Yonit • 43:59 The entire journey is hard, let's be frank. The surrender is when you're releasing the illusion of safety. This is actually when you start believing in a higher force, if you don't already. For me, it happened in the 12-day war with Iran, when I suddenly understood that I have no control over what happens to me. Just like October 7th, I had no control over whether I lived or died, not really. Take a right, take a left—it was all a matter of luck. The same thing with missiles falling from above. Understanding that you need to let go and surrender to what is, and your role in all this, is like the threshold of understanding everything we're talking about: understanding co-creation, understanding that you're part of something larger. You have to go through that in order to get to sovereignty. You can only stand on your own two feet and feel safe doing so if you know you have backing, that you have God on your side. At the end of the day, we're mortal beings, and it's scary out here. If you don't have anything to cling to, it's very scary. You can't reach that higher state if you don't understand that you're a co-creator. Lio • 45:41 I want to ask you about that, because you live in Israel and I live in Israel now, and I see—and I think a lot of Jews are looking at Israel now, as we're about to enter an election—that there's a chunk of the population. I don't think it's big enough to take control of the country, but I'm surprised to hear a significant part of the population remove themselves from any association with that foundation. Yonit • 46:14 The foundation being, sorry? Lio • 46:15 The Jewish foundation. Yonit • 46:16 Okay. Lio • 46:17 Even if you... As you said— Yonit • 46:19 You mean they don't identify as Jewish? Is that what you mean? Lio • 46:22 No, they'll say, “I'm Jewish,” but they don't subscribe to any of the ideas. Even talking about a force, or a governing set of forces, is something they're not able to do, let alone acknowledging the system that, like it or not, kept the Jewish people in the game for 3,000 years. You can object to it, call the people radical or other derogatory terms, but that's what got us here. To eliminate all of that and say, “No, I'm an individual cosmopolitan”—you've been alive for 50 years. Yonit • 46:56 That's the surrender: understanding that there is that force. Lio • 47:02 So I'm asking: if there's one point we can get out of this conversation—and I feel like there are many—how do we help Jews who still feel the— Yonit • 47:14 You can't push someone that doesn't want to be pushed. Lio • 47:16 No, I'm not pushing. I'm saying that if they happen to hear this conversation in the background, I want something to get into their heads that says: A, you can't get away from your Jewishness. That's an interesting byproduct of being Jewish, because they'll find you, as we saw. I still hear people saying, “What are you talking about?” even though they told you right to your face. So A, you're part of it; you can't get out of it. And it plays an enormously important role in who you are and in defining our future. You have to take the next step, but you can't take it in midair. What are you going to fall onto? When you pull away everything, when you take away everything, what are you left with? A person will always fall. What are you falling into? A good party you went to one time? The fact that you can eat whatever you want? I'm just— Yonit • 48:20 If you'd asked me this question even a year ago, my answer would not have been “the Creator.” There's a lot of cynicism around this, especially in the age we're living in, with all the science and everything. But I can say that science helped me, because we're living in such an amazing age, and there's more and more scientific proof, as I see it, of the existence of an entity—even if it's not tangible and all of that. On the path I went through, I didn't believe in it, but I felt it. I couldn't ignore the fact that I felt it. Stage by stage, I felt it, whether viscerally or just as something that was annoying me. I know it's out there. But I think if you let go of the cynicism, if you reach a point of no return—I couldn't return to my old life; it's gone—then... That goes back to what I was saying: you can't push someone into it. They need to go through the journey they need to go through. You know this, I'm sure. Lio • 49:48 Free choice and all that. Yonit • 49:49 They need to. And there will be those who are left behind. There will be those— Lio • 49:57 The good news is that, if you know—we spend a lot of time reading the texts—and just like the law of conservation of energy, no one is really left behind. There's an order, a sequence of events. In spirituality, Kabbalists say there's no time and space. It's always in parallel. When you go to the higher place, as we said, the concept of time as we understand it doesn't exist. What exists in spirituality is only the changing of states. That's what counts. A state can take a thousand years or a second; it doesn't matter. Yonit • 50:37 Exactly. And that's when you understand your emotions: what are these emotions, what's coming out— Lio • 50:41 Hold on, Seth, just one thing on top of what Yonit said about the Creator. This is a process we've been talking about and going through ourselves. I grew up in a super-secular house in North Tel Aviv, with a very cynical attitude toward this thing called the Creator. It was sort of looking down on people: “Oh, you need to believe in the Creator. You don't have a brain.” Over time, the more you learn, the more you understand we're feeling creatures, and the mind is the last to catch on. All the stories the mind tells itself are fine; they're your stories. But the Creator and those forces are outside and above these things. Ultimately, this ties into your puzzle: if you want to reach sovereignty, sovereignty means you will never, on this level, have proof of the Creator. You cannot have it, because it would immediately cancel your being. It's like holding a candle in front of the sun; it cancels it out. Yonit • 51:53 That goes back to walking the walk or talking the talk. Lio • 51:56 Exactly. That's why the Creator has to stay concealed. The word olam comes from ha'alama, concealment. We live in a world of concealment—five degrees of concealment, in fact—precisely so we can exist and have this conversation about the Creator as if He doesn't exist, to allow us a place of free choice. I just wanted to add that to your puzzle of sovereignty. Yonit • 52:17 I agree. Seth • 52:18 Yonit, I'm sure Lio is feeling the same thing. There's something incredible about the quality of your soul, or just this whole thing. It's very beautiful and real. The process you're describing before our eyes is a process that many people in the world have gone through, and you've done it in a way that really encapsulates it. You're able to communicate it so clearly. When I zoom out and see this whole thing, I want to take your experience and use it to give us a running start into where this is going. Let's go back, say, 200,000 years. Our ancestors climbed out of trees and lived almost like animals, perhaps more sophisticated and using tools. Eventually we get religion or something; there's some kind of divine revelation. This group—let's talk about the Jews, with Abraham in ancient Babylon—develops language, the sailboat, farming, and starts going through all these things. Eventually, through the Temples and all that, we have religion. This savage, animalistic person from a couple hundred thousand years ago becomes a refined person with morals, ethics, laws, and all these things. Then fast-forward. It's like a hockey-stick curve, this exponential growth in the development of consciousness. Then we leave religion altogether and enter secularization: “I'm not going to believe in hocus-pocus anymore. I want science. Science is my God.” Now, if we take that whole process—even billions of years, but let's say 200,000—and compress it, imagine the whole thing taking place inside a person. “I believed in this, but now I need proof.” We had religion, then science, and now we need the next thing, where it all comes together. The process you've been through is this inner process a person needs to go through, that the soul needs to go through, from a primitive understanding of who they are, the world they exist in, and the force that's managing them, to an intimate understanding of how we all fit together. It's not blindly believing in hocus-pocus. And it's not something detached from emotions in a laboratory. All these things converge: not the old religion of Poland or wherever, and not the cold science of a laboratory detached from the heart. What I'm hearing from your story is this refinement of the soul until all these things come together. What we're interested in is: how the hell do we do this without another October 7th? How does it happen without— Yonit • 55:40 I think it's going to happen to each one of us individually. If we're talking about the diaspora, there will be pogroms. There will be more and more events that push each one of us out of our comfort zone and into discomfort. This, too, is going to be by design. I believe we're headed for another Holocaust and a world war. It's inevitable as far as I'm concerned. I'm sorry; I don't want to ruin— Lio • 56:14 We're already in the midst of a world war. Yonit • 56:17 I agree. Lio • 56:18 And the Holocaust will not necessarily take the shape of Jews. Yonit • 56:21 Not in the same shape. Lio • 56:22 Jews on trains to camps. No. Yonit • 56:24 Of course not. But it's already very unsafe for Jews anywhere in the diaspora. Lio • 56:30 Absolutely. Yonit • 56:31 If we're talking about Islamists, they're not going anywhere. All these thoughts of deportation—I don't believe Europeans or Americans will be able to do that. By the way, they've been preparing for this for decades; they're not going to give up. We've seen this play out already with socialism and all of that, so we know where it's going. To your point, all these events will push us so far into discomfort that we won't have a choice. That's why I feel it's by design. I had it on October 7th, and many others did. Those who haven't will join as the events progress, as we reach the tipping point. I have another graph, if you want, about the tipping point. I need to open it. But that's it: the acceleration is coming. It's here. We're living it already. I'm opening it up. Seth • 57:36 We want to figure out whether it's possible—like you said, it may be inevitable that this war, this next Holocaust, will come—but we're trying to figure out how to do it in the least painful way possible, in the most conscious way possible. That's our whole thing. Yonit • 57:57 I don't think it's possible at this point. You guys are talking about how you evolved over time in a relatively comfortable way. Most of us don't do it that way. We have a kensho moment, and that's the tipping point. The tipping point I talk about in this graph is how we've come here over the past few years and the acceleration of events. What we're seeing now is that we're between AI and the tipping point. That's where we are. Every day, multiple times a day, you see more events happening, not only to Jews, but everywhere. Everything is collapsing. We need to decide whether the collapse is going to come full circle or whether there's going to be a breakthrough. I believe there will be a split. Some will go to the breakthrough, and others will collapse. That collapse can show up in different ways: assimilation—meaning you're not Jewish anymore—you might die, or it might be a Holocaust in whatever form that takes. Or there's the breakthrough. What is this? Are you seeing the other slide? Seth • 59:22 Yes. Yonit • 59:23 The return. The return to sovereignty, if you really understand— Lio • 59:27 No, no. Yonit • 59:28 You're not seeing it. Lio • 59:28 No, we're still on the acceleration. Yonit • 59:31 Anyway, it's the other graph showing how to become sovereign. When you become sovereign, you have safety. You can provide for yourself. You're not dependent on everything else, because you understand the abundance we're talking about. You bring that reality to yourself. That's what I'm talking about as the 21st-century Jew. What I'm working toward is getting this across to as many people as possible and helping them transition through that journey, along with healers and people who can facilitate it. It's an undertaking, but it's already happening on a grand scale. Not only to Jews, again, please. Lio • 01:00:17 Can I ask you something? You describe a lot of things, and if someone listening says, “Okay, I don't want to wait for another trauma. I feel it's coming close, and I don't know when the next opportunity will be. Maybe I'm not going to be around. I want to do something.” What now? Do I start going to therapy, seeing healers, doing yoga circles? What's the story? What do you tell such a person? Yonit • 01:00:55 At the end of the day, it's a personal journey. It's so multifaceted, and like I said, it's also a spiral. There's no one-size-fits-all. Going back to Abby, we're looking to help the community she and Sarah have opened, of thousands of—at this point, at least—American Jews, whom we hope to help through this transition. I believe this will eventually grow to all of world Jewry, including Israel, because let's be frank, the Tel Avivians here still have the same problem. We're all individuals thinking only of ourselves and not understanding the collective mission. Lio • 01:01:48 That's the point I want us to get to. I think everything you've talked about today—the cause of all the suffering and the key to the solution—revolves around that point. There's a force inside each and every one of us, even good people, especially good people. I can wake up every morning thinking, “I love everybody,” but if I never actually try to love everybody, I'll never discover that there's a force in me that won't let me love everybody more than I love myself. And yet the greatest rule in the Torah is “Love the other as you love yourself.” That's what you need to do. But you can't do it on your own. You can't do it alone. Yonit • 01:02:35 No, that's where community comes in. Lio • 01:02:38 Exactly. It's impossible to fight your ego by yourself. There's an allegory about the ego—not the Freudian ego, the Kabbalistic ego—as a thief in the market. Everybody's running after the thief, yelling, “Thief! Thief!” And the thief joins them, running and yelling, “Thief! Thief!” You can never catch it. You can never catch yourself. You can only catch yourself when you have a group of like-minded people who are also interested in finding that thief. We can help each other. Everybody can become a mirror for you. You can see, “Oh, that flaw I see—that's in me. That resistance is in me. That anger is in me. That fear is in me.” That's the way to do it. Yonit • 01:03:21 That's tikkun olam. Lio • 01:03:23 Listen, for some reason, some Jews think tikkun olam means giving money to AIPAC and then sending it off to someone in Europe. This is the only correction that needs to happen. The only thing. I agree. You talked about it in the clip at the very beginning. Kabbalists talk about it. Philosophers talk about it. We haven't invented anything. The reason we reduce everything to Kabbalah, by the way, is that all philosophy comes from Kabbalah. Greek philosophy came from Kabbalists; it just didn't have a name for it. All future incarnations are a version of that. In most cases, it's— Yonit • 01:03:58 It's even a translation. It's the same message, just a New Age translation. And I even call myself a translator: I translate it into short-form video. Lio • 01:04:08 Exactly. It's a translation. But we want to remind people not to lose sight of the actual work they need to do. Don't let the translation— Yonit • 01:04:16 That work is much, much deeper than that. You can't absorb it in a three-minute video, for sure. Again, that's where community comes in. But there's no easy answer to your question, because it's so personal. We're all here on our own journey. I know how big that sounds, but it is that big. We are an entire world in one person, and we all have a mission. I suddenly understood my mission during these past three years. I didn't even want to take it, because the call at the beginning was to fight antisemitism. I thought, “What? That's too big. No, thank you!” It took me a long time to accept it. Even now, I'm thinking, “How did I get to defining what the 21st-century Jew is?” What I'm saying is: accept the call, accept the mission. Accept that you, as an individual—each one of you watching right now—are so special that you can't even fathom it. Sometimes I catch myself and think, “Really? That's what my life is?” Going back to understanding who we are, even sitting and meditating, understanding how my mind works and how my heart works and how they work together, that coherence is out there in so many forms of modern life. This might be the first time I'm talking about this live in this way, but it's a daily struggle, a daily optimization, a daily alignment. That's the work. The work is freaking hard. There's no— Seth • 01:06:13 We have to have a community around us. It's impossible to manage it on our own. Yonit • 01:06:20 I will say that I've been isolated myself, and I know that's also by design. Everyone who goes through this dark night of the soul, who goes through this journey, needs to be isolated just so they can hear themselves, understand who they really are. Not as a human being, but, “Who am I? What are my likes? What are my dislikes?” You need to put people and people's voices aside to be able to hear yourself. And that scares a lot of people. Seth • 01:06:49 Is that number two? Yonit • 01:06:50 Where is that? Seth • 01:06:51 Is that number two? Yonit • 01:06:53 Yeah. But like I said, it's a spiral. Seth • 01:06:57 I come back to it all the time. It's like a wheel spinning forward. Sometimes it's going down and then it's going back up, but it's always going forward. Exactly. Yonit • 01:07:11 You know how many times I catch myself thinking, “I'm here again? How am I here again? Didn't I solve this?” But of course, you never come back to the same river twice. You're always different. Seth • 01:07:23 Early in my spiritual journey, when I was in my early twenties, I tried being religious. I remember opening the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, seeing all the rules, and saying to the rabbi, “Why do we have to sleep? If this is what we're supposed to do, why do we have to eat and sleep? Why don't we just do it 24/7?” But part of the design is that even Rosh Hashanah is the head of the changes, and there's also the day and the month. There are these built-in resets every time. Yonit • 01:07:58 Habits that remind you, align you, bring you back to—and that's the Torah. I haven't read it. I'm not a philosopher in any way, but I understand that it was the guidance we received on how to evolve, how to elevate, how to— Lio • 01:08:18 And when did we receive it? When we were as one man in one heart. That was the condition for receiving it. It's the only time it appears in the Bible. Yonit, I feel like we could sit here for three hours. I don't know how much time you blocked for us, but we have to end at some point. Seth • 01:08:39 This has been very tender and very beautiful. I really enjoyed getting to know you and hearing about your journey. Lio • 01:08:46 Yeah, and I want to say that you're definitely not alone in your search. Yonit • 01:08:53 I know. That's why I know what I'm saying isn't falling on deaf ears. More and more people understand this and feel this, even if they don't have the language for it. But it's not all spiritual; there's a lot of grounding to it. And we're all there. Lio • 01:09:12 I think we stopped calling it spiritual. It's all one thing. In the beginning, when you start your search, you think there's a material world and a spiritual world, and all these divisions. Eventually, there's only oneness. So either you're moving toward oneness or you're moving away from it. Either you equate your form with the Creator—the form of love and bestowal, the purpose of everything, equivalence of form, resonance, coherence, as you call it; it's the same—or you move away from it, more into yourself. Yonit • 01:09:45 So again— Lio • 01:09:47 On paper, it's very easy to solve. You need to do it day in and day out. I wanted to ask you to read something for us. We ask all our guests to read. This is a longer piece, but I think we can do it. Take your time and read it. I felt it was so apropos. I was looking through a ton of quotes, and you've said so many beautiful things. I wanted to share something that supports what you've said and tries to rephrase it. It's in the chat. Seth • 01:10:14 All the quotes are from sages. Yonit • 01:10:17 Okay. Lio • 01:10:20 It's two pieces because it was too long for the chat. There it is. Seth • 01:10:24 And where does it come from, Lio? Lio • 01:10:26 The top says it. It's from Rabash, Rabbi Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag, son of Yehuda Ashlag, Baal HaSulam, who wrote the commentary on the Book of Zohar and Talmud Eser Sefirot, on the Tree of Life by the Ari. The preeminent, most scientific Kabbalist I know. You might have heard of him; if you haven't, it would be a great experience to read him. This is by his son, who talks more about inner work. Baal HaSulam talks about the system from above down, also using a lot of drawings, like you. His son talks about the work we have to do from below up. The article is called “What Is 'Every Blade of Grass...'” Yes, go ahead. Yonit • 01:11:10 “What Is 'Every Blade of Grass Has an Appointee Above It Who Strikes It and Tells It, Grow!' in the Work?” Lio • 01:11:21 Yeah. What does that mean in the inner work? Yonit • 01:11:26 So the question—the answer is— Lio • 01:11:28 That's the name of the article. Yeah. Yonit • 01:11:30 “The question is, why do we do things that we do not like? Who forces us to exert? The answer is that there is an appointee above with a cane in his hand who beats the created beings with torments. And since they cannot tolerate the suffering, it causes them to leave the rest and go to work. It follows that this work is called compulsory work, where a person is compelled to go to work by the suffering that the appointee beats. Therefore, he acts and tells it, 'Grow!' Otherwise, when a person is born, he would lie in his place and there would be no development at all, both physically and emotionally. Hence, this cane in the hand of the appointee who beats the creatures causes the development of the creatures.” Interesting. Lio • 01:12:34 There's the next part? Yonit • 01:12:35 Oh, sorry. Go ahead. “It follows that the cause of receiving the pleasures, which comes by the development of creation, is because there is an appointee above who strikes and says, 'Grow!' Meaning that each and every blade of grass will grow. It follows that people in the world are as blades of grass, and each blade must grow.” Yes, when you talk about nature, it's always evolving. On October 7th, I had a friend in one of the kibbutzim. She saw all the destruction outside her window, and on the right she saw a bird chirping, the sky was blue, and nature continued as if nothing had happened. That reminded me of this. Growth is never-ending. It doesn't stop because of— it doesn't stop, period. If you don't grow when you need to, you'll be forced to, because it doesn't stop. I think that's what we're being propelled to do, even if we don't want to. You were asking, Lio, I think? Or was it Seth? We'll all either grow or wither and die. It's nature. Lio • 01:14:01 Wow, Yonit, I choose growth. This is great. We also choose growth. The good news is that everyone eventually will come to it, as we said, but there's a path of suffering and a path of— Yonit • 01:14:16 —Torah, or at least... Hey, it's going to be a wild ride, and it's going to be really interesting. Lio • 01:14:24 It is. We're really happy to have people like you in the forefront with us. For a long time, we also felt we were alone, just standing on a mountain and crying out to everybody, and nobody was listening. I think a lot of people are doing the inner work quietly still, but they'll come forth. We're convinced. This general strengthening, as we call it, has good people going back and finding a connection to the Jewish bedrock. It's all good. It doesn't matter how; make it your own. The important thing— Yonit • 01:14:58 Their DNA is calling them in. Lio • 01:15:00 Exactly. That's why we're having these conversations, and why we're so blessed to have Yonit Keidar with us. I've linked to her Instagram page, and I've also put the link to her video testimony of her experience. Go listen to that. It's heartbreaking and beautiful, now that you've met her. Thank you so much, Yonit. It was amazing meeting you. I feel really happy. Like, share, and comment on this video. More people need to hear these conversations. More people need to understand that there's a graph, there's a point, and you're not alone. This is TheJewFunction.