ACHIEVING SPIRITUAL ECSTASY - MUSSAR Iggeret HaRAMBAN (15)

0:12We're back in Aventura for our series. Today's shiur will be for Shmuel ben Simcha Hanna, also for David ben Esriah, Doris bat Jorah, Levana bat Sara, Rabbi Efraim ben Shulamit, Rabbanit Sara bat Anat, So the Ramban, Baruch Hashem, has led us so far over these last several weeks, last couple of months already now, in his special letter. There's actually a book that is a compilation of many letters of the sages, that's a very well-known book. But I believe the most famous letter of all is the one that we're dealing with, the one that we have been toiling over in the last couple of months, simply because the Ramban is one of the Rishonim.

1:40one of the greats that we had over the last thousand years, that kol kulo haya Torah. He was completely enamored with Torah. From morning to night, he delved into Torah. Anyone in this generation that would attempt to do what the Ramban did as far as writing commentary over the entire Chumash, over the entire Gemara, Halachot, deal with Kabbalah, probably have to live or maybe someone enabled maybe like six, seven thousand years just to achieve part of what he did. It was simply not the same being anymore. We don't have that capacity anymore. The neshamot, with each gilgul that a person gets reincarnated by, b'chasdei Hashem, are lesser than the one before, and the reason why is because when a person came to this world and all of our neshamot were at Mount Sinai, HaKadosh Baruch Hu had us at the highest level that Am Yisrael ever was. The highest level that humanity was originally with Adam HaRishon. But then the soul, the original soul, split into the many souls that we have today. But

3:08Each one of us that was at Mount Sinai had an opportunity to do teshuva. Many did not. Many actually died in Egypt. Some died in the desert. And some died along the way without doing teshuva. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu, in His mercy, if the sins were not too grave, meaning if it wasn't something like Chilul Shabbat or being with a married woman or one of the things that a person loses their Olam Haba over, if they sin, with the many sins that all of us do on a regular basis without even noticing anymore that it's even a sin, then HaKadosh Baruch Hu in His mercy reincarnates that soul and brings it back into the world and gives it another opportunity. But only this time it's a lesser soul. And the reason why is because there's no point of bringing back the entire soul. being with a married woman or one of the things that a person loses their Olam HaBa over, if they sin, with the many sins that all of us do on a regular basis without even noticing anymore that it's even a sin, then HaKadosh Baruch Hu in His mercy reincarnates that soul and brings it back into the world and gives it another opportunity. But only this time it's a lesser soul. And the reason why is because there's no point of bringing back the entire soul. if, let's say, for example, you have a complete soul and part of it kept Shabbat, part of it kept Taharat HaMishpacha, kept this, kept that, kept a bunch of things, it did good, but it has, let's say, a little bit of stealing. So He's not going to bring the Shabbat part of the soul and the Taharat HaMishpacha part of the soul and the Chesed part of it. He's not going to give that back. Why? Because then it's giving an opportunity to sin again.

4:30So by His mercy, He splits the soul. The soul is like fire that can be split endlessly. If you take one candle and you light a second candle, the first candle, after you light the second candle and even the third and the fourth and the fifth and even a hundred candles, the original fire is undisturbed. It's the same exact size fire, even though it lit a hundred more fires that are the same size as it or even bigger. Same thing with the soul. You could split it into an infinite amount of pieces, but in essence, the best part is left behind. Why? Because it already finished its tikkun. Meaning that this generation that we have right now before Mashiach, including myself, don't worry, we're the worst of the worst. We don't have the capacity that the Rishonim had 900 years ago, or that the Tannaim had 2,500 years ago. or that the generation of David HaMelech had 3,000 years ago, or needless to say, the generation of Dor HaDe'ah, the generation of pure knowledge of Mount Sinai, had. But at the same token, this is also the reason why HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives us so much assistance in order to get close to Him, so much assistance in order for us to do teshuvah, so many more chances

5:55Where in previous generations, if you wanted to go learn Torah, you'd have to travel to another city. And there weren't trains, cars, or planes in those days. You'd have to literally go on a donkey, or if you were rich, a horse, and travel for the next six months. Why? Because there's a shiur. Six months' journey from here. You go to the shiur, you stay in the shiur for two, three, four, five, six days. It's like a seminar. Finished, you go back home. You traveled six months there, six months back, for three days of Torah. That's how hard it was. You wanted to read a book, a new sefer came out, you had to go find somebody that was selling it. It wasn't artscroll.com back then, you could just go on, tick, tick, tick, it arrives at your house three days later. It wasn't amazon.com, tick, tick, tick, prime, next day. In some parts of the country, I think it's the same day now. No more. No more. Back then, you had to find somebody who had the book. Books back then were handwritten, so you couldn't mass produce millions of copies and just have them in reserves in warehouses just in case somebody decided to read a book once again. The author had to handwrite every book over and over and over again.

7:13And it was very expensive and a lot of work. Only wealthy people really had the books. So you had to go find the wealthy person who had the book and plead with him to please let you stay in his house for the six to twelve months it would take you to read the book. And then, after you finish, go back home. Now, you're not going home every day. Why? This guy lives two cities away, three cities away, six months away, a year away. You have to go to learn this book. You go to his house. If he agrees, you stay at his house for a year. You read the book. You read a couple of books over there, whatever he has. Finish. Thank you very much. Go back home. Honey, I finished the book. You traveled a year in both distances in order to study for a year. What? To learn Torah. Today, what do we have? You have an endless amount of Torah available at your fingertips. All of the books that everyone literally was willing to die for, you could just press a button and it arrives at your house in a few days. In many cases, you could even go on the internet and just read them online for free. Better yet, you have lectures. Lectures in every city. Different Rabbanim giving lectures. Dying to give you the information.

8:28But if that's not enough, since we have such a lowly generation, we even have inventions where you could literally watch this lecture and every other lecture whenever you feel like it. Meaning, if you don't feel like showing up today, you can watch it tomorrow. Why? There's YouTube, there's Be'ezrat Hashem.com, there's TorahAnytime, there's all these different websites that have an endless amount of Torah available to you whenever you feel like it. ...so because we are at such a low level, Hashem matched the generation, matched the technology, matched the world to the generation. Meaning that no one can go up to Shamayim and say, "Oh, I didn't know. Oh, it was too hard for me." What, too hard for you? They had to beg for the first guy that's already been in the house for a year to leave already so they could read the book and take turns. You have it in your hands, you didn't want to do it? Well, you had it harder than him? They literally ate carobs. People today don't even know what that is. They ate carobs every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's a dry fruit that, by the time you finish it, you have no teeth. By the time you digested it, you have no stomach either. That's how they survived. That was Am Yisrael HaKedoshim. That's your grandparents.

9:45When a person abandons Judaism today, what is he really doing? He's taking 3,300 years of people that have sacrificed everything in their life just so you could live. So a person that abandons it pretty much says, oh, 3,300 years of work for me to survive? Eh, who cares? I'm going to do my own thing. HaKadosh Baruch Hu matched the generation to the knowledge. And you have, Baruch Hashem, a lot of information available at our fingertips. But unfortunately, I'm sorry to tell you that in my 20 years of being in the business world, and about maybe 5, 6, 7 years of teaching Torah, I can count the number of hard workers that I've met on one hand. I've met thousands of people. I've probably met more people than most people. I've probably met more people than all of you combined.

10:45Business and Torah and so on—hard workers are almost impossible to find. Why? Because people are lazy. People want convenience. People want everything to show up at their door; they want to be spoon-fed. And even if it's spoon-fed, why is it a plastic spoon? Why can't it be a metal spoon? Oh, it's a metal spoon? Why is it just regular metal? It's gold? Gold? That's the gold? I only eat with gold spoons. What, it's white gold? Nah, I like yellow gold. People want things a certain way. If it doesn't fit the right way, if the air pressure is not right, if the temperature is not right, if the weather is not right, if my right shoe doesn't fit right, I'm not doing it. For that, Rabbi, is what Hashem will get upset about. Why? Because He literally reconstructs the world on a daily basis, just to accommodate us in order to make it even easier for us to serve Him, even though technically we're obligated, even under worse conditions. Anyone that reads some of the books of the tzaddikim,

12:02They lived through the Holocaust or lived through the last several hundred years and how much sacrifice they made just to serve Hashem for the smallest mitzvah, things that we don't even think are a big deal. Whether it's the mitzvah of tzitzit, kashrut, or whatever you want, pick a mitzvah. They literally sacrificed their lives to do it. Today, we're like, I don't feel like doing it. It's not for me. For that, Rabotai, HaKadosh Baruch Hu punishes us. severely. Why? Because He made it so easy for us that, in essence, when we don't do it, it's obvious we don't want to. It's not because it's hard. All the people that say, "No, no, it's so hard to be religious today," are just lying to themselves. This is the easiest generation in the world, the easiest generation in history to be Jewish and... Easiest generation in history. What are you going to say? Oh, there are a lot of tests? There have always been a lot of tests. You look at the book of Yeshayahu, Yeshayahu is rebuking the people, telling them about immodesty. The same immodesty that we have today, they had back then, just in different ways. Promiscuity, they had back then also. Resha'im, they had back then also. False speakers, they had back then also. Nothing has changed, nothing new under the sun. But convenience? Nothing like today. Back then, if you wanted to go to the bathroom, you had to leave the town.

13:21Why? Because you couldn't have a bathroom in your house. There was a hole in the ground. There was no plumbing. You'd have to leave the town, go out of town. There's a hole in the ground that the entire community uses. You go relieve yourself. After you vomit a few times from the stench, you go back home. What if you have a stomach ache? Go back there. Stay there for a week. Today, you can sleep in your bathroom, it's so clean. You can sleep in your bathroom, it's so clean. Some people's bathrooms are much nicer than their Olam HaBa. Why? Spend $200,000 on their bathrooms. You ask them, why don't you use that $200,000 to help Am Yisrael do teshuva? Oh, that's expensive. Oh, for the bathroom, you're going to spend $200,000. But to help Am Yisrael do teshuva, maybe $200. Your Olam HaBa will be just like that. $200. Why? That's the world. ...the way it works. That's me; that can get me done, Rabotai. In the old days, if you wanted to simply find kosher meat, you had to go find a few partners. Why? Because the average person couldn't afford to buy a cow, so you had to find a few partners to come up with the money to go buy a cow, then slaughter the cow in hopes that the shechita is kosher. Then...

14:42salt the cow, take all the skin off, then actually salt it, take all the blood out, and go through the whole process. By the time you ate it, you're not even hungry anymore. It's a week late already. By the time you want to eat it, ooh, ah. But you couldn't eat it every day. If you wanted to eat a burger every day, good luck. You lived in the wrong generation. Back then, if you ate meat once a month, you were rich. Today, You can have a burger five times a day if you want. You don't even know whether it's kosher or not. It just says kosher on the box. Like today, or yesterday, somebody sent me a picture. Kosher cheese. Ingredients? Bacon. I'll show you a picture. Kosher cheese. It says kosher. Kosher. Ingredients? Bacon. I'll show you more. People think, "Oh, it's kosher, that's kosher, right?" Doesn't mean it's kosher. It means that somebody got paid and it's kosher. You have to double-check. But it's easy. If you want to get cheese that's kosher, you don't have to go milk a cow. You go to a store, go to a kosher store, hopefully the owner has Yirat Shamayim, make sure that he buys from legitimate suppliers. You could even get Chalav Yisrael in your local store. In most cities in America, most cities in Europe, most cities in the world.

16:07Back then, you had to actually milk the cow, do the whole process of pasteurizing the milk, and so on and so forth, until you got the cheese. It was like a dish. "Honey, happy birthday. That's your gift. Took me a year to do it," they meant. That's the way it was. Kosher food was hard to get back then. That's why people were skinny. Today, everybody's fat, myself included. It's a reality. Reality books available, Torah available, food available, shuls on every corner. If you move to a Jewish community, every corner has a shul. Kosher shuls are a different story, but you have a shul. You have a building, you have a structure. There are so many shuls; there are plenty of empty ones where there's nothing there. They don't have enough Jews to fill up the shuls. Why? Because people like buildings, they don't necessarily like Jews, but they like buildings. So I... We buy buildings, and we buy more buildings, and more buildings, and more buildings. Why? Because we want our name on the building. What about the Torah that's in the building? Ah, not so much. I just want the people to know that I donated to the Beit Knesset. Yeah, but there's nobody in the Beit Knesset. Nobody needs to know that. Nobody needs to know. Don't tell anybody. Just tell people that I donated to the Beit Knesset. I donated a Sefer Torah. Yeah, but nobody's using the Sefer Torah. Because the Beit Knesset has 18 of them. How many can you possibly use in a week? One, two, three max.

17:33That's what they say. Even a Sefer Torah has to have mazal. There's a saying, even a Sefer Torah has to have mazal. Why? Because there are so many Sifrei Torah that people have donated that there's more Sifrei Torah than we need. The scrolls that you have, Baruch Hashem, in these places, they're all worth 30, 40, 50, 100,000 dollars. A lot of money. People want to do a big mitzvah, so they donate a Sefer Torah. Yeah, but the Beit Knesset already has five of them. They can't use all of them. You can use three at most in one week: Monday, Thursday, and Shabbat. That's it. Let's use a different Sefer Torah. But there's such an oversupply of Sifrei Torah that there's a saying: even a Sefer Torah has to have mazal. Why? It has to be the lucky one that the rabbi picks to use this week. It has to be lucky. There's some Batei Knesset... In New York and other places, they literally have a collection of 150, 200 Sifrei Torah. You're talking about millions and millions of dollars sitting in a basement. But every year they have to open them at least once so the Sifrei Torah don't go bad, don't get ruined. But they can't use them. Why? Even if you use them three times a week, it's not enough.

18:45You tell people, why don't you use that $60,000, $70,000 in helping Am Yisrael do teshuva? Nah, not so much. Why? Because you can't see my name on Am Yisrael. You can see my name on the Sefer Torah. I know, I was one of those people. I donated a Sefer Torah. When you don't know anything about Torah, that's what you do. You donate a Sefer Torah. You don't think about whether they need it or not. You think about what sounds good. What sounds good. HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves us so much that even despite our own stupidity, He gives us more chances. He gives us many, many chances. But I promise you that the time is running out and that the train has reached its last stop. Whoever is going to do teshuva is going to do teshuva very soon. Whoever is not going to do teshuva is not going to do teshuva. Whoever is going to continue toiling around and just sugarcoating things and playing around, nothing is going to happen. Nothing will help such a person. People call me all the time. "Oh, can you call my friend?" No. Why not? Because I have a thousand people like you asking me to call their friend or their cousin or their son or their this. Send them a lecture. "Yeah, but he won't watch a two-hour video." If he won't watch a two-hour video, I can't help him. If he's not willing to watch a two-hour video, I can't help him. Why? Because he's not willing to help himself. There's not enough time to go chase people. When I first started doing shiurim, I started at my house.

20:11And the group that I started with, I would call them before the shiur. "You guys are coming?" "Oh, you're coming. Okay." At the shiur, it's 9 o'clock, no one's there. I would call them again. "You guys are coming?" "Okay, you're coming." 9:15, no one's there. "You guys are coming?" I would call them two, three, four times if they didn’t show up. You know how many people I called today? Zero. Why? There's no time. You either want to do teshuva or you don't want to do teshuva. There's no time to chase people. That 15 minutes, I can learn more Torah to help Am Yisrael. The ones that want to help themselves. This, Rabotai, is the situation that we're in because the Mashiach is around the block. We don't have that much time. And we have to understand that HaKadosh Baruch Hu put us in a situation where even though there are many, many tests, there are many, many difficulties, it's relatively a very, very easy world and easy time to be a Jew. Meaning, zeh le'umat zeh bara Elokim. Now, one of the things that people struggle with is that they're spiritually lazy. They want everything to be done for them. So instead of learning, they'll pay somebody else to learn for them. Instead of going, they'll just get somebody else to go. They'll do something else. Everybody wants somebody else to do something for them. But that's not going to cut it. And the reason why, Rabotai, is because HaKadosh Baruch Hu created you so you can do it.

21:37Now, this type of laziness is not just in the spiritual world; it's also in the financial world, in the business world. You see it, you see people. I had a lot of employees, and literally, today, you have to convince people to work hard. Tell them, "Oh, listen, today we're gonna stay here till eight." "Wow, that's a long shift. I've been here since nine o'clock." "Okay, so you're staying an extra three hours. What's the big deal? You get money, no? You get paid, it's not free." "Yeah, but you know, I got the game tonight." I got basketball with my friends. We have a business, a multi-million dollar business. You care about basketball with your friends? That's what you care about? Yeah, you know, nine hours a day, it's a lot. Okay, it's a lot. It's a lot, fool. The point is, people don't want to work. Everyone is looking for convenience. That's why most successful businesses today are businesses of convenience. If you can provide the consumers convenience, you'll succeed. If it's hard to buy from you, if it's hard to figure out what you're even selling, if it's hard to figure out what your product is, if it's hard to figure out how your product works, you've failed before you started.

22:54The term "user-friendly" is a term all of you understand. Why? Because that's what you depend on. You do not use a single product that's not user-friendly. Why? Because there are too many products that are user-friendly. You get a pair of headphones or something, if it's not easy to use, you return it or throw it in the garbage and buy a new one. Why? Because you want it to be easy. Why do I have to press three buttons to turn this darn thing on? No, no, I'm gonna get one with only one button. I'm gonna get one that turns on by itself. I had a student tell me the other day that he has a machine. He has a breathing problem, and when he goes to sleep, he has to put on a machine. Now, Baruch Hashem, these machines are very, very important because a person that has a breathing problem, it's called sleep apnea. If they go to sleep without this machine, they could potentially, chas v'shalom, die. Why? Because if they stop breathing, finished. So they have this machine they put on. Now, in the old days, the machines used to be on pretty much all the time. But then it consumed a lot of electricity. It also had a lot of wear and tear on the machine. Machines didn't last very long. So, the new technology. What's the new technology?

24:14sensors. The second the machine senses that the person stopped breathing, it starts working, meaning the machine doesn't work an extra second it doesn't need to work. Even the machines are lazy! This, Rabotai, is an epidemic, but it's solvable. It's solvable if a person understands that he came to the world to toil. Adam la'amal yulad. In the book of Iyov (Job), we find out the purpose of man. What? Toil. Work hard. You want to succeed in life? You have to work hard. You want to succeed in a spiritual life? You have to work hard. You want to succeed in business? Work hard. Anything that you work hard for is going to have a lot more bracha. You don't work hard? Usually, it's not going to last. And that's one of the things that it's hard for people to get their heads around because they think that, what, if it's spirituality, it should come easy. It's the opposite. If it's real, it's going to take blood, sweat, and tears to achieve. Now, everyone wants to achieve the ultimate level.

25:34What's the ultimate level? The ultimate level is the level that all of the tzaddikim, whom we read about in books, or better yet, on the internet at least, we read about them. They reached these levels where it seemed like they were just angels among men. They had a certain understanding of how the world worked. Despite the fact that there was a massive Holocaust around them, or pogrom, or an inquisition, or they had no money, or there was death or disease, or whatever it was, despite the problems that still exist in the world today, they lived. You see a lot of flame. Rav Shach, zt"l, wrote an entire series of books inside the ghetto during the Holocaust, and That if somebody wanted to write the same type of books today, it would take them 900 years. The amount of knowledge that he had, I mean, the knowledge is already extraordinary. How do you write it and have the attention span to write it when there are literally Jews being killed in the streets? Inside the ghetto, he wrote these books. Today, if it's not quiet enough, no one wants to study. If it's too loud, no one wants to study. Everybody has convenience. What different people.

26:54But yet, we ask ourselves, maybe I'm not willing to work as hard as Rabbi Chaim Ozer, or Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman, or Rabbi Ovadia, and all these big tzaddikim, the Baal HaTanya, the Rambam, the Ramban, all these fantastic names, right? Not working, I'm not willing to do it, but I want what they have, though. I want that peace of mind that they have. I want that comfort. I want that... Goodness, it's inside me that I know everything's gonna be okay. Everything is under control, no matter what is going on and no matter how out of control it looks. And that's what the Iggeret HaRamban has arrived at: achieving spiritual ecstasy. The Ramban has already told us that a person needs to work on himself, make sure to run away from anger, make sure to protect himself from inappropriate speech, and make sure that he treats people appropriately. And now he says, if you do all of these things that we've discussed

28:07the last few months. Then the spirit of God's presence will rest upon you, as will the splendor of His glory. You will live the life of Olam HaBa, the world to come. Now, the Rambam (Maimonides), who preceded the Ramban... Sees that there's a Tehillim, Psalm number 27, where David HaMelech, in verse number four, talks about Olam HaBa. Talks about Olam HaBa and its meaning, that he says that all he ever wants: "Echad sha'alti me'et Hashem, otah avakesh, shivti be'veit Hashem kol yemei chayai." One thing I ask of Hashem that I shall seek: that I dwell in the house of Hashem all the days of my life, to behold the sweetness of Hashem and to contemplate in His sanctuary. So the Rambam writes on this Tehillim in Hilchot Teshuvah, Chapter 8, Halachah number 4, that David HaMelech wants to be in the

29:33place of Hashem, and the house of Hashem is in essence referring to, He's referring to what else is the house of Hashem? But one of the Gedolim in the previous generation, Rav Gifter, Rav Mordechai Gifter, says that Actually, you could also see that this is talking about Olam HaBa. Here, meaning there's Olam HaBa after a person dies, two options: Gehenom and Gan Eden. Oh, the good one that Rav Avigdor Miller is talking about is called Gan Eden. But Rav Gifter is saying no, no, you could also look at it where the Olam HaBa that Rav Avigdor Miller is talking about, the house of Hashem that Rav Avigdor Miller is asking in... begging Hashem to allow him inside is actually an Olam HaBa, a heaven in this world. Why? Because he says, I want Hashem, I want to live in Hashem's house all the days of my life. My life being while I'm alive. So how do you live in such a world? How do you live in heaven while you're still alive?

30:59Adam HaRishon lived in a physical heaven, but David HaMelech says, "I want to live in a spiritual heaven. I want to be, regardless of where I am, in a state of ecstasy, a complete understanding of who and what's going on, what's my purpose in life, that Hashem is running the world despite the problems." Because anyone that read a little bit about David HaMelech knows that David HaMelech never had more than 15 minutes of peace. His whole life, someone was chasing him. Shaul HaMelech chased him and tried to kill him for years. His own son tried to kill him. His enemies tried to kill him. The head of the Beit Din, everybody tried to kill him. Even his own people, when he got older, since they found out that the only way that Hashem is going to build the Beit HaMikdash is after David HaMelech dies, and it's going to be built by his son Shlomo, his own people started praying for David to die. Such is the gratefulness of our nation. God bless them. Nothing's changed. Now, David HaMelech says, despite all of these problems, despite everyone chasing me and trying to kill me and so on and so forth, I'm in a state of ecstasy.

32:18I'm on cloud nine. I'm as happy as can be. Nothing could be better. Yeah, but David, your son just tried to kill you two hours ago. Baruch Hashem. But Shimi ben Geira just cursed you in front of everybody. But your wife was given to somebody else. Baruch Hashem. But everybody's calling you that your son's a mamzer. No, Baruch Hashem. They called you a mamzer. Your father said maybe you're not a son. Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem. Everything is fantastic. Baruch Hashem. And he's starting to think, David, you're okay. David, you need some Xanax maybe. Maybe you lost it. You're okay. David is more than okay. How do we know? Look at what he wrote. Look at the holiness that he wrote. What Kedusha he wrote. What genius is in his words. We're the ones that are sick. David, al-Wawi could be a piece of dust that he walked on once in his life. How could you achieve such a level? Now, the Ramban already told us that in order to achieve such a high level of ecstasy, spiritual ecstasy,

33:36It all depends on self-discipline and the refinement of character. Meaning, we have to be much better than what we are now. Regardless of where you stand now, there is room to improve. How much room? A whole lot. Every one of us. Every one of us has deficiencies. That's why we're here. We're not here because we came to the world to play basketball, and Hashem sent us to the world took the neshama all the way from Kisei HaKavod, millions of light years away. He took the neshama from there all the way over here so you could play with a piece of leather that was made from some pig and throw it into some circle. Yay! Wow! It was worth it for that. Yeah, Hashem is cheering for you. Go! Go, Yaron! You put it in the hoop. It was worth it to go through all the toil, create the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the sun, the moon, the waves, the air, the oxygen. It was worth it for that so you can put the piece of pig inside the hoop. With the Nikes on. Yeah, Yaron! Good job, Yaron. Wow. Wow, Yaron. Hashem is dancing for you. Wow. Hashem is saying, pshh.

34:56I'm finished. I'm finished. Bring Mashiach already. Yaron put the hoop in. Two-pointer. Last second on the clock. Two-pointer. Finished. Three-pointer. Bring two Mashiachs. Bring David and bring Yosef already. He put it in the hoop. Rabotai, the life of an athlete or a celebrity that most people admire is the most miserable life that could ever be lived. How do I know? Number one, I met many of them. I dealt with many of them. I saw their lives. But number two, you could just use your mind and picture this. What do you do as an athlete? What do you do as a celebrity? your whole life as an athlete, which is much more difficult than being a celebrity. A celebrity, all you need to do is just make fun of people on the internet and people like you, and then you become a celebrity, you go on the news. Be an open homosexual, you're on the news. Write some book against the government, you're on the news. Everybody can be a celebrity today. Being an athlete requires a lot of training. That's why, by the way, the best employees are usually athletes, because they know how to work hard at least.

36:10the sad part for an athlete is that he's living a life with a dead end. Why? Since the time he's a kid, he wakes up in the morning, and his parents want to get this kid to go into the NFL, be a football player, or be in the NBA, some basketball player, whatever sport, because they're thinking he's gonna make millions and millions of dollars. So already at a young age, they train him. Already, here's the pigskin, go kid, shoot it, kick it, do something with it, we're waiting for the millions in 15 years from now. so already he has no life; all he has are the hoops, and he's having fun in the beginning. In the beginning, it's fun. Well, he plays with the ball, he throws the ball, kicks the ball, shoots the ball, and everybody says "yay" all the time. He gets a bunch of trophies that no one's going to care about in a year, which they bought from the store for 9.99 but sold to you for a thousand. Everything is good—no, trophy, trophy, trophy, because everyone is aspiring to be an athlete on TV one day. and so after he finishes playing, he watches other people who are playing professionally and starts visualizing himself being one of those people on TV. Little does he know that less than one percent of one percent of the people who are in his shoes ever make it on TV. Even the ones who make it on TV, most of them don't have a very long career, meaning they've trained their whole life for maybe a four-year career.

37:30What do you do after your career? Nothing. You don't know anything else. This is the reason why the average football player declares bankruptcy within three and a half years of retirement. The average basketball player, the same, around four or five years. Hockey players, a little less, but nonetheless, still a disaster. Why? They don't know anything else. And that's assuming they made it. Most people, they go to school, they play, they skip class, they don't, you know, because they're athletes, so the teachers don't care if you skip class, especially if you're good. You're a 16-year-old kid, already 6'6", 6'8", and you run fast? Psst! Kid, you don't need to learn math. You don't need to learn science. You don't need to learn English, even. Just keep throwing the ball, kid. We'll pass the test for you. We'll even give you a few hundred bucks for that. Go buy yourself a suit and pretend like you're important. Go. And that's what happens. They go to college. Free ride. They commit every sin under the sun in the hopes that they're going to be one of the draftees. Thousands of schools. Billions of dollars. 300 people drafted. Yeah, what about the thousands of kids that play? Nothing. Their career is over. Yeah, but he just started. He's 18 years old. Sorry, kid.

38:51You're not good enough. Well, but everybody said I was good. Yeah, you were good for them. For a real league, you're not good enough. 300, 400, 500, at most, picked. The rest of the thousands, tens of thousands, their career ended before it started. Yeah, but I just spent the first 18, 19, 20 years of my life preparing for this. Sorry, kid, you wasted your time. So then they try to pretend like they're going to get a better offer, so they go play in Canada or in China or in some place where there are a bunch of small people, so they look like giants. Pretending like maybe someone's gonna find them because there were a few success stories. In reality, they continue failing in their lives. Most of the people end up living in their past. "I used to be on the football team when I was a kid, and I remember that there were some kids in my grade, some kids on my team, that were really, really truly talented." You know what's the saddest thing in the world? They're over 40 years old, some older, some less. They're still living their high school years from 30 years ago. You see them on the internet. You see them with each other. "Oh, you remember when we played against Tottenville? You remember when we played against Wagner and you scored?" Yeah, that was 25 years ago, buddy.

40:07It's time to grow up. Okay, you threw the ball really well 25 years ago. No one cares. And they start posting the newspaper articles from 25 years ago. By the way, no one reads newspapers anymore. That's why it has to be digital now. But they're still living in the past. Why? Because they never moved on. They don't know anything else. They don't know how to live another life. And even if they made it... They made it to the NFL. They made it to the NHL. They made it to the NBA. Long career even. Ten years. You retired at 35. Now what? You're still a baby. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Oh no, I'll buy buildings. What do you know about buildings? You're lucky if you have any money left. Yeah, but he made $100 million. Yeah, how much does he have when he retired? He has so many cars and so many things that he wasted money on, he has nothing left. Because he thought he was going to continue making $10, $20 million a year, and then eventually he realized, no, this ended. But you can't just stop the budget because you're used to it.

41:15Your life ended at 35. And that's why most of them end up going into serious depressions, drug addictions, and become completely the biggest losers that no one wants to hear about anymore. Why? Because everyone wants to continue living the dream as if they're going to be the next success. The worst thing that a person can do to themselves is waste their time thinking they're going to be a professional athlete. Why? Because all you're doing is, in essence, preparing yourself for failure. Look at all of the biggest success stories. How many of them, and how successful are they really? Even if you look at people like Michael Jordan. Okay, he has money. Does he have a life? No, he doesn't. Look at his life. He has a gambling problem, a drug problem, or some alcohol problem, and he's divorced. If you call that a life, it's better off to go to Gehinnom.

42:15This, rabotai, is a life without HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu has mercy on us. He gave us the Torah. And He said, "Son, you want a life? Learn this Torah. My daughter, you want a life? Learn this Torah." You don't want to? I'm going to make it easy for you, though. You still don't want to? I'll make it even easier for you. You still don't want to? How about this? I'll give you a reward. If you learn this Torah, you'll have spiritual ecstasy. You'll actually be happy as a result. Because it's going to help you fix yourself and remove all of these false desires, all of these traps. And the Ramban says, if a person wants to achieve this, he has to fix himself. He has to remove all of the garbage that's in his mind that's telling him that learning Torah should be done whenever you get a chance. Learning Torah should be secondary in your life. Learning Torah is not necessarily a priority. Learning Torah is just something you do.

43:19it's not the cure. There has to be something better. And that's why the Ramban explains that in order to refine a person's character, it can only be inspired by fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Meaning, even though you know it's good, You've seen the results of the Gedolim in the Torah world. You've seen the results of the Gedolim in the fake world. You look at a person like Michael Jordan. I think he's like the most successful athlete ever, probably. You look at his life: divorce, who knows if he even speaks to his kids. A lot of people hate him. that were actually supposed to be his friends. But you see all the stories that people talk about him? Not so much. Steve Jobs, there's plenty of books talking against him. There's a whole movie I was actually on a board of directors of that they talk about, oh yeah, Steve Jobs, genius. But it was a piece of... every curse under the book. Why? That's the way it was. Is anyone crying over him today? Zero people. But then you look, that's the successful people in the fake world. Then you look...

44:34In the Torah world, you have people like Rav Elyashiv. There are people still crying about him today. You have people like Rav Ovadia. I cried about him yesterday. People like Rav Ovadia. You know, if you understand even a little bit about Rav Ovadia, you start crying. We had somebody like this living among us, and we don't have any more? That's enough reason to cry for a week. If you think about the Jewish sages that we had walking among us, look at what they left behind them. Rav Elyashiv left a thousand grandkids. A thousand grandkids. Countless books, countless lives that he affected in a positive way. Countless homes were built as a result of his kedusha and all the teachings that he had. Rav Ovadia, just as much. Look how much good they did in their relatively short lives—70, 80, 90 years, 100 years. No 600 million dollars, no 600 nothing. They did it simply with the Torah. You look at their lives and what they left behind and how they lived their life, and you compare it to the best, richest person you can possibly imagine.

45:53This one that's rich in money but not Torah, his life is worse than a monkey's. Because at least a monkey doesn't have stress. He's not worried about a mortgage. You look at the life of one of the Jewish sages, you say to yourself, it might as well be an angel. Might as well. How did they get to that? It all starts with fearing HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And the reason why is because the beginning of wisdom begins with recognizing that you have to serve Hashem. How do you establish that you are here to serve Hashem? By understanding that it's not an option. it's not a suggestion, it's simply a commandment. Meaning, He's a King; you exist in the world to serve Him, that's it. If you don't want to serve Him, it would be better if you didn't come into the world. Why? Because at least you wouldn't get punished.

47:04if you exist in the world, you only exist to serve, that's it. There's nothing else. There's no other reason for a person to exist other than to serve. Difficult conditions, easy conditions, if you're tall, if you're short, if you're black, if you're white, if you're male, if you're female, if everyone hates you, if everyone loves you, if you have this, if you don't have this—it doesn't make a difference. You exist only to serve. That is the beginning of wisdom, establishing that reality. most of us have not yet established that reality, and the reason why is because we think that maybe we can get around the system. What ends up happening is that Hashem has to wake us up with difficulties, trying to give us more and more signs, more and more clarity, that the other direction we picked will not give us any benefits. All you've got to do is simply look at the stories of all the people that have done what you want to do. You want to be really successful in business and just focus on business? Look at their lives, their real lives. Not the fake lives of how much money they made and you saw their names on the Forbes 500. Look at their personal lives. Look at what happened after they died. Look at what happened during their lives. Look at it. Look at their lives and you'll see. It's better off not to have the money.

48:30If that life goes with that money, it's better off to be poor. All of them, one after another, one after another. Divorce, cheating, disastrous lives, addictions of all kinds. People admire Albert Einstein, who was smart, right? One of the dumbest people that ever lived. Smart as far as IQ, he was gifted. It's not like he attained anything; he was gifted. But that's why he got such a severe punishment. One of the dumbest people that ever lived. You look at his actual life, a complete disaster. A complete disaster. He treated his wife, his first wife, so badly that eventually he said, "I'll give you terms if we're gonna stay together. You're not allowed to talk to me unless I talk to you first. You have to leave the room as soon as I tell you. If you're gonna be with me, I have to have a certain meal every day whenever I ask." And so all these strange terms that even the Nazis didn't have. But this is somebody who was calling his wife...

49:46He thought of himself as such a gift that he gave her conditions that you wouldn't even give your enemies. A person like that treats his spouse, the one that agreed to reproduce with him, agreed to tolerate him, agreed to sleep next to him, agreed to even talk to him— that's how you treat them? You're worse than an animal. All of the IQ just makes you stupider, not smarter. You look at the lives of the most successful, and you see how much of a failure they were if they didn't have Torah. And the reason why is because you cannot attain success, true success, which lives beyond you, without Torah. So anyone that wants to aspire to be an athlete, go. Get yourself a few dollars. Here's $15. You can use the $15. Go buy a biography. Or better yet, you could just go on Wikipedia and get it for free. Look at the lives of these people. Pick an athlete, whoever you want. The most successful one, the best one. Don't go with some mediocre loser. Go with the best one. The one everyone wants to be. Look at his actual life.

51:09That is the best-case scenario. Hollywood, you want your daughter to be a model. Some people are stupid enough to already start taking pictures of their three, four-year-old daughters so they can become models. Why? So that by the time they're nine, they're already addicted to drugs. By the time they're 12, they've already had enough boyfriends that you can build a team with them. By the time they're 18, they're completely cracked out. But that's what people think. No, we like the pictures. She's going to be in a magazine. Yeah, she's in a magazine. make their kids, they destroy the kids' lives right from the beginning. They're making models. Okay, go look at the most successful model, the best one. Look at the life. Don't look at it when it's at the peak of the career and she's 15, 16, 17. No, look at the bio—what happened at 45, 55, 65—if she even made it that far, if she didn't commit suicide yet. Go look at top businessmen, the people people see on TV and... The Shark Show. There's a show called Some Shark or something on CNBC. People love those people on TV. Oh, these sharks, they buy these businesses. Okay, go look at their personal lives. Shark Tank, there you go. Go look at their personal lives. Look at their behavior. Look how intolerable they are. Who wants to be next to these people? All they do is insult everybody else around them just because they have a few dollars. That's what you want to be like? You want to be intolerable like them?

52:39Why did you come to the world? So you look at the fake world, meaning the secular world. If you see the end result, meaning the best possibility, it is not even the worst possibility of an average avrech learning Torah all day. The smallest little avrech that's never going to be a gadol. He's just going to learn Torah simply, and no one's ever going to know he exists other than his family. He's never going to write any books. All he's going to do is learn Gemara every day, little by little, every day, a few more lines, a few more lines, a few more masechtot, finish the Shas, and so on and so forth. But no one's ever going to know he exists except his family. You know he's never going to write any books. He's never going to write any halachot. He's never going to give any lectures. He's not going to have a YouTube channel. Nothing. He just learns Torah, and he exists in the world. His life... is better than the most successful person in the secular world. The guy that no one ever heard of, his life is a billion times more successful. A billion times. But like I told my students all the time, you don't have to listen to me. Why? No one listens to me anyway. People want to try it out anyway.

53:52No, I'll do better than Michael Jordan. No, I'll do better than Steve Jobs. No, I'll do better than Mark Cuban. I'll do better than this guy. I'll do better than that one. Okay, a billion people came before you and they said the same thing. They failed. Don't you get the hint? Eight billion people in the world all trying to do the same thing and they're all failing one after another. Divorce rates are getting closer and closer to 100%. you have a better chance of throwing a coin in the middle of the ocean and finding it than actually having a successful marriage in the secular world. Go take a coin, drop it from a plane 35,000 feet in the air. In the ocean, you have a better success ratio finding that coin in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean than having a marriage last beyond 10 years. Why? 10 years, long time, I want a new girlfriend. I was only good with her once. I didn't have money. Now that I have money, I need her to be skinnier. I need her to be fatter. I need her to be blonder. I need her to be cleaner. He has different tastes now. Why? Because there's a few shekels in his pocket. All of a sudden, he wants something else. His taste changed. People change wives as if they're changing t-shirts. Why? They have no idea what love is. Where did they learn love? In high school. They learned love in high school. They learned love from the dogs.

55:19They don't learn love from the Torah. They don't know what love is. As soon as they get into an argument, ah, we need a divorce. Yeah, but we just got married last week. Okay, so marriage, marriage. People treat marriage like it's boyfriend-girlfriend. Replaceable. Why? A life without Torah, Rabotai, is a life that's not worth living. It's simply one failure after another in order to attain the ultimate failure. Now, why do I tell you this entire depressing track? Because, as I said in the beginning before I said this, this is the last chance. There's no more gilgul. There's no more reincarnations. We've already messed up enough times from the time of Mount Sinai to now; we're out of time. Anyone that fails in this chapter of their life, there's no more relying on, "I'll try again next time." There's no more next time. This is everybody's last shot, meaning use it carefully because you're not gonna live twice. You're not gonna live again, and I promise you

56:35that all of these people thought that they would be different. They thought that they would do better. They thought that they would beat the system. And one after another continues to fail day after day. And no one even has anything to say after they die. Why? Because they're just like the wind. A person called me about a month ago and told me that his mom died. And i don't know how successful or unsuccessful she was, but I know that the son was extremely successful. And I believe the father was very successful. And a person lived in the world for 60, 70 years, you figure they were successful in doing something. If not money, then maybe relationships. If not relationships, then maybe money. Maybe both. Something. You know how many people showed up to the funeral? Two. One was the son, the second was Chevra Kadisha. So that means that you lived in the world for 60, 70 years. One person got paid to come to your funeral, and the second person, he's the one that had to bury you. There's nobody else. If that's not failure, what is? It's sad. It's not making fun.

58:02but this is what the secular world has to offer. This is it. Why? In a secular world, there's no meaning to death. Death just means, okay, your life ended, mine continues, see you later. Too bad for you, rest in peace. That's it. Secular world, that's all it means. Okay, you died, I'm still alive, I gotta continue my life. Whereas in Judaism, in the Torah world, Death is a time of reflection, both for the dead and the living. Death is significant. We have to look, what did he achieve? What did she achieve? All of the people that have benefited from this person must show that person respect, must do something in their honor, at the very least, attend the funeral. something for them, do something for them, meaning that even in death, life continues. The ones that are living and benefit from that person's 60, 70, 80, 90 years are, in essence, continuing the deeds and the desires of the dead. Their life goes on and never ends. There are still people that read the Torah of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. He died 2,000 years ago and

59:29But there are people learning his books in his honor to this day. Rabbi Akiva, same thing. Moshe Rabbeinu, same thing. Rambam, same thing. Pick one of the sages, same thing. There are people that go to the Jewish graves to this day in honor of the sages. Not to pray to the sages, but in honor of the sages to learn their Torah to improve their elevated status in Shamayim even more. Why? Because death is not the end. Not in Judaism. When a person perfects their character traits, one by one, he understands all of these things clearly. He sees all of these things just as clearly as you see me in front of you. If a person doesn't even try to perfect their character, Then all they're seeing is some guy barking at them and saying, "I can't wait to leave. Is it an hour yet? Okay, I can't wait. Thank God. Four minutes left." Why? Because they can't see past their own ego. They can't see past their own desires. They can't see. A person like that, you can't help, no matter how much you speak. Why? They're not willing to help themselves.

1:00:55that's why, Rabotai, the Ramban says that this spiritual ecstasy can only be attained by refinement of the character, and the refinement of the character can only be attained and be motivated by fear of Hashem. Why? You have to put yourself in a state of mind where you realize that you need to refine your character, not that you should do it, but that you need to do it as a survival tactic. Meaning that in order for you to live eternally, You have to refine your character. It's no longer a suggestion that you may have read in a self-help book by one of the motivational speakers. It's literally survival. If I refine my character, if I work on my ego, if I work on my arrogance, if I work on my stinginess, if I work on my selfishness, and so on and so forth, if I work on all of these flaws that I have, I will live forever. If not, I'm already dead now. That's why the Gemara says that the wicked people are considered dead even during their life. So the Ramban continues and explains that such a person, even though his feet are going to be on the ground and he's going to be a normal person according to everybody else...

1:02:02That's why the Gemara says that the wicked people are considered dead even during their life. So the Ramban continues and explains that such a person, even though his feet are going to be on the ground and he's going to be a normal person according to everybody else, and his heart, his mind, that enjoys the success, the true success of overcoming a spiritual obstacle. He used to be stingy. Now he's generous. He used to be an angry, angry person. Now he's calm. He used to be selfish, only thinking about himself. Now she can't stop thinking about everybody else. She always wants to help her mom. She always wants to help her sister. She always wants to help the neighbor. She always wants to help him, everybody. Why? She worked on herself. He worked on himself. A person that overcomes a flaw, a character flaw, has much more joy than a person that makes a hundred billion dollars.

1:03:26And the reason why is because a person that overcomes a character flaw literally changes their nature. And no one can take that away from them. A person that made money, Hashem gifted him something, but he could easily lose it five seconds later. So the Ramban continues explaining that You have a commandment in the Torah in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 11, verse 22: "Love Hashem your God and walk in His ways and cling tightly to Him." And the Ramban explains that when a person is filled with love of God, he thinks about Him at all times. That's, in essence, what this commandment is. In order to love Hashem, you have to think about Him all the time. How can you think about Hashem all the time? Now, if you're learning Torah all the time, you would think it's easy. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people that learn Torah all day, but they don't think about Hashem even once. Why? Because they're learning it intellectually. They're not learning it because they're serving Hashem. It's not motivated by the fear of Hashem. It's motivated by the intellectual benefits that it provides. Torah is the highest level of intellectual document that exists in the world. So anyone that learns it,

1:04:52enjoys it intellectually. Some people learn it just for that, meaning that they can learn Torah all day but not fall in love with Hashem, not even be afraid of Hashem, sometimes not even be scared of Hashem. There's some Russian guy that lives in Eretz Yisrael, he calls himself a Kabbalist. Fake Kabbalist, but he calls himself a Kabbalist. He was on a Larry King show. Larry King asked him, "Do you pray?" No. "Do you believe in God?" No. Would other rabbis disagree with your system? Yes. But you're a Kabbalist. According to the Torah, a Kabbalist is the highest level. No, today "Kabbalist" is just a name. You decide you're a Kabbalist, Madonna is a Kabbalist, you're a Kabbalist, the dog is a Kabbalist, whatever you want, call everything a Kabbalist. The chair is a Kabbalist. People just put big names on anything they want. Whether it's appropriate or not is irrelevant. I remember in the business world, my employees used to argue

1:05:56All the time, but one thing. What? What business title do they put on their business card? Vice president, financial advisor, registered representative, consultant, financial consultant, senior vice president. This is what they would actually ask for. Not, what do I do to make more money? What do I do to get more? No, no. What do I put on the business card? Because they thought that if they changed the business card name, you know, the title they have on their business card, that will generate more business. That's why today everybody's vice president in every company. The guy is there for two weeks, he's vice president. He cleans the bathroom, really, and he gets coffee for the real boss. But he's vice president. Vice president, coffee department. Vice president, janitor department. Vice president, toilet department. Vice president of vice presidents. Everybody's vice president. Never look at business cards and be impressed by vice presidents or even presidents. It means absolutely nothing. The Ramban says you want to be impressed by somebody, be impressed by someone who thinks about HaKadosh Baruch Hu at all times. Why? Because that person doesn't necessarily need to learn Torah at all times.

1:07:11He needs to apply the Torah at all times. Meaning, if he's conducting business, he's thinking about, is the business I'm about to do honest or dishonest? Would Hashem give me a reward for it or punishment? I sold him this good. Was I honest or dishonest in the sale? Did I pressure him or did I convince him? It's two different things. Did I sell him what I told him I'm selling him? Or did I embellish the truth a little bit just so he could just close the deal? Oh, the house is brand new. It's a 25-year-old house. What are you talking about? Oh, the plumbing? It's fantastic. Yeah, these are brand new pipes. You don't even know what a pipe is. Last time you looked at a pipe, it was in the Lego box. No, pipes here are good. Oh, the air conditioner? It's brand new. It's only three years old. You don't even know. You just say things. Why? You want to close the deal. The guy moves in. Two weeks later, hey, listen, I know we closed and everything, but the air conditioner is broken. And we just brought the repair guy. The repair guy says the whole thing has been serviced 15 times. He told me it's brand new. Oh, yeah, I thought it's new. I'm sorry. What? I'm sorry? It's $25,000. Oh, I'm sorry.

1:08:30Well, I'm sorry. Give me the $25,000. No, that's not what we do. You know, we're just brokers. All of a sudden, you're just a broker? When we were selling, you were vice president. We were selling, you were vice president. You were Donald Trump. Now you're just a broker? Now you can't do anything? This is businessmen all day. Constant lying. World full of liars. Find me one honest businessman. One. One. I've been in the business world for over 20 years. I haven't found one. Everyone is cheating somebody. Some people are cheating the customer. Some people are cheating their employees. Some people are cheating the government. Some people are cheating their partners. Some people are cheating themselves. Everybody's cheating somebody. Today, they're not even embarrassed about it. Today, you want to get ahead, you have to cheat. You have to lie.

1:09:31That's what people think. The only people you're ever going to find that are honest have serious Yirat Shamayim. They're not honest because of the business. They're honest because of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. They know He's watching. They're not honest because they like the customers. They're honest because they know that Hashem likes the customers. Now, When you love HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you're going to think about Him at all times, even during your business dealings, even when you're with your wife, even at the most private moments, and even at the most public moments. You're going to think about HaKadosh Baruch Hu at all times, thinking, "What does HaKadosh Baruch Hu think about what I'm doing now, or what I want to do, or what I just did?" Constantly, constantly thinking who, what, when, and where. But always, Hashem is connected to it. That's what it means to fall in love with Hashem. Now, the Chazon Ish, alav hashalom, has a famous book called Emunah u'Bitachon. Emunah u'Bitachon.

1:10:48And he writes in his book, in chapter 1, section number 9, first part, section number 9, the following: He says when a person elevates himself to the point that he's able to truly sense the presence of the Almighty, he is filled with an ecstasy which has no bounds. His soul basks in delight as an earthly desire simply becomes unimportant. His delicate soul is wrapped in a sacred embrace. In so many words, he's in such a state of mind that all of what everyone else in the world cares about he sees as dust and ashes. People are chasing money and has no idea why. Why do you want so much of it? What can you do with it? Can you eat money? Can you take it with you to the next world? How much stuff do you possibly need? How many houses can you live in? How many cars can you drive at once? Why do you need so much money? He sees the whole world—eight billion people—chasing money, and he just says, "Why?" He doesn't understand what's wrong with these people.

1:12:12he's in a different world. It's like a different species. But he's just like everybody else. Flesh and blood. What's the difference about him? He has spiritual ecstasy that is a result of emunah and bitachon. But it all begins with the fear of Hashem. And he continues the Chazon Ish. This is not a person that lived a thousand years ago. This is grandfather's age. Seventy years ago. When the mortal enters this realm of sanctity a new world opens before his eyes. A person elevates himself to such a point where he has such connection with Hashem, it's as if he's living in a different world. One can live in this world and yet actually, for a brief period, experience angelic ecstasy. He could literally, not theoretically, He's not talking in analogies. He's not talking about, like, "Oh, yeah, this is kind of cool." No, literally, he can feel as if he is living an angel's life, both physically and psychologically. All mundane pleasures melt into nothingness in the face of his celestial bliss. There is no greater testimony to the divine origins of man than this unique encounter of the soul with its spiritual source.

1:13:39than this unique encounter of the soul with its spiritual source. Now, most people think that in order to feel better, they need some type of substance, whether it be alcohol or some type of drug. People get addicted to this stuff because they like the feeling it gives them after they consume a certain amount of it. They don't necessarily like or even think about what's going to happen after, it wears out, because that would actually require a brain, but they think, the high that I get from this marijuana, or the high that I get from these pain pills, or the high that I get from this coke, or the high that I get from this ecstasy, or whatever crack you want to put in your body, that, oh yeah, I want that. Why? Because I like that feeling. They think that's the only way they can feel that ecstasy, is if they take the pills.

1:14:40is if they take the drink. Shlomo HaMelech says the stupidity of men leads him to go against Hashem and then he gets mad at Hashem for punishing him. The stupidity of men makes him think that the only way that he can attain both intellectual, spiritual, and physical pleasure is by some type of substance. Only stupidity thinks that. And then he gets mad that he starts losing the ability to do certain bodily functions as a result. He gets mad that Hashem punished him. You went against Hashem; of course, punishment is going to happen. So what is the Chazon Ish really telling us here? He says if a person delves into the life of Torah and mitzvot seriously, he can attain a much higher high both physically and psychologically than any drug in the world. I can tell you that if a person seriously learns Torah for an extended period of time but also purifies himself, not just learns the book, reads the words but acts as if it's just literature, fulfills the acts, purifies themselves, purifies their eyes, they can get to such a point where they can feel their body buzzing, elevating, lifting, as if they're above and beyond humanity. A physical feeling, I'm not talking about a psychological feeling, you're happy, you're smart.

1:16:06acts as if it's just literature, fulfills the acts, purifies themselves, purifies their eyes, they can get to such a point where they can feel their body buzzing, elevating, lifting, as if they're above and beyond humanity. A physical feeling, I'm not talking about a psychological feeling—you're happy, you're smart. Physical feeling is attainable through the Torah, much greater than any drug that exists in the world or will ever exist. So much so that when a person attains that for a few moments, one minute, two minutes It puts him on a level where, for the rest of his life, all he would want is just another minute of that. It's worth it to come to the world just to feel that for one minute. Suffering, agony, pain, every disaster in the world—give me that pleasure for one minute. That's how good it is. That's how good it is. But our stupidity makes us think, no, no, if I want to feel elevated, I need a little...

1:17:16Drag. I need a pill. I need something. I need a girl, guy, dog, cat, something. I need something. No, no, you don't need anything. You have a book. You have Torah. It's from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Go. Yeah, but it's just a Chumash. Just a Chumash. HaKadosh Baruch Hu wrote a Chumash. Yeah, but it's just a Gemara. Chazal wrote a Gemara. What do you mean? Torah Kedoshah. What do you mean, just? Yeah, but I've already read it. Read it again. When? Until when? Until you feel it. What if it takes me a hundred years? I'll buy it. I'll buy it after a hundred years. That would make your life worth it. That's what the Chazon Ish is saying, and then he continues in a different letter, and he got Chazon Ish, chapter 1, part number 13. The Chazon Ish says when a person is privileged to the point where he knows Torah, his intellect unites with his knowledge just as a seed in a furrow of a field. You know, you put a seed, you drop a bunch of seeds in a field. In the beginning, it looks like there's a bunch of greens everywhere. But within a little bit of time, that seed goes into the ground and then it starts rotting, and then it becomes part of the ground and the roots start coming out and...

1:18:45it becomes an extension of the ground, it's no longer the seed anymore; it's an extension of the world. When a person knows Torah, their intellect and their knowledge unite just like that—they become a single entity. This person that knows Torah walks among people and seems, to the superficial observer, To be an ordinary person, he looks like everybody else: he has a beard, doesn't have a beard, he has a kippah, he has a jacket, no jacket, shoes on, pants on, he puts them on one leg at a time, he speaks the language that everybody else speaks, he's not like creating something new. To the average person who looks at him from afar, you look at the Chazon Ish, just a regular, some old man. But in truth, he is an angel dwelling among mortals. He lives a life of spiritual ecstasy that is exalted above all praise. In truth, this person literally is like a Malach Hashem. It's as if he's floating. Not from the perspective of heaven only, but in his own perspective.

1:20:04Not that, oh, Hashem loves him because he learns a lot of Torah and he does mitzvot. No, that's not, of course, that's needless to say. What's the chiddush here is that he himself feels like that. He sees all of the problems in the world. There's death and disease and depression and addiction and all of these things. But he sees clearly that all of these are just simply tools that Hashem uses. He took it from here and He put it here. He took it from there, and He put it there, and this guy lost all of his money because this guy deserved it, and this guy got the disease because he made somebody else sick without caring, and this guy did this, so He took it over here, and he just sees all of this chaos organized. Why? He becomes one. His knowledge and intellect become one. With what? With Torah. With HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He sees things clearly. HaKadosh Baruch Hu lets him see things. He sees all of the disaster, even the stuff that's in his own life. Oh, this, yeah, yeah, of course, this is for that sin, right here. Oh, that happened? Oh, that's because it's over here. Oh, this? Oh, of course, this is right here. What, you don't see the puzzle? You don't see it? What, you don't see it? It's right there. Oh, I'm sorry, you don't see it. Learn some more Torah tomorrow, you'll see it. That's how he sees the world.

1:21:28It's all like little pieces of a puzzle and all belongs in the right place. And it's clear. My kids, they like to play with puzzles. So I took one of their puzzles and I tried playing with it and trying to put the thing together. My daughter, she's four years old. Dad, gimme gimme. So I give her. I'm messing with this thing for like five minutes, trying to figure out where these pieces are going. My daughter's four years old. She took it in, I don't know, 40 seconds. She finished the whole thing. She goes, "Oh, yeah." She did it a bunch of times. For her, it's already clear. She did it a bunch of times; it's already muscle memory. Two, two, two. This one's the corner; this one is here; this one's the middle part. What is that like? That's like the person who knows Torah. He's done it before. He's seen this problem before. Oh, cancer? I saw it over here. Oh, Holocaust? I saw it over here. Oh, money? I saw it over here. Oh, love? I saw it over here. Everything is here, here, here. He sees everything clear. Everything is clear. Doesn't mean that problems don't exist. He just knows where it all belongs. That, rabotai, is spiritual ecstasy.

1:22:49you simply understand how you yourself are a piece of the puzzle that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is using. Now, the Maharal MiPrague wrote in Netivot Olam, saying that the way that a person can attain this spiritual ecstasy is only through attaining intense bitachon in Hashem. It begins with fear of Hashem, which leads to fixing your character traits, learning Torah, and toiling and understanding where you fit in. And the Maharal MiPrague elaborates even further. He says, how can you do all of this? By having complete faith in HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Where do we learn it from? The Maharal MiPrague uses the prophet Isaiah, chapter 26, verse number 4, as a source. He says, place your trust in Hashem forever and ever, for Hashem is the sheltering rock of both worlds. So the Gemara Masechet Menachot, page 29b,

1:24:06says that from here we learn that a person who places their complete trust in HaKadosh Baruch Hu will merit that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will be his personal protection both in this world and the next, which means that even though a person was originally destined to suffer, a person was destined to suffer. A person was destined to have some type of illness, some type of loss, something happened in the world. HaKadosh Baruch Hu on Rosh Hashanah decided, you, this year, your leg's going to hurt. You, this year, you're going to lose some money. You, this year, whatever's going to happen. So the Maharal MiPrague says that the suffering doesn't go away because he has bitachon. So what changes? He says that even if a person was originally destined to suffer, this God-fearing person sees that the forces of nature are simply lifeless tools in the hands of a Creator who controls everything. This bitachon literally lifts this man out of this world.

1:25:21He enters an entirely new sphere of existence, not unlike the olam haba itself, because he sees all of the pieces and he sees all of the things that happen, even his own suffering—not just other people's sufferings, his own suffering. It's very easy to analyze other people's suffering and... It's very easy to say, "Oh, it's going to be okay," to somebody else. Very easy to say, "No, have emunah in Hashem," to somebody else. It's hard to say it to yourself when you're in a fire. He says his own suffering, he says, "Oh, this is just a small little piece that Hashem is using to put here and put it over there." That's it. He's just going to take this piece over here because something happened over there. Oh, my finger hurts? Well, probably at some point I touched something I shouldn't have touched. That's why it hurts today. Twenty-five years later, Hashem let me. Twenty-five years to do teshuva. I didn't do teshuva because I forgot the sin. So Hashem says, I don't want this kid to go to Gehinnom, so I'm going to make his finger hurt. The same finger that touched something he wasn't supposed to touch one time for a second, I'm going to make it hurt. Why? Because I'd rather it hurt here than over there.

1:26:37Now, this is why, Rabotai, David HaMelech, Kodesh Kodeshim, writes in Sefer Tehilim, chapter 32, verse number 10: "Rabim mach'ovim larasha, ve'habote'ach b'Hashem, chesed yesovevenu." That the agonies of the resha'im, the agonies of the wicked, are enormous. They're numerous. They're countless. But a person that has bitachon in Hashem, kindness will surround him. What does that mean? He says that agonies happen in everybody's life. Suffering happens in everybody's life. Just go talk to an old man or an old woman and ask them about their life. You know what they're going to tell you about? All of the pain. That's what they're going to tell you about. You can talk to any old man; 90% of the conversation will be about the pain they experienced in their life. Why? It's much more memorable. Yeah, they'll tell you, "Oh yeah, when I was 18, I got married, and when I was 35, we had this, and when I was eight, the fun lasted 30 seconds." But if they went through the Holocaust, and they're talking, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 4 hours, they can never stop. Why? That's as clear as day.

1:28:05They were sick for a few years, clear as day, they'll tell you about that. Somebody broke their heart, clear as day, they'll tell you about that. And so on and so forth. Everyone has pain, and everyone remembers their pain like it was yesterday. David HaMelech gives us a chiddush. He says, although the agonies are numerous, it's only endless with the wicked. Why? Because the one who has confidence in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the trust in Hashem, only kindness surrounds him. Why? He sees how all of this suffering is really the chesed of Hashem. It's Hashem's kindness to help him in his life to elevate him to a higher level. All of the suffering is simply a piece of the puzzle. That's all it is. What do you think, Hashem has nothing to do? He just wants to give a person a disease? He's bored? Okay, let's see what happens with this guy now. No, it's chesed of Hashem. It's mamash, it's the mercy of Hashem. So the boteach b'Hashem, even though he suffers just like the rasha, as far as the amount of time and the amount of weight that they both get, since he has confidence in Hashem, he sees all of it as kindness.

1:29:28Whereas the rasha, who has no confidence in Hashem, sees himself as simply a victim. His whole life, he's a victim. The one that has confidence in Hashem, I'll let you listen to two messages. After this, you'll hear one tzaddik, one not so much. You see how the tzaddik complains, you see how the rasha complains. World of difference. The tzaddik says, I have so much pain. I know this is good for me. It gives me chizuk, this guy. He gives me chizuk. I listen to his message like it's a shiur Torah. Oh, I can't move. I'm bedridden. It's like he's giving me chizuk from his suffering. The people that are not so much, it's like, oh, why is Hashem doing this to me? Oh, if He's going to take the rest of my money, I might as well just die. What?

1:30:29You're alive because of paper? It's not even paper anymore; it's on a computer. You don't even have the benefit of paper anymore. That's the difference. Now, the big thing about TIDE that we have to learn is that in order to attain such bitachon, like the Rambam says, in order to get to a point of spiritual ecstasy, it's not attained by simply reading words. Reading words, if they're the right words, and they come from the Torah, is definitely a critical part of the battle. But it's not enough. Now, David HaMelech already told us that you can attain a spiritual ecstasy in this world that's no different than Olam HaBa. But he himself lived a life that from the outside we're saying, how can he say that with his life experience? Meaning that he really felt it because there's no way you can say such a thing. Now,

1:31:57If you look at the life of every single person that's mentioned in the Torah, all of the tzaddikim, it wasn't that different. If it wasn't for Avraham Avinu jumping into the fire, there wouldn't be Am Yisrael. If it wasn't for Avraham Avinu having bitachon in Hashem before he knew for sure that Hashem exists, before he knew for sure that Hashem was going to save him, if it wasn't for Avraham Avinu jumping into the fire and trusting in Hashem just because it's Hashem, that's it. No promise, no book, no Mount Sinai, no teaching from his father, no teaching from a teacher, nothing. But he jumped into the fire. Why? He knew for sure HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world. That's enough of a reason to jump into a fire for, instead of denying that. If it wasn't for Avraham Avinu taking that blind faith leap, there's no Am Yisrael. Chazal says, how come

1:33:14It took over 200 years for Moshe Rabbeinu to finally take Am Yisrael out of Egypt. Why didn't somebody else come before him? We were slaves. In 210 years, at least 86 years were hard labor slavery. They were killing kids every day by the dozens, millions. 150 babies in the morning, 150 babies at night were slaughtered just so they could use their blood to make a bath for Paro HaRasha. That's just for his bath. Forget about all the other stuff they did to us. Imagine a century of this. How come nobody saved us before? What took Moshe Rabbeinu so long? He ran away from Egypt. He went to Cush for 40 years. Then he was in Midian for another 10. Moshe just saved us right now. Double time. Chazal tells us a huge secret. Although we were in Egypt for 210 years and we suffered for 116, of which 86 were a pure nightmare.

1:34:28that made the Holocaust seem like child's play. The reason why HaKadosh Baruch Hu did not send the Goel, did not send Moshe Rabbeinu or anyone else to save Am Yisrael, is because nobody else was willing to sacrifice their life for Am Yisrael until Moshe Rabbeinu. Meaning, if it was not for Moshe Rabbeinu saying, "I'm going to die for Am Yisrael," not "I'm willing to die," "I'm going to die for Am Yisrael." Why? I'm going to meet Paro, and Paro already has a warrant for my death. Not a warrant for my arrest, a warrant for my death. That's it, he's going to kill me. As soon as he sees me, he kills me on the spot. He already tried chopping my head off. And by the grace of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, I survived it because HaKadosh Baruch Hu miraculously made the neck of Moshe Rabbeinu, the Midrash says, into something like stone. And then froze everybody and allowed Moshe Rabbeinu to run away. So now, everybody knows that as soon as he sees me, either they kill me right away, or, in the best-case scenario, make me a slave. So Moshe Rabbeinu says, I'm gonna die for Am Yisrael. Not I'm willing to die.

1:35:48If it wasn't for Moshe Rabbeinu being willing to die for Am Yisrael, we'd still be slaves in Egypt to this day, 3,300 years later. No one came before him, and there was nobody else after him. He did it. Fast forward. We got to the Yam Suf. We got to the Yam Suf. All of Am Yisrael, millions of people that survived, millions of people that survived were at the Yam Suf. The Midrash says that in the desert it wasn't an option to go anywhere else. Why? Behind them, there were millions of Egyptians who were happy to slaughter everybody. On the right and left, there was the desert, and in front of them was the ocean. Nobody knew how to swim. You were slaves for the last hundred years of your whole life. Nobody had even seen an ocean ever. So why don't you just go in the desert, right or left? He says, no, that wasn't an option. Why? In those days, there were huge anacondas. Huge anacondas that would eat men alive, like you eat little tic-tacs. Kosher, they eat people. Scorpions the size of dogs, the Midrash says. Huge things. Beasts. No one would survive the desert. That's why no one wanted to leave Egypt.

1:37:10He says, desert? That's a dangerous place. We're thinking desert, yeah, maybe you'll get a scorpion, maybe a snake here and there. No, no, my friend. In those days, there were mamash monsters in the desert. Surviving in the desert, you're better off going into the ocean. So when they got to Yam Suf, they got to the ocean, everybody was scared to death. Nachshon ben Aminadav, from Shevet Yehuda, had bitachon in Hashem. So there's no way that HaKadosh Baruch Hu did all the plagues, destroyed the biggest civilization in the world, and brought us all the way over here miraculously just to kill us. Now, obviously, right or left, going into the desert, that's not where He wants us to go because that just leaves us in a desert. He's telling us to go that way because that's where Mount Sinai is. Going back is not an option. That means the only option is going into the ocean. Yeah, but it's not a rational option. There's an ocean and there's millions of people. What, all of them are going to swim? Breaststrokes across the ocean? Nachshon ben Aminadav says, that's not for me to think. Hashem wants us to go into the ocean, I'm going into the ocean. Yeah, but you're going to die. Okay, so I'll die. I'll die believing in Hashem. If it wasn't for Nachshon ben Aminadav going into the ocean to the point where the water covered his face, meaning he was drowning, Hashem would have never split the ocean.

1:38:33And Am Yisrael would have died in the desert. They would have never reached Har Sinai. You fast forward more. Am Yisrael is in the desert. One day Balak and Bilam come up with a trick to make all of Am Yisrael sin. They sent all the young girls to entice the men. Unfortunately, Am Yisrael falls for this and starts sinning with the Midianite and Moabite women. HaKadosh Baruch Hu puts a plague on the nation. Within a matter of minutes, 24,000 people died. At that moment, Pinchas ben Elazar ben Aharon HaKohen, the grandson of Aharon HaKohen, takes a spear and kills the number one public sinner, Zimri, the prince of the tribe of Shimon.

1:39:35Shows everybody that this is a chillul Hashem. This is a desecration of Hashem's name, and that's what happens to somebody that does that. That's what happens to somebody that makes a sin with a Goyah. He takes both bodies, miraculously lifts them in the air, hanging on his spear, dead while they're naked in the middle of the act. That's how much power HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave him to commit such an act, such a heroic act of zealotry. Then in Parashat Pinchas, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says outright to Moshe Rabbeinu, "Tell everybody that this Pinchas, he's getting a blessing that he's going to live forever. Why? Because if he didn't make that act, I already decided to kill everybody." At that moment, we decided to kill all of Am Yisrael. Meaning, I killed 24,000. If he didn't do it, I was just going to kill everybody else, one after another, until I destroyed the entire nation. That's what it says in the pasuk. Go look at the pasuk. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I was planning on killing everyone. If he didn't take initiative, there would be no Am Yisrael. None of us would be here. What was that act based on? Bitachon B'Hashem.

1:40:59What's the bitachon? I'm going to go do what has to be done. Yeah, but they're going to kill you. Kill me, don't kill me. I'm going to do what has to be done. The Gemara in Masechet Sanhedrin says, in a place that there is Chilul Hashem, there's no consideration even for the honor of a rabbi. There's no consideration to anything—the honor of Moshe Rabbeinu, the honor of Aharon, the honor of anybody. There's Chilul Hashem here. That's what Pinchas was thinking. If it wasn't for Pinchas taking that act, we wouldn't be here. Fast forward. Yehoshua bin Nun crosses the Jordan River with Am Yisrael. At some point, an angel comes to Yehoshua bin Nun with a huge sword in his hand. Yehoshua bin Nun asks him, Are you with us or against us? The angel tells him,

1:41:59I'm here in the name of Hashem to punish you. Yehoshua bin Nun says, "For what?" He says, "You didn't learn Torah." "Yeah, but we're in war." He says, "It doesn't matter you're in war. There's a commandment to learn Torah in the morning and at night." The angel was sent to kill everyone. At that moment, Yehoshua bin Nun didn't think twice. He told us, "Learning, we're learning. War, no war, we're learning Torah." If it wasn't for Yehoshua bin Nun simply understanding what has to be done, there would be no Am Yisrael. Now, one time, there was a woman named Rachel. And this woman named Rachel, She was a very rich young lady, 18 years old, beautiful, and her father was one of the three richest men in the world. She saw that one of his employees, who cleans his horses, has good character traits. This older guy, 40 years old, divorced with a kid...

1:43:23But she saw that he has something that the Ramban, 1500 years later, says you have to do. What is it? He has good middot. He has good character traits. So she said to this guy, "Do you know any Torah?" He goes, "I don't even know Aleph-Bet." She said, "But you have good middot naturally. I'll marry you if you go learn Torah." He responded, "I clean horses. I don't own the horse. Your father owns the horse." She insisted, "I'll marry you if you go learn Torah." Rachel says, "I'll marry this homeless guy that cleans horses, even though he doesn't know Aleph-Bet and he's double my age." Why? He has good middot. He has good character traits. That's already a good foundation that if you add Torah to it, he can be something. Now, when her father found out the news, he says, "Listen, are you out of your mind? I could give you the biggest rabbi in the world to be your husband. You're going to marry some guy who doesn't know Aleph-Bet, cleans my horses?" Stop it. No, go find somebody else. She goes, no, no, I want him. He goes, listen to me. If you go marry him, you're on your own. I'm taking you out of the will. You're not going to get a penny from me. You're going to be kicked out of the house. She goes, I want him. She went and married this guy. And she told him, go learn Torah now. He says, yeah, but I don't know Aleph Bet. She goes, okay, so go learn Aleph Bet with the baby. The baby goes to learn Aleph Bet, you go learn Aleph Bet.

1:44:51After you learn Aleph Bet, start learning in a yeshiva. Go to yeshiva. I'll see you. When? When you finish learning. Twenty-four years later, he comes back as Rabbi Akiva with 24,000 students. And he tells all of his students, "You see that woman, that woman who looks lowly, that woman who looks homeless, that woman whom everybody's pushing around saying, 'What are you doing here, lady?' My Torah and your Torah is her Torah." is her Torah. Now, what did Rachel do for 24 years? What did she do? You read the Midrashim, what did she do? Hashem Yirachem. She did not have food to eat. She had to sell her hair. She sold her hair so she could eat. That's how poor she was. They didn't have money for a bed. They slept on straw. For how long did she sleep on straw? For 24 years, she slept on straw.

1:45:52Now, was there any assurance that this ignorant guy who came from converts, who was washing horses with a couple of good middot, was going to be anything in his life? No. No one promised, "Oh yeah, he's going to be a big rabbi one day." A lot of people go to yeshiva for 24 years, and you never heard they even exist. But if it wasn't for Rachel, pushing this nobody to go be somebody. By learning Torah, Rabotai, we would not have a Torah at all today because the entire Oral Torah that we have today comes from Rabbi Akiva. There is nothing else. Everything that we have comes from Rabbi Akiva, and we don't even have everything he had; we have a portion. But it's not because of Rabbi Akiva per se, it's because of Rachel. If it wasn't for Rachel's bitachon, that if you do what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants you to do, you win in the end. When? I have no idea. In the end. When is the end? The end, when Hashem decides it's the end. For some people, the end is after 120 years; for some people, the end is 24 years.

1:47:1324 years of sleeping on straw and selling hair so you can eat, and your neighbor making fun of you, and your other neighbor making fun of you, and everyone treating you like you're a disease, like you're some leper, and everyone's making fun of you, and I sent my husband to go learn Torah. That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants. That's it. Yeah, but he's not going to be anybody. Even if he learned Torah, if he knows something, maybe he already left. Maybe he found another woman. He's not text messaging you every 20 minutes saying, Hey, honey, what's going on? How are the kids? She didn't see him at all. No contact whatsoever. No letters. No email. Nothing for 24 years. How do you even know he's still alive? I know because I sent him to go do the will of Hashem. You don't lose when you do a mitzvah. If Rachel did not have the bitachon to make such a sacrifice, there wouldn't be anything today. If a kid that his brothers like to make fun of, and even his father called him the butcher's son, his father called him the butcher's son because he said, "My other sons are smart, you're an idiot. You're a fool." If that kid

1:48:34would have given up, we'd be in trouble today. You know why? Because after all that happened, that kid went to the Aron HaKodesh and he started crying at the Aron HaKodesh the whole night until he passed out from tears. Passed out from tears. Hashem, please give me a brain. Hashem, let me learn Torah. That's all he wanted. 900 years later, we know him as the Rambam. You know what the names of his brothers are who made fun of him? Exactly. Nobody knows. If he gave up, we wouldn't have halacha today. You wouldn't have Rabbi Yosef Karo's Shulchan Aruch. You wouldn't have the Rema. You wouldn't have anything. No halacha. We'd still be working on Gemara, guessing, figuring out, is this halacha? Is it Beit Shammai? Is it Beit Hillel? Is it Abaye? Is it Rava? Who is it? What is it? Is it even something that's applicable? What do we, we don't know. Most people read Gemara today, it's like, yeah, yeah, I think it's a korban. What korban? It's Shema Yisrael, chamor. What korban?

1:49:50Oh, you're, I think you're in a different Yitzchak Gemara. Oh, nobody knows what they're talking about today, almost. So that's, Rabotai, what's required. I'll finish off with a small story. You can ask as many questions as you'd like. A real-life example of somebody that has Bitachon BaHashem and how HaKadosh Baruch Hu shows him how you have a little benefit. That confidence that you have, I love you again, I love. Shalom knew these people, and he says a story. There was a person in Mea Shearim, a place in Israel where all the religious people live. There was a guy by the name of Rabbenu Sasson. Rabbenu Sasson was a hair cutter. You would cut people's hair, but the reason why they called him Rabbeinu Sasson was that he would cut all the rabbis' hair. All the famous rabbis would go to him to cut their hair. Tzaddik. Tzaddik. Not like today's hair cutters that cut the hair of men, women, and something in between. He was a hair cutter who only cut men's hair. A man is only allowed to touch the hair of other men. No man is ever allowed to touch the hair of a woman unless she is his wife.

1:51:10So Rabbeinu Sasson was older already, and he had a friend. His friend was Yosef Chai. One day, Yosef Chai comes to Rabbeinu Sasson and says, "I need a thousand shekels." In those days, a thousand shekels was a lot of money—it was a month and a half's worth of work. So he says, "I need a thousand shekels to take care of a few things." Rabbeinu Sasson took the money that he made for the whole month and said, "Here you go, my dear friend." How long are you going to take to pay me back? He goes, I'll pay you back next month. Okay. We're friends for many years. No problem. A month passes. Rabbeinu Sasson says he doesn't want to remind his friend. Maybe he's tight. You know, if you lend your friend money and he doesn't have it, it's a sue. You're not allowed to ask him for it. If you make him feel bad on top of it, no, okay, so. If he has it, he'll return it to you. Don't worry. He didn't ask. But after two months, he didn't ask. Almost three months. It's like when he sees him, he doesn't see him. Okay, so maybe he forgot. So I'm not going to ask him because I need the money. Because if he says he doesn't have it, no problem. I just want to make sure to remind him. So Rabbeinu Sasson calls to Yosef Chai. And he says, you know, that thousand shekels that I gave you, when do you think you'll have it? Yosef Chai says, hey, Rabbeinu, I paid you. I paid you a long time ago. Your memory is going with you, huh? He says, no, no, no, no. My memory is fine.

1:52:37You never paid me. No, Rabbeinu, I paid you. No, no, no. He goes, okay. Paid me? Okay. He goes, listen. Yosef Chai had a little bit of ego, a little bit. Tzaddik, but he had a little ego. He goes, listen. If I didn't pay you, you could have my Olam HaBa. Sometimes people, out of excitement and passion, they say stupid things. Hashem takes it seriously, though. We don't take it seriously. But Hashem takes it seriously. A few days later, Rabbeinu Sison goes to bed. It's late at night. Somebody is smashing on his door. He gets up out of bed, puts his robe on, and goes to the door. "Who's knocking on my door at 10 o'clock at night?" He opens the door. Nobody. Nobody there. It's kind of weird. OK.

1:53:41Goes back to the bedroom. As he's about to go in, there's a knock on the door, even harder than last time. "Oh, come on, this kid's playing a trick here." He goes back to the door. He's an old man. Opens it. Nothing. He turns, he closes the door. He turns around, walks away. Hard, like hard. He opens the door again. In a second, he opens the door. It's like his hand was still on the door. Nothing. Like somebody knocked on the door and the ground swallowed him. Nothing. Me, personally, I wouldn't go to sleep after that. He went to sleep. He wakes up in the morning. He feels his eyes are hurting him. His eyes are hurting him. An unusual amount of pain. He goes to the clinic. He gets to the clinic. And who does he see? He sees Yosef Chai's son in a clinic. He goes, "What are you doing here? What's wrong?" Yosef Chai was upset. His son. He goes, "What's wrong?" He goes, "Abba died. Abba died last night. On the spot." Rabbeinu says, "Ah, show me the body. Where's the body?" He takes him to the body. He says, "Yosef Chai, I forgive you. Yosef Chai, I forgive you."

1:55:07Yosef Chai, I forgive you. His son says, "Boy, what happened?" He says, "Your father said something he shouldn't have said some time ago. Told him to start with the money. Last night, somebody knocked on my door. Now I know why. I have eye pain and..." Not because I have eye pain. I've never had eye pain. Now I have eye pain because HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted to take me here. Why? Because Yosef Chai went up to Shamayim. And Shamayim says, listen, Yosef Chai, you kept Shabbat, you kept Tzitzit, you kept all these mitzvot, but I'm sorry, you don't have Olam HaBa. Why? You gave it Rabbeinu Sazon. You have no Olam HaBa. But since you did some mitzvot in your life, we'll give you the opportunity to go knock on his door. Maybe he'll get the hint and forgive you. He says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu allowed him to go all the way down to knock on my door in hopes that I'll get the point and forgive him. That night he went to sleep, and Yosef Chai came to him in his dream. He said, "Thank you, my dear friend." And he brought him a bunch of presents and so on and so forth.

1:56:24He says, "Thank you, my dear friend. I'm sorry. I didn't know I didn't pay you." He goes, "No, I love you, and everything is good." If Rabbeinu Sasson did not have bitachon, do you think he would have had the merit to save his friend? If Rabbeinu Sasson did not have bitachon, do you think he would still be friends with him? at all. "Why do you owe me money? You said you paid me. I don't want to talk to anyone." No, everything continued. "Why do you think you paid me? I know you didn't pay me, but I also know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't shortchange anyone. If I'm supposed to have that thousand dollars or thousand shekels, I'm gonna get it, whether it's from you or from fifty trillion choices that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has to give me a thousand shekels or give it to me. It's just not from you." some other source is going to give it to me. That's the difference all the time. A person that has this bitachon lives in a different world while he's still with us. He has complete understanding of what's going on. This piece is here because it belongs here, and here, and here, and everything is like a puzzle for him. But he lives a regular life, and he cuts hair.

1:57:43He lives a regular life and he writes a few books, a few chiddushim, he sells some shoes, basic stuff. And that's, Rabotai, the last example. What is the ultimate mesirut nefesh today? To be a Jew every day. Not sometimes. Every day you learn Torah. Every day you fulfill mitzvot. Every day you work on Yirat Shamayim. Every day you work on your Middot. Not just sometimes. Not just when you feel like it. Not when you're just popular. Not when you're getting attention. Not when it's an explosive thing like some of the examples that I gave you. He split the ocean. He saved the nation. No, it's the opposite now. That's not what Hashem wants. He doesn't want you to split the oceans and save anyone. Save yourself first. Do it every day. If HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants to put you in the limelight, He'll put you in the limelight at some point. If not, you're still obligated to do it. Why? Because either way, you win. That's the Mesirut Nefesh. That's how each and every single one of us can be like any one of these giants we mentioned in this generation. You can attain that elevated level.

1:58:51By simply grinding every day. Every day mitzvot. Every day you fulfill the Torah. Every day you learn Torah. Every day, every day, every day. No questions asked. There's no breaks. There's no vacation. There's nothing. All you want is to get closer and closer to Hashem every day. When a person does that, he literally starts to enjoy Olam HaBa here. And that's a life worth living. Any questions? What are you supposed to daven for? For HaKadosh Baruch Hu to help us do teshuva during this month so we can prepare ourselves for the judgment day that's coming, which is Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is a judgment day for all of creation. That means that on that day Hashem decides that... whether a person lives or not, whether a person is going to make money or not, whether he'll get married or not, whether he'll have kids or not. Everything is decided on that day. Hashem opens the books of the living and the dead on that day and decides. There's an appeal process, which is Yom Kippur, and there's even Hoshana Rabbah and Sukkot, but the point is the main judgment is during that day. That means that if I know that my life is on the line in a few weeks from now,

2:00:13to get prepared. If, let's say, someone is accused of murder and they happen to live in Texas or one of these states that has capital punishment, they know that if they're convicted of murder, that's it—they're dead. So they're not going to show up to the trial with flip-flops and a tank top saying, "Hey, what's up guys? What's going on? Yeah, I just came back from vacation." They're not going to do that. What are they going to do? They're going to come, appropriately, scared to death, and prepared. Why? Because they've been studying the case with the lawyer, and they know what they're going to say, and they know how they're going to respond, and they have all of the, pretty much, possibilities they can imagine already prepared, because they've prepared themselves. That's, in essence, what we're supposed to pray for. Please, Hashem, give me the strength and the willpower to prepare myself for this big day. Because that's the day that pretty much there's no more time. That's the day. So when a person prays for it, he starts realizing Hashem gives him ideas of how he can make it even better. What does he need to prepare? So all of a sudden Hashem gives a person thoughts. You know what? Maybe I'm a little bit too selfish. So I should do an act of chesed.

2:01:23Maybe I'm a little bit too arrogant. Maybe I should lower myself a little bit and calm myself down and maybe do something more humble. And Hashem gives the person different ideas in order to elevate themselves as a show of preparation. And once they arrive at Rosh Hashanah, their prayer is in essence a culmination of the preparation that they've done for a few weeks. And that's a prayer that's meaningful. But if a person just goes to shul just because he likes the songs, usually you can't wait for the holiday to be over. Anything else? So, B'ezrat Hashem, tomorrow night we're going to have a shiur in Sunny Isles, questions and answers. Hopefully tomorrow you guys will have many questions, maybe about this shiur, maybe about something else that perhaps you have that's not relevant to this. Also, for anyone that is going to be in Eretz Yisrael, for the holidays, or at least a few days were for the holidays. Rabbi Ephraim, a Rav, he actually just is completing the Shas, Baruch Hashem, once again, and every time he completes the Shas, the Talmud Bavli, he has, Baruch Hashem, a big celebration

2:02:37party, like a wedding-type ceremony, with a festive meal and so on and so forth. So, anyone that's a student of ours, a supporter of ours, a fan of ours, and so on, loves Be'ezrat Hashem, is invited to go. You just have to give us a heads-up that you're going to be there, and we'll give you the information on where to go. So that's the second thing. Third, we're going to start a campaign on... for prayers of the holidays, so stay tuned for that. I don't know all the details yet, but we'll start something for that. Oh, and the last thing is the story, the personal story movie. Be'ezrat Hashem should be ready within the next week or so, if not less, as far as the copyrights we've been waiting on. And then we're going to have an event. So we're contemplating whether to do a screening or to do it just at a regular shul. So if anyone is interested in hosting a big event where you can bring a few hundred people to watch the movie, let me know. If not, then we're just going to release it online. We'll see, but this is going to be probably the movie of the century for teshuvah purposes simply because it's taking a very, very popular story that's helped thousands of people do teshuvah and putting a little bit of a modern effect on it without losing the kedusha.

2:03:56modern effect on it without losing the kedusha, and this is, in essence, one of the tools that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will give us to help anyone that wants to do any sponsorships, events, anything to do with that. Please let me know, and I'll see all of you tomorrow. Amen. Modern effect on it without losing the kedusha, and this is, in essence, one of the tools that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will give us to help anyone that wants to do any sponsorships, events, anything to do with that. Please let me know, and I'll see all of you tomorrow. Amen.