America vs. Germany, PUBLIC AFFECTION, Jewish Prayer, Failed Conversions - STUMP THE RABBI (32)

0:16We are Chag Sameach, Chag Chanukah Sameach. We are here on our Wednesday night shiur, the Stamper Rabbi. Hopefully, you guys have some good questions tonight. We, Baruch Hashem, are trying to start the shiur early, but the Yetzer Hara has a different plan. So he, Baruch Hashem, is working very, very hard, which is good, because at least we know we're going in the right direction. Anyway, today's shiur will be for refuah shlemah. And all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat Hashem, will have refuah shlema, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf, and also, what is it? Esther bat Tzipporah also refuah shlema. Malka bat Basha. Malka bat Basha. B'ezrat Hashem. Also refuah shlema. Okay. Oh, and also Rabbi Efraim ben Shulamit and Rabbanit Sarah bat Anat.

1:36And all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat Hashem, will have refuah shlema, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf, and also, what is it? Esther bat Tzipporah also refuah shlema. Malka bat Basha. Malka bat Basha. B'ezrat Hashem. Also refuah shlema. Okay. Oh, and also Rabbi Efraim ben Shulamit and Rabbanit Sarah bat Anat. The chag that we have right now, Purim, I mean, I'm confused, I am. Chanukah, that's what happens when you mention the yetzer hara right in the beginning of the shiur. Chanukah is already in the middle of the way. We see that Baruch Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is preparing us

2:38for preparing us for many more miracles because I think there were a few more attacks, a few more anti-Semitic attacks today, yesterday, and one of the, I didn't read the article, but one of the headlines was they just won't stop. The anti-Semitism just won't stop. A couple of days ago, they killed a Rabbi, and I think it was in Chicago today, they beat up a few Jews in New York. But it looks like we are in Germany in 1938, 1937, 1936. We're in Germany again; that's how it started.

3:38Now, does that mean that we should all run away? Not necessarily. And the reason why I say not necessarily is because the situation is not that much different anywhere else in the world, wherever you go. If you go to Europe, there are just as many attacks there sometimes. Sometimes they're even worse. Sometimes they're even funded by the government in some way or another. If you go to Eretz Yisrael, right now they're having an election where if one side wins, then the first thing that he wants to do, this rasha merusha Lieberman, the first thing that he wants to do is, at a minimum, cut the funding for the yeshivot and the batei midrashot by 50%. Minimum, right away. That's what's on his mind. There are Arabs that are shooting missiles at us day and night. He's not worried about that. There are all types of fraudulent businesses taking the country by storm over the last few years. He's not worried about that either. There are government officials who are literally stealing money from the government. He's not worried about that either. There are all types of socioeconomic issues, all types of major movements like BDS and the like.

5:06He's not worried about that. What is he worried about? These avreichim. They learn Torah all day. First thing he wants to do is cut funding for yeshivot by 50%. Which means, Rabotai, that just like the Zohar HaKadosh said, before Mashiach comes, there's going to be a war, there's going to be a lot of problems, but there's going to be a mitzvah that we're eventually going to have to fulfill. which is to destroy Amalek. Now, for as long as I can remember, I always thought that Amalek was a Nazi. I always thought that Amalek was an Arab, some anti-Semitic Christian, Catholic, Muslim, or Chinese. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that Amalek is a Jew.

6:06But that's what it is, and that's what the Zohar says. The fulfillment of the promise that HaKadosh Baruch Hu made to Moshe Rabbeinu, which is that before HaKadosh Baruch Hu brings the complete salvation of the world, we're going to have to deal with Amalek. We always thought we're going to have to deal with Nazi Germany again or someone else. The fulfillment of that mitzvah, rabotai yekarim, the Zohar HaKadosh says, is going to involve Jewish people. Amalek, unfortunately, has a lot of Jewish people in it. There are going to be some goyim also, obviously. But there are going to be some Jews in charge. And that’s why the Zohar HaKadosh says that the fulfillment of the mitzvah of destroying Amalek will actually be fulfilled with Jewish people. Now, if this is not scary, I don’t know what is. But in theory, it was scary enough. When you're seeing it in reality, you're seeing people like Lapid, yimach shemo vezichro, or Lieberman, yimach shemo, or all of these people that were born Jewish, meaning their mother is Jewish, I believe the father also, but they hate the Torah. They hate the Torah so much. It's very hard, it's very hard to believe that we have that much time.

7:34I don't mean that much time as far as before the end. I mean that much time that we continue having this convenient life, Baruch Hashem, that we have. Where you can pretty much wake up, go to a few shuls, whichever one you want, pick your choice. You go to a supermarket, you get all types of food, kosher food. In this generation, if you're not eating kosher, it's only because you hate HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Why? It's so easy to eat kosher. It's so easy to eat kosher. You can literally find kosher food in every supermarket in the world. If you want to eat kosher, you can find kosher food even in China. Which means if you're not eating kosher, it's just because you care less about HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Care less. That's the problem. HaKadosh Baruch Hu made... This generation, although it's very, very confused and very ignorant, He also made this generation have the most amount of convenience in history. You want to get Torah? You can get it online for free. You want to get a book? It's only a click away. Food? Anywhere you go around the world, you can find kosher food. Beit Knesset, Baruch Hashem, we have more Batei Knesset than I think we have people. Each block has five Batei Knesset, but no one has a minyan.

8:55I was looking for a house a year and a half ago, and the guy, the realtor that was showing me the neighborhood, said, "Oh, yeah, they're building another big Chabad center here." He says, "It's probably going to be a 30-40 million dollar development." And I said, "Where?" He goes, "Right there in the corner." So, wait a minute, but Isn't that one across the street also a Chabad $30 million establishment? He goes, no, that's $50 million. I said, how many people live in this community? He goes, no, it's empty. There's almost nobody there. I said, why are they building more? Why are they building more? Who knows? I have no idea. Strangest thing in the world. I guess you have to park the money somehow. It's absurd. But that's what's happening, Rabotai. That's what's happening in a confused generation. We have batei knesset, we have Chabad centers, we have all types of establishments, but Torah, Torah, real Torah, we are having a hard time. We're having a hard time. Now, on the good side, I always tell people what my Rav tells me all the time, anytime I get frustrated, is that the only way to beat the tum'ah...

10:20The only way to destroy the tum'ah that's in this world, the only way to overcome the impurity of this world, the impurity from Christianity, the impurity from people serving idols, the impurity from people going against Hashem, the only way is not going to be with a gun. So don't bother buying one. If you want to buy one, go ahead. I think it's going to give you more problems than it's going to give you solutions. If you think that a gun is going to save your life, you have a lot of serious problems. If you actually think that a gun is going to save your life, you have emunah problems. You can buy one if you want. It's not like you're not allowed. You're allowed. But if that's what you think is going to save your life, you have to go all the way back to shiur number one. Why? When Gog and Magog arrives, no gun in the world is going to help you. If HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided that someone has to die, nothing's going to help him. Gun, no gun. What do you think? That the people who survived the recent attacks survived because of guns?

11:20No one survives because of a gun. People survive because HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided they're going to survive. You have to give them a reason to let you survive. The gun is definitely not a reason. You want to go buy one? Buy one. Enjoy. Buy two. Buy a whole army. It's not going to help you though. It's going to help you. One of these Russian communists came to the Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch. He didn't like that he was teaching Torah, so he put a gun to his head and said, "Listen, Rabbi, you have to stop this Torah of yours. You have to stop it, or I'm going to kill you." So the Tzemach Tzedek looks at him with a smile, and the Russian gets even more upset. He says, "Why are you smiling, old man?" The Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch didn't like that he was teaching Torah, so he put a gun to his head and said, "Listen, Rabbi, you have to stop this Torah of yours. You have to stop it, or I'm going to kill you." So the Tzemach Tzedek looks at him with a smile, and the Russian gets even more upset. He says, "Why are you smiling, old man?"

12:22He said, "You see this gun you have? That only scares people who have one world and two gods. I have one God and two worlds. Your gun doesn't scare me. One God runs the world and two worlds. For me to go from this world to Olam HaBa, it's like you're just opening a door; you change a room. You leave this room, you go to the bedroom, finished. What's the big deal?" You only scare people that have two gods, their ego and the real God that they don't even appreciate. And they think, why are they not scared of God? Because they think this is the only life anyway. There's no Olam HaBa. So that's the type of people you scare. So for all of those people that are fascinated with guns, And they think that you training, taking martial arts, all of a sudden every Jew wants to be a capoeira artist or something. Everybody's Brazilian suddenly. Everybody wants to be a ninja. You're going to start seeing people with, you know, like Zorro. You know, with masks all the time. You think that's going to help you? Hashem, we're in bigger trouble than we thought. When you see religious Jewish people worrying more about learning martial arts and buying guns than doing teshuva, you realize how much trouble we're in.

13:43But nonetheless, Rabotai, we do have a situation. We have a situation on our hands because right now it's become a trend to be anti-Semitic openly. Every Jewish community has its own share of problems, some more, some less. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu is preparing us for a time when we are going to have to rely on a miracle. Every day. Now, we're relying on miracles every day anyway, but we don't really feel it. The fact that we wake up every day is a miracle, but we don't really feel it's a miracle. We feel it's supposed to happen. The fact that the check clears when the customer sends it is a miracle, but we don't feel it's a miracle. We feel it's natural. It's supposed to happen. What do you mean? He sent the check. Why wouldn't it clear? The fact that when you turn on the electricity, it actually works is a miracle, but we don't think it's a miracle. No, it's nature. It's physics. You go on a plane, the plane actually flies, and this big boat doesn't just decide to collapse in the middle of the air because there's really nothing holding it up. No, what are you talking about? It's physics. And if you look, the propeller is going a certain amount. Okay, you can do all the calculations you want in the world. It's a miracle.

15:07The fact that you can go on a boat, no matter how big it is, it could be the size of something that's literally not much bigger than this table over here, or it could be the size of three Titanics, one of these aircraft carriers. And it floats. It's a miracle. No, it's physics. Physics, your head. Your head's in the physics. Your brain is in the physics. It's all a miracle. But we don't feel it. We don't think it is. Because we got used to it. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is bringing us to a time where we are going to have to rely on miracles we haven't seen before. Meaning that we're all going to have to get to a point where we admit this is an open miracle, this is an open miracle, this is an open miracle, everything is a miracle. The fact that we survive a day is a miracle. Now, I know not everyone sees this as clear as day, and most people are not going to see it as clear as day until it actually happens. But it's happening. Anyone that knows a little bit about history can see the movie being repeated again. It's literally identical. Now, like I said, the missiles, the guns, the knives, the capoeira, the ninjas, the cowboys, the Indians, all that stuff is not going to help us.

16:33Only thing that's going to help us is doing teshuva. But that doesn't mean we're not going to have to deal with problems anyway. Yosef was a tzaddik. Yosef was a big tzaddik. It says that Yaakov loved him because he was a ben zekunim. He was a child that he had in his older age, but more than that, he was like an old man himself. He was such a smart kid, such a big talmid chacham. that Yaakov would learn with Yosef Torah that he wouldn't learn with the rest of the brothers. So that caused the other brothers to become more jealous of Yosef. And then he was doing so well that Yaakov Avinu gave him a special jacket. What was this jacket? This jacket, Rabotai Yekarim, was the jacket that Adam HaRishon wore. Adam HaRishon had a jacket that HaKadosh Baruch Hu made for him. Most people think that Adam HaRishon and Chava, they were walking around naked. That's what we think. We grow up, we say, "Oh yeah, they were naked, right?" No. Their private parts were covered from day one, from the first second. From the first second. HaKadosh Baruch Hu created them in a way where the clouds were covering them. They had a cloud covering their private parts. Later on, He actually made them clothing.

18:00But nonetheless, they were always covered. You can see it in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, which talks about some of the interesting things that happened at the beginning of time. But more than that, this special jacket moved from generation to generation, and one day Noach had it, and after Noach had it... Nimrod HaRasha, the biggest idol worshiper of his day, got it. Now, this jacket gave him supernatural powers over the animals, which in turn gave him power over the people. People thought that he was some kind of god. They thought that Nimrod was a god because he had so much power due to this jacket. Later on, the Midrash says that Esav saw this jacket, he liked it, so he killed Nimrod. When people saw that Esav killed Nimrod, Esav became the biggest gangster in the world. Later on, what happened? Yaakov took the jacket. Yaakov took the jacket when he ran away. He had to pretend he was Esav.

19:25And he gave that jacket to Yosef. Why did he give it to him? Because Yosef was a tzaddik and a talmid chacham, and he knew a lot of Torah and he learned with him. But still, we see that Yosef made a mistake. He said some bad things about his brothers. He judged them unfavorably. He saw them in the market talking to some women, so he thought his brothers were talking to married women. He saw them eating a lamb. And he said, "Wait a minute, you didn't even slaughter him. How are you eating him? This is a violation of the Noahide laws, a violation of the Torah. You can't do it." What he didn't know was that this lamb that they were eating was a lamb that was already inside the belly of its mother, or calf, was already inside the belly of its mother when they slaughtered it. So if you slaughter it, whatever is inside it doesn't have to be slaughtered. You can eat it.

20:25So he didn't see it. He judged them unfavorably and HaKadosh Baruch Hu punished him. With what? Ten years in prison. First, he went to Potiphar's house, but then he went to prison. He went to prison for ten years. But in this week's parasha, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that, okay, enough's enough. He had ten years in prison, then he got punished for an extra two years because he didn't have enough emunah, where he said two extra words to the Egyptian. Total 12-year sentence. But then in this week's parasha, HaKadosh Baruch Hu changes nature again and shows us His glory in a small way. How? He takes a guy that's in a prison where it's a one-way system. You enter, you're pretty much not coming out, at least not in one piece. If you're coming out in one piece, it must be a miracle. It's like Siberia, just in the desert. But not only does He take this prisoner that's been there for 12 years, but it says here, "Vayishlach Paro vayikra et Yosef vayiritzu min habor."

21:47So Pharaoh sent and summoned Yosef and they rushed him from the dungeon. Vayaritzuhu. Vayaritzuhu means they rushed him. Why does HaKadosh Baruch Hu decide out of all the words in the world, why didn't He just say they took him out? What were they in a hurry for? The guy's been there for 12 years. What's the difference if it's 12 years and a half, 12 years and a month, 12 years and a day, 12 years and two hours. Why are they in such a hurry, these Egyptians? Why is HaKadosh Baruch Hu in such a hurry to take him out? I mean, if you want to take him out so quickly, take him out already last year. We learn from here, Rabotai HaYekarim, Chazal tell us that the second the decree is finished, the second it's finished, HaKadosh Baruch Hu ends it at that moment. Meaning, As soon as HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants to uncover salvation to us, it doesn't have to be a gradual process. It doesn't have to be over time. As soon as the miracle is ready, as soon as the salvation is ready, as soon as the blessing is ready, you're finished. That's it. Meaning that right now, in the morning, 8 o'clock in the morning, he was a prisoner with no way out. No appeal, no lawyer, no nothing.

23:13At 8:05, he's not only out of the prison, he's already shaving, and he's only 15 minutes away from becoming the viceroy, the second in command of the most powerful country in the world. You went from being in a hole in the middle of the desert, the Auschwitz of the desert of 3,000 years ago. Within a matter of a few minutes, you're not only out of there, but you literally become the king, the operating king. That, Rabotai, is a small sample of HaKadosh Baruch Hu showing us what salvation looks like. Now, at the time of the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, there was a woman, the Gemara says, named Miriam. And this Miriam wasn't exactly a Haredi. She liked going out. She liked money. She liked show.

24:37So this Jewish girl decided to go marry one of the Greek generals. So when the war happened and the Greeks came into the Beit HaMikdash and started desecrating it, Miriam came like the boss. She walks into the Beit HaMikdash and she goes into where the Heichal is, where the altar is, You're not allowed to have shoes in there. But she has her sandals on and she walks up to the Heichal, to the altar, and she kicks it. And she says, "Wolf, wolf." She calls the altar a wolf. "Wolf, wolf, what is it that you only take but you're not giving back?" Meaning, all this time, the Jewish people are bringing you all of these korbanot, these sacrifices. Every day, korban tamid, korban this, korban that, all of these sacrifices every day—hundreds and hundreds of sacrifices. Sometimes it's a cow, sometimes it's a lamb, sometimes it's a bird, all types of sacrifices. All day there's blood on this thing. You're eating all day, but the one time that the Jewish people need you...

25:59you have nothing to give back. Now, this is obviously a disgrace. This is obviously disgusting. But for a moment, for a moment, it looks like she's right. Why? The situation got much worse. They continued desecrating the Beit HaMikdash. As we know from the story of Chanukah. They defiled all of the oils, all of the Beit HaMikdash, avodah zarah everywhere. HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't jump and say, "Miriam, you dare walk into My Beit HaMikdash with shoes on? You dare kick the altar? You dare!" Talk about how I'm not fighting back to defend my people. After all of the wickedness and the sins you've already committed, you actually even dare say something to me? You married a goy, but you have the audacity to talk to me like this? You don't see any of that, in fact, silence. Hashem does not respond at all during the

27:15Holocaust, some of the things that we saw defy logic. There's a book called "Bein Tzalmavet," where the Rav wrote eyewitness stories, things that happened during the Holocaust. You read or hear these stories and It's just baffling that this happened. One of the famous stories in this sefer is about a woman who had her daughter in the ghetto with the rest of the Jews and the Nazis. would always want to look like they're not murderers, like the exact opposite, like they're civilized. They would lead the people into the gas chambers, but all the while saying, thank you. They'd always be dressed up, appropriate, polite, but malach ha-mavet (angel of death) inside, sleeping inside each one of them. Now,

28:45They enjoyed torturing the Jews to such an extent that it's hard to understand how such a thing can be done by a human being. How could one human being be so evil? One of the examples is that this woman had a young daughter. The Nazis came to the group and said, "Okay, the war is going on, but it looks like..." Your brothers have captured some of our brothers. So we're doing an exchange of prisoners. And we're doing it. They said they want children. So we need to get 22 kids. There are 22 kids in this section. We need all 22 kids. We're going to send them all to Israel so they can bring us back our brothers, our Nazi soldiers. So, some of the parents over there are happy. At least their kids are going to survive this gehinnom. But one woman, I forget her name. I'll remember it later. She didn't believe. She didn't buy the story. She refused. And the Nazis were very, very precise with their numbers. Everything was on record. That's how we know. A lot of the information we know, we know from the Nazis.

30:11They kept a record of everything. There's a book in English called The Doctors from Hell. It's about a different trial that they had after the Holocaust, trying all of these doctors who conducted all types of experiments. Jewish people, all types of things. They were cutting limbs, they were putting stuff in them, throwing them out of a plane, all types of strange, psychotic things. Now, in the trial, they're not like asking the guy, "Did you do this? Did you not do this?" They're actually reading him his records of all the things he did because everything was documented. What did the person do? What did he feel? Did he die? Did he survive? How many died? Exact numbers. Exact time. Exact location. Who's involved? Who's not involved? So when they're counting these kids, they see there are 21 kids they need, there are supposed to be 22. They look around, they see, oh, your kid, we need him. He says, no. The Nazi soldier smiles and says, no, no, lady.

31:29It's good for him. We're trying to help you out. We're going to take your kid to the rest of the Jewish people. She looks at him. She looks at the Nazi soldier right in the face and says, "You're a murderer. And I don't believe you. You're going to kill my kid. I waited for my kid. I waited for my daughter for 13 years. And I'm not going to let you kill her. I'm not going to give her away." The Nazi looks at her and he says... Listen, lady, if I wanted to kill your daughter, I could just shoot her now. Why would I take her from you? If I wanted to kill her, I'd just kill her right now. Nobody's stopping me. She says, that's because you're trying to look nice to everybody else so you can fool more people. But I'm not buying it. You're a murderer, and you're going to stay a murderer. Well, the Nazi didn't like this comment. So within about three seconds, that woman was on the ground, getting the beating of her life. She wakes up a few days later; she wasn't able to get out of bed for several days from the massive beating that she got from this Nazi, yimach shemo. After several days, she wakes up and sees her daughter is gone.

32:56She's hysterical. She doesn't want to move. She doesn't want to live. And the other mothers are trying to cheer her up. "Oh, come on. It's going to be okay. Why do you have to be so pessimistic? Your daughter is okay. She's alive. She's with our kids. There's salvation once in a while. You know, there's good news. You don't have to be so pessimistic all the time." And as they're talking to her and trying to cheer her up, the Nazi soldier shows up again. He says, "I have a letter." He holds a letter in his hand. He says, "I have a letter from your daughter." The mother gets up. "Oh, I'll take it." "No, no, no. You don't get this letter. You don't get this letter." until you act like everybody else. You join the party. Okay, okay, what do you want? She goes, okay, we prepared for you guys a meal. Go have a meal. Start getting back to everybody else. Start complying with everything. Don't mouth off anymore. Then we'll let you read the letter from your daughter. So she got up, which was very difficult from all the pain, but she wanted to read the letter.

34:13She got to the place. All of a sudden, there's meat. There's food. Like, whoa, these Nazis became tzaddikim. What happened here? But she's eating. Let me finish the food so I can get the letter. Everybody's eating, eating, eating. Okay, okay, okay. I finished. I finished. Give me the letter. Give me the letter. She opens the letter. She says, you just ate your daughter. Now this actually happened, Rabotai, to our brothers, to our sisters. It's happened. This happened, this is documented, and as many other stories like it. So for now, it looks like Miriam, the Rasha'it, from 2,000 years ago that kicked the altar, was right. She kicked, she's complaining against G-d, there's no salvation.

35:15Many people think that people became heretics, that the majority of people became heretics because of the Holocaust. But that's wrong. Because there are many more stories of people that stayed strong and glued to HaKadosh Baruch Hu despite the Holocaust. One of the Gedolei HaDor of that generation that was in the Holocaust wrote a book himself about his and other people's experiences and the Kiddush Hashem that he saw inside the Holocaust, Rav Meisels. He wrote an experience that he had himself where He had a very famous tzaddik grandfather, and one of his most valuable possessions was his tallit. He had his tallit. But he knew that there was no way that the Nazis were going to let him wear a tallit. So he turned it into a tallit katan, into tzitzit.

36:35And he put it under his clothes in hopes that the Nazis never find this out. But one of the times that they, inside the Holocaust, were taking a shower, the Nazis would make sure that each person took only one uniform. And they would check, they would have a soldier at the entrance checking each person to make sure he didn't steal a second uniform. you know, checked his body to see that he's not, you know, his clothes are not puffy or something like that, where he's not wearing two of them. Why? Because they want to keep them tortured. They don't want you to be warm. They don't want you to do anything, clean, nothing. Part of the destruction of the morality of the people and the morale of the people. So when he got his clothes on, the Nazi soldier that was a communist prisoner, He was a German communist, former communist, and he was actually a prisoner of the Nazis, but his punishment was not like the Jews, where he was going to be a slave. In fact, he was a guard. He was a guard, a Nazi guard. He was a communist, anti-God. So when he saw Rav Meisnitz, he saw that his uniform looked a little puffy.

38:01He says, he writes in his book, he says, and the Nazi says to me, "Explain to me why your uniform looks like that. Why does it look like that? Why is it puffy? Show me." And of course, I knew I couldn't lie. I took off my shirt and showed him that I have my tallit. And he says to me, "What is this that you have?" "Why, what is this and why do you have it on?" Now, my wits' response to him was, "This is the uniform of God." The second I finished that sentence, the word "God" was something that was the last thing that this communist, this rasha, this Nazi ever wanted to hear. ever wanted to hear. He started hitting me with no control whatsoever, in every part of my body, yelling and screaming at me with rage, "How dare you mention the name of God when all of your people are being killed in strange deaths right now? They're being tortured in ways that no man has ever seen before, and you dare bring God's name into this?!"

39:29And he starts beating me up and beating me up. And eventually, after every part of my body is bleeding—from my eyes, from my ears, from my mouth, from my legs—everything is bleeding. This Nazi stands up and demands, "Give me one explanation." Why do you still believe in God? Or you will never leave this room. So now, what do you tell a communist? What do you tell a Nazi who is looking for every excuse in the world to kill you and your God? Now, if you're a secular person... You pretty much tell the guy, "Okay, you're gonna shoot me here, you're gonna shoot me here, because I have nothing to say to you. In fact, even if you're religious, you kept Shabbos, you ate kosher, you learned here and there, but you weren't glued to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, your best bet, you're gonna say to the guy, 'You know what, you don't want to believe in Him? I don't believe in Him. Why? It's pikuach nefesh, leave me alone, I want to live. I don't want to die.'"

40:54You don't have yishuv ha'da'at to focus at that point after the guy nearly killed you and almost broke every bone in your body. You're bleeding from every hole and every non-hole in your body. You don't have any real answer for this rasha. What are you going to say to this guy? But if you are glued to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, like some of the tzaddikim, like Rav Meir Simcha, you have an answer. And he says to him, "I'll give you an analogy of what it's like." He says, "Imagine there is a top surgeon, a surgeon the world has never seen. He's so good; everyone wants him to save their life. And he gets a patient that has a critical condition. And he says, 'I can save him, but we just need to operate.'"

41:56He takes the patient and he puts him on the bed, and he looks at a certain body part. He looks at the healthiest part of his body and decides that this is the part that he needs to cut in order to enter the body and fix whatever problem is inside. Now, while this top surgeon is cutting the body and preparing everything in order to solve the crisis... shoemaker happens to pass by and he sees that there is an older man on top of a younger man who looks healthy, and the older man is cutting up the younger man's body with no mercy whatsoever. with no care in the world. He's just cutting him up like it's a pancake. And he sees that, oh, he notices that this younger man actually has a part of his body that maybe looks wounded, but he doesn't understand the logic here. Because the shoemaker says, "When I fix my leather shoes and I make the leather shoes, I will never cut the good part."

43:21Surely I'm gonna look at the shoe, see the bad part, and cut that one in order to fix it. This old man must be senile. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's cutting the good part! So the shoemaker starts yelling and screaming, "Hey, you don't know what you're doing! Let me take over! You don't know what you're doing, you're cutting the good part! You fool!" Rav Meivitz says, "Now do you think that the top surgeon pays attention to the shoemaker? Pays any mind to the shoemaker? Stops the surgery? No. Why? Because he knows that the fool making all of these comments, who has all of these questions, is simply an ignorant shoemaker."

44:23He says, you see, we may have many questions about why HaKadosh Baruch Hu is doing certain things, but that doesn't make us question Hashem. It doesn't make us question Him. We're asking why this is happening, but we're not asking whether He's there or not, whether He's the one that's doing it or not. We know He is. We know that we don't have the answer of why He's doing what He's doing, but that's not a lacking in Him. That's not a flaw in Him. It's only because we are just dumb shoemakers, and to us, we're looking at the operation. We have no idea what's going on, but surely He is doing something to save our lives. Most of us... could not even come up with an explanation like that, even at our best. Even when we feel greatest, even after we finished the masechet or even the entire Shas. Needless to say, when Rav Meivick says this explanation, right after he got a beating that nearly killed him, and he tells this to a communist,

45:45You would think, okay, at least he finished with a nice chiddush, but he's still going to get killed. But the communist was so impressed, he says to him, you're a clever Jew. You're going to survive this. From now on, every day, you come by my place, and I'm going to give you extra food, the good food that the rest of them don't get, on top of what you already get. You're not like the rest. You're not like everybody else. You are clever. You actually have a reason. You have a reason to exist. You have a reason to believe. You really believe. You're not just saying it. You're not just pretending. So when we are looking for yeshuah, it's good. It's good that we look for yeshuah. It's good that we're looking for HaKadosh Baruch Hu to save us from our troubles, to save us from our loneliness, to save us from our problems with parnassah, to save us from our shalom bayit issues, to save us from all types of issues. It's good! The question is, do we have a reason for Him to save us? Do we believe in Him to such an extent

47:09that we know that He exists, that we know that He is God, that we know that He's the one that actually caused the trouble. Do we know it? If we don't, these are some of the things we have to work on. These are the things each one of us will have to be prepared with. That's why we have these types of shiurim, not only to work on our character traits, but also to be a reminder different things that have happened to us before in order for us to be prepared for the future, but also in order to ask the few questions that will help us get there. And that's what this whole shiur every Wednesday night is about. For you guys to ask me questions that will help you get to the level of emunah and bitachon and knowledge of Hashem. Yeah, you could ask me what time Shabbat starts. You could ask that question if you want, but that's not going to help you believe in God. That's not going to help you get knowledge of God. You could ask me, like one kid asked me one time, "Do you know all 12 tribes by heart?" It's the only question I never answered. And the simple reason is I thought it was a waste of time.

48:29I thought it was a waste of time to answer the question. Why? What's it going to prove to you if I know it or I don't know it? How is this question of me memorizing 12 names going to help your emunah? And I wanted to teach the point. I want you guys to ask questions in order for those questions to help you get to a level of knowledge that God exists. Because surely, you already have problems. But unfortunately, Rabotai, it looks like HaKadosh Baruch Hu is preparing a nice dish of problems for all of us before the Mashiach comes. Now, in order for us to be one of the few that celebrate Hashem's name for eternity, we have to get to a level of knowledge. You must know that I am your God, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says. Only once in the Torah does He say you must believe that I'm God. The rest of the times He says you must know that I'm God. We have to get to a point of knowledge. So please, ask some questions that are going to get us a little closer to knowledge. It can be about emunah, it can be about bitachon, it can be really about anything, but at least think about your question before you ask it because it's a shame that sometimes we have this shiur and it literally helps countless people do teshuva and sometimes it becomes almost like a Google.

49:55Well, there's questions, there's topics, but I don't know, I feel like no one improved after that shiur. Okay, so, you know, HaKadosh Baruch Hu showed you guys that He has mercy on me and He gives me some more information in my head and I look smart. It doesn't help. What helps is us getting closer to Hashem. So, Bechavod, who wants to go first? You and then him, if anyone wants to like you said, that Hashem will give us loud, loud, loud so they can hear you like me, loud. You can hear me without a mic; they can hear me downstairs, and this is my low voice. You should have seen me on Wall Street. I could have talked over there; you heard me here. So, like you said, Hashem gives us many different problems to prepare us for bigger tests again.

51:05Does that also mean that Hashem will actually make you kind of sin intentionally, unintentionally, maybe more unintentionally, in order to bring out some kind of will or something for Him, yearning for Him? It's an interesting question. Now, Hashem never makes a person sin per se in order to punish him because that would be sadistic and evil. But there is an aspect in Kabbalah that discusses the war of good and evil, Kedusha and Tumah, and i'm going to give you a very small aspect of it because it's too deep of an issue that I don't think is right to go into just about this question, but I'll give you a little bit of an aspect of it. Now, the only way to destroy the tumah, the impurity of the world, is with more kedusha. The only way that kedusha is destroyed is with more tumah. So they're opposites.

52:30Now, when someone starts getting closer to Hashem, starts praying, starts putting on tefillin, starts protecting their brit, starts learning Torah, not only are they creating more kedusha, but they're also hurting the tumah, they're hurting the Satan, they're hurting the other side. Now, what the Satan does at that point is that sometimes he'll let the person go for a little while, Sometimes he'll attack them right away. It depends on who and what. But the more a person improves their kedusha and the better, the faster that they're doing things, the more they entice the Satan to start fighting back. So sometimes, when a person is elevating himself in a very big way, where he seriously starts studying, he seriously starts watching his brit and so on, Satan goes against them in a big way and prosecutes against them. He brings the case against HaKadosh Baruch Hu in order to eliminate this person altogether for previous sins that he committed, for which Hashem just hasn't punished him yet. Now Hashem cannot say, "No, no, no, he did teshuva for everything," because he didn't do teshuva for everything. He did teshuva for some things, but he hasn't done teshuva for everything.

53:54So, he can't say, "Oh no, no, I can't punish him for this because he did teshuva for it," because he didn't do teshuva for it yet. Meaning this was an open case, and the Satan is right. He actually has something on you. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu, of course, doesn't want to kill you. So, what does He do? HaKadosh Baruch Hu puts the person in a situation where there is going to be a certain sin that they will commit beyond their control. It's not a They're making a sin that he's gonna make you violate Shabbat, where you just decide that you're gonna drive today to the mall on Shabbat. No. Certain things sometimes happen during your sleep. Sometimes it will happen where you'll forget certain things. It'll put you in a certain situation where you'll make a sin accidentally. Why? To pacify the Satan. "Ah, look, so you made a sin. Go, go look. He's giving him a treat. Leave him alone now. He made a sin." Leave him alone. Why? To give you a little bit more time to do more teshuva. So sometimes that happens. Now, this is not common. So don't start thinking, "No, no, I don't make any sins. All my sins are from the Satan." It's nonsense. All your sins are you. All your sins are yours. Once in a while the Satan says, "Oh yeah, okay, he gave me a treat." Most of the time it's us. Once in a while, a person's really watching his brit. He watches his eyes. He doesn't even look at a newspaper.

55:21It doesn't look like a newspaper. If I touch a newspaper, I have to wash my hands. I have to do netilat yadayim from all the tumah in a newspaper. Who reads newspapers anymore? People tell me all the time, "Oh yeah, did you read this?" No. Why would I read it? "No, it's on the news." Who watches the news? Why would I watch the news? I know the news by people telling me. That's how I know the news. I have no idea about the stock market. I have no idea who's a politician, who's not a politician. I know from people. That's how I know. I look at the headline of what people send me. Okay, so I know, okay, this one died, that one was born. Okay, so we're still back at break-even. See, the history, if you look at history, nothing changes in the news other than names. Nothing changes. The only thing that changes is the name of who is killing, who is alive, who discovered, who failed. Nothing changes, just names. Why waste your time? People spend so much time on the news, and they stress themselves out. It's one of the tools of the Satan to not only waste your time but to stress you out. Because you feel helpless, you watch, you look at the news, you see all these people dying. There are rockets every day, terrorism, financial crises that are predicted but haven't happened yet, but maybe it's happening, and we don't even realize it yet. And before you finish, by 10 o'clock in the morning, you're already stressed out for a week. And...

56:44Why? You watch the news for 10 minutes. And that's what news is. You're never gonna see a news station talk about good news. You see, one car accident happened, five or ten minutes of coverage. Some company failed and declared bankruptcy, five or ten minutes of coverage. Some guy raped somebody, five, ten, or twenty minutes of coverage. Murder, five, ten, or twenty minutes of coverage. Someone won the lotto, one second. Someone discovered a cure for cancer—half a second. Good news, barely on the news. Bad news, constant. Why do you want this in your life? Why do you want to just put yourself in such stress? For what? So Satan uses all types of tools in order to fool us, to waste our time, to develop stress. And many times when we commit sins, it's because of us. It's because of things that we did. We looked at the newspapers, we looked at the internet, we looked at this girl, we looked at that girl, we did all types of things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu said are not allowed. One of the things that I've mentioned to you several times, but apparently this epidemic has become such a problem that you're now seeing the average rabbi violating the Torah openly. How? By taking pictures of himself and his wife hugging and putting it on the internet.

58:15He's hugging his wife, or he's hugging, you know, I don't know, somebody, and he's putting it on the internet. So now the average Jew thinks that his Facebook picture, or his WhatsApp picture, or his business card, or his, I don't know, billboard or something, is supposed to show, "Oh, I'm like the rabbi, I'm affectionate, I want to show the world I love my wife, so I'm hugging her in public." Shulchan Aruch. Shulchan Aruch. You guys heard of Shulchan Aruch, right? The Shulchan Aruch says this is 100% a sin. You're not allowed to show affection to your wife in public. Needless to say, you're not allowed to show affection to your wife in public and actually show it to the rest of the world. Every single minute that you're alive. Or not, because it's on the internet. People do this all the time. They have no idea. They have no idea. They're making a mistake. They have no idea what they're doing. So sometimes it's because of lack of knowledge. We didn't learn enough. We never heard this. Or sometimes we look at the wrong people as the example. We looked at the rabbi, we see Goldberg and company from Boca Raton. We see that this guy every other day has a picture of him hugging another woman. You would think this guy's a movie star.

59:30But then you find out he's a rabbi. Oh, the rabbi is hugging a bunch of women. It must be allowed. Why? He's a dayan. Not just a rabbi. He's a dayan. He's one of the biggest rabbis in America as far as his kehillah size. Hashem yerachem aleinu. His kehillah is a thousand families. He's hugging women on the internet. Not even his wife. Of course, the average Jew in America is going to think this is a mitzvah, not just allowed. A mitzvah. A mitzvah to hug strange women. as if the whole laws of niddah are canceled, the whole laws of eshet ish canceled, karet, baretz, nothing anymore. So what does that mean? It means that many times we commit sins not because we hate Hashem, not because we want to go against Him, but because we're simply clueless and we're looking at the wrong example. So remember, we do not learn Torah from people. You don't learn Torah by looking at people and then repeating what they do. You learn Torah from books. You learn Torah from a lecture, assuming that the lecture is from a kosher person. But if the rabbi giving the lecture also has a picture of him and his wife hugging, you should know, by default, you're not allowed to listen to him. Forget about "you shouldn't" — you're not allowed. The Shulchan Aruch explicitly states that you're not allowed to learn Torah from such a person.

1:00:57It's a sin, like eating pork. So now, back to your question. If a person is so zealous, such a big lover of Hashem, why doesn't he commit these sins? Because he has yirat shamayim. He's afraid of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, so he tries whatever he can to learn as much as he can, so he doesn't make a mistake. So he watches his eyes, and he watches his feet, and he watches his hands, and he watches what goes into his mouth, and he watches what comes out of his mouth, and he watches all of his actions. He's really careful. Satan comes to him and says, "Who do you think you are? Six months ago, you were a mass murderer. Now you are a tzaddik, ba'al teshuva already. Who do you think you are? I'm taking you to trial with Hashem now. Taking you to trial." So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "No, leave My tzaddik alone. He's going to be a big tzaddik one day. Leave him alone." I have a case. I got a case against him. Nine years ago, this guy wasted seed on purpose with three girls. He didn't do teshuva for it. He forgot it. He forgot it. Hashem, I got a case. Hashem says, no problem. You're right. Satan, you have a case. Here's a bone. Here's a bone. Tonight he goes to sleep. Something's going to happen in his sleep that's going to really, really upset him.

1:02:23But in reality, I'm doing him a favor. Why? I'm pacifying you, Satan, so you go away, so he can continue being a tzadik, continue watching his eyes, continue doing good things. Meaning, if your sin comes, despite you watching your eyes, despite you watching your behavior, despite you watching your mouth, you're doing everything good, and still something like that happens, just so you know, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is telling you, I like what you're doing, keep going. Don't get depressed, don't get down, it's good news. But the Satan doesn't like it. But if you're hugging your wife in public, if you have a girlfriend, you have a girlfriend, and you're a Jew, you have a girlfriend, for sure you're sinning. You have a boyfriend, for sure you're sinning. It's not even a question whether you're sinning or not. There's no girlfriend, boyfriend in Judaism. There's engaged, married, finished. everyone else is a stranger. Now if you're engaged, that means that you're still not even touching each other's hands. Why? Because you're not allowed. So now, if you didn't know this till today, welcome to Judaism. If you knew and you still sinned, okay, you got to fix this.

1:03:44You got to fix this. Issur niddah. You have to fix it. It's not an easy fix. But the point is, rabotai, that we have to work really, really hard to make sure to clean our neshamot. Why? Because the more sins we have, the harder it is for us to glue ourselves to Hashem. And that's exactly what we need to do today. We need to glue ourselves to Hashem. We need to get closer to Him. The first thing to do is eliminate as many sins as possible. Clean up our acts. Then we can start adding all of these wonderful mitzvot that will beautify our neshamah. But if you just worry about mitzvot, but not about sins, then it's like putting sauce on a pig. It's still a pig. You're still not allowed to eat it. Even if the sauce is delicious. Even if the sauce is kosher Badatz, it's still a pig. You understand? That's the thing—you have to stop sinning. Sinning is delicious, but you have to convince yourself that it's disgusting poison. That takes time and effort. Next question, from Ari over there in the back. You ask tough questions, Yehoshua.

1:05:11Are we allowed to tell God what He is and demand things from God? Also, what is God? Exactly. Are we allowed to tell God what He is? Right. What does that mean? Meaning, in Amidah, for example, it's constant. I can't think of an example right now. No, in the mitzvah you do every day with tzitzit. After the tzitzit... Who are we to tell Him what He is? Obviously, if it's in our prayer, then we're allowed to do it. Yeah, but... What's the question? That's the question. Who are we... Also, in the Amidah, there's no "please." It's like... heal us, help us, make sure we are this, make sure, take care of us. Okay, I get your question. Build Yerushalayim. There's no "please." So there's two questions. And what is He really? Because we're always saying, for example, there are so many ways to talk to Him.

1:06:34And ask, but we never really say please. It sounds demanding. Okay. So as far as describing God, we are allowed to describe God, but if you look at the Siddur, sometimes the Siddurim, depending on which versions you have, especially the ones that have English and Hebrew, the ones that have just Hebrew usually do not have much commentary on the Siddur. But if the ones that have like ArtScroll and Metsudah and some of the other Siddurim that have English and Hebrew, they tend to have more commentary on the bottom of why we pray, what we pray. And you'll see that at the prayer of Shema Yisrael, after you complete saying the mitzvah of Tzitzit... But if the ones that have like ArtScroll and Metsudah and some of the other Siddurim that have English and Hebrew, they tend to have more commentary on the bottom of why we pray, what we pray. And you'll see that at the prayer of Shema Yisrael, after you complete saying the mitzvah of Tzitzit, and you say Hashem is emet, then you start saying Hashem, You're this, Hashem, You're that, You're the best, You're righteous, You are, You know, and so on and so forth. So you look at the commentary, and the commentary says one should never think

1:07:44for a moment that this is enough or this is all Hashem is, but in essence, we're giving Him these descriptions, these praises, because these are right. It's just that you should know this is not all He is. He's much greater than any words that we can describe Him with. So when you're saying "Abba, I love You," yeah, that's fantastic. but love is something you have to show with action and so on and so forth. So you saying love is an expression of things you will do. You saying Hashem is emet, Hashem is amazing, Hashem is righteous and so on, is in essence not you trying to describe all of Him, but rather you understand that is Gedulah and how amazing He is in this particular aspect and that particular aspect. So describing Him is something that's part of our tefillah, And we learn all of these descriptions from the Five Books of Moses and from the rest of the Tanakh itself. It's not that the Chachamim just decided to, you know, use nice words to describe God. Like you're never gonna see that, oh, Hashem is tall and handsome. You're not gonna see that. Why? Because that's not a description for Hashem. The descriptions that we have for Hashem come from the Torah, come from the Tanakh. We see that He describes Himself as that.

1:09:03So to describe Him the way He describes Himself is obviously allowed. Now, in regards to our prayers seeming demanding, that only means that you have to look a little bit further into the translation of the prayers and understand what the word "Baruch" is. The word "Baruch" is not "blessed You, Hashem," as if you're demanding Him; it's quite the opposite. You're praising Hashem. You're telling Him, Hashem, You're the greatest. You're the blessed. You're the most awesome. You're the only way that I can get refuah shleimah. You're the only one that can give us peace. You're the only one that has this. Meaning, you are praising Him. You're not demanding Him to do anything. You're praising Him. Every time you say baruch, you're saying, You are the creator of this. You are the creator of that. You are the source of all good. I have nowhere else to go. That's why I say "Baruch" in every blessing. That's the highest form of praise because, in essence, you are admitting that you are nothing, we are nothing, and He is the source of all good. There is no higher praise we can give Him, and it's obviously the opposite of demanding. In essence, we are pleading to Him like homeless people. And that's really what prayer is supposed to be. Prayer is supposed to be us praying to Hashem like homeless people pray for bread.

1:10:25That's what prayer is supposed to be. If you saw, for example, the Klausenberger Rebbe, the Klausenberger Rebbe, Rav Halberstam, he has a video online, I think I've sent it to people in the past, maybe a few months ago. I'll tell you the truth. I couldn't listen to the whole thing in one sitting. I couldn't listen to it in one sitting. It just broke my heart. There's a recording of him praying Mincha. Now I'm not talking about Mincha of Yom Kippur, Mincha of Rosh Hashanah, Mincha of... regular Mincha. Regular Mincha, like all of us are supposed to pray every day? Regular Mincha. You hear him pray regular Mincha, you simply think of yourself as literally like... I might as well not pray. If that's what prayer is supposed to be like, I'm never going to get to this. He cries to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He cries to HaKadosh Baruch Hu in Mincha prayer. He cries to Him with real tears, crying, and he makes you cry. His voice, this old man, is crying hysterically to HaKadosh Baruch Hu like a baby cries to his mother. Regular Mincha every day. Regular Mincha!

1:11:51Now, if you get to cry, you tell people every year, "Oh, it's Tisha B'Av, it's a mitzvah to cry." Ninety percent of the guys are in there, "Yeah, yeah, sure, it's a mitzvah." Who's going to cry here? Maybe the rabbi's going to cry. Maybe a couple of tzaddikim are going to cry. The average guy doesn't cry at all. He's embarrassed to cry. He doesn't realize. When you pray Mincha, you pray Shacharit, you pray Arvit, and you understand what prayer is supposed to be, that you're homeless, you're a little baby with no food. And your only source is HaKadosh Baruch Hu, what are you going to do other than cry? That's how the Gedolim would literally pray on a regular basis. It depends, again, on their connection to Hashem, that different ones did different things. But I heard this recording, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't do it the whole thing in one sitting. I had to break it up. Why? You hear him cry, you start crying. And then you hear it's just regular prayer Mincha. You start crying about yourself, how much of a loser you are.

1:12:54It's like, I can't pray like this on Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, I can't pray like this. This guy is praying like this every day, Hashem Rachem Alai. Are my prayers even getting to the ceiling? Who knows? But that's, that's, that's, that's Shlemut. That's completion. That's, that's Deveikut. That's gluedness to Hashem. That's a person, that's a Gadol. But understands that he's a little baby screaming for his Abba. That's what we're supposed to do. So when we say Baruch, we're praising Hashem the best we possibly can with the limited language that we have. That's what prayer is supposed to be. Next question. That's it? Finished all Torah? You guys want me to start crying for you, maybe? For example, about health. Give us health. There's no... Again, there's no please. No, like I said. It's like, do this, do that. Before every bracha...

1:14:05Except Modeh Ani. Modeh Ani is beautiful because it's neutral. It flows. It's harmonic. But before the brachot, it's like do this and do this and then the bracha. Do this and then the bracha. Every time. Where does it come from, the demand? It's not a demand. It's a lack of understanding of what you're saying. So I recommend this. One of the previous Gedolim, Rav Pincus, He has a series of books about different parts of Judaism. One of them is about tefillah, about prayer. You read that book, you're going to have a completely different understanding of what prayer is. What's the name again? Rav Pincus. Rav Pincus. You just type his name, P-I-N-C-U-S, and you look online in his books, you'll see that one of his books talks about tefillah, talks about praying. and that's one thing. That tells you really, and there are many, many other Gedolim that wrote about prayer who will tell you what you're actually saying. Meaning, what you're saying is not just the translation into the language that's your first language. What you're saying is much, much deeper. For example, you mentioned Modeh Ani. Modeh Ani, the Pachad Yitzchak, Rav Hutner,

1:15:33says that the Modeh Ani, what most people don't understand is that when you say Modeh Ani to Hashem, in that same paragraph you're saying modeh and hodeh. You're saying the same thing twice. Why are you saying it twice? He says because that word is used in two ways. One is to thank Hashem. Modeh Ani to Hashem. I'm thanking Hashem. But also to admit. To admit what? Of all my wrongdoings, of all of my lacking, of all of my flaws, of all of my sins. And this, rabotai yekarim, is why we are all called Yehuda. We're called after Yehuda, we're called Yehudim. Why are we called Yehudim? Because of Yehuda, in last week's parasha. Yehuda had a dilemma. What was the dilemma? He was with a woman, Tamar. Now, he didn't know he was with Tamar. He thought he was with somebody else. I told you guys the story a few weeks ago. Now, what ended up happening is that Tamar got pregnant, and he didn't know that he was the other party, the contributing party. He didn't know that. He says, ah, you got pregnant without a husband. You're bringing embarrassment to our family. Death penalty. Now, Tamar was a big tzaddeket, and she says in last week's parasha, she says...

1:17:01to Yehudah, she asked for one last thing to do before they kill her. He said, what do you want? I want to speak to Yehudah, the king. I want to speak to him privately. Okay, so they bring him to the cell. Yes, what can I do for you? And she shows him his underwear, his staff, and his ring. She says, do you know who these belong to? Now, what is she saying? She should tell him, if I was Tamar, I would say, hey, Don't kill me. You should kill yourself. Why? These belong to you. No question about it. Your ring has your stamp on it. The stick—no one else has one like this. Underwear—come on, I'm not going to make this one up. This is yours. No. What does Tamar do? She asks as if she doesn't know. Do you know who these belong to? In essence, telling Yehudah, "I'm not going to disclose that you are the one who got me pregnant because maybe you don't want people to know that." And I would rather get burned in a fire than embarrass you in public. From there, we learn the mitzvah that a person is forbidden from embarrassing another person in public to such an extent that it's better to jump into a fire than to embarrass another Jew in public. Now, Yehudah had two options here. One option is to send her to the fire and continue living his life as if nothing happened.

1:18:32Okay, maybe I'll feel bad for a few days, but that's it, you move on, you know, you're out of sight, out of mind. Right? Isn't that a saying that Goyim have? So, out of sight, out of mind. But Yehudah says, you're more righteous than me, you're right, it's me, I did it. I'm going to admit and embarrass myself in public and put my own life at risk because they may end up stoning me because of this. Why? Because that's the emet. He admitted in front of everyone, "Hey, there's no burning, there's no killing of her. If anything, it's me. Why? I did it." So when he said it, Hashem said, "No, tzadka mimeni, she's more righteous than me; I was behind the whole thing." Hashem said, "I was behind the whole thing." So from that moment, HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided that the Mashiach will come from Yehuda and that Am Yisrael will be called after him. Why? Because the most critical part of being a Jew is to admit our flaws and also to be thankful. You have to be thankful and you have to admit your flaws. Because being thankful, if you're not thankful, you're never going to be grateful to Hashem.

1:19:48Admitting your flaws, if you don't admit your flaws, you're never going to do teshuva. These are two things that are required in order to be glued to Hashem. Therefore, Yehuda—in essence, his name was a prophecy to his actions. Not that it led to his actions, but it was a prophecy to his actions, meaning it indicated that that was his nature. So a person must learn how to thank Hashem and how to admit. His mistakes and everything I just told you is only one page, only one page, in the Pachad Yitzchak. One page in Pachad Yitzchak Chanukah. So, imagine if you read a whole book. You read a whole book, you have a wealth of knowledge. But you have to read the right books. Many people read books that have nice covers or books that are written by, you know, popular authors of today. You should read some of the books they were reading by the Gedolim, some of these well-known Gedolim that were accepted by everyone, and you'll see that the wisdom that's in the Torah is endless. And you'll see that your average prayer, your average holiday, your average Shabbat, your average day is just no longer the same because you have so much more knowledge.

1:21:04Anyone that wants to be not only a good Jew as far as practice, but a happy one too, must accumulate more knowledge every day. If you're not growing in knowledge, you're going backwards because every day you forget a little bit. So if you're not learning more information the way you're forgetting, eventually what ends up happening is that you start forgetting why you're even doing all these mitzvot. you wake up one day deciding that you don't want to do this anymore because you haven't prayed in a long time. You haven't prayed at least like you should in a long time. You haven't learned anything new, anything good, anything worthwhile, anything that shook your heart in a long time. You haven't taken anything on to improve yourself in who knows how long. Eventually, you start getting so weak to the point where you start asking yourself, why should I even do this at all? It's Saturday afternoon, Shabbat, 12 o'clock, but you feel like going to the game instead of going to the shul. You feel like maybe I should light up a cigarette, even if I don't smoke. Why? Because you have no idea why you're doing anything. And that's what happens. People that don't learn, it's only a matter of time before they become chilonim gemurim. Only a matter of time. There are many people that have kippot that are complete chilonim.

1:22:28But they don't want to necessarily change the whole look right away because of different social issues, kids, wife, and so on and so forth. But if you're not learning every single day, little by little you're killing your own neshama. Regarding your prayer and all the questions that you have, there are many, many books about it. And if you spend, like I said, Rav Pincus's book is just one of many examples. You spend a little bit of time learning that book, you're going to see that your prayer will never be the same. There's also "How to Pray Like a Jew." "How to Pray Like a Jew" is also a very famous book. Was the Amidah written in one shot or over time? The Amidah was done by the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah. Our whole Siddur was done by Anshei Knesset HaGedolah. Some say, that the morning prayer of Shacharit was officially done by Avraham Avinu, Mincha by Yitzchak, and Arvit by Yaakov.

1:23:33But the way we have it today, as far as the structure of all three, and the order, and the Tehillim, and so on, that was a culmination of different people who added different things over time, and then put the whole thing together, and that's what we have today. But there were different parts that were added over time. Next question. Give somebody else a chance. Sutton over here. I thought Sutton was on strike. He didn’t have his question yet. So, okay. That’s good. a certain level of embarrassment that it talks about when embarrassing someone in public because it's like eternal hell. For embarrassing someone in public, do they have to be super embarrassed or a little embarrassed? Yeah, I mean, again, it depends on whether it was intentional or not. It depends on whether the person did teshuva for it or not. Everything is subject to teshuva, meaning that even if you embarrass somebody in public, um... You can still do teshuva for it. You can say "I'm sorry" to the person. You can work on yourself to not do it again. You can work on your character traits. All of us have failed at this at some point or another, sometimes even with the most important people in our lives. Usually, the people we embarrass the most are the people that we love the most: our wives, our husbands, our kids, our parents. And so it happens often, simply because of a lack of knowledge.

1:24:55We don't realize that either it's not allowed, or we don't realize that it's going to be that embarrassing for them. So the most important thing to know is that, number one, it's something that you can do teshuva for, which starts off with saying "I'm sorry," working on yourself to never do it again, doing your best to work on your character traits to never bring yourself to that type of stage, and if you fail again, do teshuva again. Do teshuva again. Teshuva is available as long as you're alive. They asked one of the Chachamim about life, "Tell us a secret that's going to get us to Olam HaBa." And Rabbi Eliezer says, "Do teshuva before you die." So the students say to Rabbi Eliezer, "Well, does one actually know when he's going to die?" So Rabbi Eliezer answers, he says, exactly. Since you don't know and no one knows when they're going to die, therefore you're obligated to do teshuva every day. Every day you work on something. Today you're going to work on prayer. Okay, tomorrow you maybe work on prayer again. Next day, maybe you continue to work on prayer. Maybe you're going to work on prayer for three months straight. Who knows? But eventually, you have to change something else.

1:26:18Okay, learning. You're going to work on learning. You're going to learn more now. Okay, it's 15 minutes, now it's a half hour, now it's an hour, and so on and so forth. Okay, you're going to start working on character traits. Every one of us knows for sure at least a few things that we are terrible at. If you don't, then that means you have even more things terrible about you. Everyone has something terrible about them. Everyone. You know there's something terrible about you. Pick something that's terrible about you. You're angry. You're cheap. You're a stingy person. You are, I don't know, whatever it is that you are. Something's wrong with you that you know is not really a likable trait. People complain about it all the time. And the reality is you know they're right. You don't have to admit to all of them that they're right. Admit to yourself at least that they're right. And you have to fix it. Pick it. Start working on it. Start working on it. Start fixing it. The Rambam writes, for example, that someone who is stingy, one of the ways to work on it is to start taking a certain amount of money that you are willing to give, let's say $100, and give it to 100 people. Not $100 times 100, but take $100 and give $1 to different people. Why? Even though $100 to one person will be a lot more productive than $1 to 100 people.

1:27:38While it's about to help somebody, you can't buy gum with it anymore. What do you do with a dollar? You give all those guys dollars and tell them, "Listen, let me give you change." That's all you give. Give a dollar. When you give a dollar, whether the dollar gets away with all you want, somebody is... Rambam says, give him a dollar. Why give him a dollar? Because you're stingy. There's no chance in the world you're going to give him five. There's no chance in the world you're going to give him ten. There's no chance in the world you're going to give him a hundred. There's no chance. You're not going to do it. You're a stingy person. So what do you do? Give a dollar to a hundred people because that you can give. Why? Because once you see or you feel the feeling of giving to so many people, what it creates for you, with this emotional feeling, this physical feeling that you get out of it, this pleasure you get out of it, you're going to want to give more. You're going to get used to giving. After giving to 100 people, even though you really didn't help anybody, you're going to actually start liking giving. You'll enjoy giving. And that's going to eventually lead you to give more than just $100. Maybe you'll end up giving $200, maybe $300, maybe more.

1:28:45And that happens sometimes. I've actually seen it with my own eyes. We see that certain people are very, very stingy, and they change over time. Unfortunately, people only change if they want to change, though. No one changes by themselves. You know, there's no like evolution of character traits. Your character traits develop if you want them to develop. If you don't want them to develop, they won't develop. They'll stay the same as you were born. You know, that's an important thing. If a person takes teshuva seriously, he's going to evaluate himself. She's going to evaluate herself. Where am I weak? The rabbi keeps mentioning modesty in every single lecture. Yet I still have pictures on the internet with tank tops on. I still walk around with half an outfit missing. So maybe I should take modesty on. Maybe I should stop wearing tight clothes as if I'm one of these goyot. Maybe I should start looking like I'm from a different nation. Maybe I should stop enticing every average Joe to look at me because I'm so attracting, not just attractive.

1:29:56i wear clothes specifically to get attention, certain colors that she wears, certain styles that she wears, certain features that she has. She wears clothes that have the brand or certain words right on her chest, Hashem Yerachem. That means that every single time a guy walks by, immediately, immediately he's going to look at those words. Why? Because our brain is programmed in a certain way that we look at certain things automatically, even subconsciously. That's why the billboard business is so successful. ...way. If you want to get a billboard, for example, in New York City, you're going to have to pay at least a quarter million dollars a month. A quarter million dollars a month to get a decent billboard on the highway to put your advertisement on it, at least. I'm talking about cheap. You want to go in Manhattan? You want to go into other places? Millions of dollars. Why? Who's looking up? Everyone. You put words, you put colors, you put a picture on something, people automatically look. Everybody's a reincarnation of the water fountain that rotates by itself. That's what we are. Everybody moves their heads like this, like this, like little monkeys. That's what we are. We keep looking. So if she wears a shirt that has words on her chest or has words on her behind, guess what? Not only is this not allowed, this is mamash the Satan himself in clothes.

1:31:21So a woman that thinks about this automatically says, okay, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. It's not worth it to wear this Gucci, Fendi, whatever brand you like and make so many sins just by going outside to buy some groceries. It's not worth it. So a person that does teshuva starts doing self-evaluation. Where am I weak? What could I do? How could I change it? How could I fix this? How could I fix that? And little by little, they fix it. You start seeing yourself a year later, you can't recognize yourself anymore. Why? You've improved so much. But that's only if you want to change. And that's why I told somebody, I have a friend of mine, talmid chacham, a serious talmid chacham. He's also a physicist. He has a website called that has all types of scientific proofs of God and so on. Anyway, we had a discussion one time about Gehinom. And I said, yeah, I saw somebody make a comment and they said that learning about punishment turned them off. Turned them off from Judaism. It got them so upset they got turned off by it.

1:32:44And people are always worried about talking about punishment, talking about severe things because they're afraid of turning people off. Now here's the secret: The only people that are turned off, the only people that are upset by hearing about punishment, are people that don't want to change. That's why you're upset. You're upset about Gehenom because you don't want to change and therefore you know you're going there. We're talking about you. You're the criminal. That's why you're upset. But a guy that says, "Listen, I don't want to go to this Gehenom. I'm going to change." He's not upset. He's enlightened. He's, "Thanks, Rabbi, you just changed my life." I didn't know I was gonna go on a one-way ticket to Gehenom. I didn't know. Now you told me to stop wasting seed. Now you told me to stop going with every girl that I meet and don't meet. Now you told me to stop doing drugs. Now you told me that Hashem hates all this stuff? Rabbi, you just saved my life. You're the best rabbi in the world. That's the best rabbi? I just told you what's on the peshat of the Torah. What best rabbi? I just did the job you were supposed to already know when you were six years old.

1:34:04Rabbotai, I'm going to show you something. I read this, I don't know, it shook my neshama. There are halachot that you learn about how to behave as far as modesty, both as a man and as a woman. And there are halachot of how to behave in the bathroom. This always fascinates me. And the reason why is because this shows us how precise our Torah is and how much Hashem cares about everything. Now, you're not allowed to learn Torah when you're in the toilet. You're not allowed to learn Torah. Now, you're going to think about, if you're a righteous Jew, you're going to think about Hashem all the time. There's no such thing as not thinking about Hashem. But to learn Torah, you're not allowed to do. You're not allowed to take your Chumash with you and learn in the toilet. Not allowed. Why? Because it's an impure place. But there's a question for you. Is HaKadosh Baruch Hu also in the toilet? If you say no, you're a kofer gamur. Why? He's everywhere. He's everywhere. There's nothing else but Him. He's everywhere. Now let me ask you a question. Is HaKadosh Baruch Hu disgusted by the fecal matter that's in the bathroom?

1:35:25Is He disgusted by the fecal matter? By the waste that comes out of your body? Is He disgusted by it? He created it. Now, is HaKadosh Baruch Hu disgusted by the animals? Like, for example, the pig. The pig, whether you throw him a diaper, or you throw him food, or you throw him a human being, he's going to eat anything. The pig is such a filthy, disgusting animal that even if a venomous snake bites it, it does absolutely no damage whatsoever to the pig. Why? Because the skin of the pig has so much poison on it, it's more venomous than the venom of the snake. This is 100% fact. The pig is so filthy from eating everything that the venom of the snake doesn't affect it. Now, when that pig eats waste, people's waste, its own waste, bodies, anything. Is HaKadosh Baruch Hu disgusted by the pig? Is HaKadosh Baruch Hu disgusted by the pig? Yes or no? He created it, Satan is still right. people's waste, its own waste, bodies, anything. Is HaKadosh Baruch Hu disgusted by the pig? Is HaKadosh Baruch Hu disgusted by the pig? Yes or no? He created it; Satan is still right.

1:36:40Now, next, at some point, at some point, everybody dies. The pig is going to die and people are going to die. That's what everybody's going to do—die. There's no curses. It's just a reality. People die. Now, what happens in the grave? What happens after someone dies? They decay. What does that mean? What does it mean? Decay is a nice word to say. What does decay mean? Decay means you become lunch. You become lunch for a bunch of worms and maggots. Maybe sometimes snakes do too. The maggots and the worms start eating the person, a person that died. Within a few hours, they start smelling. And the next day, you think you should burn the whole house. If you open a grave of somebody that died a week, two weeks, three weeks later, you have to go to a hospital sometimes. It's horrible. Horrible. Now, That's the animals eating this. These little animals, these little creatures, are eating this delicious for them lunch, breakfast, and dinner. Is HaKadosh Baruch Hu disgusted from the decayed flesh? He created it, right? Is He disgusted from the maggots that are eating people? No, He created it. He's the one that implemented the system.

1:38:06So what is HaKadosh Baruch Hu disgusted by? You're in the right direction. You're in the right direction. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is only disgusted by one thing, not three things, one thing. Sin. That's the only thing that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is disgusted by. that means that if you actually put this into your head and you remember this, the next time you want to look somewhere you're not supposed to, the next time you want to turn on something you're not supposed to, the next time you want to take something you're not supposed to, the next time you see a delicious sin You think for yourself this: Hashem is not disgusted by the maggot. He's not disgusted by the worms. He's not disgusted by the pig. He's not disgusted by disease. He's not disgusted by, you know, all types of horrible things. He's not disgusted by anything, but He is going to be disgusted by my sin. That means that the whole world moves, the whole world operates, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not disgusted by anything.

1:39:18...accept our sins. So imagine, one day we meet HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu shows you everything that's going on in the entire world, but the only thing He's disgusted by is what you did in that moment. That, Rabotai, is embarrassing, to say the least. But that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu says. He writes in the Torah himself, he's disgusted by sin. And that's what we have to get ourselves to. We have to get ourselves to a point where we are disgusted by sin. I'll give you an example of what a Jew did or does. He's still alive, Baruch Hashem. He told me he does this, and it helps him. Now, this is a little bit higher level than most people, but nonetheless, it's a good idea. He says the only way that he could stop looking at women is if you replace it with something. Now, obviously, there's going to be women in the world. He's married, he's got a wife, he's got kids, so he's going to look at not just them, there are other people. Now, of course, once in a while, you're going to see someone that looks attractive.

1:40:41So what did he do? He simply starts thinking in his head all types of disgusting things. Bugs, all types of filthy things, and he thinks of it as being on this person he's not allowed to look at. Why? Because he knows he's not allowed to look at her. She's a married woman. She's not his wife. He's not allowed to look at her. So what does he think? He looks at her, and he starts seeing all those things in his mind. So, immediately, any thought of attraction that he had for a moment disappears because he's disgusted. He's revolted by it. That's a genius idea. How many people can do it? Who knows? But the point I'm trying to tell you is that a person who wants to get glued to Hashem has to help himself. Being creative, being zealous about mitzvot, being zealous about staying away from sins because he knows and she knows that sins are disgusting to Hashem. And we should never ever want to be disgusting to Hashem. I remember one of the lectures I listened to from Rav Nissim Yagen, alav ha-shalom, mamash, probably a few months before he died, he was very, very sick.

1:41:51Probably one of his last few lectures. He was very sick. And he started crying. It was right before Rosh Hashanah, during Elul. He started crying during the shiur. But he’s not crying about, you know, the government. He’s crying about the... What is he crying about? He starts crying in the shiur, talking about doing teshuva and praying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, thinking about, may we never be disgusting to Hashem. That's what we have to pray for every day. We have to beg Hashem, beg Hashem to help us so we're not disgusting in His eyes. That's what a kosher Jew prays for, not to be disgusting to Hashem. But now that you know that the only thing that's disgusting is sins, that already gives you, okay, that's it. So from now on, I've got to watch myself. Make sure that I try to sin as little as possible. Everybody sins. Everybody sins to some extent. But the point being is that we have to first and foremost not do it intentionally. And second of all, do teshuva. Fix it. Next question. We're almost done.

1:43:18Nobody else? Everybody else knows the rest of the Torah? Oh, Nathaniel. Nathaniel has a question. Baruch Hashem. We learn from the Ten Commandments that Hashem says that we're not allowed to take His name in vain or He'll punish whoever takes it in vain. And our sages say, especially in our prayer book, we usually have the name Yud Kei Vav Kei. Excuse me? Now, is it only for us, the Jews, or even in the Siddurim sometimes, not only do they just put the letters, but they put the Nikud in that order, or do they say not to say it? Now, Is it just for Jews? Or goyim as well? Because I know there's a group of people that call themselves, you know, yeah. So is it, whatever, yes. Witnesses of, yeah. Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah, Jehovah, yeah, that. It's not His name. A few things, a few things a person can know. The Gemara, I believe it's Masechet Ta'anit. Ta'anit. It says...

1:44:40Anyone that mentions HaKadosh Baruch Hu's real name has no share of the world to come. There are certain times that we were allowed to use it at the Beit HaMikdash, but today it's not used. The name that we use in prayer, Baruch Ata Adonai, that is not His name. That just means "our Lord." But that's the name that we use. The real name we're not allowed to use. They're not even using the real name either, but they're trying very, very hard. to use it. But anyone that uses the real name has no share of the world to come, meaning even if they keep Shabbat, even if they do everything good, if they say Hashem's name like they're saying Steve, they have a very, very serious problem because that's violating Hashem's name in a very big way. It's using Hashem's name in vain. Hashem's name is so holy, so glorious, that we created the term "Hashem." Hashem doesn't mean a name; it means "the Name." Hashem is "the Name." It's not an actual name; it just actually means the word "name." And "Ha" is "the." So when we say "Hashem," it means "the Name." Why "the Name" and not the actual name? Because the name is so holy and so glorious, we're simply not allowed to say it. Even when we pray, the name that we use is, in essence, one of the names, but not the real true name, the 72-letter name, and so on.

1:46:05And that is not a name that we're allowed to use. If a person knew the true name of Hashem, he would be able to do all types of miracles and so on. And that's part of Kabbalah Maasit and so on. But there are many names that Hashem has. A person needs to be very, very careful with Hashem's name. Because if you misuse it, you simply are the walking dead. Some people buy these paintings or have these cards and so on, with different Kabbalistic names of Hashem. This is a very big mistake. This does not belong in your wallet. This does not belong in your back pocket. This does not belong in some unholy place. Hashem's name is a very, very big thing. Even the certain words that are in the Torah are made up in a certain way where part of that word is Hashem's name, but it was combined with something else, so now you're allowed to say it. with different Kabbalistic names of Hashem. This is a very big mistake. This does not belong in your wallet. This does not belong in your back pocket. This does not belong in some unholy place. Hashem's name is a very, very big thing. Even certain words that are in the Torah are made up in a certain way where part of that word is Hashem's name, but it was combined with something else, so now you're allowed to say it. That's how careful a person needs to be with Hashem's name. The last thing I would tell you is that this is also why if a person made a blessing and he started a blessing but he forgot what he's blessing. He forgot what the blessing is. He says Baruch Atah Hashem and he forgot whether it's Eitz or Adama or it's Asher Yatzar. He's in a different planet, but he already started the blessing.

1:47:29So then it's important to always remember the pasuk from Tehillim, which is an actual verse in the Torah. Because you're not allowed to just say Hashem's name for no reason. Because that's a sin. If you said a blessing, let's say, for example, a food that is Adama, but let's say you said Shehakol. You said Shehakol instead of Adama, you still eat. Why? Because Shehakol covers everything. And you saying it again would be saying Hashem's name in vain. ...and many times during the holidays like Chanukah, many of the halachot have to do with whether, if you forgot which candle it is, do you say the blessing or not. If you have a certain type of situation where, let's say, you're lighting a menorah at your parents' house, do you say a blessing or not? All of these issues of whether you say a blessing or not, all of these halachot, which are literally hundreds of laws...

1:48:30whether you should say a blessing or not. When you put on tefillin, there's a halakha that's different between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. So the Ashkenazim, when they put on the tefillin of the yad, they do one blessing. And when they put on the second one on the head, they do a second blessing. The Sephardim don't do that. The Sephardim put on the one on the hand, they do a blessing. On the head, no blessing. The only time the Sephardim do the second blessing is if they said something in between. If they interrupted. the concentration between putting the tefillin on the arm and the tefillin on the head, then we do a second blessing. Why? Because we don't want to misuse Hashem's name. So many of the halachot that have to do with blessings have mostly to do with not misusing Hashem's name. Make sure not to misuse His name, because when you misuse His name, it's a very big sin. And the Chachamim were very, very careful before they decided which blessings you're allowed to say, which blessings you're not allowed to say, what to bless for, what not to bless for. There are certain things that you consume and you don't do a blessing on them. Why? Because they don't deserve a blessing. But nonetheless, this required a lot of debates between the Chachamim before they decided. Like, for example, salt. Salt is something that if you don't have it in your food, it's usually disgusting.

1:50:00it's one of these ingredients that's in your food that you have to have. Now, technically, you should make a blessing for it because you think this is such an important part of the meal that if you make chicken or you make steak or you make whatever dish that you make, it's a warm dish without some salt in it. Usually, it's going to come out like, I don't know, no taste or some weird taste. So you figure this is deka, this is the most important part of the meal because the meat without the salt, the chicken without the salt, the potatoes without the salt, might as well be, you know, nothing. The truth is, yes, it is a critical ingredient, but we don't bless ingredients. So to get to this conclusion, the Chachamim had to debate for a long time. Why? Because they're worried about misusing Hashem's name and saying a blessing when they're not supposed to. Meaning, even to bless Hashem has its right time and its right place. You can't just bless Hashem just because. So it's important to know that all of that has to do with the Ten Commandments' part of not misusing Hashem's name. Next question.

1:51:22If a person has found the truth and has basically been hand-selected by Hashem to be a righteous convert, and he or she delays this process or at some point just kind of forgets about it, is there a punishment for that? Sir, punishment for delaying or giving up your conversion. So, the Arizal says that there are certain Jews who committed certain sins, and part of their punishment was that they had to become reincarnated as non-Jews, where their obligation was to convert during their life, meaning that's their mission in life. There are also non-Jews who lived at the time of Matan Torah, when we got the Torah, and they wanted to accept the Torah but they were part of nations that did not want to accept the Torah. So Hashem promised them that He would bring them again into the world and put them in an extraordinary circumstance where they have the opportunity and desire to convert, which means that's again part of their ultimate purpose.

1:52:46so a person such as this, not fulfilling their purpose, is like a person getting a car but not putting any gas in it. There's no point to the car; it's just a piece of metal. The person lived their life with no point because their purpose was to convert if they have such an opportunity. Now, can they still go to heaven if they don't convert? Yes, they can still technically go to heaven by being a righteous convert, by being a righteous Noachide. But I can tell you that being a righteous Noachide is a lot harder than people think. And usually the reasons why people who want to convert change their mind are not because of their righteousness, but rather the opposite. Now, the Gemara says that converts... have to bring a sacrifice. At the time of Mashiach and the building of the Beit HaMikdash, the third one, every convert is going to have to bring a sacrifice to the Beit HaMikdash because that's what is going to be the final step of their conversion. Because Am Yisrael, when we got Matan Torah, we brought a sacrifice. Each person brought a sacrifice. So a convert cannot bring a sacrifice to anything today.

1:54:07So what happens? So Chazal says in the Gemara that every convert is going to have to bring a sacrifice at the time of the third Beit HaMikdash. But further, the Gemara says that a convert who delays his or her conversion for no real reason, meaning they're not delaying it because of financial issues, they're not delaying it because of anything that is... you know, in their control. They're delaying it. I'm sorry, they're not delaying it because of anything that's out of their control. They're delaying it because they don't feel like it. They're delaying it because they want to, you know, go to India or go to Honolulu or go to Cancun and make a few more sins before they jump in. The Gemara says a person that delays his conversion, HaKadosh Baruch Hu punishes them. Even if they convert. Why? He punishes them because He's going to say, "Wait, so you knew the truth?" So why did you delay? You knew that you can serve Me on the ultimate level. And even though you eventually decided to do it, you delayed it by six years, you delayed it by six months, you delayed it by ten years, you delayed it by a bunch of time. How dare you? I'm the King of Kings. How dare you delay it? Now, I can tell you this from experience, not from books.

1:55:36From experience, I've seen people that introduced themselves to me, told me that they want to be converts, told me that they're zealous for Hashem, and they started off like rockets. They watched every shiur, read books, everything. Took notes, highlighted, everything. Became like little rabbis, little rebbetzins, six months, a year. All of a sudden, they stopped watching. All of a sudden, they started cooling off. All of a sudden, they started messing around a little bit. But they still tell you, "No, no, Rabbi, I'm definitely converting. I love Hashem. Converting, converting, converting." I saw these people lose their merit. How did I see it with my own eyes? Where one day, simply, the desire to convert disappeared. Before they met me, they wanted to convert for 5, 10, 20 years. They wanted to convert. Their whole life, they wanted to convert. They just didn't know how, who, what, when. Now they have an actual opportunity to convert. They mess up. Hashem says, guess what? I don't want you to convert anymore. That desire that I instilled into your mind 3,000 years ago, deleted. Best bet, you'll die a goy. Best bet.

1:57:00And I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen. It's very sad. Why? Because, you know, this person could have been a good Jew. But, of course, HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows. Knows who, what, when, and how. And people do not understand that to be a Jew is the biggest privilege, the biggest present, the biggest gift you could ever have in this world. Unfortunately, most people don't know this. And people think it's a burden to be a Jew. People think it's difficult to be a Jew. People think it's all types of things that it's not. Very few describe Judaism as a privilege. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu, if He sees that you do not see Judaism as a privilege, He says then, don't convert. Why would you do it? Why would you convert to something that you don't think is the best? If you don't think it's the best, go do something else. And that's a sad scenario that I've seen with my own eyes. I've seen people that, mamash, they just changed their mind for no reason. Nothing happened. It wasn't like trauma or something. Nothing happened. They just lost it. As if it was deleted from their mind. And it's a sad scenario. So it's important to know that if you want to convert to Judaism, you should do everything possible to get it done as soon as possible. But more importantly, to get yourself ready. Forget about convincing rabbis to convert you. Plenty of people go to rabbis, and the rabbi puts them in a mikveh, but they still come out Yoshke anyway. They're still reshaim. They're still, at best, going to be wicked Jews. Why would you do that to yourself? Get yourself spiritually ready. If you're not ready, don't do it. Why? For what? Why make you really dumb to convert to Judaism and to be a sinner?

1:58:28to get yourself ready. Forget about convincing rabbis to convert you. Plenty of people go to rabbis, and the rabbi puts them in a mikveh, but they still come out Yoshke anyway. They're still reshaim. They're still, at best, going to be wicked Jews. Why would you do that to yourself? Get yourself spiritually ready. If you're not ready, don't do it. Why? For what? Why make it really dumb to convert to Judaism and to be a sinner? when those same sins are not sins for a non-Jew. But if you want to seriously convert and you're really serious about it, you should make it your number one priority in life. Just like a Jew is supposed to make Judaism the number one priority in their life. Judaism is not a religion like Christianity is a religion or like Islam is a religion. Judaism is not part of your life. It is your life. The way you know whether you are close to being on the right track or not is based on what your definition of Judaism is. If your Judaism is part of you, you're on the right track but not necessarily on it yet. Why? Because Judaism should be you. That's all you should be about. It doesn't mean you don't work. It doesn't mean you don't do other things. But everything else revolves around your Judaism.

1:59:49Not the opposite around. You don't try to fit your Judaism into the Christmas party. You don't try to fit your Judaism into your non-kosher business, your non-kosher relationships, or your non-kosher hobbies. No, it's the opposite. Everything else revolves around the Judaism, the Torah. If your mindset is that way, you should do everything possible to continue and get things done as soon as possible as far as converting. If your mind is not that way, it's best not to convert. There are certain people that I've spoken to, and I told them outright I wouldn't convert them. I wouldn't help them. I wouldn't bring them to a Beit Din. Why? Because I thought they were simply going to be bad Jews. And I don't want to do that to them. "No, what do you mean? I'll be good. I'll be good," they said. I responded, "Listen, you can get other rabbis to help you." And some did. Some went to other rabbis, and those rabbis helped them. I said, "Baruch Hashem, it wasn't me." Why? Because I know this guy or this girl is not going to be good. And unfortunately, every single time I said it, so far it's been right. They weren't good. They're not good. They shouldn't have converted. Not that it's some great knowledge. After a while, you get to meet people. You see who's legit, who's not. And you see who's going to be good, who's going to be not. And unfortunately, people have a warped mentality of what Judaism is today.

2:01:12They convert for a lot of wrong reasons. So if you're serious about conversion, make it your number one priority in life. If you're not, then don't convert. You don't have to. There's no obligation, 100%. You can still go to Heaven. Anything else before we finish? Last question? Hold on, give them the mic so they can hear you. I witnessed someone who converted. Next month, they were driving on Shabbat. I mean, they went through the whole process. So, what's going on? He said, after you're a Jew, you're a Jew. I mean, once you become a Jew, you're a Jew. Whatever you do, you're still a Jew. Now, as a fellow Jew, is it something that I should be addressing in this case?

2:02:14Does this person ever keep Shabbat? Yes. After they became a Jew, they kept Shabbat? Yes. For a while? They kept Shabbat for like a month or two? They kept Shabbat. They went to shul, kept Shabbat, everything. No, just because you go to shul, it doesn't mean you keep Shabbat. A lot of people go to shul. They drive. Yeah. They drive to shul on Shabbat. No. They go to shul on Shabbat and they... No, no, no. But later on... Yes. Finished. It's very unusual. It's very unusual for a person to convert. Sometimes they do it for the kids, for the husband. I understand. Okay. It's very unusual for a person to legitimately keep all of the mitzvot for a year, two years, three years while they go through the conversion process and abandon it right away. Meaning within a week or two or a month. It's very, very unusual. Very unusual. Usually, cases like that mean that they simply have been lying to everybody and never really kept anything. They just made it look like they were keeping. They didn’t drive to shul, but they were watching TV at home. You know, they were still smoking cigarettes at home.

2:03:27like they didn't do public sins, but surely they were doing private sins. And a person like that, there's a machloket, a debate between the chachamim, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and others, whether their conversion is legitimate or not, whether they're actually considered Jewish or not. Now, if this person is not married, then you should talk to the beit din and see if the beit din can get involved to either help this person do teshuva immediately or to announce him publicly as conversion is null and void, if you will, because there is a certain issue, a certain complication, make enough noise that no one's going to want to marry this guy. If the person is married, then it's much more problematic. I can tell you for sure that although conversions have become a lot more difficult to do in this generation than before, A lot more politics and money involved in it. Unfortunately, because there's money involved and because there's politics involved, this makes it a prime target for criminals. Criminals that pretend to be rabbis love conversions. Why? It's an opportunity to make a fortune. Because to do a real, legitimate conversion, if it's legit, not only takes a while, but it takes a lot of effort.

2:04:54So, a person that doesn't want to do that, what does he do? He just pays off somebody. He goes to some "Barbie" rabbi that wears black and white and looks more righteous than the Baba Sali. But in reality, rotten tomatoes. Full of maggots. But he likes money. Gives him $10,000, $20,000, $30,000. Mr. Cohen, you're a tzaddik. I know a few of these stories. One over here in Chabad, about an hour and a half from me, in Park something, there's a Kohen, a Kohen that's married to a convert. The rabbi converted the woman to marry a Kohen. Halacha says that even if she converted to be Miriam the prophetess, he is still not allowed to marry her. Why? Because a Kohen is not allowed to marry a convert. But if you give the rabbi $100,000 or $200,000 every year, all of a sudden Torah doesn't matter anymore. So that happened over there. There are a few things in different states, different places. Unfortunately, there are criminals everywhere. So just because someone converted doesn't necessarily mean they're a righteous convert, but it also doesn't mean that they're not a righteous convert. You have to simply evaluate case by case. Evaluate the people. But also make sure that while you're evaluating other people, everything you check on them, you check on yourself.

2:06:22everything you question on them, okay, you're criticizing their prayer—how is your prayer? You're criticizing their Shabbat—how's your Shabbat? You're criticizing how they watch their eyes—are you watching yours? I'll give you an example, a week ago... Somebody sent me a message saying, Rabbi, listen, you said that such music is allowed and certain artists are allowed and so on and so forth, but they did a compilation with a different artist. And to my knowledge, this artist, this other artist is Tameh. Why? He does concerts for men and women dancing together. It's obviously the opposite of our religion not to go to such things. So, he's tameh, right? Now, these people, I love them. Why? Because they're looking for me to make some type of comment so they can take a snapshot of it, and then blast it all over the internet. Look, this guy is tameh. Why? Yaron Reuven said so. How many emails come after that? People are looking, looking for you to slip on every banana.

2:07:34So, Baruch Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu sent me the training for almost 20 years in the business world. So this is, you know, Baruch Hashem who would trade for this. So, I don't really usually spend much time on Facebook as far as looking at other people's profiles. unless they send me some odd questions like this because they asked me about something else. So I asked, I looked at their profile. Within two seconds of looking at their profile, I had to shut it off. Why? Their entire page is full of their own recordings, their own recordings of mixed dancing parties. So I go back to the guy and say, wait, so you're saying that this artist is treif because he does concerts for mixed dancing parties. ...that the same type of mixed dancing parties like the one that you are promoting on your page. Oh, yeah, yeah, Rabbi. Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I do promote it, but I haven't done it yet. I haven't done it yet. My question was for my friend. All of a sudden, the question was for the friend...

2:08:36It wasn't for me because I'm still working on myself. Okay, so now you have the answer. Go do a mitzvah and erase it. Go do a mitzvah and erase all these recordings. Why? It's not nice to make other people sin by looking at your page. So that's what the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat says: a person does not see the obligation in himself. Everybody sees wrong in everybody else. So if you're going to start evaluating every convert, whether he or she is righteous or not, whether he or she is praying well enough or not, whether he or she is keeping mitzvot or not, whether he or she knows how to manage a relationship or not, check yourself. Check yourself first on those specific things. If you're not so kosher on those specific things, you have no right to criticize anyone else. You can't tell somebody to keep Shabbat if you're violating Shabbat. You can't give somebody relationship advice if you're divorced three times. You can't give somebody advice on their kids. You don't have a single kid. I love those people. They don't have any kids, but they know everything about kids. No, you shouldn't let your kid do that to you. You should tell your kid to do this or that. Oh, how many kids do you have? Zero.

2:09:53What do you know about kids? You woke up in the middle of the night to feed the kid? You woke up in the middle of the night to see if he's alive, if she's alive, if they're breathing? You cleaned their little boogies? You changed their diapers even though they smell? What do you know about kids? Why, the ones you saw on television? Leave me alone with your advice. Check yourself. Check yourself. That's what the Gemara really means. When people say, we don't have somebody to rebuke in our generation, that's the meaning. The meaning is, we don't have anyone that's perfect in everything, that's able to rebuke in everything like Moshe Rabbeinu. But that doesn't mean you don't rebuke. That means you don't rebuke on everything. You rebuke on the things that you're good at. You're good on Shabbat. You're allowed to rebuke people about Shabbat. But if you're a Mechalel Shabbat, don't talk to anybody about Shabbat. Why? You're making a mockery of it. If you want to know how to watch your mouth, you can tell people to watch their mouth also. But if filth comes out of your mouth more than the sewer, don't talk to anybody about watching their mouth. Why? It's a joke. It's nonsense. So check yourself. Check yourself. People do not like to check themselves. Why? Because people have a big ego and they

2:11:07like to smash everyone else in order to raise themselves up, which is a horrible, disgusting habit. And a person needs to do whatever they can not to be disgusting. Anything else critical, or are we done for the day? Good, you guys had some sufganiyot? And you got some answers. Sufganiyot and some answers. Okay, Baruch Hashem. Next time when I see you, B'ezrat Hashem, it will be next week. Here, B'ezrat Hashem. Until then, Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.