An Adult Conversation With Teenagers In Arizona (Ahavat Israel Arizona)

0:01Thank you for watching. Good to be in Arizona, Baruch Hashem. We had a lot of lectures over the weekend, a lot of work. Also, thank you to the Rav, Kehillat Ahavat Yisrael, for hosting us, Baruch Hashem, and organizing all the lectures. Also, Torah Anytime, anyone who wants to see the lectures. Good to be in Arizona, Baruch Hashem. We had a lot of lectures over the weekend, a lot of work. Also, thank you to the Rav, Kehillat Ahavat Yisrael, for hosting us, Baruch Hashem, and organizing all the lectures. Also, Torah Anytime, anyone who wants to see the lectures.

1:10You can go on to TorahAnytime.com or you can go to my website, which is BeEzratHashem.org. There are a few hundred hours worth of shiurim. There are also some CDs for anyone that wants. They're free. It's about 30 hours worth of shiurei Torah, long ones, short ones. And then, BeEzrat Hashem, there's a new one that's coming out, BeEzrat Hashem, hopefully in the next month or so. I want to come up with the CD number two. It talks about my personal story, why I did teshuva, why I left Wall Street and millions, and all types of interesting things about the life of Torah and mesirut nefesh to try to help people do teshuva. It's completely two opposite worlds. One is the world of money, the other one is the world of kedusha. It's an interesting story; we talked about it last night actually. Another version of the story, with a little bit more details that we didn't talk about in previous shiurim. But today, since everyone, Baruch Hashem, is young, I want to talk to you guys about a few other things. Obviously, the more questions you have, the better, because the most important thing in every lecture is for me to talk about what you're interested in versus what I'm interested in. And B'ezrat Hashem, we'll try to see what the opinion of Hashem is, rather than my opinion. But the first thing is, I remember when I was a kid,

2:33And someone would tell me, "Wow, you're such a young guy, such a young kid." I don't think I hated something more than that. Someone told me I'm so young, I'm so, you know, I don't know anything, and they would treat me like a kid. It would just be unbearable to me. Like, what do you mean I'm a kid? I'm 16 years old. I'm 18 years old. I'm 20. What do you mean I'm a kid? And I would hate it. Because in my mind, I already knew everything. Or at least I knew everything I thought that was everything. So how many of you share that feeling where you don't like when somebody calls you young? Probably everybody. Okay, baruch Hashem. Okay, so the good news is that we're going to talk about adult topics. I'm not going to treat you like a kid; I'm going to treat you like adults. So you can't go complain to your parents that I talked about adult topics. But I'm going to talk to you about things that are going to change your life, and it's going to be up to you which direction you take, either good or bad. Now, Shlomo HaMelech said in one of his three books that he wrote in the Torah...

3:46asking a question. What's man's advantage over an animal? It's the book of Kohelet, chapter 3, verse 19. He says, man's advantage over an animal is nothing. All is meaningless. Meaning that everything that a man chases, whether it's money or other material things, it's really meaningless. And this is coming from someone who had everything, Shlomo HaMelech. He had money, he had a thousand wives, he had world peace, he had power, he had wisdom, he had everything. So coming from him, it means something. If a homeless guy told you money doesn't mean anything, then okay, you never had money; you don't know how much it means. But if the guy that was the richest guy in the world tells you money doesn't mean anything, okay, there's something to it. He says, everything that man chases as far as material is meaningless. What's meaningful?

4:46The pure soul which is destined to present itself in judgment and reckoning before Your Throne of Glory. She says the only thing that is meaningful that a man has, a person has, is his soul. Because this soul is what distinguishes him from being an animal and being a human being. How so? An animal works off of instincts. Instincts. When a lion is hungry, he goes and chases the zebra. He doesn't chase the zebra for fun. You're never going to see a lion chase a zebra or a deer or anything for fun. Human beings are the only species in the world that actually kill for fun. We're the only ones. All other creatures on Earth kill only for survival. So now, since the lion is only going to chase the deer if he's hungry, and he's only going to do things based on instinct, Shlomo HaMelech is telling us, humankind also have instincts. But the difference between the two,

6:03is that we have the ability to control our instincts. The lion doesn’t. If a lion is hungry, he’s going to have to chase some food. He can’t just sit there and wait for food to come. He’s going to have to chase food. A human being, on the other hand, can choose. I’m hungry, but I’m not that hungry. I can wait another two hours. I don’t have to go kill somebody and chop his arm off and start eating it. I don’t have to rob a bank, get the money, and buy food at 3 o’clock in the morning. You can wait. And that's the same thing with all of our character traits. Every single thing that's difficult for you, if you view it as something that you need, if you view it as a disease, like people view, for example, if you go to AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous, they pretty much guarantee that the attendees, these alcoholics that come to the meetings, are going to be there forever. They failed, they became alcoholics, they became drug addicts, they developed some other type of addiction. They go to an AA meeting, and the AA meeting instructor is telling them, in so many words, you're going to be here forever. Why? Because he's telling them what you have is a disease. Being an alcoholic is a disease, being a drug addict is a disease. But he's wrong. It's not a disease. If it were a disease, then he'd be right. They'd be there forever because it's not curable.

7:26There's no medicine that's being made by Pfizer to stop being an alcoholic. There's no medicine that says stop being a drug addict. There's no medicine that says stop being a sex addict. There's no such thing. If it's a disease, yes, you're going to be here forever. You're going to come to this church and have the AA meeting. And eventually, they're going to try to get you to go to Christianity too. That's who funds the AA, by the way. And you're going to be there forever. But if you look at it in a Torah perspective, from the wisdom of Hashem, the limitless wisdom of Hashem, who told the prophets, who told Moshe Rabbeinu, who told Am Yisrael, who told Shlomo HaMelech, who told the sages in the Oral Torah and the Written Torah, then you realize that everything that they're saying is complete nonsense. It is absolutely not a disease. It's a desire. Once you start looking at it as a desire,

8:26you know, it's a choice. I can either desire to eat chicken or steak. It's a preference. I desire to go to the mall or to the Beit Knesset. I desire to wear a red shirt or a white shirt. To desire is a choice. You have a choice with everything in your life. Once you start looking at things that way, then there's hope. But once you look at yourself as, "No, no, no, I'm addicted to driving on Shabbat, I'm addicted to drugs, I'm addicted to, I don't know, whatever addiction you have," then I can't help you. Then the Torah can't help you. Nothing can help you because there's no cure, there's no cure for this disease. When you look at the right perspective and say, "Okay, it's a desire, and I have to just overcome it," it's difficult, yes, I understand it's difficult. It's not easy to overcome desires. This is actually the purpose of life, to overcome our desires, work on our middot, become better people, become better Jews, get closer to Hashem. But in general, the only way we can do all of that is if we have the right perspective—the perspective of Hashem. If we look at ourselves like animals, then that's what we're going to be. Shlomo HaMelech says, if you look at yourself like everything you have is an instinct, then you're an animal. There's nothing different about you.

9:47But if you look at everything as a choice, that means you can beat anything, whether it's any desire you have. A lot of people connect to the story that I have as far as my teshuva because it's so extreme. On one end, a world of money, the epitome of money. My business was money. It's not making money. It actually was money. helping rich people invest their money so they can have more money. So you're not actually buying anything. I'm not buying restaurants. I'm not buying buildings. I'm not buying food. I'm buying companies. But the purpose of these companies is for them to generate money so they could generate money for the investors. So the guy that already has money has more money. It was 100% a money business. And to leave all of that, go to a world which, in this world, doesn't have much money, and you have to live off a miracle every single month. So, it's extreme. How do you leave with such a high desire for money and go to the exact opposite? Okay, if you slow down, you don't work 20 hours a day anymore; you work 10 hours like a normal person.

11:04You work a part-time job, you get a basic salary, fine, that's not, okay, fine, okay, you didn't lose your mind. You just, okay. But to go from everything to nothing, which is really the opposite, it's from nothing to everything, that's what attracts people. How do you get to that point? And you get to it by learning a lot of Torah. And we mentioned in last night's lecture, one of the lessons that you learned from Yitro, Yitro ...was one of the most righteous people that ever lived and one of the most notable converts to Judaism that ever lived. He was the father-in-law of Moshe Rabbeinu's wife, Tzipporah. And in Parashat Yitro, it starts with the word "Vayishma," which means "he heard." Yitro heard that there was a God of Israel. He heard about the miracles that He did for Am Yisrael. He realized that this is a serious God. It's not like the million types of idol worship that he was worshipping his whole life. Because he was like the head pope. He tried every type of idol worship. And the reason why he tried so many is that even though he was an idol worshiper, he was a man of truth at the same time. As soon as he saw that the idol worship was nonsense, he'd leave it and he'd start something new. And he kept leaving. Every day he'd start a new, different type of idol worship.

12:23and eventually heard about the God of Israel splitting the sea, destroying the greatest civilization in history, all for this small nation of slaves. That was enough for him. He left all of the idol worship, he left all of his friends, he left his family, he left everything just to go and be part of this nation. And Yitro gets the merit of having a parasha written about him. But aside from that, he also gets the merit of creating something that we still use today. It's called the judicial system. You go to court, there's a standard court, Supreme Court, and so on. That all comes from Yitro's idea. It all came to Hashem, and it came to Moshe, and told him, listen, you can't handle all of these people coming to you every five minutes, asking you questions, having cases, having arguments, all of this stuff, it's too much. Have a chain of command. Small cases are for these people, bigger cases are for those people, and so on and so forth. And these people that you're going to pick as the judges, they have to have certain requirements. You can't just pick anybody to be a judge. If the guy's a criminal, you can't make him a judge.

13:32People will be worse off going to him. If the guy has no fear of Hashem, you can't make him a judge because then he's just going to make his own rules. He's not going to listen to Hashem. One of the requirements of being a judge is to hate money. Why hate money? Why is Yitro saying it's actually a requirement for someone to be a righteous judge? Because if you like money, then someone can pay you off and win the case because of that money. But if you hate it, no one can buy you out. So, when we realize that obviously this person that hates money is just like anybody else. He's flesh and blood. He had a mother like everyone else. He eats, he drinks, he puts on his pants one leg at a time. What's the difference between him and everyone else? He has a choice. He exercised the choice to get closer to Hashem, to get closer to Kedusha, and the closer you get to Kedusha, the closer you get to Hashem, the more meaningless the rest of the world becomes. So obviously, this is a huge amount of dedication, a lot of work, and it's not necessarily a requirement for someone to live life. You could...

14:55Enjoy this life, have nice things, have a nice car, have a nice house, all that. There's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong with it is if you become addicted to it. A lot of anything is not good unless it's Torah. A lot of money, a lot of women, a lot of men, a lot of material things. Too much of everything is not good. Except if it's kedusha. So now, once we start looking at things in that perspective, we go, okay, so I have... choice to make every single day whether my number one focus is going to be chasing money, chasing women, chasing whatever other desires people have, or it's going to be chasing the truth. Now, the advantage of chasing the truth is that when you find it, you win permanently, whereas when you're chasing the rest of what we call "alma de shikra," which is the world of lies, you never win. And that's why the Gemara says, when someone has 100 coins, he wants 200. If you give him 200, he wants 400. If it's 400, he wants 800. Meaning that it doesn't matter how much money you give somebody, they're always going to want more. So if you compare the hearts of, let's say, a poor person versus a rich person, the poor guy, let's say, has, I don't know, 100 dollars.

16:23So all he wants, he feels like he's short 100 bucks. The rich guy that has a million, he feels inside. He's not going to tell everybody else, obviously. He's probably too proud to say that he feels poor. But he feels like he's missing a million dollars. Because the more he has, the more he feels like he should have. And this is, again, all based on the choice of what we have. Now, the first thing we need to understand, and again, you can interrupt me anytime you want with other questions, even if they don't have anything to do with what I say. Do you have any questions already so far? Don't throw any tomatoes at me; it's not nice. Okay, so the first thing we need to understand is the significance of a Jew. If you look at the word Jew in Hebrew, it's Yehudi. And the way you write Yehudi... It's five letters: Yud, Vav, Hei, Dalet, Yud. Anyone who knows Hebrew knows that the Dalet looks a little bit like the Hei. And if you take the Yud at the end of Yehudi and just put it under the Dalet, then the Dalet becomes a Hei.

17:43And then you see that it's now Yud-Heh, Vav, and Heh, which is the name of God. Meaning that Hashem put Himself within us. Unlike any of the other nations, the Jews are not just, they should, but they're obligated to have Hashem in their life. And they're going to be rewarded or punished accordingly. Now, a lot of people ask the question, why did Hashem create the world? Why did Hashem create the world? Why did Hashem do all of this for? What was the point? I don't want to live. If I'm obligated by all these mitzvot, I don't want to live then. I want to do something else. Well, the good news is, you don't have a choice. You're already here. So the next question is, why did Hashem create the world? Has anyone ever asked the question? point. Okay, Hashem is perfect, meaning we bring Him nothing to the table. He was perfect before us, He's perfect right now, and He's going to be perfect after us. So why did He create us? Because anytime you see something that's good, the person—how do you know if someone is good? The person is good because they do something good. If someone is closed in a room their whole life and no one knows they exist, you don't know if they're good or bad. Maybe they're a psychopath.

19:09Maybe they're a nice person. You don't know. How do you know if someone is good? Based on their actions. So, Hashem is 100% good. And when you're good, you want to create good. So, Hashem created us because He wanted to share His goodness, His kindness. In return, we have one job. Yes, we have that one job which divides into 613 mitzvot, but there's one main job that all of us have. If we don't do it, we're living a purposeless life. And that is Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying Hashem's name. If you wake up in the morning and do something to sanctify Hashem's name, you've fulfilled your purpose. If you're a walking Chilul Hashem, then you're not fulfilling your purpose. So Chazal tells us that it was worth it for Hashem to create the entire world for just one person. Yeah? Sorry, question. Um, Chillul Hashem is considered Karet, right? Ken, it's one of the three worst sins there is in Judaism. Wait, how many Karet sins are there? 36.

20:27There are three sins which we'll talk about, at least one of them today. These three sins are the worst sins in Judaism, and again, since you are adults, we're going to talk to you like adults, and I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. I don't know how to do that anyway. There are seven parts of Gehinnom, seven. Each part gets worse than the other, but the first six parts end at some point. Get punished for a year, get punished for a thousand years, get punished for a million years, whatever it is, it ends at some point. There's one level, which is the seventh level, that never ends. It's 100% revenge. And it's for three sins. One, Chilul Hashem, someone that desecrates Hashem's name on a regular basis, without a care in the world. For example, making a website against a rabbi. That's Chilul Hashem. Or, for example, making a website to advocate atheism or homosexuality or anything like that that's completely against the Torah. Living their life against the Torah in public and showing off the fact that that's what you're doing. Unfortunately, we have many who do that today.

21:48That's Chilul Hashem. The second sin is Chilul Shabbat. Someone who violates Shabbat on a regular basis, driving on Shabbat with no care in the world, knowing that Shabbat is a holy day. If the person was born in Siberia, and he's surrounded by polar bears and rocks, and he doesn't know what Shabbat is, okay, Hashem is not going to judge him accordingly, because Hashem put him there in the first place. But if he lives in Arizona in a Jewish and Bukharian community, if he lives in Brooklyn surrounded by "black and whites" and all types of Jews, Chassidic and non-Chassidic, if he lives in Florida, if he knows what Judaism is, and he still violates Shabbat, still drives on Shabbat, still plays with his phone on Shabbat, still smokes cigarettes on Shabbat, that's considered 100% idol worship. In the Torah, you'll see, if you look at Parashat HaShavua, almost every single parasha talks about Shabbat. Almost. And every single time it talks about the punishment for violating Shabbat, right next to it, it talks about idol worship.

22:51next to it, idol worship. Every single time you look at the Ten Commandments, idol worship is right next to Shabbat. Why? Because to Hashem, it's the same thing. If you keep Shabbat, then you're definitely not an idol worshiper. But if you don't keep Shabbat, according to Hashem, you're 100% an idol worshiper. The reason why is because one of the main reasons we keep Shabbat is that we're taking into account and telling Hashem that we believe You created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. You didn't rest on the seventh day because You needed to sleep or because You were tired. You rested on the seventh to give me the feeling of how You felt, like Hashem doesn't actually have feelings, but to give us an understanding, to give us a feeling of what You felt by stopping Your creation. Meaning that Hashem really created the world in an instant. He didn't need to hire construction companies, get titles from the government, pay off a mayor to give Him a permit. He didn't have to do all that. What did He have to do?

23:59Think about it. It was created. That's it. But He extended the creation over a period of six days in order to create a week. Why? Because if He would have just created everything in an instant, then every day would be the same. There will be no difference between the first day, the second day, the third day, or the 80th day. Everything will be the same. But if He extended the creation by creating everything instantly, but then putting the pieces—the moon and the sun on this day, the animals on that day—He puts all the pieces in different places on certain days. And then on the seventh day, He's no longer creating. He stopped putting stuff into place. then that's a different day. That's a day of its own. That's a day that's different than every other day. Because that's the only day He didn't do anything. And by not doing anything, He did everything. So He said that I did all of that just for you to feel like Me, as much as a human can feel like God. Because on that day, I didn't create, so therefore I don't want you to create. And if anyone has a doubt,

25:07about what we're allowed and not allowed to do on Shabbat. In the Torah, where it talks about how we get the laws of Shabbat, there are 39 restrictions. There are 39 things that we're not allowed to do on Shabbat, specifically 39. Where do we learn them from? From the building of the Mishkan, the building of the Beit HaMikdash in the desert. which is holier than the actual Beit HaMikdash that we had in Jerusalem twice, the first one and the second one. The one we had in the desert was holier than them. And those very same 39 things that we used to build the one in the desert, we also used to build the other ones. And Hashem is telling us, everything you did to build this Mishkan, you're not allowed to do on Shabbat. It's the exact opposite. Why? Why those 39? Why are we not allowed to do it? To give us an idea of how important Shabbat is. Hashem is telling us here that even if you're thinking to yourself, "Listen, I'm going to do Kiddush Hashem. We're going to build this house. We're going to do Kiddush Hashem. Build Hashem's house on earth. It's the greatest place on earth." Even to build My house, you're not allowed on Shabbat. That's how holy Shabbat is.

26:24And that's why when someone violates Shabbat, Hashem takes it very personally. The third sin, and then I'll get to your question, is wasting seed on purpose. Wasting seed on purpose, and this is one of the disasters of this generation, and a big part of the fault is of the teachings we have today, since it virtually does not exist. Most people today, whether they're religious or not, do not realize how bad it is. teenagers grow up thinking it's okay to do it because they even heard doctors, professors, and psychiatrists tell them it's recommended because it's a way for you to relieve your stress. Not realizing that they're destroying themselves both in this world and the next. And I actually did a three and a half hour lecture in New York about the topic, talking about it both scientifically and spiritually. We'll talk a little bit about it today, b'ezrat Hashem, and more details of why it's so bad. But that's the three sins that get someone to this horrendous place, which is the seventh level of Gehenom. Go ahead, question.

27:31My question is about the 39 activities that were used to build the Beit HaMikdash. Are those the same activities that are relevant today? It's not materials, it's activities. Things we did, like lighting a fire or grinding. So it was actions that we did in order to build the Beit HaMikdash. So we needed fire. in order to, let's say, make the stones. Or we needed to grind in order to shape the stones, and so on and so forth. So it's 39 specific activities that we did, that we're not allowed to do on Shabbat. So all that from thousands of years ago is still applicable. The Torah is eternal. The Torah does not change. And the reason why Hashem wrote the Torah is because, and He says it specifically in at least half of the Torah, that the rules are le'olam, which means to eternity. They're always applicable. Even after Mashiach comes, it's still going to be applicable. Everything that He wrote in the Torah is permanent. Shabbat is permanent. Everything is permanent. Nothing changes. Just like He says, just like His name is permanent, His Torah is permanent.

28:38So now, these 39 melachot in today's world have become a lot easier to observe. And the reason why is because in the old days, for example, if you wanted to keep your food warm, it was a big deal to keep your food warm. Today, you have a plata, a hot plate. You put your food on there; just don't put soup. Because if you put the soup on the hot plate, then once you take it off, you can't put it back on. in general, you could have the food that you have during the week; you could have even more delicious food on Shabbat. Back then, you had to make sure that you had a big enough candle to keep the light on for all of Shabbat. Today, we have electricity; just keep the light on, that's it, don't touch it. Everything that someone wants to do on Shabbat, they could do any other day. If they want to go, I don't know, they want to go to the park, and they want to drive to a park, they could drive on Sunday. They don't have to do it on Shabbat. You want to go to the movies? Okay, you want to go to the movies? Go on Sunday, go on Tuesday, go on any other day. Meaning that when we don't keep Shabbat, it cannot be because we're bad people, we're going against Hashem. Because in general, most people are good people. So it's really based on my understanding, there are only two reasons someone violates Shabbat. One,

30:00don't believe in the Torah. They think it's like Harry Potter. Same thing: Harry Potter. The woman created this Harry Potter story, she made a billion dollars, and good for her. She gave a lot of money to donations, and people read the book. They know it's fake, but they enjoy it. He thinks the Torah is the same. He doesn't believe in it. To him, there's a special shield We did it on Shabbat. We also have it recorded online. There's also a big shiur by Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi called Torah and Science that proves the Torah scientifically. Because if I tell you rationally, if I tell you spiritually, if someone has a scientific mind, they're not going to take it seriously. But if I prove to you the Torah scientifically and show you that there's actually evidence in the Torah of knowledge that could not come from mankind, such as the number of stars in the universe that a generation didn't have a telescope. We only had a telescope 400 years ago. And back then, the telescope of Galileo Galilei was the equivalent of a toy today. He was only able to see 8,000 stars. Today, we know that there are trillions and trillions of stars. The exact number of stars in the universe is actually in the Oral Torah in Masechet Berachot, page 32b. It's one, zero, six, four, three, four, zero, and then 12 zeros after it.

31:22This is in the Torah. It was written 3,000 years ago. The goyim were laughing at us for the last 3,000 years, saying, "Ah, this number, who uses this number? Where did you get this number from? Look, there's only 800 stars," because that's all they could see. You fast forward 1,600 years, Galileo Galilei says, "No, no, no, everyone's wrong. It's 8,000 stars." But then you fast forward to 1994. NASA comes out with a supercomputer connected to a telescope. They do an analysis that estimates, not exact, but estimates the number of stars in the universe. And they come out with 10 to the 21st power, which is 1 and 21 zeros after it. And then you fast forward 10 more years. A university in Australia comes up with a little bit of a better computer, a little bit more precise analysis. They say, no, no, it's 10 to the 18th power. Which is almost exactly the number we have in the Torah, which is 10 to the 18th power plus 64,340 and 12 zeros. So it's almost the same thing. Meaning it took them 3,000 years to catch up to something you could have just read for free. And the Torah is full of that. Full of it. So someone that doesn't believe in the Torah, we can prove it to them. Very simple. All I need is time.

32:34Give me time, I'll prove to you the Torah. If it takes you five minutes, Chazak U'Baruch, if it takes you an hour, I can prove it to you in an hour. It all depends on the person. If the person is looking for the truth, I can prove to you the Torah in less than an hour. If the person is looking for excuses, we could sit here from now until Mashiach comes and goes 80 times, and it still won't help. So it depends on who the person is. If they're looking for an excuse, they're not looking for answers. Now, this is the first reason why someone doesn't keep Shabbat. The second reason why somebody doesn't keep Shabbat, when they know it's a holy day, they know that Hashem views it as a big deal, they see their parents or uncles or someone they know go to synagogue on Shabbat, they've heard of what it is, and they still don't keep it, is because they simply do not know how bad it is to violate Shabbat. Bottom line. That's the only reason why they would do it. Because if they knew, they would be scared to move. move. I'm not even talking about going to the Beit Keneset. Move. Move on Shabbat. I have a book that's just full of verses. It's not like a regular book with paragraphs. It's just sources. One verse from this book, one verse from that book, from the Zohar, from all different types. It's 87 pages of sources. So instead of paragraphs, I have one-liners. Gemara, Masechet Berachot has this, ta. Zohar, this parasha has that.

33:59It's 87 pages worth of sources of punishments for violation of Shabbat. If someone just reads the first page, which is about, I think, 30 sources, they would probably lose sleep for a week if they violate Shabbat. That's how bad it is. So obviously, someone that violates Shabbat doesn't know. I didn't know. I just thought, okay, I'm not going to work on Shabbat. I'll go to a casino instead. That's what I thought. I'm not working. That was my rationale as a Chiloni, as someone who was secular. I'm not working. Okay, I'm not going to the Knesset either, but I'm going to the casino, play poker. This made sense to me. But then I read the Torah, and I said, wait a minute. Hashem is making kind of a big deal out of the Shabbat. He keeps mentioning it. And again, and again, and again. And then at some point when I get to Parashat Ki Tisa, Hashem says something pretty scary. He says someone who violates Shabbat has death upon death and is cut off from the nation. This is the literal translation of the Hebrew. What does it mean, "death upon death"? So, first death, you can't die twice, right? Live once, die once.

35:16So, first death means someone is cutting their life short. In the old days, when we had the Sanhedrin, someone who violated Shabbat, such as the first violator of Shabbat in history, was a person by the name of Tzelafchad. He's in the Torah. The story is actually in the Torah. He went and gathered wood. It is not allowed to gather wood on Shabbat. He did it. They told him to stop. He didn't stop. He was the first violator of Shabbat in history. This was one week after we got the Torah. Not 3,000 years. Which means he probably didn't have enough time to read the whole Torah. We just got it a week ago. It's a pretty big book. So if Hashem was ever going to give someone a leniency and say, listen, you didn't have time to read the book. You only read Parashat Bereishit. You read half the book. Let him go. It's okay. This would be the guy. Agree? Moshe Rabbeinu Puts him in jail, and he asks Hashem, "What do I do with him?" The first violator of Shabbat in history. We only got the Torah a week ago. And Hashem gives us His opinion. And that's the only opinion that counts. My opinion doesn't count, your opinion doesn't count, no one's opinion counts. Only Hashem's opinion counts. Hashem gives him the answer. He says, "Kill him in the worst possible way of killing, which is stoning, in front of the entire nation. In public."

36:46This is the first violator of Shabbat, a week after we got the Torah. He didn't have an excuse. He didn't have a way to get away with it. What's our excuse 3,300 years later? So now, we see that Hashem treats it as a big deal. That's what mot tamut, that's just the first part. Yumat, it's the second death. Okay, he died here already. What's the second death? Second death means he has no share of the World to Come. The real world is not this world. This world you live in 70 years, 80 years, 100 years, whatever you live in this world, but then it ends. The real world, which is where your soul goes to, is eternal. It's forever. Now this Olam HaBa could be good or bad. You choose. Your actions will dictate which one it's going to be. So when it says someone loses their share of the World to Come, it doesn't mean that they go to nothing. It means it's not the good part. So that's yumat. The third part is the one that affected me the most. I didn't care about dying. I was already very sick at the time. I actually wanted to die at some point. No share of the World to Come. I didn't know that someone ever came back from there. I didn't really believe in it. But the third part affected me the most. When they said, "cut off from the nation," I said, "I already died twice. What are you cutting me off from?"

38:11And according to the book of laws, the Shulchan Aruch in seven different places, in the Zohar, in the Gemara, in the written Torah, in pretty much every single book that was ever written about Shabbat by the sages, including even things that were written in our generations that talk about the halachot of Shabbat, the Rambam says, and every other source says the same thing, a Jew that violates Shabbat, meaning on purpose, is cut off from the nation, meaning that he's no longer considered Jewish. He's considered like a goy. Now, this is not a righteous goy, like Iyov (Job). There are characters in the Torah, several of them, who were very, very righteous. Iyov was one of them. He was so righteous that Hashem actually wrote one of the 24 books of the Tanach about him—his struggle, his difficulty, his teshuva. He was a prophet, one of the most righteous people that ever lived. So, obviously, being like him, halavai, would be great to be like him. No, no, that's not what we're talking about. What the Torah says, being like a goy, means that you are like an idol worshiper. Meaning you're not the good type. You're not Iyov. You're the worst type. You're like Haman or Hitler, or whoever else was wicked in past generations. Because you're pretty much saying to Hashem that He didn't build the world in six days. It came from nothing.

39:37came from some explosion, coincidence, or happenstance. You don't believe in it. In Hashem's eyes, someone who doesn't keep Shabbat, as a Jew, is considered 100% atheist. He takes it very personally. So, He says, your Judaism now is on suspension. You don't have to convert once you start keeping Shabbat, obviously. That's the benefit of having a Jewish mother. It qualifies you to be Jewish. But until you start keeping Shabbat, unlike any other sin in the Torah, even if someone actually worships idols, they're still considered Jewish, they're just considered wicked. But someone that violates Shabbat is cut off from the nation. That's how significant Shabbat is. And when I found this out, it affected me. Some people it affects, some people don't care, and some people go against me because of it. Like I wrote it. Hashem didn't ask me for permission when He wrote the Halachot of Shabbat or anything like that. I wasn't there. And even if I was, I don't think He would ask me. So, the thing is, when Hashem is telling us that Shabbat is so, so significant that we get to a point of putting our Judaism on suspension, then you realize it's a big deal.

40:56then the first two don't matter anymore. Because all of us, even if we don't even like the Torah, because we don't really know what it is, we still like being Jewish. Very rarely do you meet a Jew that actually hates being Jewish. There are some in the world, unfortunately, but it's rare. Why don't you tell somebody, listen, that thing you really, really like, it's not yours anymore. It’s a bad feeling. It's a bad feeling. Okay, what do I do to get it back? How much do I have to pay? Nothing. It's free. What do I have to do? Keep Shabbat. Oh, okay. It's easy. Go ahead. This may be a silly question, but how is any of this tangible? Did somebody who had gone to the next life come back and say, like, how is this measured? Yes, okay. So yes, there is. There is something called near-death experience. There's also different types of hypnosis, one of them is called regression. So, there are two ways to prove the spiritual world, at least scientifically. There are obviously other ways to do it non-scientifically, but we'll stick with the science because people believe science. So, there are...

42:14Many people have had an experience called a near-death experience, which means that their blood stopped traveling to the brain for a certain amount of time. Sometimes, if your blood stops traveling to your brain, you're officially considered clinically dead if it stops traveling to the brain for six seconds or more. Even if you come back, medically you're not supposed to be the same. Medically, you're supposed to be deformed, you're supposed to be retarded, you're supposed to have some type of serious, serious permanent problems. But there are many cases, and by many I mean at least 30 million documented cases of people who have died for much longer than six seconds, in some cases even a few days, and came back and said the same story of what happens after you die. And it's very, very different than what the secular world thinks. The overwhelming majority of them had a very similar experience. They see a light. Some of them see judgment. They go in front of these judges that tell them you sinned, you didn't sin, you're righteous, not righteous, and so on. It's a very, very similar experience in general with a lot of them, even including the goyim.

43:28this if this was, let's say, one rabbi, like, for example, there's a famous rabbi today, who is also a dear friend of mine. His name is Rabbi Alon Anava. He had a near-death experience. I think it was for a while, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, maybe longer. And he saw a lot more than what he says in the lectures, by the way, a lot more. Baruch Hashem, I had the benefit of speaking to him privately a few times, and he gave me a little bit of a tidbit. I didn't sleep for the rest of the night; it's a lot scarier than what he says in the lectures. But nonetheless, his experience is not unique. It's unique to him, it's unique to his followers, but he's not the only one that had it. So, if he was the only one that had this experience, you could say, ah, he has a vested interest in it. He wants people to be religious, I don't know, he wants money, he wants this; you could make up all types of crazy thoughts about why he's doing what he's doing. But when you have 30 million people saying the same thing, then you see, okay, there's more to this.

44:30Then you see that, okay, this life after death is very much real. People go, they see things, they see people, they see all types of things that are not of this world. The second thing is when we look at hypnosis. One of the types of hypnosis is called regression. Regression is, not everyone is obviously able to do it. It's a certain expertise, but there's more than enough people that know how to do it and have gone through it, and it's documented. They're able to hypnotize somebody and make them go back to the past. So you tell somebody, "Listen, you're hypnotized." Let's say, for example, they want to make them stop smoking cigarettes. "You don't like cigarettes anymore," or something. I don't know. They do that and the guy wakes up and he doesn't like cigarettes, and hopefully it sticks. Second, I'll finish the point and I'll answer it. But then, regression is not, "You don't like cigarettes." It says, "Go back from the year 2016 to 1900. Go back 116 years." Obviously, the guy wasn't alive 116 years ago. And the guy starts talking in a different language, starts speaking French. He doesn't speak French; he's American. He barely speaks English.

45:43And now he speaks French. He said, "Okay, go back to 1700." And he starts speaking Greek. Where are you? And he pictures different things. In many cases, they were able to even have people visualize, like tell them where they were. In some cases, there were people who were in the Holocaust, showing things that told them what was happening in the Holocaust, and these people didn't even know what the Holocaust was. and then last but not least, there are actually proofs of reincarnation, many of them, where there are different people that are born. Apparently, Hashem has mercy on us because we are a generation that requires proofs, whereas in the past, our grandparents didn't require any proofs. You said "God," they said, "I'm sorry, you know, we believe." You said "Elul starts," you know, "Rosh Chodesh Elul," the whole synagogue passed out. everyone already started doing that. You buy in this generation, you tell them "God," and they're like, "Who? Torah? What? Where is that? In Barnes & Noble? They have it?" Most people don't know what it is, even. So, there are certain people that were born, and it's documented. There's actually a kid in, what is it called, um...

46:59Young boy, there are a few of them. One very famous case is of a young boy who is still alive. He's probably, I don't know, maybe 15 or 16 years old now. But when it was first documented, he was only maybe five or six. And he remembered his previous life as a soldier who died in a war. And he came back to life and told his new parents that he remembers everything and wants to go see his wife. In the beginning, they obviously thought their kid had a vivid imagination. But after a while, he kept mentioning that he wanted to see his wife and kid. He knew exactly where they lived. They eventually followed him and went to a doctor, who took an interest in it and said, "Okay, show it to me. Where do you go?" And he took him exactly to where it was. And they see this strange woman. The strange woman obviously doesn't know the boy. He says, yes, this is my wife so-and-so. He knows her name, which is indeed her name. He knows the address. And then he says, listen, before I went to war, I hid some money in the house in case I died. Did you find it? And she goes, what money? What are you talking about? He goes inside the house, looks at a safe place, takes out the money, and gives it to his wife. This is one of many cases. There's another kid that was born with a birthmark on his forehead.

48:25in some strange country in India, and kept telling his parents that he knows his murderer, and he would have nightmares about his murder over and over again. Eventually, again, they went to a doctor. The psychiatrist told them, okay, let's follow what he says. He took him to a completely different country. A completely different country. And they followed him, and they asked some police to help them. He said, let's go to the woods. And they go in the middle of the woods, and he says, this is where my body is buried. And they started digging, and they found the body. And right next to it, he told them, listen, the guy killed me with an axe. Right next to the body is an axe. And he says, the guy's name is so-and-so, and he lives in this and this place in this town. They went to the guy, and the guy admitted it. All documented cases, and there are thousands and thousands of them, meaning that if you look for it, you'll find it. It's not something I created or anything like that, and there's a lot of it. It's just that until you have an interest in finding the truth, it's not something you would look for.

49:33So, when it comes to the Torah, Hashem, Baruch Hashem, He actually had mercy on us and He knew that we're a very weak generation that's very, very far away from King David and King Solomon, Moshe and Aharon, and all of that, that we need a lot more proof. We need to see God. So, He gave us an ability to do it. Next question. Is hypnosis allowed? Is hypnosis allowed? For what purpose? I mean, I don't know, I just heard that it might not be allowed because... No, yeah, it depends on the purpose. Depends on the purpose. You mean if you wanted to figure out your previous soul? There are certain things that the Gemara says you shouldn't look into. You probably don't want to know. You know, certain questions that you shouldn't ask because you'll never get a sufficient answer. As far as who you were in your previous life... You're allowed to find out. There are actually even autistic kids that we can communicate with through different types of technology, through computers. It's already a known science for at least 30 plus years, where these autistic kids are very holy neshamot, and they can communicate with us, but through a computer.

50:53And they know a lot more than a natural human being does. Meaning, they know who you are without knowing anything about you. You walk into a room, they know everything about you. They know the future, they know the past, they know a lot of things. And there are a few famous ones, where people go to them, and they find out who they are, and they, you know, as soon as these people walk into the room, they get mussar, they get it on their head right away. They say, "Why do you do this sin, why do you do that sin?" The guy just came in, they didn't even know the guy. So yes, you can find out about your past, but for what? It's interesting. I want to find out about my past, but then at the same time, I'm like, eh, maybe I wasn't... If I'm already here, I wasn't that good. Go ahead. Yeah, there's things like that also. There are all types of supernatural things. In general, it's highly recommended to stay natural.

51:54to stay simple, just connect to Torah because the supernatural is above most people's ability to handle. Additionally, a lot of people that go into the supernatural world use Sheidim, they use demons. once you become friendly with demons, you've pretty much become a prisoner. They start torturing you and eventually could lead you to commit suicide or even get killed. It's not for everyone. This is the reason why, for example, to learn Kabbalah, which is the mystical part of the Torah that's part of the Zohar, you're not allowed to do it. You can do it if you want, but in general, according to the Torah, according to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, which is one of the main sages that give us the interpretation of the secrets of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, he said you should not even touch the Zohar until you have all these requirements. A few of the requirements include being at least 40 years old. And the reason why 40 years old is because that's at least how much time you need to completely commit yourself to holiness and learn Torah, to even have a chance of knowing enough information about Torah to be at a level of learning the Zohar. Meaning you need to know the entire Gemara, the entire Chumash, the entire Tanach, the entire Shulchan Aruch. You need to know so many books that in reality, for most people, it could take them a thousand years, and they still won't finish.

53:14And the reason why is because once you go into the Zohar, once you go into the Kabbalah world—the real Kabbalah world, not the Kabbalah Center, that's nonsense—the real Kabbalah world, then you start dealing with the supernatural. And if you deal with the supernatural and you don't have the merit to do it, you create a lot of problems for yourself because it involves saying the names of certain angels. And those angels take it very personally. If you say their name and you don't have the merit to say it, then they start torturing you. And if someone doesn't believe it, they could go to Har Nof in Yerushalayim. It's right next to my Rav's house. There's a huge hospital for crazy people. The vast majority of them are people that learned the Zohar and Kabbalah before their time. So it's not like some mom trying to scare you so you don't deal with them. Actually, I went there. I saw it. It's there. There's a bunch of people. There's an actual hospital for crazy people just for those people that just didn't want to listen. So a lot of the stuff that's in the Torah is so magical, so beautiful, so amazing that you don't need to go to the mystical parts. There's already enough mystical stuff that you're allowed to do in the Gemara, in the written Torah.

54:22In the Gemara, in the written Torah, there's more than enough. You start looking at the Midrashim, like Me'am Loez, and other places, if you like mysticism, you could find it in the traditional Torah. You don't need to go to the places of, you know, magic and stuff like that, because it's just, it's more problems than you need in your life. Next. Can you tell us about intermarriage and why it's... why it's a big deal? Yeah. Okay. It's actually one of the topics I wanted to talk about. Okay, so. There are a few things in the Torah that are complete no-no's. A few times in the Torah, Hashem told us certain things that there's no other way around them.

55:23intermarriage is one of them. And the reason why we know this is one of them, aside from the punishment that Hashem tells us what happens to someone in intermarriage, is the fact that we already have that rule before we got the written Torah. We have the rule already from the days of Avraham Avinu. Avraham Avinu lived many generations before the Torah. He's our forefather. And Hashem told him to make sure that your son Yitzchak does not marry anyone outside of your own nation. He's not allowed to marry anyone from the Canaanite nations. So we already knew that Hashem wanted each one of us to have a certain mate. Now, once we got the written Torah, we started getting the details of why it's so bad. And this is some of the things that Chazal teach us about it. In the Gemara, Masechet Sanhedrin, page 82a, Rabbi Chiya, one of the greatest sages that ever lived, says this: anyone who is intimate with a non-Jewish woman, and this obviously applies if it's a non-Jewish man also, is like someone who married into idol worship.

56:46As it says, and he's quoting a verse in the book of Malachi, "Who is intimate with the daughter of the idol? Does an idol have a daughter?" This is to say that whoever is intimate with a non-Jew is, in essence, the same thing as an idol worshiper. This is one of the violations of the Ten Commandments. There's a lot, so I'll just read some things, and then if you have specific questions, we'll go into them. So we'll go to the source. We'll go to the book of Malachi in the Tanach. It's one of our Nevi'im. And this is what he says. Someone asked the same question that people ask today. Have we all not one father? Meaning, don't we all come from Hashem? Why are you being so prejudiced? Why can't the goyim marry the Jews? The Jews marry the goyim. We all have the same Creator. So they already asked it in the Torah 3,300 years ago. It's not a new question. Did not one God create us all? Why then is one person betrayed by another in order to defile the covenant of our forefathers?

58:15And it says, Judah is betrayed. Judah refers to the Jewish nation. It is an abomination that has been done in Israel and in Jerusalem, for Judah has defiled the holy nation of Hashem, which He loved, and has taken in marriage the daughter of a foreign god. May Hashem eliminate the man who does this and any child and descendant from the tents of Jacob. Meaning, The prophet is telling us, yes, we all come from the same God. But Hashem made a special deal with the Jewish people. So the one that defiles this covenant of Hashem, he gives him a special curse from Hashem. May Hashem eliminate him and his descendants. It's not a good idea to get cursed by a prophet. And obviously, the prophet is speaking in the name of Hashem. Moving forward, we're going to Masechet Sanhedrin, page 82. It says the Beit Din of Hashmonayim decreed that anyone who is intimate with a non-Jew is like violating nida, shifcha, intermarriage, and a married woman. So what's nida, shifcha, intermarriage, and a married woman? It says when someone is even intimate, we're not talking about married, having kids, all of that stuff. We're talking about just one time they went

59:40And they're with a non-Jewish woman. The Gemara here says, the Oral Torah says, it's four different sins, not one. It's like being with a nidah, which is a woman who is not pure. And anyone who knows about the laws of taharat hamishpacha, or family purity, knows that the Torah, Hashem, says that someone who is with his wife, his own wife, which he's allowed to be with. He's married to her; she's Jewish. But she's not pure, meaning it's the time of the month. It's a bigger sin than if he was with his own mother. Now, being involved in incest, obviously, is despicable in our minds, thank God. We're still not in Sodom and Gomorrah. And that's the reason we give that example, because that, to us, is crazy. Being with your own wife during the time of the month is not that crazy to some people. Well, according to Hashem, it's even worse. Again, our mind is not like Hashem's mind when we don't have Torah. So Hashem says this is just the first sin. The second one is being with a maidservant, meaning being with somebody you're not allowed to be with anyway. The third one is obviously being with a Gentile. And the fourth one is like being with a prostitute.

1:01:00Now, why is this nice non-Jewish lady getting such a, you know, description? Maybe she's really nice. And anyone who doesn't know, my wife is a convert. And the story, a personal story that we talked about last night, if anyone missed it, you could hear the whole story. It's a very, very special place in my heart for converts. But nonetheless... Why is someone who's not Jewish getting such a description from Hashem? He created them. He says, "Listen, I gave them a deal. I gave the Jewish people a deal and I gave the Gentiles a deal. The Jewish people are the chosen people. They get a special privilege. They're above the mazal. They get all types of protection and so on and so forth. But for that, they have to comply with the Torah." The non-Jews also have to comply with the Torah, but instead of 613 rules, they have seven. They can get to Olam HaBa with fewer rules. It's a lower level of Olam HaBa. It's not the same level, obviously, because then it wouldn't be fair. But nonetheless, they can get to Olam HaBa. They can get to a good place, an eternal good, just like Iyov did, by just doing a few rules. The Jew has to do a lot more work.

1:02:23Now, if you go out there as a non-Jew, and not only do you not want to comply with your own rules, but you actually destroy the future of one of my children, then you have a big problem. Why? Because when you destroy one of the lives of my children, you're also violating your own law of murder. One of the seven Noahide laws is "Do not murder." When a non-Jewish woman is with a Jewish man, she's considered like she's murdering a Jew. This is why she gets this description. Further in Masechet Eruvin, page 19, right after the section where it talks about how Avraham Avinu is going to ...save anyone that's worthy, anyone that has some merits that's in Gehinom, he's going to save them if they protected their Brit. If they protected their Brit Milah, they didn't waste seed, they made some sins, but they have enough merits, he'll go into Gehinom for them specifically to save them, to get them out of there. It says the only one he can't save is someone that stayed with a non-Jewish woman.

1:03:50because they wasted seed, because they violated their Brit, he won't even know they're Jewish. He won't even know that they're there to be saved. The book of Chashukei Chemed, based on this Masechet Sanhedrin, page 82, says, what happens if there's someone that comes to your Beit Knesset and he's married to a non-Jew? I had this Beit Knesset that I was going to for a while. Not only did they have this guy who was intermarried get a lot of respect from people, but on top of it, they made him the Chazan. They made him the Chazan, they made him the Ba'al Koreh, he was reading from the Torah. Obviously, when I found out,

1:04:54I left, but the point is that people don't know. They think it's not a big deal. He's a nice guy. He has a nice voice. By the way, the Gemara in Masechet Sotah, page 16. Not Sotah, Masechet Ta'anit, page 16. It says, the kehillah that picks a chazan purely because he has a nice voice but knows that he's not righteous, knows that he violates Shabbat, intermarried, all types of things, there's no one in the world that Hashem hates more than this chazan. And instead of bringing blessing to the kehillah, Hashem curses the entire kehillah because of him, for putting him there. It's a big deal to put just anyone as the chazan. So anyway, in his book, in Masechet Sanhedrin, Chashukei Chemed, they ask the question, what happens if somebody that's intermarried comes to your kehillah? He says, he cannot be counted as part of the minyan. You have ten Jews; they all have Jewish mothers, one guy is with a non-Jewish girl,

1:06:02Now you have nine Jews. You can't count him as part of the minyan as long as he's with her. Sorry, well, same with the person who violates Shabbat. Exactly. That's what he says. In Mishnah Berurah, he uses a source from Mishnah Berurah, Siman 55. He says, just like a mechalel Shabbat, the person is considered a complete idol worshiper and is not included in a minyan; intermarriage is the same. Now, one of the major things that people don't understand about the whole aspect of intermarriage is that it's not only destroying one world. It's not just your life. You can say, I don't care about my life. I like her. She's great. She likes me. I'm great. Leave me alone. I don't want to be Jewish, simply. Here's the problem. It's not up to you.

1:07:08One day your real life begins, which is after this world, and you're going to have to answer some questions. For the last 3,300 years, from Moshe Rabbeinu, we've received the Torah. We've heard stories after stories of what Am Yisrael did to protect their Judaism. We fought for it. We cried for it. We died for it. Generation after generation, Holocaust and pogroms and destructions and all types of disasters. And you hear story after story of how someone was willing to die and not worship idols. They showed them a cross. They say, "Bow to this cross. It takes two seconds. And you live. Or we'll kill you." it's one of the sins you're not allowed to do. They say if you have an opportunity to die instead of worshiping idols, not only do you have to die, but it's actually considered the best type of death. It's considered you're sanctifying Hashem's name by protecting your Judaism. So you have stories, countless stories, from the Holocaust.

1:08:24from Spain, from generation to generation, people died just for you to be Jewish. The only reason. Now you come along, not anyone here specifically, I don't know your situation, but obviously, I'm just giving an example. You come along and you say, "Yeah, I don't really feel like it. It's not for me." You marry a non-Jewish girl. It's a problem. Eventually, after 50 years, 60 years, 100 years, whatever it is, you show up to Shamayim and a Beit Din shows up, Moshe Rabbeinu, Avraham Avinu, everybody shows up, and they say, wait a minute. We killed ourselves for 3,300 years just for you to be Jewish. And you ended Judaism with you. Because as soon as you marry the non-Jew, the kids are not Jewish anymore.

1:09:25There's no more Judaism after you. It died. It ended. So, 3,300 years' worth of work, death, and sacrifice, and you ended it? Why did you do it? Was it really worth it? If you asked yourself that question, would you be surprised if they were disappointed? Would you be surprised if Hashem was disappointed? Would you be surprised if you were disappointed when you realized how much damage it caused? Next question. Question. Did the same rules and, so to say, derogatory terms apply to the male? So, let's just say it's a female who's Jewish but is intermarrying. Is the male consistent? I'm glad you asked the question, so it's not my fault that I answer it. A woman is considered worse. She gets a worse description. She's considered a zonah. A Jewish woman is considered a zonah when she's with a non-Jew. And if she wanted to marry a Kohen, she wouldn't be allowed to. If she was ever with a goy...

1:10:42If a woman was ever with a non-Jew, and then she wants to get married, she wouldn't be allowed to be with a Kohen because of what she did in her past, even if it was one time. So, a woman has a very, very big responsibility in Judaism. You are responsible for our descendants. You're responsible for bringing in the future. You're a big deal. You're technically considered higher than a man. The reason why a woman is considered higher than a man is because naturally, Hashem created you with spirituality already within you. This is why you're not required to learn the same level of Torah as a man is. Because a woman, if she starts praying, within five minutes she can start crying. Five minutes, she connects to Hashem, within five minutes she can start crying. She connects to Hashem, she reads Tehillim, she understands the words. Within two minutes, I don't know, the kid didn't get into kindergarten, she'll start crying. The food didn't come out okay, she starts crying. Husband didn't show up on time, she starts crying. She connects with her emotions like that. A guy, he can pray for 20 years, never cried once. Tisha B'Av, Shoah, Yom HaZikaron, anything, doesn't know how to cry.

1:11:49A woman is much, much more emotional, and those emotions are part of her spirituality. It makes her special. A guy, in order for him to become emotional, in order for him to become spiritual, needs the Torah. He needs to learn it every day because it's the only way that he can get there. So, we need women. As a matter of fact, the only reason why Hashem saved us from Egypt is because the men were idol worshipers. They're all idol worshipers. The only reason He saved us from Egypt is because of women. They weren't idol worshipers. They were still modest, and they still believed in Hashem. The only reason why Hashem is going to send us the Mashiach and save us is because of the merits of the women. The men are here to fulfill a certain purpose as well, obviously. But the position of women in Judaism couldn't get any bigger.

1:12:50it's huge. But when people don't know the Torah, they think that the Torah is the opposite. They think the Torah is like a sexist. They think it's like, you know, feminism goes again. No, see, it gives women half the value. Because there's one in the Torah, says that if a woman is a virgin when she's married, she's worth a certain amount. And if she's not a virgin, she's worth less. So the whole feminism movement makes a whole big deal out of this. And they say, "Oh, see, it's feminist." Well, it's not her fault. Maybe she liked him, maybe he was a nice guy. I don't know, they make up all types of crazy things. And the reality of it is that even in today's world, it's that way. Even in today's world, we apply those same rules, even if you're not religious. If a husband is about to marry a woman, and his wife-to-be is a virgin... the public will view that much more significantly than if she wasn't. It's a fact of life. Even more so, if, and this is going to be a little graphic, but just to give you an idea of finalizing this point, not graphic like that, but if he's going to marry her, but he brought in one of the women that used to work in Las Vegas, his parents are not going to want him to marry her because who knows what she did over there.

1:14:13We don't want this to come into our holy house. So we apply those rules anyway. But when it says it in the Torah, we don't like it. When it's in our minds, we like it. So that's the thing that people have to understand. Women have a huge, huge, huge purpose in the Torah. And they have a certain position in the Torah. Men also have a position in the Torah. Men are responsible for learning the Torah in the house. They're responsible for, you know, generating the income. They're responsible for being the scholar in the house. Women, on the other hand, are responsible for teaching the children, keeping the house holy—everything that's related to the house they're responsible for. And if they want their husband to be a Talmid Chacham, then they would be responsible for bringing in the money. But that's only if they agree, not if the husband makes them agree. So, this is... a way of how to build a kosher, a holy house. Now, one of the main things that we fail to understand in our generation is that in order for us to develop all of this, this mindset, there are certain things we need to do. Now, I don't know if anyone here is married. And if you're not, I assume no one's married because you're all kind of young to be married. You're married?

1:15:38So now, the Torah says something very interesting. In the Gemara Masechet Sotah, page 2a, it says a person is going to get a wife based on his actions. Okay? What does this mean? So Rashi, one of the greatest sages that ever lived, almost 900 years ago, gives us the details. He says... If he's a tzaddik, he gets a modest woman. If he's a rasha, he gets a prostitute. What does one thing have to do with the other? Why can't a tzaddik get a tzaddeket? And why can't a wicked one get a wicked woman? This would make more sense. And he says, no. If he's a tzaddik, he'll get a modest woman, because if she's modest, then she has much, much more likelihood of being righteous. But if she's not modest, there's 0% chance of her being righteous. Why? Because 60% of the responsibility of a woman is to be modest.

1:16:57meaning that you can't pass the test of life without being modest. You have a hundred, you went to school. You know, you take a test. There's a hundred, you know, zero to a hundred. And you know, when I was still in school, 20-something years ago, the passing grade was 65. Maybe in today's generation, it's like 12 because they want everyone to win. You know, third place also gets a trophy. I mean, the 30th place also gets a trophy in this generation. But whatever, let's say it's still 65. Everyone goes to the competition, everyone gets a trophy in this generation. I don't know why, but they don't want anyone to get their feelings hurt by not getting a trophy. Okay, fine. But the teachers, maybe they still have some standards. They say you have to get a 51. 50, you fail. Oh, you know what? Even better yet. 50, you pass. 49, you fail. Now, if modesty is 60%, even if you find a way to fulfill all 40% of the other mitzvot, You did them perfectly. Taharat HaMishpacha, Shabbat, Kashrut, you sent your husband to the kollel, everything is fantastic. But you like wearing mini skirts and tank tops, and you don't want to cover your hair. You failed the test. Simple as it gets. So, this is why people need to understand that this modesty has rules.

1:18:21Modesty, in so many words, for women, is very, very difficult in this generation because of what we see with our eyes. We constantly compare ourselves to celebrities. We constantly compare ourselves to superstars. And we constantly compare ourselves to everything we're not supposed to compare ourselves to. Instead of being proud of being Jewish and being proud of what we are and what we have, we constantly try to want to be like the goyim. And this creates serious problems because if we're comparing ourselves to one of these movie stars, then we're going to want to look like them. And when we look like them, we can't be modest. Because in today's world, the fewer clothes you have, the prettier the world thinks you are. This is the only thing that justifies, rationally, why a 400-pound woman can allow herself to wear shorts and a tight top and think she looks good. It's the only reason. She doesn't have a different mirror than you. But this is the only reason. Why? Because someone told her in her mind that if she wears fewer clothes, she looks better. It has nothing to do with what kind of clothes. It's just less.

1:19:40And this is the warped mentality that we have. This is why any wife that wants to have a good marriage, the first thing she needs to do is destroy the television. She's not allowed to have television in her house. Why? What does she care? She likes to watch Oprah, she likes to watch all these, I don't know, whatever shows are still on television. What's wrong with television? Because when you bring television into your house, you're in essence bringing competition. And you're guaranteed to lose. Because your husband's going to come home from wherever he went. He's going to put on television. And if anyone ever watched television, Baruch Hashem, I haven't watched it for a few years, but I'm sure it's still the same. There's no one ugly on TV. Even the ugly people are good-looking. So your husband is there. He's eating the steak you slaved over. He's shooing the kids that you were praying to have. He's just thinking about, "I just want to be left alone and watch TV, watch the game, watch a bunch of people throw a ball, watch some show that talks about money, whatever." Waste his life doing something, watching TV. And a commercial comes on. A nicely dressed, half-naked girl comes on TV and tells him to buy soap. And from that moment on, he will always think of that woman when he uses soap.

1:21:07Even if he is intimate with his own wife. And any man that has a backbone will admit that if you've ever seen an immodest woman, there are specific times you think about them. These are the specific times: during prayer and during a time you're with your own wife. So while this wife that slaved herself over to make this husband dinner, prepare the house, make a nice home for him, do everything for him—she loves him, she adores him, she takes care of him. Now he's thinking about a different woman when he looks at her. Whose fault is it? It's her fault. Congratulations, you're married to somebody who doesn't even look at you. So when you bring a TV to your house, you're bringing competition. And you can't win. Why can't you win? Because on TV, she has makeup artists. She always looks her best. In real life, the wife doesn't always look her best. She goes to sleep at some point. She puts on pajamas. She's not wearing a fancy gown like she did at the wedding. Maybe she wants to put on, I don't know, comfortable clothes. So now he looks at the...

1:22:25you know, model on television, and he looks at his wife, and he looks at the model, and he looks at the wife. He's like, I can get her. Every guy thinks this. Every guy thinks he can get the girl on TV. And it creates an inner battle in him of whether he should stay even married b'chlal. And then when he goes outside, he starts looking for this girl, thinking he's going to find her. And she's in his mind all the time. Whose fault? Wife's fault. She allowed the enemy inside. So any wife that wants a good marriage, eliminate the competition first. The second thing is, beauty, only allow your husband to see it. If you're the type of woman that doesn't want to be modest, And you want to go and show Joey and Steve at the supermarket what your skin looks like. But then, when your husband comes home, you're only wearing sweatpants and t-shirts. Don't be surprised if he divorces you after five years. Outside, to Joey, Steve, and Wilbur, you're looking at your best. "Hi, how are you? Yes, thank you for putting my food in my cart," with the eight-inch heels.

1:23:47And then your husband comes home, he sees Tisha B'Av. Looks like he just woke up. Who wants to get married to that? So, if you do the opposite, you don't necessarily need to look ugly when you go outside, but look extra special for your husband, and don't show the world the goods. Make sure he knows this is just for you. This is why, one of the many reasons, a Jewish woman is obligated to cover her hair with a scarf or a hat. Because a big part of a woman's beauty is her hair. This is a very big difficulty for women today. But I can tell you that when you do that, you are guaranteeing your husband that you are his. Why? Because he's the only one allowed to see it. When he's the only one allowed to see it, then you're the diamond that you really are. And I'll answer your question in a second. Then you're the diamond that you really are. How do we know? If, let's say, for example, any one of you struck it rich and found a $100 million diamond. A $100 million diamond doesn't necessarily need to be that big. Now, would you go in the middle of the street and throw it like a ball, like a baseball, to show it to the world?

1:24:58Probably not, right? What do you do? You put it in a safe, and you put that safe into another safe, and that safe into another safe, and another safe, and then tell everyone it's inside, but it's really in a different safe. Because you want to protect it. Why can't you protect your beauty? Why can't you show it to the only man that you promised to be with? Why do you have to show it to Steve? Why do you have to show it to Wilbur? And Carlos? Why? Why? Why do they have to see you that way? You promised your eternity to be with this man. Why does Carlos have to also see the same thing he sees? And even more so, why are you showing such provocative behavior in front of him? You don't want to be with him. So what's the point? And I could tell you something that happened in the Gemara, and then I'll answer your question. What does modesty mean in the Gemara? Two simple stories. In the Gemara Masechet Berachot, It says if a man is getting change, you know, he paid for something from a woman, and she has to give him change, gives him money back. You're allowed to do business with a woman, there's nothing wrong with it. But if he's getting change or giving her change slowly, specifically so he can use that time to look at her, and even if it's just his hands, even if it's just her hands, he can have the mitzvot in the Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu, and he would still have to go to Gehinnom for that. That's what modesty means to Hashem. Why? Because she belongs to another. You thief, why are you looking at her? On the other hand, we have one of the greatest sages that ever lived, Rabbi Chanina...

1:26:18specifically so he can use that time to look at her, and even if it's just her hands, he can have all the mitzvot in the Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu, and he would still have to go to Gehinnom for that. That's what modesty means to Hashem. Why? Because she belongs to another. You thief, why are you looking at her? On the other hand, we have one of the greatest sages that ever lived, Rabbi Chanina, And he had a daughter. This is also a story that happened. He had two daughters. One daughter was married to whom every Sephardic mother knows because we have candles. He had another daughter. Both of them were very, very righteous, obviously coming from a great family. But the second daughter, not the one that was married, her name was Bruria. One day she was walking in the street... And she noticed that the goyim were looking at her and they were complimenting her walking. She was modest, not like today's world—she was 100% modest. But they liked the way she walked. Well, they whistled or something. So she started walking slower. Punishment? Shortly after, Hashem sent the goyim to Rabbi Chanina's house.

1:27:47...and took her and sent her to a house of prostitution. That was the punishment. But because she prayed and had some merits, Rabbi Meir was able to save her before she was ever touched by another man. Nonetheless, just walking in an immodest way in front of people that you're not supposed to, is already considered a sin in Hashem's eyes. Our generation is so far from reality that we have no idea of this stuff. So, this is why I tell you things that are serious, things that are for adults, because this is the type of stuff that's either going to build you and get you close to Hashem, get you towards happiness, get you towards the greatest place in the world, or otherwise. But at least now you know. What's the question? No, on the day of the marriage, they're not married yet. On the day of the marriage, they're not married yet. Oh, yeah, the night that they get married, they're officially married that day, and she's supposed to cover her hair that night.

1:29:05look, after the wedding, she is supposed to cover her hair that night. She still does not become officially his until they become intimate together. The first night is usually the night they are intimate. So, I know there’s a whole problem with wigs, but what if— No, there’s nothing wrong with wigs. You have to cover your hair. Yes, there are a lot of problems with wigs. No, but what if your hair is prettier than the wig you plan on wearing? Okay, so I'm going to give you a question. I'm going to answer your question with a question. Habata. Where do we get the whole, this is the Jewish thing to do, we answer questions with questions. Okay. So now, where do we get, where is our source for modesty in the Torah? One of them, one of many, is Parashat Naso. Parashat Naso we get one of the major places that talks about modesty. But which part of modesty? The part about covering our hair. There is something called a Sotah in the Torah. And a Sotah is a wayward woman, meaning a woman that's accused of cheating on her husband. Not convicted, but accused.

1:30:27of cheating on her husband. Why? Because she was doing things that she's not allowed to do. She was in a room by herself with another man who was not her husband, and she wasn't allowed to be there. We don't know what she did. We don't know if she was with him or not. But she was in an enclosed room that no one else was able to enter with another man. If, let's say, the room or the place where she was with this other man is open for anybody else to come in and leave, then she is allowed. But she was in a place that no one else could enter. She's not allowed to do that. So now the husband is questioning whether she was with this guy intimately or not. Now, in those days, you didn't need a private detective. You had God. So what do you do? Once your wife failed a test where she was with this man, you told her to stop, and she did it again. She was with him again. So, meaning that either way, even if she didn't cheat, she still... was doing something inappropriate. She was going against her husband anyway. So then you have to take her to the Beit HaMikdash. You take her to the Kohanim. And the Kohanim have to give her something called the bitter water, which is water that they make her drink. And if she cheated, she would blow up and die on the spot.

1:31:45Now, this water was part of two things. One, it was holy water that they used in order to purify the kohanim. And the second thing is they would take a scroll and they would write Hashem's name on it. Then they would dip it into the water until the ink from the scroll would go into the water, which would make it bitter. And this is the only time that you are allowed to erase Hashem's name. Where Hashem is telling you that for shalom bayit, you're allowed to erase My name. For nothing else, you're not allowed. It's a sin, 100%. It's part of the sins of the Ten Commandments, using Hashem's name in vain. Not allowed to erase Hashem's name. But for shalom bayit, you're allowed to erase His name. This is one of the sources where we learn that from. So now, they take Hashem's name. They put it into the waters. She drinks the water. If she cheated, she dies on the spot. If she didn't cheat, she gets a blessing from the Kohen. If she wasn't able to have kids, she's able to have kids. If she has kids, the kids will be very righteous, and so on. But before they get to this last final step, they try to convince, and in essence intimidate, the woman to admit that she cheated on him.

1:32:54And the reason why is because they know that if she says, "Yes, I cheated on him," then all they have to do is say, "Okay, you're divorced now. You're not allowed to be with your husband, but you're also not allowed to be with this other guy. You're not allowed to benefit from this cheating, but at least you're not going to die. You save a life. But if you lie, not only did you cheat, but you lie about cheating, and you drink the water, then you die. We can't save you after that." So at least, one second, so at least if you admit, you could save your life. Now part of this intimidation process is making her walk, getting her tired, trying to talk her into it, but then there's the final step. You know, when you try to do something, it all builds up to the final step, the final move, that's the ultimate big step before we take the last one. So the final step of embarrassing this wayward woman, this sotah, is taking off her kisuy rosh, taking off the scarf off of her head, and showing her hair to the public. trying to talk her into it, but then there's the final step. You know, when you try to do something, it all builds up to the final step, the final move, that's the ultimate big step before we take the last one. So the final step of embarrassing this wayward woman, this sotah, is taking off her kisuy rosh, taking off the scarf off of her head, and showing her hair to the public.

1:34:04So Chazal says, why, what's the point of taking her kisuy rosh off? He says, because even if she was a prostitute, not just a cheater, a prostitute, she still wouldn't want to show her hair to the public in those days. That's how valuable the beauty of the hair of a woman is in Hashem's eyes and according to the Torah. Now here's the question. So, obviously from here we learn that women, married women, have their hair covered with a scarf, not with a wig. It doesn't say they took off her wig. They took off her scarf. Now, here's the question we have. If we're being serious, if we're being adults, if we're being very, very serious about Hashem and we have an intention to do teshuva, then we have to ask ourselves a question. Why does everyone want to look like the sotah? When we wear kisui rosh with a scarf, we look like the kosher woman before any problem started. When we wear a wig, or we don't cover our hair, then we look like the sotah. We look like the woman that's being accused of something, and it's not exactly a compliment. Even if it's a nice wig, and this wig, and that wig, the point is you're showing something the Torah strictly said you're not supposed to.

1:35:34Why do we want to have this description according to the Torah that we look like her? Question? I have a question. You said how the girls, when the girls cheat on the boys, they get punished. What happens when the boys cheat on the girls? They also get punished. Now, also, another thing about this specific act, if the woman cheated on the man... Even though, according to the Torah, it's not allowed anymore because men can't handle more than one wife, according to the Torah, men are actually allowed to marry more than one woman if the original wife permits it. If the original wife says it's okay, you can marry more than one woman. But in today's generation, it's not allowed because we can't even handle one wife. So... And anyway, anyone that would marry a second woman in today's age would be for the wrong reasons. It wouldn't be because they want to bring children into the world, and so on. They would do it because they're sick in their mind. So the question is, what would happen with this issue if the man was with another woman that he wasn't supposed to be with, but the wife also cheated? They both cheated. And he said to the Kohanim, she wouldn't die.

1:36:53She would not die. And the reason why is because Hashem says, "I can't punish her, not him." So, he would have to continue staying with this woman while she cheats on him. So, there's always justice in Shamayim. Any questions? Somebody raised their hand two seconds ago. Yeah. Why is covering the hair a different level of importance than covering the body? Because that's already something that's exclusive to the husband once in a while. It's the same. It's part of the same thing. Covering the body and covering the hair is part of the same thing. It's part of the overall modesty of a woman. The modesty of a woman is all based on the fact that Hashem created men with a weaker mind than women. When a woman looks at a man, she sees a personality. She thinks, oh, he looks nice. That's what she sees. Or he looks rich. Or he looks smart. She sees a personality. No woman says, oh, he looks, you know, like a guy sees a girl. It just doesn’t happen. A guy looks at a woman, and he just sees nakedness. That’s just a reality. When a guy does not have Torah, that’s all he sees. So, when a woman makes it easier for him, by pretty much actually fulfilling his crazy desires, you have yourself a problem. Because then you're turning yourself into a makhti harabim. In Pirkei Avot, chapter 5, Mishnah 21, it says something very interesting: כל המזכה את הרבים אין חטא בא על ידו וכל המחטיא את הרבים אין מספיקים בידו לעשות תשובה.

1:38:16by pretty much actually fulfilling his crazy desires, you have yourself a problem. Because then you're turning yourself into a machti ha'rabim. In Pirkei Avot, chapter 5, Mishnah 21, it says something very interesting: כל המזכה את הרבים אין חטא בא על ידו וכל המחטיא את הרבים אין מספיקים בידו לעשות תשובה. Anyone who influences the masses to become meritorious, meaning anyone that helps people do teshuva, shall not be the cause of sin. Meaning that Hashem is not going to give him these, He's going to give him tests, but not the small tests that the average person is going to get, because he's already worried about Hashem's children. Therefore, Hashem is going to take special care of him. But, the big but, one that influences the public to sin. to sin. The opposite. Instead of making them do teshuva, he makes them sin. He will not be given the means to do teshuva. So now, Chazal tells us that teshuva is always an option. So what does this mean?

1:39:29In order to do teshuva, in order to start repenting, in order to start keeping Shabbat, in order to start becoming modest, in order to start learning Torah, in order to start eating kosher and not having a hard time finding food, in order to get closer to Hashem, you need a certain level of siyata d'shmaya, you need a certain level of help from Hashem. The younger you are when you start doing teshuva, the more help from Hashem you have. Because it's much more difficult to do teshuva as a younger person based on desires than it is when you're 70. When you're 70 years old, the only desire you have at that point is kavod. You want everyone to give you kavod. You want everyone to give you respect. Oh yeah, he's 70, he lived this way, he had this. They don't care about women anymore. They don't care about anything else. They just want everyone to give them respect. When you're a young person, you have a million and a half desires. Your hormones are going 50,000 miles an hour. Your dreams are to be the next Bill Gates. Your other dream is to be the next runway model at the same time. You want everything. You want the whole world in your hands. This is why a baby, when it's born, is born with closed hands. Because it's trying to grab everything in sight. But when we die, we die with open hands. Because we realize it's all worth nothing. We have nothing left.

1:40:48So now when someone is young and they do teshuva, Hashem is going to give you a lot of help if you actually take that first step. He's going to give you a lot of help and it's going to make it easier for you once you pass that first big test. But as you get older, so for example if you're, let's say, 20 years old and you do teshuva, Hashem is going to help you 90% of the way. 90% of the way, you start, you pass that first test, He's already going to help you 90% of the way. It's going to become easy for you to be modest, learn Torah. You're going to understand things much clearer. You're going to connect to Hashem much easier. Your brothers and sisters that are double your age have a hard time even understanding parashat hashavua. You already understand the secrets of the Torah after learning the Torah for only a couple of years. Why? Because Hashem has given you special assistance from heaven. It's called siyata dishmaya. If you wait until your 30s, then it goes down from 90% to maybe 65% or 70%. You wait until your 40s, it goes down to 40%. By the time you get into your 60s, you're already at a point where there's barely any help, maybe 20, 30%. Now, this particular Mishnah says that if someone is making other people sin, then they put themselves in a different category.

1:42:04Then they put themselves in a category as someone who is actually making other people fail. Not only are they not doing teshuva, but they're making other people get further from teshuva. Even if that person is a talmid chacham and he walks around and he sees a half-naked girl, he made a sin. He has to live with that sin. How does he have to live with it? Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus says, every time a person, this is also in the Gemara Masechet Berachot, anyone that wants to look at this, every time a person makes a sin, every time a person makes a mitzvah, he creates an angel. A special angel, it's next to him all the time, protects him. Every time he makes a sin, he creates a demon. Also next to him. The more demons he creates, more he gets connected to the sin itself. Demons start affecting him, and it becomes almost impossible to stop sinning, especially when it comes to really, really big sins like wasting seed and things like that. But nonetheless, to answer your question, once a woman is not modest, what she doesn't realize is one thing. She can walk from, let's say, here to, I don't know, down the street—that's a five-minute walk—so

1:43:23innocent walk. Now, here there's not really that many people outside. It's Arizona and it's like Gehinnom here with the heat. But let's say it was New York and there's a million people on the street, and she walks from Avenue A to Avenue B. And a thousand people looked at her. Every single one of those people created demons. And she also created double the amount of demons that they did because she caused them to do it. So now she walks thinking that she's cute. She's getting all these looks. She doesn't realize there's about 15 million demons that she just created that are becoming our friends forever, until she does teshuva. And those demons are going to torture her, here and in the next world. So when we go up to Shamayim and they don't ask you, "Did you do this? Did you do this?" They don't ask you anything. What happens when you go to Shamayim, you go to the Bet Din of Shamayim, Chazal tells us, which is from people that actually went there and came back. They said, when we go up to Shamayim, it's not that they ask you, what did you do on Tuesday? What did you do on Wednesday at three o'clock? No, no, no. The angel that you created for the mitzvah shows up. He says, oh yeah, I was created. My name is Shabbat. I was created on Shabbat of September 1st in Arizona when so-and-so kept Shabbat.

1:44:47I'm the witness that he did this as well. I was created that way. But then there are 15 million Shedim that come and say, "Yes, we were also created that same Shabbat that she was keeping. She was wearing a mini skirt to the Bet Knesset. We were also created because the whole Kehillah was following her. We were created on the same day." You have yourself a problem. So, and those Shedim are given the responsibility to be the ones that punish you. So it's very graphic, very, very scary, and it's very, very real. So, when a woman is not modest, she's not really doing herself a favor. Because she's putting herself in a scenario that she's making other people sin. So now, the ultimate explanation of this Pirkei Avot, of this Mishnah, which comes even before the Gemara, it's 2,500 years ago, Why does it mean that they shut off, that it's hard for them to repent? Is that when the average person is able to do teshuva because he has a certain amount of siyata dishmaya, he has a certain level of help from Hashem, once a woman realizes that she is making other people sin, and she continues, if she didn't know, it's different. But if she knowingly makes other people sin, she knows it's not allowed to wear a tight skirt.

1:46:06Not allowed to wear tight anything. She knows you're not allowed to wear these short sleeve shirts. You have to cover your elbows. She knows she's not allowed to wear a skirt that doesn't cover the knees. She has to cover the bottom of the knees. She knows that by her looking a certain way, it's going to make other people think about her intimately. If she looks modest and they still think that way, it's not her problem. But if she does everything she has to, and she fulfills the mitzvah, she's in a good position. But if she doesn't, and she knowingly violates this law, then that siyata dishmaya we were talking about, that help from Hashem about actually doing teshuva, becomes much more difficult. Instead of 90%, it could drop to five. And she fulfills the mitzvah, she's in a good position. But if she doesn't, and she knowingly violates this law, then that siyata dishmaya we were talking about, that help from Hashem about actually doing teshuva, becomes much more difficult. Instead of 90%, it could drop to five. Why? Because not only are you a sinner now, you're creating sinners. Which means that you're now being accused of murder. You're killing my kids. I have to punish my kids because you decided to wear a miniskirt today. Why are you doing this to my kids? It's not just, okay, you want to ruin your life, ruin your life, fine. But why are you ruining my kids' lives? Go ahead. The consequences that you're stating are very intense. How does somebody live with that? It's much, much worse than what I say.

1:47:25It's much, much worse. It's scary, yes. Okay, so it's scary. It's actually much worse than what I'm telling you. So that's the... I'm having some mercy on you guys to not tell you the full details because then you'll have nightmares. And it's not necessary because this is enough to develop Yirat Shamayim. Yirat Shamayim is the basic first level of being a Jew. Without Yirat Shamayim, without fear of the Almighty... Teshuva cannot exist. Shlomo HaMelech, who was the wisest man that ever lived, received a gift from Hashem on the day he became king. He was 12 years old, and he prayed to Hashem in the Book of Kings, saying, "Hashem, all I want is to judge Your nation favorably." That's it. I see people are obviously having problems between each other. One guy is suing the other guy. The other guy is suing this one. People are having problems. So I'm the judge. I'm the ultimate judge. I'm the king. So all I want is the knowledge of Torah that I need to have to judge Your children favorably. And Hashem says, because you asked to fulfill My Torah instead of asking for money, instead of asking for women, instead of asking for power, I'll give you all of them. Because you asked for the right thing, I'll give you everything.

1:48:49So this main thing made Shlomo HaMelech the wisest man that ever lived. So this very same Shlomo HaMelech, who knows what he's talking about, says the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Almighty. Meaning that someone who does not fear Hashem cannot be considered wise. Why? If Someone is born into this world and they think that everything came from some explosion. Obviously, you can't call them wise because they're crazy. Even the monkey knows that there's a creator. Even the donkey knows that he has a ba'al habayit, he has an owner. Everyone knows there has to be something. Even if you want to believe in the whole theory of evolution, you still can't explain where the first cell came from. So if it came from somewhere, obviously there has to be a Creator. So if the Creator was able to create one cell, why are you limiting it to one cell? Why couldn't He create a whole world? So once you know that there's a Creator, then you can easily fast forward and realize that the Creator had to give us an instruction set. And the instruction set is the Torah, which there are ways to prove, as I mentioned before. For anyone that wants to watch that lecture, it's already online. It's called "Torah, Science, and Ancient Wisdom: A Bunch of Torah Proofs."

1:50:15that I have in the lecture. Once you realize the Creator gave an instruction set, you see what the Creator says in this instruction set, and you see that, okay, I have to do certain things. Once you realize that for Him to fulfill all of your desires, whether it's parnassah, or it's refuah sheleimah, or it's a zivug, or it's anything, For you to just be able to breathe is a miracle. It's 100% a miracle for you to be able to breathe. It's actually 100% a miracle that you're even here. I'll give you a small example scientifically. Each one of you was told by some doctor at some point, or at least on some commercial, that you should eat a lot of protein. That's why they feed you so much meat. You should eat protein, right? They say protein is healthy. So that means that your body is full of trillions and trillions and trillions of proteins. Now, each one of these proteins has to fold in a precise way, something called a protein fold. And it has to fold in an exact way, not like a man folds his t-shirts, but fold in a precise way.

1:51:35And what happens if it doesn't fold in a precise way? If one out of all the trillions and trillions and trillions of proteins you have in your body folds a little off—five degrees off to the right, five degrees off to the left—it's not like it's bad; it's just a little bit off. You lose vision, chas v'shalom. You lose the ability to breathe. You can't walk. You can't live. All sicknesses start there. One protein. Not ten or fifty million. One. So the very same One that created the heaven and the earth is also responsible for folding these proteins. Once we realize that the same One is responsible for these proteins folding the right way, how could you not be scared? How could you not be scared when you realize how much He's responsible for? So the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Almighty. A healthy Jew has to have a certain level of fear. The reason why is because Chazal tells us, A connection to Hashem. There are two types of connections to Hashem. There's Ahava and there's Yirah. There's love of Hashem and there's fear of Hashem. We're obligated by the 613 mitzvot to do both of them.

1:52:46But if you look at the Torah, the entire Torah, and you compare the ratio of how often it talks about fear of Hashem versus loving Hashem, the ratio is 100 to 1, if not more. Meaning to fear Hashem is mentioned at least 100 times or more for every one time it mentions loving Hashem. Reason being is because Chazal says that if your connection to Hashem is only based on fear, it's only based on fear, then it's an incomplete connection. It's a connection, but it's incomplete. A complete connection will be both fear and love. But if it's a connection that's just based on love and no fear, then it's no connection at all. Meaning it cannot happen. It cannot exist. It cannot be. Because you can't love something if you don't know what it is. And if you knew what it is, of course you would fear it. So someone can't say, listen, I love this woman. Who? I don't know. How can you love it then? then it's no connection at all, meaning it cannot happen. It cannot exist. It cannot be. Because you can't love something if you don't know what it is. And if you knew what it is, of course you would fear it. So, someone can't say, "Listen, I love this woman." Who? "I don't know." How can you love her then?

1:54:00You understand? So it's the same thing with Hashem. Once you know even a small 1% of what we can know about Hashem, once we know just about this protein thing we talked about, or the fact that the name of Hashem is inside your DNA, or the fact that Hashem is responsible for every single move that you make, anything and everything that Hashem is responsible for, once you know even a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of a percent of how much you rely on this Hashem, of course you're going to fear Him. And to have this fear is necessary. Because Hashem specifically came to us at Mount Sinai and He gave us the Ten Commandments. Before He gave us the rest of the Torah, He gave us the Ten Commandments. Now if you notice, when we got the Ten Commandments, at some point the Jewish people said, "Please tell them to stop or else we'll die. Please tell them to stop talking or else we're going to die." Hashem is talking, you want Him to stop talking? No one ever heard, no... Religion never started the same way as Judaism. Judaism is the only religion in history, the only people in history, where a group of people—more than one—were able to listen to Hashem speak. It was just the Jewish people. So now that you finally heard Him in public, you want Him to stop? And to such an extent that you're saying, "Stop or else we're gonna die?" Sounds a little extreme. So why are they saying it? Because Hashem's voice...

1:55:23was so holy and so scary that they all died when they heard the first commandment, and Hashem brought them back to life. And then they heard the second commandment, and they all died again, and He brought them back to life. And then they said, "Please stop Him from talking, or else we'll die," because they had already died twice. They felt the pain of death. go up to the mountain, listen to whatever He says yourself, then tell Moses, we will do and then we will listen. Meaning, you tell us what to do and then we'll hear it for whatever He says. But we can't, we don't want to feel the pain of death anymore. So what does Moses answer them? Hashem is only scaring you so you don't make sins. Meaning, the scare tactic, the Gehenom, the punishment, the scary stuff—it's not my strategy, it's not unique to me; it's Hashem's strategy. He gave you all of these things, and He wrote it in the Torah in many, many places. Nearly half the Torah talks about punishment. Most people don't teach it because it's not politically correct to scare people. But this is why 80% of Am Yisrael does not even know what Shabbat is. So, this nice tactic doesn't work.

1:56:48But Hashem is scaring us so we wake up, so we don't sin. Because if we all thought that we actually have free choice, like most people think we have free choice, they think that, you know, free choice means we can do whatever we want. We don't actually have free choice. We have choice. Not free, just choice. The difference is, if I have free choice, that means that I can come work here and I get paid. If I don't come to work, I don't get paid. That's free choice. If I come to work, I get paid. If I don't come to work, I don't get paid. That's free choice. I can do whatever I want. And if I do the right thing, I get paid. If I do the mitzvot, I get paid. If I don't do them, I get nothing. That's free choice. But that's not what the Torah says we have. The Torah says we have choice. Meaning, I come to work, I get paid. If I don't come to work, they send people to my house and they beat me up. That's what we have. I do what Hashem says, I get rewarded. I don't do what Hashem says, I get punished. That's choice. When we know and we have the right perspective on things, that it's a choice that we have, it becomes much easier to make the right choice. Now that I know that I have to be modest, okay, I might as well be modest. Now that I know that I have to eat kosher, might as well eat kosher. Because if I don't, only bad things will happen.

1:58:16And anyone that doesn't believe that, that thinks that bad things only happen in the next world and they don't care about the next world, watch my lecture from last night. Last night's lecture isn't posted yet, but it's already in a few other lectures. There's one lecture that's called "Hashem Took Back His Millions and Gave Me Emunah Instead." It's my personal story. Or if you don't have it, then you could just listen to this CD. There's another one of the personal stories on it. And then you could see what Gehinnom looks like in this world. Not the next world, this one. We don't have to worry about who came back from there. I saw it here. Yes? Even if we have choice in this world of, like, choice A or choice B, then, like, on Rosh Hashanah, our whole year is planned on Rosh Hashanah. Yes. We'll have choice if it's already planned. Right. So, the Baal Shem Tov has the same question. One day, he saw a person delivering water, and he saw the guy really happy. He's carrying this big jug of water. It's really heavy. And he asked him, "How are you doing?" The guy is smiling. He said, "Everything is great." The next day, he sees the same guy. He's been delivering water for 20 years. Same guy delivering the same water. It's just as heavy. It's just as hot. Nothing changed.

1:59:38How are you doing? You know, I don't know why Hashem burdens me with such heavy water on such a hot day. Life is so tough. Today is Tisha B'Av. So the Baal Shem Tov says, "Oh, Baruch Hashem, you just helped me figure out a question I've been asking myself for a long time. Thank you. Chazak u'Baruch." I helped you figure out a question in the Torah. All I'm doing is carrying water and complaining. He says, in the Gemara, Masechet Rosh Hashanah and also Masechet Beitzah, it says that Hashem judges us. On Rosh Hashanah, what parnassah we're going to get, and everything else we're going to get, from Rosh Hashanah to Rosh Hashanah. We show up to Rosh Hashanah, we do teshuvah, we get serious, we already start preparing the whole month of Elul. We get to Rosh Hashanah, we do teshuvah. Whatever we're supposed to get is going to be decided on Rosh Hashanah, and to make sure that in case, because we don't know what the decisions of Shamayim are...

2:00:49We have ten days to appeal whatever decision was already made, which is Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah is judgment day. Yom Kippur is the appeal, meaning you can make whatever decision you have even better—hopefully better. Hopefully, it's already good and you're making it better. Or if it was bad, you could turn it around during those ten days. And Yom Kippur is the last day. But anyway, the point is that it's decided already at that time what's going to happen, how much money you're going to make, and everything else from that year to the next year. But then he says, but the Mishnah, which is even before the Gemara, says that Hashem actually judges us every day. Why does He have to judge us every day if He already judged it on Rosh Hashanah? Same question you asked. So the Baal Shem Tov says, I now know. On Rosh Hashanah, He decides what we're going to get. But every day, based on our actions, He decides how we're going to get it. On Rosh Hashanah, He decides, oh, Yaron's going to get a million dollars. But every day, based on my actions, He's going to decide, oh, he's either going to get it through donations or he's going to get it through a car accident. Someone can get fired a day after Rosh Hashanah or a month after Rosh Hashanah, thinking that he lost the world that he had. And a week later, he wins the lotto.

2:02:18So, Hashem still gave him the money, just in a different way. How he's going to get it is decided every day. This is the reason why, if you want to explain it in a physical way, in a natural way, you wake up in a bad mood. Who's a liar and says no? Everyone woke up in a bad mood one day. What happened? Why are you in a bad mood? Do you ever wonder? Nothing happened. You went to sleep. Why are you in a bad mood? You can't be in a bad mood because nothing happened. You went to sleep. Because when you go to sleep, part of your neshama goes upstairs and it reports everything you did for the day. I made this sin, I made this mitzvah, I did this, I did that, and you sign your name on it. So the day of judgment comes one day, b'ezrat Hashem, after 120, they're going to show you everything you signed off on. So you can't say, "I didn't know." So now they say, oh, based on your actions today, tomorrow is going to be a good day. You made some mitzvot, tomorrow is going to be a good day. You're going to get some of your reward for the mitzvot you made on a certain day tomorrow. So already your neshama comes back excited because you know today is going to be a good day. You don't know because you don't know your neshama 100% because your body is covering part of it. But that's why you wake up in a good mood.

2:03:44But then sometimes you show up over there with a bunch of sins. They say, oh, okay, listen, we like you, so we're going to make sure that you have some suffering here instead of there, because there it's much hotter. It's even hotter than Arizona. So we're going to give you some suffering here. Today, on the way to work, you can get a flat tire. You're going to be late to work by three hours. You're going to miss the appointment, you're going to lose the contract, and you're not going to be able to pay the bills this month. Your neshamah already knows this ahead of time. That's why you wake up on Tisha B'Av. That's why you wake up in a bad mood. Because you already know you got bad news. Now, a smart person wakes up in a bad mood, and now that he knows this, now that she knows this, you have a way to repent. This is where teshuva comes in. If I already woke up in a bad mood, that means that my neshamah knows something I don't know. I need to fix something today. I have two choices. I can either exercise "one sin leads to another," and make more sins today, making tomorrow even worse. Continue in a bad mood. When you're in a bad mood, you make sins. Or, I can say, okay, you know what? I don't want to get any more bad news. Let me actually put a jacket on today instead of wearing a t-shirt.

2:05:03Let me cover myself. Let me eat kosher today instead of eating McDonald's. Let me think of what's going on in my life. Let me start doing teshuva. Do something. Something. No one's going to do teshuva in a second. It's a process. You don't just keep everything one day. Number one, you don't know everything to keep. And number two, you have to get used to it. But the very basics, like Shabbat, like kosher, like being modest, don't take that long. It's a decision, really. It's really a second. It's either you're gonna keep it or you're not. How you're going to keep it, that takes maybe a little longer. You have to get new clothes. You have to prepare your house for Shabbat, buy a hot plate, maybe arrange a place to go to and learn how to keep Shabbat. It's a process. But the decision to do it, it's a second. Do you want to be righteous with Hashem? Or do you want to be His enemy? And anyone who thinks that Hashem does not have enemies should take a look in the Torah. At the end of Parashat Va'etchanan, there are three last verses. And Hashem gives us a definition of His lover and His enemy. In chapter 7, verse 9,

2:06:23It says, first part, translation: You must know that Hashem, your God, He is the God, the faithful God, who safeguards the covenant and kindness for those who love Him and for those who observe His commandments for thousands of generations. So here, Hashem gives us a definition of who He considers His lovers. same sentence, he says who the lovers are: the ones who keep His commandments. So, this is not my definition. The Five Books of Moses, in Deuteronomy chapter seven, you can see for yourself in verse nine. So now we know the definition of who Hashem considers His lovers. This is written several times in the Torah. This is just one of my personal favorites. It's written several times in this parasha and several other places. Now, great, so now we continue. translation and he is still referring to Hashem because it's a continuation. He repays His enemies cash to their face to make them perish. He shall not delay for His enemy in their lifetime; He shall repay him. So now...

2:07:49Anyone that has read a book before knows that language works this way. If you're saying one thing in one sentence, and then you continue it, but it's obviously an opposite decision, then you know that the two things are connected. One means the opposite. So here, if Hashem is saying, "My lovers are the ones that keep My mitzvot," then when He's referring to enemies, who is He referring to? The ones who don't keep mitzvot. But he also answers a very, very big question that a lot of people have today. How come I see this guy that's an idol worshiper or a guy that hates Hashem, a guy that's an atheist, a guy that's a kofer, driving a Ferrari on Shabbat? How come Hashem is not punishing him? He doesn't keep anything. He told you in his sentence, the guy that's the kofer, if Hashem pretty much decided that he's already on a route... that is only going to lead to more and more sins, and he didn't start doing teshuva,

2:08:51then Hashem has to pay him for the few mitzvot that he did in his life. He laid tefillin at one point, he ate kosher at one point, he gave tzedakah at one point. Hashem has to pay him for those mitzvot. Even if he's a rasha, he still has to get paid for those mitzvot. So He says, "I repay him cash to his face." "Cash to his face" means in a disrespectful way: take everything, it doesn't really matter to Me. Why? It specifically says, to make him perish. Meaning every bit of mitzvah that he did, I'll pay him the entire reward in this world. Why? Because, as we said before, he has no share in Olam HaBa. Hashem won't delay his payment. He's going to pay him here. So the next time you see somebody driving a fancy car, living in a three, four, five, $50 million house, ...looks like they have the life you want as far as material is concerned, but as an outright heretic who doesn't keep anything, instead of envying them, you should feel bad for them. Maybe give them one of these CDs because Hashem pretty much is telling them, "Okay, you're on a one-way route to the bad place we mentioned several times today, so I have to pay you. I have to pay you in this world. You kept Shabbat one time? I'll give you a building."

2:10:17You gave a few tzedakot; I'll give you another building. You were nice to an avrech for some reason; I'll give you a wife. You ate kosher, even if it was by accident; I'll give you children. Whatever you did, I'm going to have to pay you here. Why? Because once you get to Me, I don't want to see you. This is literal Torah. It's not my translation, not my interpretation. I can't even be the nail on the toes of any of these sages that were, you know, that gave our understanding of the Torah. Yeah? Is there a way you can tell whether what you're given is either good or bad? Like, let's say you're given, like, some type of reward that you totally never heard of, like, oh, $5,000. It's like, oh, is this a good thing or a bad thing? There's something said in the Torah, it says, I always looked at everything with, in essence, a perspective that Hashem is next to me all the time. So, if someone is trying to do teshuva, trying, they're not completely righteous yet, they don't know the entire Torah, she's not ready to do every single thing yet, but she's working towards it. She learns every day, she starts wearing modest clothes, she's not making other people sin, she's doing the basics, but she's not where she could potentially be at some point.

2:11:48she's really trying, then there's no reason for her to look at things and any reward she gets as a negative. If anything, it should be Hashem showing you, "Look, I'm accepting your teshuva, and you're getting a reward for some of it as assistance and encouragement." On the other hand, if you look at it in perspective, you say, listen, I went to this guy, and this rabbi was saying all these scary things, and I know it's true, and I still didn't feel like listening. I still want to wear a t-shirt. I still want to wear short shorts. I still want to drive to the mall on Shabbat. I still want to eat pig once a week. I still want to do all those things. And you start seeing problems in your life. Now you know why. So I said, okay, I gave you the wake-up call. You didn't wake up. I'm going to give you a different one. I got a wake-up call for a while. and I didn't listen. So then Hashem took everything. First, He took my money, some of it. That wasn't enough. And since I didn't wake up, He started taking my health away. So I went from one day, being a multi-millionaire, in May of 2006,

2:13:03I made $1.6 million for the month. One month, not the whole year. I was perfectly healthy. I was on top of the world. I was on TV. I was famous. I had workers. All these Harvard grads would work for me. I didn't even finish college. It was wonderful. Five months later, I'm asking everyone to kill me. Why? Because I can't stop screaming from pain. I can't stop screaming from pain, and this pain doesn't stop for the next seven years. And over the next seven years, I lose all my money, I lose my health, and baruch Hashem, I'm here today, baruch Hashem, everything is better. But nonetheless, when I didn't listen to my wake-up call, the wake-up call got louder. First, Hashem sends you a text. You ignore it. He sends you another text. On WhatsApp this time. You ignore it. We're going to do Minchah in a second. We'll put it on break and then we continue if you guys want. He sends you a text. Then a WhatsApp. Then an email. Then a phone call. Then he sends somebody to your house. And it just gets louder and louder. It's up to you. Do you want to be stubborn like I was? Or do you want to wake up today?

2:14:26Let's do Minchah b'ezrat Hashem. If you guys want to continue, we can continue with as many questions as you want. I have another shiur at 7:30. So we can continue all the way until then, if you guys want.