Are You Cursed?, NAZI Mentality, Zionism, Religious Fanaticism and MORE - STUMP THE RABBI (18)

0:12We're back here on Wednesday's program in Sha'arei Tziyon, the Stump the Rabbi, ask your questions. Today's shiur will be for Refuah Shlema for Esther Bat Zipporah and Eliyahu, and also for Ilui Nishmat Eliyahu Ben Frecha, and also for Refuah Shlema for Aviv Mori David Ben Nesria, Doris Bat Jorah, Rabbanit Levana Bat Sara, also Rivka Chaya Bat Sara, Yocheved Bat Batya, and... Bat Zipporah and Eliyahu, and also Ilui Nishmat Eliyahu Ben Frecha, and also for Refuah Shlema for Aviv Mori David Ben Nesria, Doris Bat Jorah, Rabbanit Levana Bat Sara, also Rivka Chaya Bat Sara, Yocheved Bat Batya, and Rav Ephraim Ben Shulamit, Rabbanit Sarah Bat Anat, Rabbanit Shulamit Bat Jorah, hopefully, I'm pronouncing it right. And all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat Hashem, will have refuah shlema, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf, and also for zivug, zivug hagun, and teshuva shlema for Elad Ben Doris.

1:26So, today, hopefully, you guys have some questions for me. But usually, you guys need some time to warm up, so I'll give you a little bit of an insight into a few things I learned. Maybe we'll both learn from them. So, we have this week's parasha, Parashat Eikev. Last week's parasha was a monumental parasha. It's full of atomic bombs for every neshama that wants to hear the truth. From the beginning, where you learn the value of prayer from Moshe Rabbeinu, but at the same time, the will of Hashem, and the will of Hashem that cannot change under certain conditions, where even though Moshe Rabbeinu his single tefillah had the weight of the tefillah of the entire nation. We learn this from what happened with Miriam when she said lashon hara about Moshe accidentally. Hashem punished her by giving her tzaraat. Tzaraat is both a physical and a spiritual disease, and the person has to be kicked out of the camp.

2:41until they healed. And the healing only takes place if the person does teshuvah. It's not like some medicine. You take a few Vicodins, maybe some Percocet, an antibiotic, and you're okay. Tzaraat is a serious disease that only HaKadosh Baruch Hu heals, like everything else, but in this case, mamash. The entire nation, millions of people, prayed for Miriam, but to no avail. Then Aharon HaKohen went to Moshe, begged him to pray for his sister. She's our sister, she's our flesh. Moshe Rabbeinu said five words. The entire nation said a lot more than five words. It didn't work. Moshe Rabbeinu said five words, literally five words. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu healed Miriam on the spot. Meaning that the single prayer, five words from Moshe Rabbeinu, was more significant than countless words from millions and millions of Jews. Yet, at the beginning of Parashat Va'etchanan, Moshe Rabbeinu prays 515 times. We don't even have any concept of how long each prayer was and how many words each prayer was. All we know is 515 prayers, complete prayers,

3:56for Hashem to change His mind and let Moshe Rabbeinu enter Eretz Yisrael, and Hashem said, "Rav lach." No, Moshe, enough. Don't speak to Me about this matter anymore. Hashem denied him. Meaning that when Hashem says something, He doesn't change His mind. But of course, we later on read from the Mefarshim that this was for the good of the people. Because had Moshe come into Eretz Yisrael, the first thing he would have done was build the Beit HaMikdash. And Hashem made a deal with Moshe Rabbeinu that anything that he does is almost the equivalent of HaKadosh Baruch Hu doing it. Meaning that it's permanent. Hashem gave Moshe Rabbeinu the Torah. He didn't give Noach the Torah. He didn't give Avraham Avinu the Torah. He didn't give anybody else the Torah. He gave it to Moshe Rabbeinu. Why? The deal was with Moshe. I'm gonna give you the Torah because Torah is permanent. Anything I give you is permanent. I give you the nation of Israel, they're permanent. I give you Torah, it's permanent. Had Moshe Rabbeinu built the Beit HaMikdash, the Beit HaMikdash would have had to be permanent. But because HaKadosh Baruch Hu knew that Am Yisrael is going to sin in the future, that means that He would have had to destroy the Beit HaMikdash.

5:13But if Moshe Rabbeinu would have built a Beit HaMikdash, he wouldn't have been able to use that choice. Meaning, Hashem Yerachem, he would have had to destroy Am Yisrael. So why did Moshe Rabbeinu want to go to Eretz Yisrael? For the good of the people. For the good of the people, he wanted to go for them. He wanted to be their leader, build a Beit HaMikdash, and serve Hashem better. He didn't want them to die. So, had he known that going into Eretz Yisrael would mean the eventual demise of the nation, obviously he wouldn't even ask for it. But that's also why HaKadosh Baruch Hu told Moshe Rabbeinu, you can see my back but you can't see the front, you can't see today. Meaning you can see everything that I've already done and I can explain it to you why I did it because now it's finished. But I can't show you the future and you understand what it really means, why I'm doing what I'm doing. I can't even show you the present and explain to you why I'm doing what I'm doing because it has to do with the future and so on and so forth. As long as you're a human being, you're limited. So we see in the beginning of Parashat Va'etchanan the power of prayer. We also see the Ten Commandments told to us the second time in the Torah, this time from Moshe Rabbeinu's perspective.

6:22We also see at the end an explanation, a very detailed explanation for a very famous question that's constantly asked till this day, which is, why is there a righteous person that has a miserable life and a wicked person that has a good life? Meaning the righteous person is poor as dirt sometimes. Not always, but sometimes he's as poor as dirt. Sometimes he's sick. Sometimes he has pain. Sometimes he has all types of enemies surrounding him like bees. But the wicked person, he's driving his Ferrari on Shabbat and no one even gives him a ticket. I pay my haters cash to their face to destroy them. Meaning, if you see a wicked person living what seems to be a good life, you should start crying for them. Why? That means that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is starting to pay them reward for the few mitzvot they did in their life in this world in order to destroy them. In order to destroy them.

7:24because He doesn't want to see them in Olam Haba for even a second. So He pays them whatever reward He owes them for the few mitzvot they did. They laid tefillin for their bar mitzvah, they gave tzedakah a few times, they said they did a few mitzvot here and there, they eat kosher; He's going to pay them for it. But the account is empty at the time of their demise, and then after that, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a different account with them, Hashem yerachem. Now, in this parasha, we see that Moshe Rabbeinu continues and he says, "This shall be the reward when you hearken to these ordinances and you observe and perform them. Hashem, your God, will safeguard for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your forefathers." So here we see that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is promising us an enormous amount of blessings. He says that He's going to bless not only your kids, the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your land, your grain, your wine, meaning that not only are you going to be blessed with children, but you'll be blessed with parnassah to feed them. You'll be blessed with a solid business where you're not going to have to worry about how to survive.

8:50Even the food that you're going to eat is going to taste good. People don't think this is very much a big deal. What do you mean? If my mom cooks good food, it's food. It's good food. No. Rabbi Akiva, alav ha-shalom, says that he knew a guy who was a multi-millionaire who owned a wedding hall, a very fancy wedding hall. And one day he comes to his wedding hall. There was an event that he was invited to. And he sees this event. was catered by the best chef in the country. You go to some of these events, there's like five stories of food. And no one's there yet. He goes to the owner, "Why don't you have some? It looks delicious." You look hungry, no? Why don't you have some? He goes, no, no, I can't. He goes, what, you don't want to eat meat? Okay, so you have over there, the parve. He goes, no, no, I can't. He goes, okay, so have this. No, I can't. Okay, this. Why not? Why can't you have any of this stuff? He says, I'm sick. I have diabetes, I have this, I have cholesterol, I have every disease in the book. So I can see this food, but I can't eat it. So even the food tasting good in your mouth, we take for granted.

10:07And we shouldn't. It's a blessing in its own. Now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to us that if we follow these commandments, the reward is this: that He will bless us to no end. Now, He quickly goes and he wants to make sure that we understand that this is after we follow the commandments. And one of the commandments includes not to follow the goyim. Not to act like them, not to look like them, not to want to be like them. You should not aspire to become a baseball player. You should not aspire to become some, I don't know, some philosopher for the goyim or some newscaster on CNN. You should not aspire to be like them. but most importantly, you should not have a mind like them. What's a mind like a goy? What's a mind like a goy? The average person goes to work. You have eight billion people in the world. With the exception of most of the children, the rest of them work. The rest of the people work.

11:22Some have both the mom and the father working, some it's just the father, but most likely everybody works to some extent or has worked in their life. Now, the mind of a goy, what does it think? What does it think? It thinks that I'm gonna go to work, I'm gonna work for Coca-Cola, I'm gonna work for UPS, I'm gonna work for Mars, I'm gonna work for whoever, some company, some big company or small company or the laundromat or whatever. the customer is gonna buy something and therefore I'm gonna sell them something and I'm gonna make a profit and that's it. So, I'm relying on the customer or I'm relying on my boss paying me the check on time every two weeks, relying on the boss to give me a check every two weeks. So, I am relying on my boss. relying on the customer. I'm relying on the economy. They turn on TV in the morning, especially in Western society. First thing in the morning, every person that makes a few shekels turns on CNBC, turns on the news. He wants to see what's the market doing. Why? Because all of a sudden he became an economist. Oh, the GDP is up. The GDP is down. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, they're celebrating. It's nine o'clock in the morning. Tomorrow, they're gonna do the whole thing all over again. Oh

12:37every day there is a new announcement: they sold too many cars, too few cars, too many houses, too few houses. Unemployment is up, unemployment is down. All types of statistics just to get your nerves up right before you start the day, and everybody becomes an economist. And they say, "Why? Why are you so worried?" "Oh, the economy is down. The economy is up." The economy is all these different things. So what does it mean? They rely on the economy. They rely on the economy. They think, "No, my business is down this year. I can't give tzedakah. Oh, why not? Ah, you know, business is down. The economy, you know, this Trump is terrible. This Obama is terrible. There's some president." So he's relying on the president too. He's relying on the politicians. He's relying on the economy. He's relying on all types of things that go into his head. He puts on the radio on the way to work. Doesn't put on a shiur Torah. Why does he put on the radio? To make sure that 1010 News or 1130 Bloomberg or one of these channels is going to tell him how his day is going to go. Why? Because they're the economy. They're the news. He's relying on all these people. Now, even though this is the vast majority of people, especially in Western society, I'm here to tell you

13:53that according to the Torah, you can check yourself. According to the Torah, if that's your mindset, that is the mindset of a goy. Now, I don't mean like a righteous goy like Iyov. Iyov was a tzadik, kodesh kodeshim; he was a navi. He was a navi. Iyov spoke to Hashem. None of us speak to Hashem. We speak, but He doesn't answer. Iyov, Hashem spoke to him. Wrote a whole book for him. But I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about a goy, a no-good goy. One that you wouldn't even invite to a bar mitzvah party. Thinking that CNBC statistics, or Bloomberg, or all of these statistics, or the economy, or the customer, or the boss, or anybody else is in control of your parnassah, unfortunately, rabotai yikarim, is a very, very bad idea for a Jew. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu told one of His favorite prophets, Yirmiyahu, something about those people. chapter 17, verse number five, who says, Jeremiah, to tell the people: "Thus said Hashem."

15:14Cursed is the man who trusts in people and makes flesh and blood his strength and turns his heart away from Hashem. He says, anyone that trusts in people to give them their parnassah, to give them anything in the world, you trust in people, you trust in the customs, you trust in the economics, you trust in the dollar bill, you trust in anything like that, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I'm personally cursing you. Why? You trusted in somebody other than Me. And then he continues, he will be like a lone tree in the desert and will not see when goodness comes. It dwells in parched lands in the wilderness, in a salty uninhabited land. He says, not only is he cursed personally, but this person will never see a good day in his life.

16:15All the good that's there—the beautiful land, the mountains, the fresh air, the delicious food, all the good in the world—he's never going to enjoy it. Why? He trusts in people instead of Me. Now, which one of us here woke up in the morning and actually knew that, wait a minute, I may be bringing curses on myself? The reality is most people don't. But that's what we want. Why? Because Rabotai Yekarim, HaKadosh Baruch Hu did not suggest for us to trust in Him. He commanded us to trust in Him. Because if we don't trust in Him, we are trusting people that are flesh and blood just like us. And it's only a matter of time before that fails. When you trust HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you could literally have everything. Enjoy everything, have blessings from everything, and that's what he follows with the next verse: "Blessed is the man who trusts in Hashem, then Hashem will be his security. He will be like a tree planted near water, which spreads out its roots along the brook and does not see when heat comes, whose foliage is ever fresh. It will not worry in a year of drought and will not stop producing fruit." He says not only...

17:36is trusting HaKadosh Baruch Hu and having confidence in HaKadosh Baruch Hu good for you as far as Hashem is giving you a blessing, but He's telling you you're actually going to receive the blessing just because you trusted in Hashem. Just because you said, somebody asked you, what are you doing? I'm doing such and such. I'm going to a meeting. I'm gonna close this deal. I'm gonna buy this house. I'm gonna get this job. I'm gonna close this. I'm gonna do this. But you really believe it. Now you're just saying it because it's like a figure of speech. You really believe that everything is in the power of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You're just fulfilling the hishtadlut, meaning you're trying your effort. Why? Because Adam HaRishon messed up. So, we're obligated to have a little bit of hishtadlut. How much hishtadlut? Depending on how much emunah you have. But the point is that we try something. I'm going to go to the job. I'm going to go to the interview. Hopefully, I get it. I'm going to buy this investment. Hopefully, it works out. Hashem is going to take care of whether it works out or not. I'm going to sell this product. I'm going to decide to buy this little tchotchke. I'm going to try to sell it on the internet. Hopefully, people buy it. Hashem decides whether they're going to buy it or not.

18:49But when does a person officially get this curse? Because this would mean that almost everybody's cursed. So that's not the case. When does somebody officially get this curse and when does somebody officially get the blessing? Because you see many people are blessed, many people are not, you know, they're not cursed. When is the official, if you notice that he says, he trusts in people and makes flesh and blood his strength and turns his heart away from Hashem. When does the curse officially come full force on the person? When he trusts in people, which leads him to go away from Hashem. What is that like? Let's say you work for a company. You've been at this company for five, ten years. You believe wholeheartedly you deserve a promotion, but you've been skipped over a few times. The guy that barely knows how to speak, he got the promotion. The woman that wears a miniskirt, she got the promotion. Everybody else got the promotion; you didn't get anything. One day your supervisor says, "Hey, Steve, you want to get a promotion? What are you getting now? $20 an hour? You've been here for how long? 10 years? Ah, I think you should be getting at least 50, 60. Yeah, so I don't know, what do I do? You know what? I got something for you. This is what you do. Tonight, the boss is having a party at his house. He's got a big mansion. Come to the house. Talk to the boss a few times. Bring a nice wine. You know, one of these nice wines. Bring it there. I'll talk to the boss for you.

20:19And you get the promotion. He goes, why are you going to do this for me? He goes, yeah, for sure. Wait a minute, hold on. Jewish alert goes on. What kind of party is this? If you're a Jew, you have to think, what kind of party is this? So let's say you asked, what kind of party is this? Oh, party, you know, the girls, the boys, dancing, schmoozing, you know. But he goes, why? He's not a religious Jew. He goes, what, religious Jew? Because the last time the guy spelled religion was maybe in kindergarten. What are you talking about, religious Jew? This guy is going to have every mention of tzniut in the world come to the house. What are you talking about, religion? But come, come to the house. No, I mean, you could be already by Monday making $60 an hour. Did you just have a kid? Did you just get married? Don't you need the money? Oh, you don't need the money? No, no, I need the money, I need the money. What do you do? What do you do? You have $20 an hour right now. There's no chance in the world for you to get the promotion, logically. On Monday, you can get $60. Why? By going to this party. By going to Gehinom just to visit for a little bit. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, you go to that party...

21:23You are cursed officially, full force. Even if you get the $60, it'll only go for medical bills. Even if you get the $60, you'll never enjoy a single penny out of it. Why? Because that move that you made furthered you away from Me. You stepped on Me to go because you trusted in man. It's not just trusting in man—that's bad enough—but you got away from Me. You thought that the only way for you to get the $60 is if you say, Hashem, let me put you on hold for a couple of days, only a few hours, Hashem. I love you, but just tomorrow, I'm gonna go to minyan, I'll do tachanun. I'll do two tachanun, Hashem. In the morning, one with everybody, one after, I'll stay extra. I'll say teshuva, I'll read, I'll finish another masechta. Don't worry, Hashem. Me and you, we're like this, but I need to get the $60, Hashem. You didn't do it for me. Hashem, you didn't do it for me, so I'm helping you out. Hashem, I'm helping you out. If you were gonna do it for me, I wouldn't go. So, Hashem, let's do a deal. You either send me a text right now and tell me I got the promotion without going to the party. If there's no text within the next five minutes, I'm going to the party. That person is cursed. Why? Hashem says you trusted a man instead of Me, and that trust led you away from Me. Rabotai, this is a day-to-day test.

22:49...that the older ones among us have encountered many times, the younger ones are going to encounter much more. But you are encountering it every single day. Every day you're given at least one test, or else there's no point in your day. Every day somebody's going to call you and ask you to come to a place that you know you shouldn't go or a place you should go. Somebody calls you and says, "Yeah, you want to come play basketball? Where? Oh, you know, in that schoolyard with all those other people that you're not really supposed to be friends with." You know you're not supposed to go. No, your yetzer hatov says, "No, wait a minute, if I go to the basketball, then I can't go to the shiur Torah. But the basketball is so much more fun than this guy yelling at me for two hours. What should I do? Should I go to the shiur Torah? It's a mitzvah, right? Yeah, but you know what, Hashem, I'll watch it on YouTube. I'll watch it on YouTube. I'll watch it at home. I'll watch it live on Facebook. I'll go to the basketball, have a good time, and then I'll watch it on Facebook. What? It's a mitzvah, no? Arur ha'adam. A person like that is cursed. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, not only did you trust another person, which is bad enough, but you distanced yourself from Me. This is a day-to-day test that a person who wants to get close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu has to literally and actively look for.

24:09Look for that test. That should be the mission of every Jew. Ah, that's the test. You got the phone call? Ah, that's the test. What am I going to do now? That's the test. That's the point of the whole day. You found out. That's the test. That's the point of the whole day. What are you going to do now? Are you going to pass the test or fail the test? And that, Rabbi, should be the point of all of our questions, all of the things that we do. Because we want blessings. We don't want curses. HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't want to punish us. But at the same token, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is like a Father in Heaven who rebukes a child. Just like it says in this week's parasha, He rebukes a child just like a father rebukes a son. If the father just lets the kid do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, eventually that kid's going to turn into a little Hitler. Any good father, any good mother has to rebuke the child and tell them "no" at some point or another. And that's what the Chachamim say happened. That was the mistake of David HaMelech with one of his sons, Avshalom. Avshalom was a son that wanted to kill David HaMelech. Imagine, David HaMelech, the biggest tzaddik in the world, his own son wants to kill him. Why? Chachamim say because David loved Avshalom so much, he never told him no. Anything he asked, he said yes. Yes, yes, anything you want. Yes, yes, yes. Eventually, Avshalom says, okay, I want the malchut. I want to be king.

25:30No, no, that's the line. What do you mean that's the line? You've been telling me yes for 15, 20 years. Now, no, no, no is not accepted. I want the malchut. No, you can't. I'm going to kill you. Why? He got used to it. Yes, yes, yes. Every single parent has to say no. Every single parent has to rebuke their kid. If you don't rebuke your kid, if you don't tell your kid no, at some point you're going to regret it. You're actually ruining the kid. Same thing that you have to do for yourself. You have to learn how to tell yourself no. There are certain things that you know that you want, but you shouldn't have. You have to teach yourself how to say no. That's what distinguishes us from animals. Animals work off of instinct. We have that. We have a mind that can determine whether we should or shouldn't do something. Sometimes, even though we shouldn't do something, we want to do it. gave us a brain to say, "Okay, you want to do it, but you know you shouldn't do it. Therefore, choose no. Choose no. If you choose no, that's the right choice. If you choose yes, that's the wrong choice." The difference between a righteous and a wicked person is that the righteous person chooses no many more times than he chooses yes, meaning he makes the right choice.

26:50So there's many, many more things, but I'm hoping you guys have some questions. B'chavod, who wants to go first? Where's the mic, by the way? Who wants to go first with questions? You got questions, yeah. I think you have to turn it on. In one of the previous parshiyot, I remember... Moab wanted to curse Bnei Yisrael, so Balak got Bil'am to curse Bnei Yisrael. It didn't work, so then they sent the daughters to sin with Bnei Yisrael. Good. And then... And then Hashem commanded Moshe to kill them with anger. And I just wanted to know why with anger. Isn't it like a big sin to be angry? You could kill them, but why do you have to be angry? It's like an accessory, you know? You could just... Right, so you're talking about Parashat Balak. Parashat Balak. HaKadosh Baruch Hu tested Am Yisrael by allowing the prophet of the goyim, Bil'am,

27:55a power that even Moshe Rabbeinu did not have. The Gemara in Masechet Berachot says that there was a power that Bil'am had that even Moshe Rabbeinu did not have, which is that Bil'am knew the Rega, the moment that HaKadosh Baruch Hu judges the people and rebukes them. What's a rega? A rega is, according to the Chachamim, one 15,000th of a second. That's what a rega is. So there's one 15,000th of a second. Take a second, divide it by 15,000. That's what a rega is; that's a moment in the eyes of Hashem. And at that moment, Hashem judges and punishes all of the wicked. Now, whoever needs to be punished at that point, not everybody gets punished every day, obviously. The point is that that's when Hashem judges. Now, Bilaam knew this moment, and he knew that if he curses somebody at that moment, it would bring judgment on them at that moment, and Hashem could literally kill them just because he cursed them at that moment. So Bilaam wanted to use this power that he had to curse Am Yisrael, but Hashem obviously is not subject to laws. He is the law. So He chose not to be angry during that moment, and the curse of Bilaam didn't work.

29:09That's why every day at the end of Shacharit, it's a minhag Yisrael, both Ashkenazim and Sephardim, everybody has a minhag to not only say the 13 principles of faith, but also the 10 remembrances. The 10 remembrances are 10 specific events that you can find in the Siddur at the end of Shacharit, 10 major events that happened throughout history for which we have to thank HaKadosh Baruch Hu. One of those things is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided... not to be angry during this moment. Why? Because had He been angry during this moment, like He is every other day throughout all of history, the curse of Bilaam would have worked and he would have destroyed all of Am Yisrael. So now, since Bilaam did not succeed, he said to Balak, who hired him, that obviously Hashem is not falling for this, but there is a way that you can get the people of Israel to destroy themselves. How? By getting them to fall for immorality. Getting them to fall and make sex crimes. Because Elohim soneh zima. The Prophet knew that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the God of Israel, hates immodesty, hates promiscuity, hates it, despises it. that obviously Hashem is not falling for this, but there is a way that you can get the people of Israel to destroy themselves. How? By getting them to fall for immorality. Getting them to fall and commit sexual sins. Because Elokim soneh zimah. The Prophet knew that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the God of Israel, hates immodesty, hates promiscuity, hates it, despises it.

30:23So why do we get them to fall? He says, send all your girls, all your pretty little girls, the 18-year-olds, the 16-year-olds, the 20-year-olds, all the ones, send them all in miniskirts. Go and send them to the camp of Israel and tell them to try to make boyfriends. And that's what they did. Both Midyan and Moav sent their people to the camp of Israel and unfortunately, Am Yisrael started sinning with them. And even worse, after they, uh, got together with them and brought them into the camp, they, uh, wanted to commit the sin with them. The, uh, plan was to get the army to also worship idols. So the women said, "Hey, you want me? Okay, first pray to my god." So they would take out a statue and say, "Show my god, show me, uh, you know, the statue." So HaKadosh Baruch Hu at that moment decided, without warning Am Yisrael, to destroy Am Yisrael. This is the only time in all of history that Pinchas, alav ha-shalom, says, this is the only time in all of history that HaKadosh Baruch Hu punished Am Yisrael without warning. Only time. He warned us. The man, He warned us. All the other times that He punished us, He warned us before He punished us. Here, there was no warning. He just punished them. He started killing everybody. And if it wasn't for the brave, zealous act of Pinchas,

31:49of killing the main sinner that was making a big Chilul Hashem, Zimri, who was committing the act with Kozbi, killing both of them in the middle of the act, Hashem would have actually destroyed all of Am Yisrael, as it says in the beginning of Parashat Pinchas. So now after this, HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells Moshe Rabbeinu to go and take revenge. Take revenge against these nations, without any mercy, with anger, meaning without any mercy. Why without any mercy? Because they didn't have any mercy on us by not only getting Am Yisrael to sin with Avodah Zarah, but also with something that the prophet used against the nation, meaning with immorality, with sex crimes, something that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, it's known by everyone that HaKadosh Baruch Hu hates immodesty, He hates promiscuity. She said, since they had no mercy on you and they literally nearly annihilated all of you, you cannot have any mercy on them whatsoever. You have to kill the children. You have to kill the mothers. You have to kill the fathers. You have to kill everybody. Leave no one in sight. Nothing. Why? These people have lost their right to exist. Lost their right to exist. Why? They had no mercy. It's measure for measure.

33:14It's measure for measure. Actually, Am Yisrael, the soldiers, won the battle, but they initially made a mistake. They brought the women back. They thought, no, no, he meant only the men. Because the men are warriors. We kill them. It's men against men. Why are you going to kill the women? For what they do. Moshe Rabbeinu rebuked them, yelled at them. He goes, did Hashem tell you to leave the women? Didn't He tell you to kill everybody? So they killed them. The point is, rabotai, that there is a rule in the world that HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs, which is measure for measure. If you do something, you get something in return. People like to call it karma and all types of other nonsensical names. It's measure for measure. If you hurt somebody, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will hurt you. You steal from somebody, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will have somebody steal from you. You take advantage of somebody, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will have somebody take advantage of you. What is it like in practical terms? I said this the other day, but for some of you that weren't here, or somebody that didn't watch the shiur online, many times, I would say at least half a dozen times a day, people call me or send me messages asking for guidance for shalom bayit. There's almost no bayit that has shalom bayit. There's almost no house that has shalom bayit. Everybody's fighting.

34:32wife wants this, the husband wants that. They got married, but since they got married, they are both going in two different directions. Usually, the only times that you see that there’s shalom bayit is when the woman is modest and the husband learns Torah. If there is modesty and Torah, there is shalom bayit. What does one thing have to do with the other? Just because he learned some books? And she wears an outfit that covers her whole body. That's going to be shalom bayit. That's going to make her husband nice to her. What does one thing have to do with the other? This, Rabotai, is a simple way to apply measure for measure. If a woman walks around immodestly, she walks around to attract the attention of other people. Every woman knows if she's walking around with an outfit that makes her look attractive to other people or not. Every woman. She could lie to everybody else except herself.

35:32every woman knows that she's going to wear that particular shirt because it makes her more attractive for people to look at her. She has two shirts; she has 2,000 shirts, but she's going to wear that shirt because it makes her figure look a certain way. That Shmuel and Boteach are all going to look at in the supermarket and say, "Hi Mrs. Smith, you're looking good today." wants what she wants. She wants compliments because she likes the attention; it makes her feel good about herself. So she's wearing the shirt or the skirt that's just a little bit too short and just a little bit too tight, just a little bit of this and just a little bit of that. Why? Because she likes the way she gets looks. Everybody knows this. She has an option to wear something modest and something else that's like safek modest. That's like modest for somebody that's like two sizes smaller than her. Not for her though. But she wears that one. Why? Because she likes the looks and she likes the attention. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "Oh, you like to get attention from other men, right? Okay. So what's the measure for measure? You are getting the attention of other men."

36:37Those men are now going to think about you at some point or another. Once they look at you, that's it. The picture is captured for eternity. It's never leaving. He's going to think about you. The next time he argues with his wife, he's going to think about you. I could get somebody better. Like this lady that I saw at the supermarket. I'll get somebody better than you. Like the lady that I saw who was my customer. I'll get somebody better than you. Like the lady that I saw in shul. I'll get somebody better than you. She even said hi to me. You didn't say hi to me. You're my wife. I'll get somebody better than you. He's thinking about you. So what did you do? You helped destroy Shalom Bayit. Who says you destroyed Shalom Bayit, I'll destroy your Shalom Bayit. All of a sudden, your husband is not interested in you or in anything that you want or anything that you say. The next time that you say something, he won't even pay attention. All of a sudden, he hates your food and doesn't care about anything that you want, and so on and so forth. Guess what? This is measure for measure. You have ma'arit, you're destroying Shalom Bayit, Hashem will destroy your Shalom Bayit. What about the Torah part?

37:45Only a Ben Torah, only a person that learns Torah every single day of his life. It doesn't have to be necessarily all day, just every day. In the morning a little bit, at night a little bit, but every day, like clockwork. Just like he breathes every day and he eats every day, he has to learn Torah every day. Only a person that has the mind of someone that learns Torah will know how to appreciate an Eshet Chayil and give her encouragement. be modest and show her how beautiful she is in his eyes so she won't need Steve and Shmuley and David and whoever else out there to compliment her. Why? Because she's getting enough compliments from our tzaddik husband that learns Torah every day. But if he doesn't learn Torah, guess what He's learning something else. Maybe it's sports and all the cheerleaders and the pictures. Maybe it's the news and all the half-naked newscasters. He's learning something. He's not just a blob doing nothing all day. He's learning something. So he's either learning Torah or he's learning something else. If he's learning Torah, he's going to know the only way my eyes look at a woman is if it's my wife. He's going to know how to appreciate his wife. He's going to know how to make her feel beautiful. He's going to give her compliments to no end. He's going to know how to treat a woman that's a bat Yisrael.

39:02But that's the only way. If he learns, he'll know. If he doesn't learn, guess what? They both lose. That's why, Rabotai HaKerim, midah k'neged midah is not something that's so out of the question, hard to figure out. It's very simple. You see it everywhere. Divorce rates in America are approaching 80%. In some cases, even more. I believe in Denver, it's over 90%. You pretty much might as well flip a coin. You'll have a better chance. Just pick somebody off the street, flip a coin. Okay, let's get married. Tomorrow we'll get divorced anyway. That's pretty much what it is right now. Why? People don't know how to be humans. They don't know how to be decent human beings. So the Torah gives us the book of what to do, how to get there. gave us the rules. He didn't really give it to us as suggestions. He gave it to us as commandments, but also commandments for us to follow for our own good. That's one of the other things that this parasha says. So the anger when it comes to the war is not just to teach us that there's measure for measure in a war action, but also measure for measure that runs the world. That HaKadosh Baruch Hu uses this rule to run the world. Anything that you do has consequences, good ones or bad ones.

40:15You go to a shiur Torah, you'll have consequences that are good. You don't go to a shiur Torah, you'll have consequences that are not good. You go and listen to a heretic teach, even if 95% of what he says is good, it's kosher, it's glatt, but there's 5% kefirah, guess what? You'll be punished for it. You'll be punished for it. Why? Because that's the way it is. That's the way it is. That's why it's very, very important, Rabotai, to constantly, constantly evaluate our own actions. Evaluate who our friends are. Evaluate who we associate ourselves with. Evaluate everything. If you evaluate yourself every day, you'll have such a wonderful life that you'll simply look to the rest of the world as if you're flying on cloud nine. You're flying on cloud nine. Why? Because it looks like there's no problem. You have problems, but you know HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world. Next question. Yes, he wants the question. Go ahead. Give him the mic. He does. He's right next to you. Didn't you want to ask? You? No? Oh, no. Okay. Somebody in the back. Amen. In this week's parashah about the...

41:39when we get the land of Canaan, it writes that there's one pasuk that mentions how it says, not because of your righteousness will you get the land, but because of the... the deal that He made with Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. Right. But also the wickedness of the Canaanites. Yes. So, is it because of two things that deal with the patriarchs and because of their wickedness? And like if, let's say they weren't wicked, would they remain in the land? Technically, yes. I mean, it's one of the things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't punish somebody for no reason. So, for example, Chachamim ask, how come Hashem didn't punish Yishmael? When he knew that his descendants were going to be the Arabs, who are the natural enemies of Am Yisrael. So much so that the prophet Daniel says that even though we've suffered 2,000 years from Edom, from Esav, the Mashiach, when he comes, there's going to be a big war. There's going to be a lot of damage. But the biggest amount of punishment will be given to the children of Yishmael.

43:07More than Edom. Even though Edom, Esav, hurt us a lot more. 2,000 years they're torturing us. Whereas Yishmael is torturing us relatively less. You know, 100 years, 200 years, not that much. They're only around for the last 400 years. They're not that old. Or 1,600 years. Point is that it's not like they've caused as much damage to us for the most part. Am Yisrael has been relatively friendly with the Arabs. many years. They've only become really the worst people in the world in the last hundred years. They kill us for no reason in the middle of the street. They see a Jew going to a store, and they just decide to stab them. All the stuff that you hear about in the news every day, this didn't happen 200 years ago, 300 years ago. Here and there, but not like it is right now. But the prophet Daniel gives a prophecy... And he says that at the time of Gog and Magog, when Hashem takes revenge against all of the wicked, the biggest punishment will be given to the sons of Yishmael. So the Chachamim say, if the sons of Yishmael are so bad, why didn’t Hashem already punish their grandfather, Yishmael? And they never come to the world. So Chachamim say, what’s the answer? The answer is, Yishmael did teshuva.

44:26We see that he actually went and buried his father. And even though his descendants ended up becoming very, very wicked, not all of them, but most of them, unfortunately. Very, very wicked people that distort the Torah, making the Torah into Plato, where they pretty much pick and choose what they want. They add different things, all types of nonsense that the Quran has, such as changing timelines, changing dates, changing places, and so on and so forth. He says that even though his descendants are wicked, you cannot punish somebody before the sin. You only punish them after the sin. He only punished them after the sin. So even though Hashem knew that they were going to sin in the future, still He did not punish them before the fact. The people that lived in Canaan, which later becomes Israel, they already sinned. They already did a lot of things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu found disgusting. All types of immorality, homosexuality, bestiality, idolatry, all types of disgusting things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu calls To'evat Hashem. And because they were so disgusting in the eyes of Hashem, Hashem says, kick them out.

45:45They don't have the right to sit in this land anymore. But that's not the only reason. It's also because I promised it to your forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and their righteousness. So don't think that you can dance around somebody's grave, meaning that somebody dies, therefore you're going to benefit just because of that. No. There's also righteousness involved. If they did bad, and you did nothing, and there was no chas v'shalom, there was no Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, you still wouldn't get the land. Somebody else would. Somebody else did good. because you have both aspects: the good and the bad. That makes a match. So, that's why there's a rule in the Torah that you're not allowed to celebrate and dance around somebody's grave, if you will. Meaning, you cannot dance and celebrate that somebody else fell, even if it's your enemy. There's a Halacha. It's also in Pirkei Avot. It's all over the Torah. It says in the beginning of the Gemara. It's many, many places. The Chachamim teach all the way from the time of Shlomo HaMelech to be very, very careful not to celebrate when you see your enemy fall. Don't take any credit or any celebration whatsoever if you see your enemy fall. Unless he's an enemy of the Torah.

47:08Then he's an enemy of Hashem, then it's a mitzvah to celebrate. But if he's just your personal enemy, whatever, business competition or whatever else it is, you should not take any pride in it. So that's also another thing. It's so terrible that if you celebrate somebody else's demise, you could literally even lose olam haba. Nazis are not only an enemy of us, they're an enemy of the Torah. Desecrator by killing the chosen people, about six million of them, desecrates it enough. Yes, next question. To him, if you actually read this book, anyone that has a thick skin and wants to read this book by Dr. Nicholas Nizri, it's a book that gives you a little bit of detail of what kind of disaster... one particular person wrote, there's other books obviously as well, about what kind of horror Am Yisrael had to endure during the Holocaust. I mean, some of the things that these Nazis did. I mean, it might as well have been... I don't even think that bad...

48:23I think that gives a bad name to shedim. The stuff they did, the stuff he describes here, what they did to people, I mean, you just, I don't know. I don't know how somebody could still be considered a human being with some of the stuff they did. I'll give you a small example. There was a little girl, a little girl that miraculously survived one of the gas chambers. Now, this never happened before. they would put a few hundred or even a few thousand people in one gas chamber under the pretext that they're going to take a shower. They'd tell them, listen, we're gonna clean you. But even though these people that went in there didn't have power to fight anyway. They starved them for so many months and they worked them like slaves. They had no power to fight anyway, poor people. But anyway, they put them into one of these gas chambers. Tell them, no, no, we're cleaning you to take out all the this and that, all the germs. took everybody's numbers and put them in books and told them, "Don't put your shoes over here next to your jacket," giving people some type of indication that they were coming back to get their jacket. So, they would put them in and then release the Zyklon B gas, which, unfortunately, was invented by a Jew.

49:42And they would poison everybody to death. Within three minutes, everybody died, but they would still leave it there, and nobody would enter for 20 minutes because it was so poisonous. But in one circumstance, Miklós Nyiszli, who was one of the Sonderkommandos, one of the people that was a Jew that was got a job by the Nazis, not under his will, but he had to either die or work for them. So, he was one of the people that chose to work for them. He would dissect the bodies and be a pathologist, someone that goes and cuts the bodies and tells them what happened, what was the cause of death, and so on and so forth. And that's what he did, actually, even before the Holocaust. And he became Dr. Mengele's assistant. Dr. Mengele, whom we also call Malach HaMavet. This was a sick, sick person who did all types of experiments on Jewish people and other people. He had an obsession with death, an obsession with different body parts. He would collect gallbladders and all types of sick things.

50:50he would literally have no feelings whatsoever if somebody died right in front of him, just nothing. Anyway, this Nicholas Nizili was in charge of one of the crematoriums. they would burn the bodies after they killed them in the gas chambers, and he was in charge of one of the gas chambers, and so on and so forth. So, one time he stayed, it's in the morning, and the people come to him. They're not gonna do it. They wake up in the morning, and he goes, "Listen, you have to come. You have to come." "What? Come to the gas chamber over here. There's something happened." They didn't want to tell him. He went and he sees there's hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies everywhere. This was an everyday thing. Every day, thousands of people were being murdered, thousands. So this was like literally, death was part of everyday life. There were dead bodies everywhere, every day. Trucks of people would come in, killed on the spot, either by gun, by the gas chambers, or by both—all types of horrible things. Fire, Hashem yerachem. Guys, you really should learn this stuff because it will show you where you came from and why you're fighting to be a Jew. These people fought to be Jews even if they weren't religious. By the time they arrived at the Holocaust, they still fought to be Jews. Why? They were forced to be Jews.

52:03point is that Nicolas Mizili comes to the gas chamber and he sees something he's never seen before. There was one little girl, a 16-year-old girl, who survived. Somehow her little frail body passed out within the first 10 seconds. first 10 seconds of the gas chamber, and she fell on her face, and her face hit the floor. Because there was so much humidity on the floor, somehow she wasn't poisoned by the gas. Miraculously, she survived. No one has ever survived. They would simply kill all the people, then put them into the crematorium and burn all the bodies. They wouldn't even bury anybody—no graves, no nothing. All these places that you go to where there are names of people, there are no bodies there. So now, this little girl survived. But according to the list, she's supposed to be dead. So what do we do with her? Now you can't run away with her; there are Nazis everywhere. Hide her? How long are you going to hide her? So while they're discussing it, one of the Nazis, yimach shemo, comes in and sees what the commotion is about.

53:15And Dr. Nezili says to him, he goes, "Listen, something unique happened. I think Dr. Mengele will be interested in this because this woman survived. This never happened before. We've killed millions of people. No one's ever survived the gas chambers. This is interesting. Let her live. She's only 16 years old. What could she possibly do? Let her live." The Nazi says, "No." He kills her on the spot. For other people. Look at this. I mean, you just witnessed a miracle. Let the kid survive. No. Same exact thing happened in a similar context with a mother and a daughter. Same exact thing happened with other stories. The point is, Abotai, they killed so many people in such vicious, vicious ways that it's mamash, it's a shame that they don't teach this stuff in public schools, in yeshivot, in all types of after-school programs because without us knowing the horror that happened in detail,

54:19We simply, it's only a matter of time for all of us to disconnect from it and all of us, Hashem Yerachem, become Holocaust deniers. They were already denying the Holocaust the year it happened. Today there are many Jews, we're not talking about Goyim, forget about the Goyim. There are many Jews that are Holocaust deniers. They're not really sure if it happened. They're not really sure if it was that bad. They're not really sure it was six million. They're not really sure it was this. They're not really sure of that. Why? Because we don't educate ourselves. These books just collect dust. Most people don't know what happened. Most people don't watch the documentaries. Most people don't know anything about it. Quite frankly, most people are gonna die not knowing anything about it. All they're gonna know is "never again." They're gonna know the statement "never again" because they saw it on the internet. "Never again, six million, never again, six million." Do you know anything about the six million? Do you know the stories about the six million? Do you know anything about anything? Oh, my great-grandmother died. Okay, do you know how? Do you know what they did to her? No, you don't know anything. You need to know the details. Why? We need to understand where we came from and what Hashem's wrath looks like. What does Hashem's wrath look like? Why? Because we don't want to repeat it. This Nicholas Winton, I don't think he did Teshuvah, because the first time he mentions God is towards the end of the book on page 177. He doesn't mention it in good ways. He says, there was no way that God did this. I can't believe it. And then he called some Jew that was religious a fanatic.

55:45called the Jew that was religious a fanatic. So the point is, Rabotai, only a person that has da'at Torah, that has a little bit of wisdom from the Torah, can understand why such things happen and how we could avoid it happening again. Or we could continue being ignorant and simply, oh, just say "never again, never again," while we're doing the whole thing all over again. So with that being said, I forgot what the question was, but I had to say it. This just came out, apparently. What else? What would somebody ask? Did somebody ask a question or not yet? Oh, so go ahead, the question. I was going to ask a question, but I forgot about it. I was paying attention. I forgot the question also. Go ahead, next question. Anybody else? Yes, Michael over there has a question. Sorry. Sometimes a thought comes in and Rav Shwadron says, you have a thought, you have to say it. So what you're saying about Hashem's wrath is that the irony was that Hitler said that he executed all the Jews because they weren't doing God's will. So he truly believed he was. And has anyone ever touched on, because the Nazis were so calculated in everything they did, except morality. You know, they wanted to slaughter the soul as much as they wanted to slaughter the physicality. Okay.

57:01Is that why they cremated all the bodies? Because as Jews, we should never be cremated. We always have to return to earth. So, like, these souls never really got their rest. They rest. Yeah, I mean, Hitler, yimach shemo, in chapter two of Mein Kampf, I believe, he says that he believed that he was God's messenger. to take revenge against the Jewish people for betraying Hashem. Similar to the concept of what the Arabs say today. The Arabs say that they are now the new chosen people because the Jews betrayed Hashem. Arabs, generally speaking, don't have much animosity towards religious Jews. In fact, some of them actually understand that you're supposed to protect the religious Jews. They have a problem with the Zionist, anti-Torah types of people. And so does the Torah. But the point is that they're saying that we're going to take the law into our hands. We're going to kill Jews because they're betraying Hashem. But the Torah doesn't say that they have a right to go against Jews and kill Jews. That's why we have the mitzvah of teshuva. But when a person has...

58:06so much pride and so much ego, he will use the Torah in order to implement his own will, but in the name of the Torah. And if he was a Jew, we would call it "naval birshut haTorah," despicable in the name of Torah. In fact, we have even Jews that use the Torah in a distorted way in order to get their will. One of them is Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion wasn't exactly a tzaddik; he was a rasha. But when he needed the Torah, he used it to get his will. How? In the United Nations, when he wanted to fight to get the land, what did he put up? He said, "We have a right to this land. What's our right?" And he picked up a Tanach. He said, "This is our right. See, it says in here. It says in here, you all believe in a Tanach. The Muslims, the Christians, you all believe in a Tanach. It says in here that it's our land." Did he follow a single word from a Tanach? No. But when it was time, he used it. Why? Because that's a naval b'rshut haTorah. He used the Torah to manipulate his own will. Same thing with Hitler, same thing with any Arab that kills Jews or wants to kill Jews or promotes killing Jews. There are many people that will use the Torah in order to betray the Torah. But they will look righteous doing it.

59:23So, the people that followed Hitler followed him in a fanatic way because they also believed that they were doing the will of Hashem. They didn't do it in the name of atheism. They actually did it partially to fight atheism because many of the Jews at the time were communists, and communists by nature are anti-God. Many Jews were anti-God. Many Jews at the time were anti-God. Many Jews wanted to be goyim, converted to Christianity and Catholicism, and created a lot of things that were anti-Torah. For example, they turned Berlin into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, opened up a lot of bars and gay bars and prostitution clubs and things of that nature. The Jews opened this. They also opened up a Hollywood. It's kind in those days, and they literally destroyed Berlin and made it the most disgusting place on earth. They destroyed the economy by getting the non-Jews to borrow money at extremely high interest, and when they couldn't return it, they would destroy their businesses, similar to what's happening today with the cash advance business. The point is that they, the Jews, did a lot of bad things, which was not the will of Hashem.

1:00:38Hitler saw that this is wrong, but he didn't care so much about the fact that it was wrong. He cared about the fact that he wanted control. So he used that argument to get his will. It had nothing to do with God. A guy that kills millions and billions of people with no shame, with no remorse, with no nothing, doesn't believe. He's not a believer even in his own New Testament, false testament. It's just that he's gonna use it to manipulate. Same thing like Christians in general for the last 2,000 years. For 2,000 years they've been murdering people left and right in the name of Jesus, in the name of some fakeness that they have. doesn't believe. He's not a believer even in his own New Testament, false testament. It's just that he's gonna use it to manipulate. Same thing like Christians in general for the last 2,000 years. For 2,000 years they've been murdering people left and right in the name of Jesus, in the name of some fakeness that they have. The reality is that anyone that actually read the Torah, which is the book that the Christians, the Muslims, and the Jews obviously say that they believe in, knows that none of this stuff is allowed. But people will manipulate things in order to get their will, and they'll do it in the name of the Torah, and they'll do it in the name of God, and that's part of the reason of why Hashem says to the prophet Daniel that He'll punish those people worse than anybody else.

1:01:39Yes, question. Yes, so the Nazis who worked for Hitler, they were, I believe they were forced to work for him because if they didn't, they would have died, right? No, not the Nazi Germans. The Germans that worked for Hitler loved Hitler and worshipped him like a god. If you look at some of the documentaries about Adolf Hitler yimach shemo vezikhro, You see how people literally cried when they saw him from far away as if he was some type of god. They literally did anything and everything he said; they wanted to do what he said. Unfortunately, there was so much momentum behind him and everything that he did that even many Jews, some say as much as 150,000 Jews, also joined the Nazi army and fought and worked willingly for Hitler. momentum behind him and everything that he did, that even many Jews, some say as many as 150,000 Jews, also joined the Nazi army and fought and worked willingly for Hitler.

1:02:42in his army, in the camps, killing other Jews, and so on. Many Jews wanted to be Germans. Many of the Jews that were in concentration camps didn't feel like they needed to be in concentration camps because they were more German than they were Jews. They were married to goyim. They were acting like goyim. They had no connection to Judaism. But Hitler forced them to be forced them to be Jews unless he saw some type of special interest in them, whether they were a special type of doctor or something else, an economist of some kind that he could use. There were a few people specifically that he liked who were Jews, and he pretty much excluded them from the murder list. But either way, it wasn't about either working for him or dying; everybody worked for him because they wanted to. Yes, you had a question? Oh, go ahead. Anyone else? You usually have one or two. Okay, give it to him if he has one. Go ahead. I know in yeshivot that they don't teach about Zionism. Is it wrong to be a Zionist? I mean, he said Ben-Gurion is a rasha. I believe so too, but I just want to hear your take on it. So I have a lecture that I actually heard about six months ago about the original Zionists.

1:04:01Herzl, Ben-Gurion, and many of the other people that were the original Zionists. Now, the original Zionists were the wicked of the wicked, no less than the Nazi Germans. And the reason why is the following: one is the fact that they were not only anti-Torah. Now, there are many people who are anti-Torah, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're worse than Nazis. They're bad, they're not good, but they're not necessarily worse than Nazis. But Herzl, for example, was not just anti-Torah. He was anti-Semitic. He was anti-Jews. Why? Because his goal, his journal was discovered after he died. He had communications between him and the Pope. There's a whole documentary about this on the internet if you'd like to watch it. It's in Hebrew, though. But anyone who speaks Hebrew should watch it. If you don't, maybe there's a translation somewhere. But anyway, there's a documentary about Herzl's life and a documentary about what he did and so on and so forth. And many Israelis who learn about Herzl in university today still don't know this — that Herzl was anti-Semitic. He hated Jews. He hated Judaism with a passion because he converted his son to Christianity.

1:05:11And his letter, communication with the Pope, was a solution for the Jewish problem. He said that the solution was to get everyone to feel bad for us, to give us the land, to give the Jewish people the land, and then convert everybody to Christianity. That was his solution to eliminate anti-Semitism. Why? If there are no Jews, there's no anti-Semitism. So, he didn't hate the Torah. He hated Jews. And he hated Judaism, and he hated the Torah itself. He didn't hate that part. So he was a rasha with a degree. Many of the other followers that he had were also anti-Torah and did a lot of things that are no less than the evil things the Nazis did. For example... Anyone that has followed some of the lawsuits by the Yemeni Jews against the Israeli government over the last 25-30 years knows about Yaldei Teiman, the children of Yemen, that the original Zionists, if you will, started with the original politicians of modern-day Israel. They got all types of immigrants, all types of Jewish immigrants that came from all over the world.

1:06:24because many of them wanted to live in Israel. And many of them who lived in third-world countries actually thought Mashiach had come. So they didn't have communications, they didn't have the internet like today, and they would arrive in Israel thinking Mashiach had come. These Zionists would tell them, "Listen, you don't need to keep mitzvot anymore. You're in the land of Israel." They would cut their peyot, send them to kibbutzim, and send them to places that taught anti-Torah. And if anybody had a child, Because there wasn't a program like you have today. Today, if you go into a hospital, even as a visitor, you have to give your ID, picture, get a tag, you leave, you have an ID. There's a lot of monitoring today. In those days in Israel, it wasn't like that. It was like a third-world country. So many of the Yemenites who had babies with them or had babies in Eretz Yisrael, the hospitals were part of these underground organizations that would take the babies and sell them to have experiments done on them. And thousands and thousands of children were murdered in cold blood by these Zionists. This is all documented.

1:07:27it is not your own event. This is all documented, but most people don't know. They murdered thousands of people and did all types of medical experiments. They also sent kids to places in America. Parents who couldn't have kids but had a lot of money would buy these kids for five to ten thousand dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. They would adopt this kid, and the kid would only find out that those are not really his parents when he's already 15 or 20 years old because he's dark, and his parents are white because he's Yemenite and his parents are Ashkenazi. Some of the kids grew up later on and said, "Listen, I'm one of those kids." They discovered who their parents are. You can see this in many documentaries. These evil things were done by evil people. They weren't done by goyim; they were done by Jews. They were heretics, and they were all Zionists. So those people we hate. It's a mitzvah to hate them no less than the Nazis. Why? Because they're both Amalek. Amalek doesn't have to be a goy. Amalek could also be a Jew. Yevsektsiya in Russia were Jews, but they were Amalek also. You read the book by Rav Yitzchak Zilber, he says, this is Amalek. Who? Yevsektsiya. Yevsektsiya was a group of communist Jews whose prime target was to kill religious Jews.

1:08:40just because they were religious. So, there were a lot of wicked people that were Jews, unfortunately. So, those people we are obligated to hate. Now, as far as Zionism in general, there are two types. One type is the type I just described to you, people that are anti-Torah. Unfortunately, some of them still exist today, like Lapid, yimach shemo ve'zichro, is one of those people that's an anti-Torah person. He's in the government today. There's also the guy from Tiberias that is pretty much making it his mission in life to get all of Tiberias to violate Shabbat. That's his mission in life. He's anti-Torah Amalek. People like that, we're obligated to hate. But then there are the religious Zionists. What is a religious Zionist? A religious Zionist is someone who follows the Torah, keeps Shabbat, keeps Kashrut, keeps Taharat Mishpacha, keeps the laws of the Torah more or less, to the best of his ability, but he loves the land of Israel. That should be every Jew.

1:09:44That should be every, every Jew should love Eretz Yisrael. Even if you don't agree, which you shouldn't agree with the political situation in Israel, because the entire cabinet of politicians there, nearly every single one of them, is one bigger rasha than the other, and there are even some terrorists in the government. Literally, terrorists are actually in the government of the Israeli government, that actually help the terrorists, help the Palestinian terrorists get funding and get payments from the government for killing Jews. This is actually people in the cabinet, in the government of the Israeli government. There are actually people like this. And they get paid salaries by the Israelis. They protest against Tzahal, against the IDF. They call the IDF murderers. But they're in the Israeli government. So those people, you're obligated to hate. The political situation in Israel, you're obligated to hate. Because it's all against the Torah, it's against rationale, it's against logic, it's against everything. Anyone that's normal is obligated to hate such things. But then there is Eretz Yisrael. Now, there are some tzaddikim from Satmar. Some tzaddikim from Satmar that are anti the land of Israel in the sense that they love the land of Israel, but they're so against the government of Israel, the Zionist movement of Israel, that in essence they're saying that you're not allowed to live in Eretz Yisrael.

1:11:01They did not have to live in Eretz Yisrael because we were supposed to get Eretz Yisrael from God. We weren't supposed to take it with our own power. Now, even though the original Satmar Rebbe had this argument, even though the original argument has merit to it, it's not necessarily completely preposterous. It's not completely wrong. There is merit to it. The reality is it's already after the fact, meaning we already have the land. So, to continue fighting against the land doesn't do anybody any good. What’s going to happen? Let's say you win, and you say, "Okay, all the Jews, now you're not allowed to live in Israel." Now you have eight or nine million Jews. Where are they gonna go? We're going to America? They're not gonna accept us here. You think they're gonna accept us in America? You're dreaming. In your dreams. In your dreams they're gonna accept nine million Jews. They're gonna accept nine million Syrians before they accept nine million Jews. Where, in Saudi Arabia? They'll murder us at the gate. In Syria, in Iran, in where? Bangladesh, where are they gonna send us to? There's no way you can put the Jews, there's no way you can put the Jews...

1:12:07No one wants us. This is a land that we have, and Baruch Hashem, we have it. So even though the original argument of whether they took it by force in a political situation is anti-Torah and so on, has merit to it, still, you still have to fight for the lives of the people that already live there. And hope that they all do teshuva. Many of them, Baruch Hashem, have a lot more Torah than we have here in America or anywhere else in the world. But many of them, even more so, have the opposite. Point being is that You have to use your brain a little bit and understand that there are problems there. So you can't just blindly love everyone. That's just stupidity. It's like loving a Nazi. You can't love a Nazi. You know, so there's a, you have to pick Jews. There's religious Zionism and then there's Zionism in general. Religious Zionism is less of a problem. Yes. So what do you think of the Neturei Karta? Neturei Karta, these are Nazis. so it's like there's no difference between them and Nazis. Neturei Karta has not an inkling of righteousness in them because their argument is not about the merit of living in Israel or not. Their argument has crossed the line where they have already befriended the enemy to be against

1:13:26the political situation in Israel, every normal Orthodox Jew should be concerned. Why? Because the political situation in Israel is problematic. It's just something's wrong with it. It's worse than America. This is something where you have a terrorist inside the government. How does that make any sense to anybody? So anybody that's normal knows that there's something wrong there. but to go befriend the Iranian government to get money from the Iranian government, from the Saudi Arabian government, from all types of terrorists in order to magnify the effect? No. So what are they doing? They've befriended the enemy. They go to Iran, first class. No Jew in the world is allowed there, but they're first class. They go meet the president over there, no problem. Why? Because they do a public display. They film it, they have big pictures. So the Iranians use this for propaganda reasons by recording this stuff and saying, look, the real Jews are with us. The ones that we want to destroy, all fake Jews. And that's complete nonsense.

1:14:29That's complete nonsense. There was a guy in Monsey who, to show that this all has to do with money and nothing to do with righteousness or Torah, did a very big Chillul Hashem with the Iranians and publicized all types of things against the Jews. Some people from the community got sick of him and decided to burn his house. which is something that all of us would probably want to do also. If you see somebody hugging a guy that says on public television that he can't wait to launch an atomic bomb and blow up 9 million Jews, anybody that's a normal Jew says, "I want to burn that guy's house." Why? You want to kill 9 million of my brothers? Even if they're not necessarily all Shomrei Shabbat, they're not all anti-Torah. They're not all anti-Torah. Some of them, most of them, are ignorant. Most of them don't keep Shabbat because they're unaware. They just don't know that you're supposed to keep Shabbat. It's not because they do it dafka against Hashem. Listen, like I was most of my life. I was ignorant. I didn't know. So one day Hashem gave me a little chochmah and I did teshuva. Most of them you can help. Some of them you can't. Some of them are anti. But it's not all of them. It's not the majority of them. So a guy that hugs the enemy, hugs the enemy, and the same enemy that says I can't wait to launch an atomic bomb and kill millions of Jews, that guy is an enemy. So the neighborhood got sick of him and they burned his house.

1:15:56to show how much money he gets from the terrorists. The next day, literally 24 hours later, he had a bigger house built. A big house in Monsey. You can't find a house. The next day, he had a big house. That's how much money, millions and millions of dollars, are being given to this, which shows that this has nothing to do with Torah, has nothing to do with righteousness. It has everything to do with ego, money, power, and getting attention. That's all it has to do with. It has nothing to do with Eretz Yisrael. If these people were given enough money, they'd just go to some island in Africa or something. They'd go somewhere there. They wouldn't care. But the reality is that they're getting a lot of attention, a lot of media attention, and they're just wicked people. So, somebody like that, that's an enemy. But a person that's against the political situation of Eretz Yisrael, that's a normal person. A person that wants Jews to die, that's an enemy. That's a different story. Yes? You have a...

1:16:58Do you think in cases like that with Neturei Karta, for example, that – how much of it is their own free will, or has Hashem relinquished or taken back their free will to allow them this transgression as a curse upon them, for example? Like in their own unconscious bias or their own attachment to their own distorted – it's like – I've had a number of conversations with these guys, and they truly believe in whatever... Many of them are very ignorant people. Many of them are... You're not going to find a single talmid chacham among them. Not a single one. They're all like robots. For example, the Christians... they know Isaiah 53 by heart. You ask them 52, 54, 51, 41, any other Isaiah, they don't know a single word, don't even know what it says. But 53, they know by heart. Daniel 9, they know by heart. Daniel 8, any six, five, two, one, nothing. Nine, they know by heart. So it's like the Christians, especially the missionary type, they're programmed. They were inserted with some disc, and this is the only information they're going to have forever. That's it. They're not allowed to ask any questions about anything before or anything after; that's all they have. That's Christian missionaries. That's why when you bring a Christian missionary and show them what it says about the suffering servant and how it's Am Yisrael and has nothing to do with this, you realize, wait a minute,

1:18:21Why did I believe this stupidity that Isaiah 53 has anything to do with Yeshu? Why would I think that? Once you read chapters 52, 51, 53, or any other part of Isaiah, you already realize, that's it. That's all you need to know. It's just that none of them know this. Or you teach them anything else about Torah. You teach them the laws of the Torah. You teach them the book of Devarim. You teach them the book of Vayikra. Any other parts of the Torah. Any of the Midrashim. Christian is like his mind is blown and either literally runs away, not knowing how to handle all this, or he wants to convert on the spot, become a ger tzedek. One of the two, he cannot handle it. Same thing with, unfortunately, some of these other types of fanatical people, including many of the Muslim kids. are groomed already in their infancy to hate Jews for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You ask an average six-, seven-, eight-year-old what he wants to be when he grows up, he'll tell you, "I want to be a Shahid." He wants to, you know, pretty much put bombs around himself and kill a bunch of Jews.

1:19:35Why? Can you repeat the verse from the Quran about how a Muslim, a Muslim, there's a Jew hiding behind me. The rock is talking to the Muslim, telling him that there's a Jew hiding behind him, come kill him. That's what every little six-, seven-, eight-, nine-year-old Muslim kid knows by heart. But he doesn't know anything else. He doesn't know that it's Musa, it's Moshe Rabbeinu, may his name be blessed. He doesn't know Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. He doesn't know any of that stuff. He doesn't know that Am Yisrael is blessed. He doesn't know any of that stuff. He just knows that part. Why? Because he was groomed to be a terrorist. The other ones that are not terrorists are usually people that either rebel against the Muslim religion or actually want to educate themselves, which is unfortunately very rare because they're very, very poor and unfortunately very dependent on their teachers. Unfortunately, this also happens to Am Yisrael. You see this with even religious Jews that are so enamored by their Rebbe, all they know is what has to do with their Rebbe. You ask an average Chabad kid,

1:20:47How many masechtot did you finish in the Gemara? You're already 20, 25 years old. How many masechtot from the Gemara, you say? Oh, usually nothing. So what do you learn every day? Oh, I learn the letters from the Rebbe. Okay, letters from the Rebbe are good. But did you finish the Chumash? Chumash with Rashi. You finished that? When I was 12 in school. Okay, Chumash now? Okay, Gemara, no. Shulchan Aruch. What's Shulchan Aruch? No, the Rebbe, the Rebbe, I know about the Rebbe. Okay, Rambam. The Rebbe said, learn the Rambam. The Rebbe said, learn the Rambam every year. Finish the entire Rambam every year. Find me one Chabadnik in all of Florida, that's a Messianic Chabadnik, that finished the Rambam. One, one. Give me one. That's a Messianic that thinks that the Rebbe is Mashiach. Find me one that finished the Rambam in the last year. Or at all. Why? Because they're so enamored by the Tzaddik, that they've turned him into an idol and they forgot that there's the rest of the Torah. We'll get to that. They forgot that there's the rest of the Torah, they forgot that there is a Rambam, they forgot that there's a Shulchan Aruch, they forgot that there's a Gemara, they forgot that there's a Chumash. You ask a Messianic Chabadnik, who's bigger, Moshe Rabbeinu or the Rebbe? He'll tell you the Rebbe 99% of the time. And the only 1% of the time he'll say no is because he feels uncomfortable because he doesn't know who you are yet.

1:22:11That's the only thing. That's the reality. That's the reality, rabotai. This is the truth. This is not. This is what's happening to Am Yisrael. There's even a website that shows an inside scoop of a Lubavitcher Rebbe that's a Messianic. He's a rabbi in Lubavitch. He says, listen, many of the Chabadniks that are Messianic, many of them are not really Messianic. Many of them believe that the Rebbe became God. they don't tell it to everybody because they don't feel like the public is ready for it. They feel like the public is only ready to hear that he's only Mashiach. So this is not a secret. You can find all this stuff on the internet. You go to the Lubavitcher Rebbe's shuls and all that, it's everywhere. Meaning they've been programmed to such an extent they forgot the rest of the Torah. Neturei Karta is no different. Also programmed. Where they only know things that are anti-Zionist. Their entire Torah is turned into everything that's anti-Zionist. Anything that's anti-Zionist, they'll know it by heart. They'll give you lectures about it, give you chidushim about it. Anything that's anti-Zionist. You ask them anything about Masechet Shabbat, Masechet Ta'anit, Masechet this, Masechet... Nothing. Halakha, Shulchan Aruch, nothing. Rambam, nothing. Nothing. Why? How do I know this? Why, do I know all of them? No.

1:23:32Anyone that completed the Shas, anyone that completed the Rambam, anyone that completed the Shulchan Aruch, does not act that way. If you completed the Shas, it changes you as a person. You cannot be the same behemah. You started after the Shas. You cannot be. Unless you study the fake Shas, like the Daf Yomi, where you go there for an hour, sit there like some cow, and somebody's talking, and after seven years he says, "Oh, you finished the Shas, kol ha-kavod." Let's go to Madison Square Garden, you finished the Shas. There's a Shas in shamayim. You finish the Shas by learning and toiling and sweating bullets for hours just to finish one daf and understand 1% of it. Then you finish the Shas. Going to the shiur for an hour a day. Good. It's better than nothing. But you didn't finish the Shas. Let's not joke ourselves. You didn't finish the Shas. Finishing the Shas is toiling like the Chavatzeles over here. Every day, every day, every day you learn. Every day you learn. You don't feel like learning, you learn anyway. Tired, you learn anyway. It's 3 o'clock in the morning, you learn anyway. You got problems, you learn anyway. Why? Because you have a mission in life. Someone that does that day and night, day and night, doesn't act that way. Doesn't act that way. You don't want people to die.

1:24:47You don't want people to die just because they are living in Eretz Yisrael. They're not automatically resha'im. Why? Because you see, in Eretz Yisrael, there are a lot of resha'im, but there are even more tzaddikim. There are many tzaddikim in Eretz Yisrael, many gedolei hador, many huge people. What, you want them to die also? Because they live in Eretz Yisrael? Where does it say that in the Torah? Find me one place in the Torah that says that. So that's the thing. When you're programmed... ...to focus and become obsessed with one particular thing, the Zohar HaKadosh says, I don't have to influence you anymore... Yetzer Hara takes a break. Why? You have fallen in love with this sin so much. I don't have to influence you anymore. You're doing it by yourself. You can't even blame the Yetzer Hara anymore. Why? You love the sin like a guy that goes with girls all the time, all the time, all the time. It's not necessary to influence him anymore. Why? He's obsessed. He's sold to it. He's addicted to it. Yetzer Hara doesn't have to help him.

1:25:51Why? He can't be alone. He has to call. What are you doing today? What are you doing today? Where are you? Where are you going? Constantly, constantly needs it. It's like a morphine addict or some type of cocaine or some type of drug. He needs it. He needs it. He needs the sin. Yetzer Hara has nothing to do with that anymore. Yetzer Hara says, listen, I got you started. Hey, you're on your own now. You're on your own. Don't blame me at all. I have nothing to do with you. That's those people. That's those people. Everyone I just mentioned now, that's all of those people. They have countless opportunities to do teshuvah. How do I know? They're alive. If you are alive, you have an opportunity to do teshuvah. There are few people that HaKadosh Baruch Hu takes away meaning, the Rambam writes, there is a form of punishment where HaKadosh Baruch Hu takes away the help that He would give somebody to do teshuvah and even takes away their free will. but that's very, very rare, very few and far in between. It's not entire groups, it's not entire organizations, it's just people that literally, all of these people we talked about, these are people that love the sin, love the lifestyle that it gives them, and that's it, it has nothing to do with Hashem, it has nothing to do with even the yetzer hara. It's just that they like it, they want it,

1:27:10That's it. And they're going to pay for it eventually. But you'll see, anyone that's a real talmid chacham, or even someone that's aspiring to be a talmid chacham, will run away from these things like a plague. Because even the people, like there's a big talmid chacham named Rabbi Shapiro. Rabbi Shapiro, he has an organization called True Torah Jews, something like that. Now, he is completely anti-Israel to the highest extent. But meaning he's never gonna tell you to go kill Jews. He's never gonna tell you, let's go make best friends with the Iranians, with Saudi Arabia. He's never gonna tell you that. And he gives shiurim about everything, not just about Zionism and anti-Zionism. He'll give you shiurim and chidushim about Gemara, about Tosafot and the Gemara, about complicated, huge, huge, big issues. You may disagree with his political stance, you may disagree with even the way he communicates some of the things, but you're not gonna disagree that he knows what he's talking about. So you see that this person spends hours and hours and hours learning Torah. Yes, he hates Zionism with a passion, and I agree with him in many aspects of it.

1:28:22But he's not psychotic. He's not a crazy person who has lost the concept of human life or just logic. He didn't lose himself in the name of Torah. He still learns Torah, still completes the Shas, still learns everything, still does what he needs to do. And that's it. You ask him a question, he'll give you a normal answer. He's not going to connect everything to Zionism. And that's what happens with all these organizations that I told you about. Any question that you ask them, they're always going to connect it to their obsession. You ask the Neturei Karta something, what do you think Moshe Rabbeinu was doing in Parashat Shemot when he first got the news? Oh, that Moshe Rabbeinu really was telling us the prophecy about Bibi Netanyahu. And how much Bibi... What Bibi Netanyahu? It's Shemot. We haven't even started yet. How does that have to do with Shemot? How does that have to do with Bibi Netanyahu? Everything's connected to that. Why? Because they're obsessed. You ask the Chabadnik, what does it say over here in Parashat Ekev? Moshe Rabbeinu is rebuking the nation. Yeah, but the Rebbe, the Rebbe was a Tzadik. Okay, what does that have to do with the Rebbe? I asked you, what does it say? What does the Rashi say? Not Rebbe, Rashi. Yeah, but the Rebbe though. But I said Rashi. Do you know what Rashi said? Yeah, I don't know. Rashi said something, but let me tell you what the Rebbe said. Okay, Kol HaKavod to the Rebbe, he is Kodesh Kodeshim, but there's also Rashi. He comes 900 years before him. You don't know what he said?

1:29:38No, the Rebbe is Mashiach. What does that have to do with what I said? What does that have to do with anything? But that's the thing. It's an obsession. It's an obsession with a certain thing. And it literally puts the entire Torah aside and desecrates the Torah, desecrates the name of Hashem. We are Jews. The Jews are obligated to follow the Torah of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Not a person, not a movement, not anything. We call it Orthodox Judaism for lack of a better name. In reality, it's Judaism. That's it. Everything else is simply not Judaism. There's no Modern Orthodox and Half Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox or even Orthodox. Either you're a Jew or you're not. That's what it really is. The problem is that because there are so many different things, everybody is so confused. They have to give themselves some tag. You know, they want to go to an event and put a little tag, "Hi, my name is Jerome. I am part of Judaism, but the Orthodox type. Don't confuse me with the modern. I'm the Orthodox. I'm old-fashioned. I'm modern. I'm new. I'm future. I'm new things gonna come in the future." Because people are crazy.

1:30:52There's a Torah. We have to comply with the Torah. It's not that hard. Believe it or not, it's not that hard. It's all of this added mumbo-jumbo that is an excuse people use to implement their own ego. That's really what it is. People want to implement or use the Torah in order to justify their sins. So, if they want to be less modest but still keep Shabbat, they're not Orthodox. they want to be, you know, someone that's really strict with issues when it comes to Zionism. They're in Satmar. They want to be close to a tzaddik. Don't join some other type of Chassidus, either Breslov or Bobov or Chabad or something else. But if we look and any of the leaders of these real Chassiduts, any of the leaders of Am Yisrael throughout all of history, with or without Chassidut,

1:31:54whether it's the ones that are anti or the ones that are for, it doesn't make a difference. You look at the leaders, you look at the Chazon Ish, you look at the Chafetz Chaim, you look at the Steipler Gaon, you look at Rav Moshe Feinstein, you look at Rav Shach, you look at the Baal Shem Tov, you look at the Vilna Gaon, you look at all of these giants living, the ones that have passed 900 years ago, the Rambam, anyone. you see that they have one single commitment that's united among all of them. What? Torah. Torah. And even when they disagreed with each other, there was still kavod for the Torah. There was still kavod for the Torah. The only time that you see that there's disrespect between two chachamim is when one accused another of avodah zarah. When one accused somebody else of avodah zarah, then you see there's already, he's out. And that's actually some of the opinions about different types of Chassidut in the time of the Gaon of Vilna. He believed that Chassidut was a form of idolatry. So he was mamash, mamash against it. And people that were also at the time of fake Mashiachs, Shabtai Tzvi, there were a lot of major arguments between the Chachamim at that time. They would literally call each other idolaters.

1:33:10Even though he was a big chacham, yeah, he's a chacham, but he lost his mind. Why? He's an idolater. He's following Shabtai Tzvi. Shabtai Tzvi ended up being a big rasha in the end anyway. But there were some big chachamim who actually believed that he was somebody. Just because you have doesn't mean you make a mistake, but still, do you see that their body of knowledge? It never changed because of their decision, even if it was the wrong decision. They always complied with the Torah, complied with the Gemara, or the Oral Torah, the Written Torah, never veering in a different direction. Only now we have this craziness where every average Joe pretends to be some tzaddik and... But he doesn't know two cents about the Torah. But he wants to give you commentary about the Rambam. He wants to give his opinion about what Rashi says. He wants to give his opinion about how he disagrees with Rabbi Ovadia. He wants to give his opinion about how he thinks that this rabbi is bigger than that rabbi. You cannot judge two rabbis unless you're on their level in the first place. Do you even know that rule yet? Oh, you don't know that rule? How are you going to judge them then? It's just that we're so ignorant in this generation that...

1:34:19we actually are too ignorant to realize we're ignorant, that we actually think that everybody's opinion counts like, uh, like some democracy. It doesn't count. You cannot walk into the number one surgeon in the world, into his office, and tell him, "Listen, hey doc, I think you're wrong." The doc's gonna look like, "But what? I, I just, the chess match I'm playing on my computer, you think it's a wrong move?" He goes, "No, no, about the medicine that you're doing, the surgery that you're doing." He goes, "Listen, maybe it's the chess. Maybe somehow you saw what I was playing. Maybe you're an expert in chess. But in medicine, I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. If you're going to tell me that I'm wrong, what's your credentials? Did you do what I do? Do you have that many years of experience? Did you read as many books? Did you follow as many procedures? What did you do to justify this opinion of yours?" And that's the problem. The problem is today that we don't even have the right to have an opinion. because most people don't even know what I've said this last 25 minutes when I've said the word Shas. You're gonna have at least 15 comments. If I don't explain what Shas means, 15 comments will say, "What's this Shas that he keeps mentioning?" The Shas is the entire Talmud. The Shas is the collection of all the tractates of the Gemara. That's what the Shas is.

1:35:35Most people don't know what that is. Most people never read it. And even the ones that read it, they read it superficially sometimes. The point is, Rabotai, that even the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat, the Amoraim say that the sages of the previous generation were like angels. They were like angels. If we are to be considered as donkeys, he says about themselves, he says if they're angels, we are donkeys. If they're donkeys, what are we? We're probably some sand that a donkey stepped on at some point along the way in the road. But that's the thing. We're so far away from reality, we actually think that we have the right to have an opinion. that contradicts the Rishonim, the Achronim, the sages, without even knowing where and what things start. And that's why I say, if you meet a Talmid Chacham one day, you're going to see how they talk differently. First of all, they're much more modest. They're much more humble. They're very scared to even give their opinion many times, even though when it comes to Ra, they're opinionated.

1:36:53But when it comes to, you say some big names said such and such, they're not going to be in a hurry like your average ignorant Joe that watched a few YouTube videos. They tell him, no, no, I disagree with him. Someone that learns Torah for a few years is going to be very scared before he says, no, that's my opinion. Why? If you said that this rabbi, this huge giant rabbi from 500 years ago, said this, the guy almost feels like he's wasting his time challenging it. Why? I have to find somebody bigger than him. that said it, I can't say I disagree with him from 500 years ago. I have to find somebody from 600 years ago that said something different. It's not me; it's not my opinion. There was somebody else that I just didn't know at this point. He said something 500 years ago, I have to find a Rambam that disagrees with him. Even though most of this is the Rambam, there are parts of it that are not the Rambam. So if I find the Rambam honest, that's one thing. If I find somebody that... He said something, that's something. If I say something else, but it's not going to be my opinion from 2019 in the Christian calendar. It's not going to be that. And that's the thing. So when somebody learns Torah seriously, they're not going to be part of these crazy, fanatical movements that are obsessed about a rabbi or some type of political position. They're going to be obsessed about one thing, which is Torah.

1:38:21their political opinion, their ideas, they may be part of their life, but it's definitely not going to be their obsession. To be part of their life, part of their life, that's not a problem. You're allowed to have other things as part of your life, but Torah is always number one. But if you see that somebody's entire life is focused on one thing, for sure, they don't know any Torah. It's not possible. It's not possible to have all that garbage and Torah at the same time. It's not possible. There's just so much room in the neshama. It's not possible. You put a lot of tumah into your body, it's not going to allow all this kedushah in there at the same time. It'll ruin it. so that's why I feel bad. I feel bad for a lot of people that rely on these, uh, different types of, uh, people for opinions. Every day people come to me and they tell me, "Listen, the rabbi told me that, uh..." Actually, you know what? This case happened yesterday. A guy told me his mom died last week, my skin, and I told him, "Listen, have the rabbi..."

1:39:29bring a million people or ten people to your house to do the Shiva. It's a matter of Kavod for the met—someone died, you buried them—but now to have a Shiva for a week, have them come. He tells me today, "You're never gonna believe it." "So why?" "Because the rabbi refuses to bring people to my house. Because I told them I'm not gonna come to the shul anymore because I don't want to drive on Shabbat anymore." I told him I can't come to the shul because I don't want to drive on Shabbat. But he said, no, it's okay, we need you. If you want to come on Shabbat, then I'm not coming to the house. This is a Chabad. Fake Chabad, but it's a Chabad nonetheless. On the wall, you see it says Chabad. It has nothing to do with the real Chabad, but that's what it says. It says Chabad. I have so many stories, so many stories with these people that call themselves Chabad or other types of places that have nothing to do with the real place, nothing to do with the real Chabad or the real Breslov, the real thing. But they are the ones that are pretty much representing them today because there's no leadership. There's a business, but there's no leadership.

1:40:49There's, you know, a board of directors running the business, generating a billion dollars a year. A billion dollars a year, talking about $100 million a month, comes into Chabad every month, like clockwork. You're never gonna see an underfunded shul. You're never gonna see a Chabad center close down. They do a fundraiser within 60 minutes to get the money, whatever the amount of money is. I've seen it with my own eyes. Everybody loves Chabad. The problem is that many of the Chabads are leaderless and are unfortunately many times comprised of people that have no knowledge of what real Chabad is. They've never actually read the Tanya. If they read just the Tanya, just the Tanya, forget about the rest of the Chumash, just the Tanya, you'd do teshuva. First 12 chapters, you do teshuva. You read the whole thing? They don't read the whole. They read an excerpt here, an excerpt there. We'll spend three hours on this page. What about the rest of the chapter? Oh, we'll read it another time. So why don't we just continue? We have more than three hours. No, no, we're going to have a couple of drinks. We're going to have a farbrengen. Oh, so you're going to learn and then you're going to forget everything you learned because you're having a bunch of alcohol.

1:41:53That's the will of Hashem. Hashem said this, you're gonna learn for three hours and then have a farbrengen, you're gonna give it to a bunch of underage kids. A bunch of 18, 19-year-olds, you're gonna give them alcohol to drink. That's the Torah? Where does it say in the Torah to do this? Rabbi never said to give it to underage kids. Rabbi never said to give it to underage kids. Rabbi never said to break the law. Why? Because there's a law of the land. You have to comply with the law of the land also. That's also against the Torah. But you have centers here in Florida, in New York, in different places; they give liquor to underage kids. Why? In the name of the Torah. In the name of the Torah. Here's the Torah. Which Torah? So, that's the thing. There are many places... that are the opposite of Torah. But unfortunately, they look like they are portraying the Torah; they look like they are representing the Torah, but they have nothing to do with it. And we live in a generation where most people do not know enough to tell right from wrong. They don't know how to tell right from wrong. They don't know how to discern. And there are very few people who speak like I do. Not that it's a credit to me. It's just simply, "In a place where there are no leaders, strive to be a leader." I'm stuck with this position. I'd much rather be in a cave, left alone. But this is what I have to do. Anyone who wants to join is welcome.

1:43:13But the point is, Rabotai, that there are very few people who are willing to take this battle on. Why? Because tomorrow morning, when this goes online, or now that it's going online, I'm going to get at least 500 hate mails and probably 5,000 phone calls. And a lot of headaches from all types of people. "Oh, how could you say? How could you say?" But nobody can tell me that what I'm saying is wrong. None of it is wrong. Everything is true, everything is factual, and I can give you stories from here to next year of stories that people tell me of all types of things. The point is that if you want to know what to do in life, you have to see what it says in the Torah. If what the speaker, the rabbi, the rabbanit, the rebbetzin, or whatever it is, the donkey, says matches what it says in the Torah, go. Do it. But if there's a conflict, Just like if you saw there's a conflict with a doctor. He prescribed a painkiller for cancer. It doesn't really match. I need a solution for the cancer. A painkiller is just going to, it's like a bandaid on a heartache. It's not going to help me. He's giving you an antibiotic for AIDS. It's not going to help you. It's not going to help you, why? Because I need something for this, not for that.

1:44:26So you use your own logic. If you see that what he says doesn't match with Torah, the little bit that we all know, you know it doesn't match, double-check. Double-check. Can you show me what you say in a book? You said that we should drink after we learn Torah. Can you show me this in a book? You say that we're allowed to drive on Shabbat as long as it's to the beit knesset. Can you show me this in a book? You say that God needs us. Can you show me this in a book? You say that it's not to believe that the Rebbe died and then he's gonna be Mashiach. Can you show me this in a book? All types of things. Can you show me all this stuff in a book? And then after they show you whatever nonsense they show you in a book, it says, oh, you show me page 88, page 82. Let's go to page 9. Let's go to page 52. Can you teach me that one too? Oh, no, no, another time, another time. How come you only know one page in the entire Gemara? How come you know only one page in the entire Masechet Sanhedrin, you only know one page? Where it says the name Menachem. How come you don't go over the fact that it says the whole name, not just Menachem? How come you don't tell me the rest of what the Rambam says? That a Mechalel Shabbat is considered an idolater. How come you only tell me about the Rambam that talks about Mashiach? How come you don't tell me about Hilchot Teshuva of the Rambam? So, they'll tell you Torah,

1:45:50but it's a Christian Torah. They'll pick and choose small little tidbits of information that they've reviewed 50,000 times, and that's all they know. They know it by heart, better than I know anything else that I know, but they don't know anything else. They know nothing else. And that's how you test the person that's teaching you. Ask him any random question that he wants to ask, or whatever he's talking about. Whatever book he's reading. After that, can you show me anything else in that book? Or what else? I don't know, let's just randomly pick another chapter. Can you teach me this part? You'll see they don't know anything. Can you teach me about Shulchan Aruch? No. Gemara? No. Chumash? Can you read Hebrew? Can you read Hebrew? Sometimes no. Sometimes no. Do you know how many halachot go into tefillin? You put tefillin on people. You put tefillin on people. Middle of the street. In the middle of the street, you put on tefillin. How many halachot do we need to know, that somebody needs to know, to make tefillin? How many halachot? Oh, I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? All day you're putting tefillin on people. All day you're putting tefillin on people. How many halachot is it? You should know the halachot of tefillin.

1:47:09What happens if you speak between the Rosh and Nehemiah? What happens? What if you're Ashkenazi? What if you're Sephardi? Can you use Ashkenazi tefillin if you're Sephardi? Can you use Sephardi tefillin if you're Ashkenazi? What's the difference between Rabbeinu Tam and Rashi? Can you use something else? How long does it take to make tefillin? Can I just make it green? Does it have to be black? Do you know any of this? What do you know? Oh, I know how to put this wrap around your arm. Okay, I know how to do it too. Do you understand? That's what we have. We have people that know how to follow a short set of instructions like robots. And that's not what we need. What we need is to take the Torah and learn it, parashah after parashah, little by little, verse after verse. Don't worry, you have time. Whatever time HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided for you, that's enough time for you to learn the Torah that you need to learn. you learn verse by verse, you look at the sages, what they say, and little by little, you learn how to be a Jew, you learn the halachot, you learn how to keep Shabbat, you learn how to keep the holidays, you learn how to do all of those things. And little by little, if you yearn for it, if you chase it like it's a treasure, you will be gifted it. But if you're going to use this local guy as the crutch, that he's going to answer all of your questions, and you're not going to toil at all,

1:48:37It's not going to fare well for you in the end. It's not going to fare well for you, regardless of who it is. And that's why I tell everybody, you have to learn Torah. You have to learn Torah. And if you start learning seriously, you'll see your life change. You'll see a lot of blessing in your life. And you'll see the world from a different set of lenses. Simply a different set of lenses. You'll still have problems like everybody else, but you'll have solutions too. And you'll be happy for it. And then you can educate others around you, whether it be your spouse or your children or even your peers, your friends, and so on. But you have to do it for yourself. You cannot rely on anybody else to do it for you. Because right now, there's a lot of people that represent Judaism, but in reality, that's a different religion. It's not the same thing. And you'll be happy for it. And then you can educate others around you, whether it be your spouse or your children or even your peers, your friends, and so on. But you have to do it for yourself. You cannot rely on anybody else to do it for you. Because right now, there's a lot of people that represent Judaism, but in reality, it's a different religion. It's not the same thing. There's no way that what we teach is such a wide variance from what they teach. It's not possible. It's not possible for there to be that much of a difference in the same religion. You know, people say, no, no, you have a strategy that's always fear, and they have a strategy that's always love. It's complete nonsense. All of the tzaddikim, all of the chasidim, they spoke about everything. They spoke about fear, they spoke about love.

1:49:54There's no way that one Chasid says, no matter what, Hashem will love you and you go to Olam Haba, and one of his students says, no, no, no matter what, Hashem is going to rebuke you. There's no way. It's either you're both liars or one of you is lying. It cannot be that you're both the same religion. It cannot be that Hashem says, if you don't follow My laws in this week's parasha, what kind of punishment may I give you? But then his rabbi has a get out of jail free card. There's no way. It cannot be the same Torah. So that's what we have to check for ourselves. Check for yourself. You see that, Baruch Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu made it simple. Simple for our generation. You want the real Torah? It's simply a button. Simply a button. Anytime you have any questions about what is the truth, you could simply read about how the tzaddikim lived their lives. If the tzaddikim, whether it be the Lubavitcher Rebbe, or Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, or Rabbi Kahaneman, or the Ponevezher Rav, or whoever you want, name them. You read their bios. If they drove on Shabbat, you should drive on Shabbat. If they went out and hung out and had drinks with the boys, you should do it too. If they just decided to hang out and do nothing once in a while, you should do it too. But you see, in their bios, you see in their lives, none of that. See, none of that.

1:51:18You see, Kodesh Kodashim, dedication to the Torah. Dedication to the Torah, toiling in the Torah, sacrificing their body and their soul for the Torah. Everything for the Torah. So, I want to be like him. Not like his chassid, or the guy that says he's a chassid. I want to be like the tzaddik himself. So if I want to be like him, I have to follow what he did. What, he kept Shabbat? I'll keep Shabbat. He did this, I'm going to do this. Whatever, everything that I can do, I'm going to do. So, that's the thing, you have to forget about what people say. Look, that's why I always recommend, and my rabbi always recommends, read the bios of the tzaddikim. Read the bios of the tzaddikim. Baruch Hashem, there are many of them. Am Yisrael has more righteous people than all of the other nations combined. We have the best-documented history of all of mankind. There are so many tzaddikim and so many books written about them. Literally, it's not even 1% of all the stories that are available. But nonetheless, there are plenty of them. And it's the chachamim who say that learning about the lives of the tzaddikim, it could be from 10 years ago or from 100 years ago. It doesn't make a difference. 1,000 years ago. Anyone. Pick any one of them. You read their book. You read about their life.

1:52:34They say it's like Maaseh Merkavah. What's Maaseh Merkavah? It's like the secret way of how Hashem runs the world. What does He do in heaven? He has these tzaddikim. That's like His little pawns that He has in every generation. And how they lived their life. And how they became tzaddikim. And you see what they did. You see how they lived their life, how they communicated, how they dealt with people. And you're enamored by them. And you say, wait a minute, I want to be like him. I want to be like him. The guy that's representing him is not like him. The guy that keeps saying his name is not like him. Why? Look at him, look at him. Someone cursed at him, and he smiled at the guy. This guy, someone looked at him the wrong way, and he punched him in the face. Two different things. So you read about them, see how they are, and you'll see that's why they merit to have such a big impact on the world. But it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody that's saying their name and says that they're representing them is necessarily representing them. Many of the places, at least here and many other places that I hear that have Chabad, unfortunately, are not following what the Lubavitcher Rebbe said.

1:53:47So that's why I say to people, please, please double-check. Double-check what the Torah actually says. Anything else? We'll finish for tonight. Yes, you have one? Is it safe to say that any kind of obsession aside from being obsessed with the Torah can be considered idolatry? You're supposed to fall in love with Hashem. You're supposed to fall in love with His Torah. Anytime you give anything else more mashmaut, more significance than the Torah, than Hashem, it can be considered idolatry. Where do we learn this from? We learn this from the meeting after 22 years between Yaakov Avinu and his son Yosef HaTzaddik. You see in the parasha that says that after 22 years, Yaakov Avinu has been crying over his son for years, for decades. Deep inside, he knew that something's wrong; he didn't die. You're supposed to already stop mourning the dead after a year. Not just stop mourning, but also stop the feeling. Hashem gave us the gift of loss of memory.

1:54:58So naturally, a person should have less of a feeling of anguish after a year. That's one of the gifts that Hashem gave us. But Yaakov felt the same anguish, the same pain after 20 years, just like he did after 20 minutes of the loss of his son. So now he's been waiting for him and crying for him for 20-plus years. And finally, he sees him. He goes to Mitzrayim after the brothers tell him that he's there, he's the viceroy, he's the second in command in Egypt. And Yaakov comes to see his son, and he sees his son in power. It says in the parasha that Yosef hugged Yaakov, but it doesn't say that Yaakov hugged Yosef. You've been crying over him for 20 years. you hug him, give him a nice Middle Eastern kiss on the cheek or something—no, nothing. Chazal say the moment that Yaakov saw his son, he felt so much passion and compassion for his son, and he was so happy

1:56:11Stopped himself for a moment. He says, wait a minute, chas v'shalom, chas v'chalilah, that I'm gonna have that much passion, that much love, for anything other than HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So, at that moment, while his son is hugging him, he said, Shema Yisrael, I don't know, I don't know if I’d meaning Hashem, only You, all of this passion, all of this love, only belongs to You. It doesn't belong to my son, as I'm going to my wife as well, to anybody. Yeah, we've been crying for him over 20 years. Mistake. All that belongs to G-d. All that belongs to G-d. At that moment, his son is hugging him, but he's not hugging him back. Why? He says, no one is allowed to have so much of my heart. No one. And we see many of the tzaddikim. We see many of the tzaddikim followed Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, zatzal. I told you guys a story a couple of weeks ago. They asked him one time, how come he stands so still, like a pillar, when he's praying. He says, one time, a Cossack...

1:57:12put a gun to his head and said, if you move, I'm gonna kill you. And he says, I was so afraid that he's gonna kill me, I literally didn't move. But then I realized that this feeling of fear and trepidation, for what? Just losing my body for this Cossack? Big deal. That feeling only belongs to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I should only be afraid of HaKadosh Baruch Hu like this. So from that moment on, every time I talk to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, that's how I am. I'm afraid, deathly afraid. Every time he's praying, every time he's praying, he's talking to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And he stood just like that, as if Hamas has a gun to his head. Because he's talking to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So you see, the tzaddikim emulated. ones before them, so you are supposed to love your wife, love your husband, love your children, love everybody, no problem. But nothing, nothing in the world takes precedence over HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Nothing, not even anything. So it's a, and the only time that you're allowed to put the Torah, um...

1:58:25not a side, but the Torah gives you permission. Permission to say, let's say, for example, a white lie for the sake of Shalom Bayit. It's not that you are violating the Torah for the sake of Shalom Bayit. The Torah allows you; you're following the Torah, For the sake of Shalom Bayit. There are different intricate details within this, but generally speaking, you are never ever allowed to love or care about anything in the world more than HaKadosh Baruch Hu and the Torah. If you do, it can be considered at the very least Avak Avodah Zarah. The dust of Avodah Zarah. Not Avodah Zarah Mamash, but the dust of Avodah Zarah. Meaning, it's the feeling, it's the sensation, it's the look, It's the smell. It's almost, it's almost. And it can be. And that's what's happening actually with some people that are idolizing their rabbi, living or dead, idolizing their something. And it becomes a form of Avodah Zarah. Many people's treatment of money is 100% Avodah Zarah. The way they treat money and how obsessed they are with money is 100% Avodah Zarah. Sometimes even people, how they treat their phone.

1:59:34way they treat their phone, how obsessed they are with their phone. They lose their phone and can't do anything. Okay, buddy, relax. I understand you have your whole life and business and stuff, but it's just a phone. In a few hours, you'll get a new one, and tomorrow you're going to know it's not God. It's not like God went on vacation and you're godless right now. It's just a phone. Okay, it's fine. I understand it's inconvenient; I don't like it either, but take it easy. They lose their mind. They lose their cool. They lose everything. So at the very least, it's avak avodah zarah. If not, avodah zarah mamash. But sometimes the way women shop for clothes. They go spend, Rabbi Yagen said, women go spend six, eight hours looking for a dress. He says, at the very least, it's avak avodah zarah. He goes, six hours looking for one dress? You know how much you could achieve in six hours? fine, you want to shop, change this, that—an hour, two hours, six hours. So, anytime that you've made something more significant where it pretty much surpasses your value of the Torah, it becomes very, very problematic.

2:00:47Majority of the moments of the majority of the people, religious or not religious, that are living, it's almost like as though if you're not spending every moment to sanctify Hashem's name, to love HaKadosh Baruch Hu, then it's like it's going to lead almost to Avodah Zarah at some point. So, Baruch Shekivanta, you're saying what Torah says, the Gemara in Masechet Chagigah, page 4a. Says that if you did not find a way to sanctify HaKadosh Baruch Hu's name today, it was better off you didn't come to the world. Meaning, if you didn't find a way to sanctify HaKadosh Baruch Hu's name every day, it is better off you didn't come to the world. Why? What's your purpose? What's your purpose now? We always hear when there's a shiur Torah or there's a minyan and they say that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted to bring merit to Am Yisrael, so He gave them a lot of mitzvot. What does it mean? Another understanding could be that He wanted to give merit to Am Yisrael by keeping them busy.

2:02:06...with constant mitzvot, because each one of those mitzvot, when you fulfill it in the name of Hashem, is a way to sanctify HaKadosh Baruch Hu's name. It's a way for you to constantly think about HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Oh, you are about to have water. Are you going to do a blessing or not? Oh, if you do a blessing, why are you doing a blessing? You're thinking about Hashem. Oh, it's a way of sanctifying His name. Oh, you can learn Torah. Are you going to do a blessing before you learn Torah or not? Oh, you know the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed because they didn't bless the Torah before they learned. Oh, you didn't know? Okay, now you not only learned, but you also did a blessing. and so on and so forth. Every single thing you benefit from in the world, every single thing you benefit from in the world, you find there is a blessing for it. There's a way to sanctify Hashem's name for it, and that way you're constantly busy living your life while sanctifying Hashem's name. You don't have to stop your life, and everybody in the world will become an event that would be in the days of Mashiach. you could live your life, you could go to work, you could pick up boxes, you could drive a car, you could, I don't know, drive a ship or something. You do whatever it is that you're doing as long as it's a kosher job. But remember, in whatever it is that you're doing, you're eating. Remember to do a blessing, remember that it has to be kosher food, remember that you're only allowed to eat in this place, not in that place. If there's a dead body, don't eat next to it.

2:03:26Don't eat next to it. Why? Because the dead body is there, and you're eating. The dead body is still there, and there's a neshamah there. And then you're going to cause it suffering that it can't eat and you're eating. So this is a simple halakha that if you dealt with the dead, you realize, this is halakha, I have to know. Okay, so even eating, I can't eat next to a dead body. Yeah, but I have to be a shomer. When somebody's dead, somebody died, and they can't be buried at that time. You have to, halakha is, or the minhag really is that you have to have somebody there. You have to have somebody there. It can be a man, it can be a woman, ideally a man. But what about, okay, you have to go to eat at some point. It says you can't eat next to him. So what do you do? Okay, go to the next room. Go to the next room. The point is that there are all these little intricate details of how to live your life like a regular person, but still remembering Hashem along the way. All of the Tannaim, all of the Amoraim, all of them did something. They didn't necessarily all just learn Torah all the time. They all did something. You know, they sold shoes, they made shoes, they sewed stuff; there are all types of professions. There were doctors, and so on and so forth. No one is saying don't work and just be an avrech in a kollel from morning to night, and that's the only way that you can go to heaven. No one is saying that. You can be; that would be fantastic, that sounds like a dream, but for most people, it's not a reality.

2:04:51Not necessarily just because they don't have the emunah to do it, and the belief that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will send them the financial power to do it, but also because a lot of people just don't have the mental capacity. The mental capacity to just sit there for 12, 14 hours learning. Some people, you know, they can listen to a shiur for three hours, but you give them a book, three minutes. Or they can learn from a book, but only for three hours. 14 hours? You're a little crazy. Enough. Okay, so you can be a baal habayit. You can work and you can study. There's no problem with that. No one says that you have to study full time all the time. Just study a set amount of time every day. You get to the Torah and learn it in the morning and at night. You make time for it in the morning, you make time for it at night. The Rambam says that you should study the majority of your Torah at night. And if it didn't say "learn it day and night," we would literally only study at night and never in the morning. Because the Torah that you learn at night is Torah from which you get your real wisdom. That's where you get your real wisdom from.

2:06:03So much so, the Rambam says, if anybody understood the magnitude of learning Torah at night, they would never waste a single night on eating, sleeping, drinking, or doing anything mundane other than just learning Torah. That's how valuable Torah is at night. But again, if you have a day job, and that day job requires you to be there at 9 o'clock in the morning, learning all night every day is not possible. Why? You have to wake up in the morning. You have to go to work. And you can't say, "Oh no, I studied Torah, so that's why I'm sleeping on the job." That doesn't work. Then you're stealing. the guy's paying you not to sleep, he's paying you to work. So, again, everybody has to be a grown-up and evaluate themselves. But you're a hundred percent encouraged, not just allowed, encouraged to live your regular life, work, do, but keep Hashem in mind. Keep Hashem in mind, and if you do that, you'll see that He is literally at the tip of your tongue all day. You're doing a blessing before you eat. You decide whether this deal that you're doing is kosher or not. You decide whether to make this arrangement or not. You decide whether to go to a place or not because there are certain people that are anti and certain people that are for. You decide how to pick all types of things. If you have the Torah constantly in your mind, every decision that you make throughout the day has that, you know, as part of the consideration.

2:07:27It's not something—the Torah is not something you think about only when you're learning. The Torah is something that's constantly on your mind, and you make your decisions based on what the Torah says, not necessarily based on what your desire says. The average person makes their decisions based on what they want. Someone who wants to comply with the Torah and wants to go to Olam HaBa makes decisions based on what the Torah says. has nothing to do with what they want or not. First is, is it allowed or not allowed? Then I'll decide whether I want to or not. The average ignoramus is going to decide, what do I want? Is it allowed? What do I want? He decides what he wants and then decides, is it allowed or not allowed? Why is that a problem? If you decide, is it allowed, not allowed, according to the Torah, and then decide whether you want it or not, that means that you've already looked at things based on the Torah's mindset, HaKadosh Baruch Hu's mindset. Allowed, not allowed. Not allowed, okay, I'm not even considering whether I want it or not. It immediately gets rejected at the door. But if I decide whether I like it or not, and then review whether it's allowed or not, I'm already nogea. I'm already biased. Why? I like it.

2:08:48Delicious. I am already tasting it. I am already smelling it. I already see myself doing it. It already becomes harder to say no. So what do you do? You manipulate or find a way to make the pig allowed? You find a way to make a leniency. You know it's not allowed, but I like it and how could I make it allowed? Is there a way, Rabbi, to make it allowed? Like somebody asked me the other day, "Is there a way to make it allowed to do such and such?" I said, "No." "Yeah, but this Rabbi said it's allowed." "Oh, I don't know, Rabbi or uh, Smurf? I don't know who this guy is, but it's not allowed." "But is there a way to make it?" "No, there's no way to make it allowed." "How come he said it?" "I don't know. I can't speak for him. I can't speak for him. I can't speak for everybody. I can tell you what's allowed and what's not allowed." So that's why it's ideally our, uh... goals should be to get ourselves to a point where one day we are reviewing things based on allowed or not allowed according to the Torah, and then decide whether we like it or not. That's the idea, that's the tzadik. It's not always that way; it doesn't always necessarily work that way, but that's the ideal way to do it. Anything else?

2:10:04You're going to have five questions after the camera's off. Usually, you do. But usually, it's downstairs when I want to go home. He has the list. He always has a list for me. Listen, it's a fantastic parasha. I highly recommend to... To learn it, it talks about all types of chiddushim, all types of things that you can learn from the commentaries. Whether it's about emunah, bitachon, Gehinnom, giants, there's so many different wonderful things in this parasha. that I highly, highly recommend making it your number one priority over these next couple of days to learn the parasha with commentary. At the very least, learn it with Rashi. If you've completed with Rashi, then maybe you can learn some other commentary, some Me'am Lo'ez, some Midrash Rabbah, some other things, a lot of interesting things. The Book of Deuteronomy is a very special book that you could learn...

2:11:16a lot of things in a way that every average person could understand. And it's one of the things that some of the Chachamim say that if you read it regularly, even outside of the weekly parasha, it's one of the best tools in the world to help you do teshuva. Because the whole book, the whole book of Sefer Devarim, the whole book of Deuteronomy, is one big Mussar lesson from Moshe Rabbeinu. Rebuking us, telling us what to do, what not to do. What to stay away from, and what to glue ourselves to. Reminding us of our mistakes, but at the same time, giving us the courage to move forward. Don't ever think that you can't do it. Don't ever think that it's not possible. You are able to do everything you want to do. who will help you doing it. The key is to make sure that you want to do the right thing. Narrow your perspective to eliminate many of the choices and choose the right thing. And don't ever think, "Listen, what can I do? I'm just little me. I just started. I'm already 30, 40, 50 years old. I don't even know how to do this yet. How am I going to be able to do it?"

2:12:25Don't say that. You have a Jewish neshama, you could do a lot more than you can possibly imagine. HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants your teshuva, He wants your Torah, He wants you to focus on Him and only Him, not any human being, and not any particular statue or any particular belief. He wants you to focus on Him. But Him, Him, not Him like your own perspective of Him. Him, the real Him, the Him that the Torah says in this parasha, no less than a few times that you have to be afraid of Him, love Him, but also be afraid of Him. It says love Him one time, but be afraid of Him multiple times. To understand what He said, and not what somebody said in His name. This is important. This is what you should find important this week. And every week, I have a couple of questions here. If anybody wants to stick around, I can ask them. But otherwise, we can just continue next week. Oh, you have another one. Okay. It speaks about, Hashem says how He can't wait to get rid of His adversaries.

2:13:36to ease Himself of the adversaries and then restore the counselors and the judges of earlier times. Is this actually like a prophecy of what's going to happen? There's a Tehillim that says that Hashem is the God of vengeance, the God of vengeance arrived. It's one of the prophecies that can happen at the end of days. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to take revenge against all of the evildoers, and some of these evildoers are goyim—most of them are—but some of them, unfortunately, are Jews. They're called Erev Rav. And that Erev Rav could be also very, very religious people—dayanim. The Gemara says that one of the things that creates anger in the eyes of Hashem is when judges, who are dayanim in a Beit Din, distort the law to their own likings because of different political reasons or different financial reasons.

2:14:39They'll convert somebody just because the guy gave them an extra $20,000 under the table. They'll say this guy is right even though he's really wrong, but that's because he's going to give them tzedakah, and all types of distortions of the law. Unfortunately, this stuff happens every single day, and this creates a lot of anger. There are other things that create anger, but the point is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will take revenge. He'll take revenge against all of those wicked people that distorted this Torah, especially those people who have distorted this Torah. ...especially those people who have distorted this Torah, simply because those people are not only hurting themselves, they're hurting the public. They're hurting the name of the Torah. They're hurting the name of Hashem. People are, you know, left to go astray because of their decisions, because of what they do, because of what they portray. And that's why we speak very harshly against idolaters, against people that are missionaries, and even against people that have false beliefs within Judaism. You know where they pretty much are, you know, just beating around the bush constantly, telling people, "No, no, don't worry. Everything is okay. Hashem loves you no matter what." We speak very harshly against them because those people enable the sinners to continue being sinners. You know, countless people come to me and tell me, "Listen, my father's been going to shul for 20 years, but he's not religious. What do you mean?"

2:16:03He's been going to shul for 20 years, but he's not religious. How could that be? What does the rabbi do? How? Even if the rabbi doesn't necessarily rebuke him personally, how does the rabbi not make sure to mention certain things during the weekly shiur so that this guy will get something through his skull? Or maybe after 20 years, I don't know, make one private meeting with the guy. Do something. How does a guy go to shul for 20 years and still stay not religious? So, those people that distort the Torah, actively do it, create a lot of problems for Am Yisrael. Just today, I got a case, somebody asked me a very difficult question. He said, what happens if a woman goes to a Beit Din, converts through a Beit Din, but she never kept mitzvot? I said, what kind of mitzvot didn't she keep? I said, did she keep Shabbat? He goes, no. I said, never? He goes, never. I said, the Gemara, Masechet Avodah Zarah, says she's not a convert. Her conversion is null and void. She fooled the Beit Din. And hopefully, the Beit Din didn't know. Most likely, they didn't. But the point is that her conversion is zero. Nothing. Because there's no such thing as a convert that doesn't keep Shabbat. So that's the next question. The guy says, yeah, but she has kids.

2:17:24I said, those kids are 100% goyim. He goes, yeah, but one of them is already, it's already 40 years later. And one of the kids is a Haredi. She's a Haredi, the hat, everything. I said, I'm sorry, you have to let this Haredi know he's a goy. He's 100% a goy. You have to let him know. Why? He's gonna live his whole life thinking he's a Jew. That's a problem. Why? He's going to marry a Jew. He's going to have kids with a Jew. He's going to live a life as a Jew. He's going to go up to the Shamayim and tell them, "Hashem Yodea," what you are. So this is a problem. And this is happening in many places. There's a school here in Florida, a Chabad school. Almost—it's not a big school, Baruch Hashem, but it's a big building. The principal of the school herself told me, half of the kids that go to this school are goyim. I said, what do you mean? Half the kids that come to this school are goyim. I said, what do you mean? Some of them are in the process of conversion. Some of them just prefer to go to this type of private school because, you know, it's better than the other private schools. I'm thinking, wait a minute, but it's not like kindergarten where the worst-case scenario is they throw a tomato at each other, maybe a Lego too.

2:18:46These are 13, 14, 15-year-old kids. What if the boy likes the girl? And the boy is a Jew and the girl is a non-Jew? No, nobody thought about this. This is everywhere. It's not just here. It's in New York. It's in Jersey. It's in California. It's everywhere. These glorified public schools call themselves religious or call themselves Jewish or call themselves something. It's everywhere. So this is... a generation where you have to double-check everybody before you get married. Why? You're not even sure who's Jewish anymore. Let's check: Who's the mom? Who's the dad? Who's the grandmother? How did she convert? Okay, who, why, when—show me how. You don't have a stamp? You have a certificate? You have to deal with it. What do you mean, but he's been religious for 30 years? Okay, so the view is going to be easy for you then. No, but it's a bushah, it's an embarrassment. Okay, so... We will tell you. You have to check. If you don't have proof of Judaism, you have to check. I'm telling you, it's a very, very dangerous generation. Very dangerous generation. Because I deal with a lot of converts, I see a lot more dirt than, I guess, some other rabbis. And unfortunately, it's a disaster. It's a disaster out there. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff that's going on everywhere. There are Christians that pretend to be Jews. They look like Chassidim.

2:20:14To look at Chassidim, there's a couple of Christian organizations where they send their shlichim, their missionaries, to Jewish communities, specifically Chassidish Jewish communities, dressed as Chassidim, looking like Chassidim, acting like Chassidim. Why? To befriend a few weak people within the kehillah, and every kehillah has a weak couple or two, if not more. Bring them closer and tell them, have you heard about Yoshkeh? Have you heard about him? Let me tell you about him. He's a rabbi. He's a Mashiach. He's this. They're not going to tell you what the Gemara says. They're going to tell you different things. So, that's their job. Already a few have been caught in the last couple of months. Unfortunately, some rabbis have sold their souls to the devil in Monsey and in Jersey. Where is it? Lakewood. They did a joint job to translate the New Testament into Yiddish.

2:21:16The Yiddish is the only language that only Jews speak. Hebrew, you can see the Arabs speak Hebrew. Some Christians speak Hebrew. Some people that like languages speak Hebrew. Yiddish, only Jews speak Yiddish. Only Jews. Meaning, this New Testament only catered to Jews, religious Jews. Who translated it? Jews. But religious Jews translated it. Why? Because they got a few hundred thousand dollars. everywhere, unfortunately, people don't think the missionaries and Christianity are a problem. People try to distort the Torah in a million different ways. There are even Modern Orthodox people that try to personify Jesus in a nice way by calling him Rabbi. which is complete heresy against the Gemara that says that he's in Tzoah Rotachat. He is in boiling feces right now. He's a rasha merusha that went against the Torah. He's a heretic. There's no other way to describe him. If you describe him in another way, you are a heretic against the Torah. there is no rabbi. There is no nice way of personifying him. He's a rasha. He was a rasha. He is a rasha, and he'll never stop being a rasha. That's what the Gemara says in several places. The point is, that's it. There's no other way. There's no other visualization of him.

2:22:35but people are trying to be nice to the Christians. Why? Because they're donating a lot of money to Israel, they're helping the IDF, they're helping Trump, they're helping this and that. So, oh, now you're an idol worshiper too? No, what do you mean? I keep Shabbat. No, you believe in Trump, you believe in the economy, you believe in everything except God. You're the person we talked about in the beginning, it's you. you're the person that we talked about in the shiur, that you believe in something other than HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You're giving power to something else. And unfortunately, Chaverei, bitachon is not one of those things that is commonly taught properly. And a lot of people don't know it, and they're trying to befriend the goyim, so much so that you have sometimes religious leaders, very famous ones, befriending, befriending the church in very, very open ways as if there's nothing wrong with it. Like this rasha Mirvis from England, who has day-to-day meetings with the Pope and his friends.

2:23:36Dweck, his girlfriend, or some other people that are constantly, constantly befriending the church in a lot of different ways, and it's confusing people. Part of the reason is because we are confused; we are ignorant. This generation is a generation of ignorant people. You tell people, "Listen, you want to listen to the shiur Torah? Well, how long is it?" Don't you care who said it or anything? No, no. How long is it? It's three hours. Ah, no, come on. Do you have something shorter? What about a debate? There's a debate between some Jew and a Christian. Oh, okay, I'll watch it. Oh, you don't care how long it is? You don't care how long it is? You don't care who said it? No, no, it's a debate. It's action. It's action. What are you going to learn from the debate? Wait a minute. What are you going to learn from the debate? What are you going to learn? How not to be a Christian? You should already know that. You're a Jew. Why do people have this obsession with debates? For what? One time you realize it's all hocus pocus, that's it, finished, go on. Go on with your life. No, no, I want to see what Dr. Brown says. It's the same nonsense he's been saying for 30 years. Lie after lie after lie after lie after lie. What else is he going to say?

2:24:54What else is he going to say? It's the same thing. It's the same hocus-pocus he's been saying for 30 years. What else is he going to say? You believe in Torah? In those two hours, three hours, you could be learning a few dafim in the Gemara, become an ish kodesh. You could learn some Shulchan Aruch, you could learn some Rambam, you could learn something in your life. No, I want to learn debate. For what? The yetzer hara tells him the debate is better for him. The yetzer hara tells him that the politics is better for him. He wants to learn all types of things that are... Waste of time. So, we are confused people, we are ignorant people, but unfortunately, none of that is going to help us on the Day of Judgment in Shamayim. When we go up to Shamayim, they're going to show us all the time that we've wasted on complete, utter nonsense. doing absolutely nothing meaningful, nothing useful, and just completely wasting 30, 40, 50, 60 years of our life learning about everything but HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You're going to go up to Shamayim, you know, not so much. I know you can't drive.

2:26:10Anything else? You can't drive? Are you allowed to eat rice? No, that's Pesach, buddy, for the Ashkenazim. No, no, Shabbat, Shabbat. I could tell you who was the 43rd president. I could tell you who was the vice president under the 42nd president. Okay, but that's not gonna help you in Shamayim. They can tell you all the laws. They can tell you about congressional meetings. They can tell you all of the different debates that were held before the 45th president was elected. They can tell you all that stuff. Torah? Nothing. People all day send me messages to no end. It's like junk mail. of all this nonsense that they watch on the internet about politics and these two zonot that wanted to go to Eretz Yisrael and Bibi Netanyahu told them no, but then he told them yes, but then they said no. It's complete utter nonsense and waste of life. People spend so much time wasting their life on the shtuyot, no wonder they don't know anything. And a little bit of information, I think, no, they get it from the wrong source. They go to some messianic crazy guy that tells them that the Rebbe is God, or he's a Mashiach, or that you have to break dance in the middle of the street to be happy, or that you have to have some odd diet, or you have to do some type of strange thing that there's no source for in the Torah. As long as you put a red string and go to a mekubal once a year and give him $1,500, everything's going to be fine.

2:27:34All types of cults and shtuyot that people create, no wonder Gehinnom keeps getting bigger. But then they say, no, no, you're a fanatic. You're a machmir. I told you one time, one time something above the law. One time there's a stringency. Not once. Not once did I ever teach a stringency. It's just that we're so ignorant of what we're supposed to do that the basics look like stringencies. So you have to be strict with your life. Strict with your time. You can conduct your life. You can work. You can live. You can get married. You can have kids. I can do anything I want. I just have to do it in a kosher way. That's it. That's what the Torah says. Anything you want to do, you can do. Anything you want. Anything that's normal. Like a normal person, you can do. If you're a sick person, nothing will help you. Anything a normal person wants to do, you can do. Anything. There's a kosher way to do it. Any food you want to eat, you can eat. There's a kosher way to eat it, flavor and all. You want to eat something that tastes like pig? There is kosher turkey bacon. There's a fish called chabuta. There's a duck in Japan that has the flavor of bacon.

2:28:46You have this fascination with bacon; you can eat bacon, just it's not pig, it's a kosher one. There's even soy. You want to be intimate with a woman, okay, just get married, make sure she's a ba'alat teshuva, get married, finished. You want to be successful, okay, go have a kosher job, make money, do your business, no problem. Anything you want to do, you can do. You want to have fun? No problem. As long as you fulfill your obligation to the Torah and mitzvot, you can have fun in a kosher way. You want to go climb a mountain? You want to be on a boat? You want to go, I don't know, some type of white water rafting? No problem. As long as you fulfill the Torah and mitzvot and you don't go to places full of zenut, no problem. Go. Do. Have fun. Have fun. Everything you want to do, you can do. It just has to be in a kosher way. That's why I say you have to think of the Torah first and then what you want. Because once you think of Torah first, it already eliminates a lot of the wrong choices. A lot of the things that you shouldn't want. And then after that, you start realizing that a lot of the things that you shouldn't want are probably not good for you anyway.

2:29:52and the things that you're allowed to do are good for you. So you benefit in both ways, benefit in the way your life is, the way your marriage is, the way you raise your kids. It becomes simply a much better way of life. A much better way of life. Anything else? I'll answer this one question because it's a simple question. Somebody asked, why do we refer to Hashem as our father rather than our mother? Because anytime that HaKadosh Baruch Hu refers to Himself, He refers to Himself in masculine language. In Hebrew, the way the vowel system works is that you would know if a word is referred to as masculine or feminine. Otach or otcha. So that last letter either has one vowel or another, a sheva or a, what is it, kamatz?

2:30:55kamatz, I think it is. So there's a different vowel at the end. The point is that when HaKadosh Baruch Hu refers to Himself, He refers to Himself in a masculine tense, not a feminine tense. There's no female God. It's not like Hashem has a gender, per se, but He refers to Himself in a masculine way, therefore we do as well. Why is it always Eliyahu HaNavi specifically who comes to a Brit Milah and the door on Pesach and not anyone else? A very interesting question. Eliyahu HaNavi is a... Pinchas. Some say Pinchas became Eliyahu HaNavi during his life. Some say Pinchas died and then reincarnated as Eliyahu HaNavi, who didn't die. And the book of Zechariah, I believe, says that three days before Mashiach comes, Hashem is going to send Eliyahu HaNavi to announce it.

2:31:55So first thing is, is that Eliyahu HaNavi came from Pinchas, meaning that Eliyahu HaNavi was very, very zealous. Very zealous for mitzvot. And one time, Eliyahu HaNavi had a case against Am Yisrael, saying that they're not keeping mitzvot. And Hashem said, "Yeah, but they're keeping Brit Milah." Speaking about my nation, so from now on you're going to have to show up as your punishment, if you will, to show that Am Yisrael does keep my mitzvot. You're going to have to attend every Brit Milah until Mashiach comes. So that's the reason why he goes to the Brit Milah. And as far as Pesach, if I'm not mistaken, it's because it's one of the things that happened as part of the salvation for Mashiach. So, in essence, if Eliyahu HaNavi shows up, it's a sign of Mashiach. I have to double-check that one; there may actually be some other things on it also. But, in essence, each thing that Eliyahu HaNavi has his name on, there's a lot of time behind it, there's a lot of reasons behind it. But the first one I'm sure of; the second one I am 80% on. So I'll double-check. If I get the second one wrong, you'll get 50 bucks.

2:33:06So, thank you for learning with me. We learned an additional amount today. Next year we'll be back here on Sunday. Sunday we'll do our Bitachon series. Amen.