ATOMIC Relationships- 3 Ways to Fight Your Yetzer Hara (15 Minutes)

2:01I'm being such a nice guy, I'm a tzadik. Chesed, she's new in the area. And she's a goya, it's perfect. Look, it's kiddush Hashem, showing the goyim how nice Jews are. All of the justification in the world is going to come to you, is going to tell you, listen, you should take her out, show her around. Maybe even pay for her rent for a month or two. Yetzer Hara is going to tell you all these different things. But this is an atomic bomb. Page five says if the Satan comes to you this way with this atomic bomb, then you do what we talked about previously. First, you learn some Torah, and then you remind yourself of the day you're going to die. Simple explanation of all three. He says first, remind yourself there's a God. Say Kriyat Shema, Shema Yisrael, Hashem, I remember there's a God watching me. There's an eye that sees, an ear that hears; everything that we're doing is being written in a book. It's from last week's Mishnah. Last week's shiur we did in New York. Shema Yisrael reminds you there's a God watching you. Eventually, you're going to have to pay the bill, my friend. Maybe your wife isn't going to find out, but Hashem knows.

3:29But the demons you're creating, they also know. The mitzvah you're trying to make is no mitzvah at all, my friend. You're destroying your eternity with this chesed. So say Kriyat Shema, sometimes it's not enough though. Sometimes it's not enough. Maybe somebody's connection to Hashem is not that strong, for him to even put himself in that situation already shows Kriyat Shema may not be enough. He's not that strong. He's very vulnerable. He watches a few things with some modesty on the internet, so he always thought about this thing being, you know, exotic. All the shtuyot that are in his head that show him in movies, he wants to be like a character in a movie. So Kriyat Shema is not going to be enough for him. So go, go, go. Run. Go learn some Torah, read something, open a Sefer Tehillim, open a Chumash, open a Gemara. This is why every one of you should always have something, some Sefer Kodesh with you at all times.

4:29And all the time, be ready, the Satan is coming. Read something. What do you mean by reading? I can't even focus. All I can see is this blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl that wants my attention. You want me to read Torah? Okay, maybe that's not going to be enough for you. So he says, remind him of the day he's going to die. Why? No one likes to think about death. Even though if you read the Torah, whether you read the five books of Moshe, or you read Tehillim, Or you read any of the sages' books, any of the prophets; there's constant talk of death. Not because Am Yisrael is a morbid nation, Chas V'Shalom. It's not that we like death, but we think of death as just a transition. From Alma DeShikra to Alma DeKushta, from the world of lies to the world of truth. It's a transition, it's not an end. So if you think of it that way, then...

5:29Your end is really only the beginning. But the beginning of what is the question. So when someone thinks about it, oh wait a minute, there's going to be a day that I have to start paying the bill. I'm going to have to go, before I start this eventual new beginning, I have to pay the bill. I have to go show up in front of the judge, the King of Kings. He's going to tell me about all the things that I did. I don't have to tell him; He already knows. Ask me: Did you conduct your business with emunah? Did you have faith in your business? What do you mean by conducting your business with emunah? Did you work on Shabbat? Sometimes. Oh, that means you didn't really believe that parnasah is from Me. You thought you were making the parnasah. Did you work overtime? Yeah, usually two or three weeks out of the month. Oh, so you thought that the money is coming from you and that I don't have enough money, so you have to work extra time. I spent all my money on creating the world, and I ran out of money when it came to you. Did you overcharge people? Yes, sometimes when I had an opportunity. Why did you think the only way to get ahead is by taking advantage of innocent people? You can't get the money in an honest way? Did you gamble?

6:51Oh yeah, you know, sometimes I go, you know, play a few sports, a few this, a few that. My friend won seventy thousand dollars last week; I figured maybe I could do the same. Oh, so you didn't read the halakha that gambling is stealing; it's gezel. You didn't read that part? Okay, first question we're in trouble. Second question: Did you make time to learn Torah? Now, based on your response to the first question, we already know the answer to the second one. Really, we would logically think that the first question should be, did you make time to learn Torah? But here we learn, it's not just about learning, it's about doing. You can learn all the Torah in the world, but if you're not doing what it says, it's worthless. It says in the Gemara, Masechet Shabbat, page 31a.

7:54Resh Lakish says, he defines different stages of the Mishnah, six different parts of the Mishnah: Zeraim, Moed, Nashim, Nezikin, Kodashim, and Taharot. He says if someone studies all of these throughout his life, he's, in essence, studying the Torah. It's great; he's, in essence, trying to define how somebody achieves the ultimate goal. So they say, study Torah. What's the Oral Torah at this stage? The Mishnah. Mishnah came before the Gemara. So he's defining, he's describing each of the six parts of the Mishnah. And he says, but the verse that they're getting this from, Yirat Hashem hi otzaro. The

8:56This is from Megillah. He says, "The fear of God is in his storehouses." What does it mean, "The fear of God is in his storehouses"? It says that even if someone studied all six orders of the Mishnah, the most important thing in the eyes of the Almighty is whether the Mishnah actually taught him anything. Meaning, whether the teachings have instilled a true fear of Hashem in him. Whether he's developed yirat shamayim, whether he's developed fear of Hashem. Meaning he could learn the Torah and know it all by heart—great, chazak u'baruch. Yet, if you have no yirat shamayim, you're missing something. So, the rest of the Gemara explains it in a little more detail so everybody understands it's not just my interpretation. Rava says, when they escort a person to his final heavenly judgment after his death... This is the same Mishnah we just talked about, what they ask you. The Heavenly Tribunal says to him, did you conduct your business transactions faithfully? Did you set aside fixed time for Torah study? Did you engage in procreation, bringing children to the world? Did you wait and hope for the Mashiach? Did you delve into wisdom? Did you go deeper into Limud Torah, or did you just come to shiur once a week? Did you watch YouTube? What did you do?

10:25When you learn Torah, did you learn it deeply? Did you infer one thing from the other? Did you do all these things? But even so, meaning even if you did all of this, even if you answered yes to all the questions, yes, yes, yes, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, you don't even know what the question is, and you already put check. Check! But even so, if fear of God was this person's storehouse, then yes, his judgment is favorable. But if not, then no, his judgment is not favorable. Meaning you can learn the entire Torah, but if you don't have a foundation of Yirat Shamayim, it's all worthless. At the final law, they give you a parable.

11:32or analogy. He says, what is this like? One time, a person goes to his boss. He says, "Well, what can I do?" And the boss says, "Bring me a measure of wheat. Go to the attic and get some wheat. Organize the wheat over there." So, he goes, does what his boss says, comes back, and the boss asks him, "Did you mix for me a cup of kamton?" you mixed with the wheat, did you put some of this chemical on it? No, and the boss says it would have been better had you never brought up the weed in the first place. Why? Because the chemical, the extra thing, was the preservative. Now that you put it all up there with no chemicals, it's all going to get ruined. You learn the whole Torah; you're going to forget all of it. You learn the whole Torah, and you're not going to do any of it. Without Yirat Shamayim, you have nothing. Nothing is going to convince you to wake up at six o'clock in the morning. The fact that you know the halakha, to do this, to do that, you know the segula, you know this—it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything.

12:52And here, Gemara Masechet Shabbat is telling us, if you're not planning on working on your Yirat Shamayim, it's better off you don't do anything, to that extent. Now the question you should all be asking yourselves is, why isn't anybody teaching Yirat Shamayim? Why isn't everybody teaching, oh, Emunah, Ahavat Hashem, you know, loving Hashem, being kind, being this, being that? Very, very few actually teach Yirat Shamayim. They missed this, they forgot this page, and the many, many other pages that show it all the way from the Five Books of Moses to Mishlei, which is Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. It's everywhere, in every book that you talk about Musar or anything else. What happened? Why isn't anybody teaching it? Unfortunately, this is the foundation; it is the foundation of Musar. It takes guts to learn mussar, meaning you have to want to change in order for you to learn about it. If you think you're perfect, there's no reason for you to learn about it. If you think you're doing fine, why would you learn it? Why would you change? Why would you do anything?

14:14Now, if you're interested in changing because you want to get closer to Hashem, then we have something to discuss. So now the Gemara says, regarding this big yetzer hara that you have, this significant yetzer hara where a woman comes, or something else comes, or different types of yetzer hara, like an atomic bomb coming to your attention, the way that you can overcome it. If Kriyat Shema doesn't work, if learning Torah doesn't work because you can't focus, then one method is to think about the day you're going to die. Because on that day, you're going to die, and you're forced to have Yirat Shamayim. You're compelled to think: what's going to happen after I die? Am I going to turn into a tree, or will something else happen? But that's not actually the Yetzer Hara that we all deal with every day. That's the Yetzer Hara of once in a while.