Authentic KINDNESS - MUSSAR Iggeret HaRAMBAN (25)

0:16In the name of G-d, let us do and succeed in the Song of the Torah. We're back here at our Tuesday night Song of the Torah, the Iggeret HaRamban. Today's shiur will be for Ilui Nishmat Eliyahu Ben Freda. also for refuah shlemah for Esther bat Tzipporah, for Gavriel ben Tvacha, and also for Catherine bat Hazel, Catherine bat Hazel, also for Levana bat Sara, Doris bat Jorah, David ben Nesria, and hatzlacha rabah to Osher ben Doris, Gabi ben Doris, and their wives and their children, and also for Elad ben Doris. Hatzlacha rabah to all of them. So, to get it on b'n both, Hashem continues, we have a little bit of a different aspect of it to go over today, but also connected to Chanukah. We're in the middle of Chanukah almost, and...

1:38For anyone who has not lit the candles, the halacha is that you can light the candles all night, even though it's best to light them right after Arvit, about 15 minutes after Arvit, or right after Arvit, depending on when you pray Arvit. If you pray early or you pray late, but if you missed out, for whatever reason, you can still light the candles. You have to light the candles when you get home. It doesn't matter if it's 1 o'clock in the morning or 12 o'clock at night. Also, as a side note, on Friday, obviously you cannot light the candles on Shabbat. So you have to light the candles of Chanukah before you light the candles for Shabbat. You have to light the candles before you light the candles of Shabbat. This is not really a reality for most people, but I'll still say it just in case, in case people don't know. If a person is very poor and does not have enough money, to buy new candles for the Chanukiah and only has two candles. So for Shabbat, what you would do is you would light one candle for the Chanukiah and one candle for Shabbat. But if you only have one candle, then you actually light the Shabbat candle.

3:01So as far as the halachot of Chanukah are concerned, they are not very extensive. They are not very massive. But you still need to know them, still need to know what to do and how to do it. Many people make a mistake when lighting the candles where they light the candles without really calculating how much oil they put in the candles and... And the candles go out after five or ten minutes because there's not enough oil. If you did that, then you did not fulfill the mitzvah of Chanukah. You have to make sure that there's oil for at least a half hour. Now, on Friday, since you're lighting it earlier than usual, you need to have oil that's enough for one hour. Enough oil for one hour. That's another aspect of it to know. And on Chanukah, in lighting the menorah, it is an obligation for everyone, meaning it's an obligation for men and for women. So whether you're a man, or you're a woman, or you're not sure, whatever it is, you still have to light the candles. You still have to light the candles. If you have any more questions about it, you could ask, send me a text message, but it's not too difficult. Now, we've asked this question a few times in the last few shiurim, as far as why do we actually celebrate

4:31Hanukkah. Now, so far, we've asked the question. We've gotten some answers that really, we're celebrating the spiritual battle that we won, both against the Greeks and the Mityavnim, which were the lefty liberal Jews that joined the The Greeks went against the Torah. They didn't necessarily want to kill Jews, but they ended up trying to destroy the entire Torah, which caused the death of many, many people, including Jews. Now, when you look at the Torah, you'll find something very interesting. When we say Torah, we're not only referring to the five books of Moses. also not only referring to the Tanakh, the 24 books in total—five books of Moses plus 19 other books. When we say Torah, we're actually talking about the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah being the Gemara, the Mishnah, all of the Midrashim, Musar books. This is all different parts of the Oral Torah. Now

5:52Maran, the Rishon LeTzion, Rav Ovadia, zt"l, wrote in Chazon Ovadia, in the beginning, that if you notice, the entire Gemara, which is the most critical part of our Oral Torah, that's where we learn how to think like a Jew, that's where we learn all of the details of the secrets of Mussar, That's where we also learn our halachot. Without Gemara, there's simply no understanding whatsoever of how to be a Jew and how to understand Torah. We learn many Midrashim from there. We learn about the history of Am Yisrael and even other nations in there. We learn different secrets about medicine. All types of beautiful things are in a Gemara. Now, if you notice, the different debates that are being made inside the Gemara, all of the Chachamim, that are named in the Gemara, they're at the time of Hillel and after. The time of Hillel and after, which is about a hundred years before the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, the second Beit HaMikdash. Now his rabbis, Shmaya and Avtalyon, you know, the Zugot, all of the giants that lived before him, we don't have their Torah.

7:20What we have today are the teachings of the students of Shmaya and Avtalyon, the students of David HaMelech, the students of Moshe Rabbeinu, but we don't have their Torah per se. We have what was happening 100 years before the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. Now, why is this mini history lesson critical for us to understand? Because this is the time of Hanukkah. Meaning that the Torah that we have today is only thanks to the battle that we won during Hanukkah. If it was not for the tzaddikim's victory, the miraculous one over the millions of Greek soldiers, Greek soldiers and left the liberal, anti-Torah Jews. If it wasn't for the few rabbis that won that war, it's not that there wouldn't be Jews because there wouldn't be Jews physically; there wouldn't be Judaism, period, chas v'shalom. Why? Because we wouldn't have the Oral Torah. That's actually what we're celebrating during Hanukkah.

8:39We're celebrating that we won the Oral Torah. We won the ability to continue being Jews, because without the Oral Torah, without the Gemara, we would simply not know how to put on tefillin. We wouldn't know if it's supposed to be a round box or a square one, or what color the leather needs to be, or what type of leather it needs to be. Where to put it? It says, what's totafot? You don't even know what it is. Do we have to put, do we have to just, now that it says, it says in the Torah, you have to put a p'til, one of the strings needs to be t'cheilet. But now that we don't have, Ability to know what it really is anymore. We don't know what it is anymore. It doesn't, it ceases to exist in the world because there used to be an animal, the chilazon, that they would take the blood from this chilazon to make the techeilet, and that animal—we don't have it anymore. We have no idea where it is. So that means that we cannot get anything that's techeilet now. There are some people that are guessing, a very educated guess, of what techeilet is, and they sell it for a lot of money—$80, $100, $200 per tzitzit.

9:57But the reality is, you go to any of the Gedolei HaDor, none of them are wearing it. Why? Because they don't believe this is the Techeilet. So the question is, do we cancel the entire mitzvah of tzitzit because we don't have the techeilet like it says in the pasuk? So if we don't have the techeilet of the pasuk, can we actually wear the tzitzit without the techeilet? Without the Gemara, you would never arrive at a conclusion. You wouldn't know. So you would have people walking around with no tzitzit, thinking that the mitzvah of tzitzit is abolished, it's canceled. Why? Because we don't have techeilet anymore. We wouldn't know how to slaughter animals. We wouldn't know how, whether to pray, whether we're allowed to pray at different places, different times, and so on and so forth. All of the rules that you know today in the Torah that are halacha, not customs, halacha, come from our Oral Torah. There is not a single rule in the Torah that you could understand by simply reading the Written Torah. For example, the Oral Torah gives us details of what the Ten Commandments mean. And if I tell you, read the Ten Commandments and give me your explanation. Now, when it says, "don't steal," what are you going to say that means?

11:21No, give me some answers. Don't steal. Commandment, don't steal. Don't steal from a store, exactly. That's what people would think. But it actually means don't kidnap somebody. Don't kidnap somebody. Also, it says, don't be an adulterer. Don't be an adulterer. So you would think, "Oh, okay, don't be an adulterer," meaning don't cheat on your wife and don't be with somebody else's wife. That's the best that our logic can get to. The Torah says otherwise. It has two aspects. One is the one that you understand. The other one actually is: don't waste seed, meaning don't be an adulterer with yourself, with your leg or your hand, and so on. Without the oral Torah, we would simply not understand it. Most people, the first time they hear that wasting seed is not allowed, think, "Okay, well, if it's so not allowed, how come it's not in the Ten Commandments?" It is. You just never read it. So our oral Torah, Rabotai, is simply the Torah that created Judaism. That's what we have. If you are against the Oral Torah, in essence, you are going against Judaism altogether. And that's why it's very, very ridiculous when people make comments that are against the Gemara, against the Chachamim. "Oh, no, I don't agree with Rambam. I don't agree with Rabbi Akiva." You know, you ask one rabbi a question, he gives you one answer, and you look somewhere else, there's a different answer. So everybody has their own opinion. "I'm going to throw in my opinion too," as if you have the right to throw your opinion anywhere, as if you're in the same world as these big rabbis.

12:41against the Oral Torah, in essence, you are going against Judaism altogether. And that's why it's very, very ridiculous when people make comments that are against the Gemara, against the Chachamim. "Oh, no, I don't agree with Rambam, I don't agree with Rabbi Akiva." You know, you ask one rabbi a question, he gives you one answer, and you look somewhere else, there's a different answer. So everybody has their own opinion. "I'm going to throw in my opinion too," as if you have the right to throw your opinion anywhere, as if you're in the same world as these big rabbis, and... So the holiday of Sukkot, of Hanukkah, is our celebration that we have Judaism still. Which is also funny because one of the favorite, or probably the favorite holiday for Jewish people today that are not religious is Hanukkah. That's their favorite holiday. What shows is how ignorant the generation is because the holiday itself is celebrating the defeat of the secular people, the religious people, the few, the weak, beating the many secular people, the many haters of Torah, the many people that want to go to the beach with their wife and girlfriend at the same time and... ...shows how ignorant the generation is because the holiday itself is celebrating the defeat of the secular people by the religious people, the few, the weak, beating the many secular people, the many haters of Torah, the many people that want to go to the beach with their wife and girlfriend at the same time and...

14:09Is the lack of knowledge that we have in this generation? We don't even know what we're celebrating and why. Most people think that celebrating Hanukkah means you light some candles, you eat some doughnuts, and you're religious for today. There are different parts of the Torah that discuss the Oral Torah, and there are very interesting things that connect to our Igeret HaRamban. Now the Igeret HaRamban has arrived at a section where the Ramban says. So the Ramban writes almost 850 years ago... that connect to our Igeret HaRamban. Now, the Igeret HaRamban has arrived at a section where the Ramban says: So, the Ramban writes almost 850 years ago, "If he is poor and you are richer and wiser than he, consider that he may be more righteous than yourself. If he sins, it is a result of an error, while your sins and transgressions are deliberate." So, in essence, what is the Ramban teaching us? He is teaching us kef zechut; he is teaching us to give people the benefit of the doubt and... if he is poor and you are richer and wiser than he, consider that he may be more righteous than yourself. If he sins, it is a result of an error, while your sins and transgressions are deliberate. So, in essence, what is the Ramban teaching us? He is teaching us kaf zechut; he is teaching us to give people the benefit of the doubt and

15:38The benefit of the doubt, giving people the benefit of the doubt, requires kindness. It requires an extraordinary amount of kindness that is almost unheard of today. You see, most people are so selfish that even when they do somebody a favor, it's not really a favor because they want something in return. so when you give somebody the benefit of the doubt that, oh, this mistake that he made, he made it because he slipped. You know, he didn't pay attention. Why do so many people do that? Because they know that they want others to give them the same benefit of the doubt. They're not really giving him the benefit of the doubt because they truly believe he made a mistake. They think he did it on purpose. But they want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because they want to get it back. In reality, this is not really benefit of the doubt. This is just you taking care of yourself. The kindness that's there is not really kindness. It's selfish. So the Ramban teaches us that the root of

16:52giving someone is kindness, but it's also having the right perspective of yourself and how you view other people. Last week he told us that if a person is wiser or smarter than you, you have to honor them. If someone's a Talmid Chacham, someone who learns Torah all day, and all you do is maybe watch Shiurim, once in a while you pick up a book, you... Enjoy your shiur, you can enjoy your books, but if he's learning all day, he's coming to you. It doesn't matter if he's 20 years younger than you or 20 years older than you; when he enters the room, you stand up. When you talk to him, you say "Kavod," not like some of these people who are like, "Wait, does he have smicha? Does he have smicha? I don't know; why should we call him Rabbi if he doesn't have smicha?" It's so ridiculous that people have no problem... Calling some guy that barely graduated college with a C-plus average "Doctor"—the guy pulls teeth for a living, they call him "Doctor DDS," but they still call him "Doctor." The guy passed some classes in college and got a PhD, they still call him "Doctor." He's not a doctor of anything. He just learns a bunch of books. He doesn't operate on anything, but they call him "Doctor," and

18:15But to call someone who learns Torah a rabbi, they have a problem with. Why? They want to ask, wait, does he have a semicha or doesn't he have a semicha? This also shows us our limited knowledge, our ignorance. Because, number one, there's really no semicha in the world anymore. The real semicha of the time of Moshe Rabbeinu putting his hands on Yehoshua bin Nun hasn't been around for over 2,000 years. Dismissals that we have today where you get a certification from a Beit Midrash from a Kollel, like we did at a Sheva Brachot last year with Rabbi Spivak, and of course, Ephraim also has many of them already, Baruch Hashem. That stuff is, yeah, you get it, but that's not the same semicha as what we had since the time of Moshe Rabbeinu. That's more of like, okay, we checked you, you know what you're doing, go for it, and... There's a few subjects that you're good at, you have a semicha on that issue. And there's different levels, but that's not the same type of semicha. But there is one semicha that does not need to be given to you by anyone, and that's the semicha of teaching. The Gemara, Masechet Bava Metzia, I believe it's page 33a, says, who is his rabbi?

19:26He says, oh, his rabbi is the one that—how do you determine who your rabbi is? So, it's a machloket between Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yossi, and Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes. And the first says, the rabbi is the one that taught him the most amount of Torah. And the second chacham says, no, no, it's not. The rabbi taught him the most amount of Torah, he's good. But the rabbi is really the one that taught him divrei chokhmah, the one that taught him Gemara, because that's the most difficult. But then Rabbi Meir comes with a chidush. He says, no, no, no. We know from David HaMelech who his rabbi is. Who is his rabbi? Someone who taught him a single halacha. Somebody taught you a halacha, from now on you have to call him rabbi. What do we learn from there? We learn from there that anyone who teaches Torah is a rabbi. No smicha required. No smicha required. You teach people Torah, chazak u'baruch, you're a rabbi. Congratulations. Now, of course, people don't necessarily need to do this for egotistical reasons, thinking that just because they have three or four YouTube videos of themselves with no crowd, they should now make sure that their kids and their wife call them rabbi. Don't be ridiculous. But the point being, rabotai, is that we have a very, very hard time being kind to rabbis, being kind to talmidei chachamim.

20:54being kind to people that toil and toil over the Torah, which in essence gives HaKadosh Baruch Hu a reason to let this world continue existing. One of the reasons is because we do not give them the benefit of the doubt. We're also very egotistical ourselves. Last but not least, kindness is almost like a lost art. We don't even know how to be kind the right way. Because the way most of us are kind is more like business. I'll do you a favor, so you do me a favor when I need you. I'll give you a ride, so when I need you to give me a ride, you'll be there for me. I'm going to lend you money, so you lend me money when I need you. That's not kindness. That's business. Kindness is doing something selflessly. You do something just because it's the right thing to do. give him a ride because he needs to go somewhere. One time, I was giving him a ride and I made a mistake on the road. I didn't make a right or a left or wherever it was. I don't really usually pay attention very much, and I make mistakes a lot when I drive. My mind is somewhere else, and I made a mistake. He said to me, "Oh no, okay, you know what? You could just drop me off here and I'll just walk." I said, "Well, I'll just drive." He replied, "No, it's out of your way." So, what am I carrying, the car in my head?

22:21Didn't want to mention it was fine. All right, carrying the car in my head. I don't care what the cops said. I'll drive around, take me another 5, 10, 20 minutes. Who cares? What do I care? I'm driving the car. People make such a big deal out of giving people rides. Well, you're carrying the car in your head. You press the gas pedal, and sometimes not even that anymore with some of these cars. Not a big deal, but that's the problem. When you're doing people a favor because in reality it's business, then it does matter. It's like, you know what? Get off here. No, no, no. I'm not going to. It's too much already. It's too much for me to press the gas pedal for an extra five minutes. Why? Because when you're going to give me a ride, you wouldn't want to do it for me. Why? Because it's business now. But if you do something right just because it's right, there's no limitation. There's no limitation. Now, how can we get ourselves to that point of doing the required self-accounting to get ourselves to our mindset? The Ramban tells us, he tells us, it's all based on how we view other people. If the person is wise, if the person is rich, it's easy. It's easy. It's easy to be nice to them. Why? Because usually we want something from them.

23:40Here he says, you want to develop true kindness, you have to be just as, if not more, kind to the people that are below you: people that are poor, people that are weaker than you, people that are not as wise as you. How? By looking at things and giving them the benefit of the doubt that even though they lack in this one thing, they definitely possess something else that's superior to you. he says, if he's poor and you are richer or wiser than him, then consider the fact that he's more righteous than you. You see a person that's poor, don't look down on him. Why? He's probably more righteous than you, probably a bigger tzaddik than you. And actually, statistics show it's probably true. Why? The most religious people in the world are the poorest people and You go to some of these poor countries, even though most of them worship idols. Nonetheless, they are very religious people. It's very easy for a poor person to become religious when they don't have all of the yetzer hara of money and ego and all the nonsense that everybody else deals with. They deal with life and its problems with no falsehood. This is also the reason why most of the organizations in the world...

25:10Do-good are funded by poor people, not by rich people. The hundred-dollar donations, the two-hundred-dollar donations, the thousand-dollar donations—those are considered the lifeblood of most organizations. It's not the million and the twenty-million, thirty-million dollar donations that make organizations. It's the ones that are actually small, and the reason why is because those million, two-million, and three-million dollar donations that come randomly usually come with some kind of contract. I'm going to give you a million dollars, so you're going to publicize my name. And you're going to pretty much obey my commands. And every time I come in, you're going to kiss my feet. And every time I say something, you're going to jump, and so on and so forth. They expect you to become their pet because they're donating a lot of money. Whereas people that simply do something good just because it's the right thing to do, and they have $100 to give, $1,000 to give, $500 to give, whatever money they have, they don't ask for anything.

26:13They don't ask, "Hey, listen, I'm going to give you $100, but from now on, every time I call, you pick up." Unless they're delirious. Unless they're delirious and actually do think that they can control you with $100. Which, by the way, happened to me today, Baruch Hashem. All of these things, Baruch Hashem. Hashem mefaneik oti. You know what mefaneik oti is? Spoils me. Spoils me with these different tikkunim, Baruch Hashem. I'll tell you the story in a minute. Now, don't worry, you won't miss out on the story. It's a good one. But Baruch Hashem, the Ramban teaches us that you have to look at the poor as someone that's more righteous than you. You have to look at them in such a way that if you see them in your Beit Knesset, coming in late. Late minyan. Never ever think, ah, this guy's half-religious, this guy.

27:13Might as well not even come. Why did you even come? You're already here. We've already almost finished Amidah. This guy came. I'm not even counting minyanim anymore. Never ever do that. Why? The Ramban says do the opposite. Opposite. He came late. Why? Because he was doing chesed. He was helping somebody that you didn't want to help. You know that broken car on the road that you pass by saying, "Yeah, okay, good luck to you." That guy, oh, you didn't even say that? He stopped and helped him. That's why he's late. In your mind, that's what you have to do. But you, on the other hand, when you come late, give yourself a pat on the head. "I can't believe I'm such a loser. I can't believe I can't even show up to prayer on time. What a loser I am." That's what we have to do. That's what the Ramban says. The perspective that we have is the exact opposite of this. What do we usually do? They are the losers. We are the winners. We're late because we have a legitimate excuse. Come on, Rabbi. I was busy. That's why I came late. I was tired. That's why I fell asleep in the shiur. I was tired. Him, on the other hand, he's a loser. He's always this. He's always that. Opposite.

28:25If we have the right perspective, Rabotai, little by little you will see yourself start to develop pure kindness. You give people the right type of kaf zechut, benefit of the doubt, only if you have the right amount of kindness. Now, the Gemara, Masechet Shabbat, page 151b, has an interesting story between Rabbi Chiya and his wife. Rabbi Chiya tells his wife that anytime a poor person comes to our house, don't wait for him to knock on the door. If you already see that he's coming from the window, run to the door, open the door, and go out to him with something. Give him something. Don't wait for him to come all the way here. Why? Because maybe our kids... One day we're going to be poor, and we want Hashem to judge us measure for measure. Since we were extra kind to the poor people, Hashem will treat our kids extra kindly. They won't have to go all the way to certain people; people will come to them and give them money. So, just like a typical Jewish mother, Rabbi Chiya's wife is like, "Hey, you're cursing my kids! You're cursing my kids! What are you doing?" He said, "No, no, no, you see, we have a rule. The rule is that..."

29:52the wheel that rotates through the world, meaning that no matter what you do—whether you made a lot of money or you didn't make a lot of money—in your life at some point, someone connected to you or you yourself will suffer from financial issues. Rabbi Chiya says, "How so?" and could be that you made a lot of money, but your kids didn't really know how to preserve that money. For example, the Rockefellers and the Carnegies and all of these people who made millions or billions of dollars a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago—many of their descendants are completely broke. Some of them still have a lot of money, but many of them are completely, completely broke. Very rarely do you see wealth transfer over several generations. The Carnegies and all of these people who made millions or billions of dollars a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago—many of their descendants are completely broke. Some of them still have a lot of money, but many of them are completely, completely broke. Very rarely do you see wealth transfer over several generations.

31:00It's very rare. Generally speaking, that wealth ends within one or two generations from the one guy that made a whole lot of money or the one woman that made a whole lot of money. I mean, historically speaking, it's been usually mostly men. But the point being is that generally wealth does not transfer very well. Because the guy that made the money and preserved it and did all he did knew how to do all of that stuff. He didn't necessarily always teach his kids the same thing. And even if he taught his kids, his kids did not give their kids, which is his grandkids, the same education. So within one or two generations, they start wasting the money. And before you know it, a lot of them go to an extent where they literally become completely broke and homeless. So that's one way that we've seen historically, many times where a person works really hard in order for his kids to have everything that he never had, only to see that his kids or his grandkids, or at some point someone else, has less than what he had. So the Baal Shem Tov says that's one way that wealth does not transfer and the descendants can be poor. So we need to have kindness for them.

32:15They don't have to go door-to-door. Maybe somebody's going to help them out. They don't have to deal with a limited amount of embarrassment. Another way, though, is what the Baal Shem Tov tells us, which is reincarnation. A person could be decreed that he or she is going to have a lot of money in this gilgul, and they passed the test. They passed the test of money. They had money. They gave money. They were generous with it. They publicized Torah. But they failed the test somewhere else. They failed the test with their eyes. They failed the test with their Shabbat observance; it wasn't 100%. They failed the test with kashrut. They failed the test with shalom bayit. They failed the test somewhere. Not the whole test. They're not going to gain Olam HaBa for eternity. But they failed the test somewhere. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu, in His kindness, has to reincarnate and bring them back to the world again. But since he doesn't want to give them the same test that they had last time, what does He do? He does them a favor. What? He makes them poor. Because they already passed the test of money. And He knows that having a lot of money is more difficult than not having money. Because you have a lot more opportunities to make sins.

33:27So he can reincarnate a formerly rich person as somebody that's completely broke. Why? Because their test is no longer the money. Their test now is Shalom Bayit. Their test is Shabbat. Their test is something else. It's not money. So a person can be reincarnated as a poor person and not have the same luck as he did last time. But this is, again, kindness from Hashem. So Rabbi Chiya tells us we have to be kind to the poor because, again, it could be us. It could be us or our kids. The Pele Yoetz says that when a person sees a poor person pass by him—and we're talking about a poor person that is Shomer Torah and mitzvot, not a poor person that’s just some guy that came from, I don’t know, Saudi Arabia or something, and he’s only poor because he hasn’t gotten his terrorist money yet. No, we're talking about, like, you know, a person that lives in Bnei Brak, in Yerushalayim, in different parts of New York—a religious person, but he's poor. He comes to the Beit Knesset, the Pele Yoetz says, stand up then. Give him kavod, stand up then. Why? Because we learned from David HaMelech in Tehillim 109:31.

34:48Ki ya'amod li min evyon. That the Almighty Himself stands at the right side of the destitute. Meaning, this poor person, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is walking with him. He's walking with him. Well, you think that this guy is a nothing? HaKadosh Baruch Hu is right next to him. Because he's poor. He's the destitute. Why? Because when we pray, what do we really pray for? What do we really pray for? Seriously, let's do some cheshbon hanefesh and laugh at ourselves a little bit. What do we pray for? Give me parnassah tovah. You know, the house is not big enough. I need another room. You know, another room for the kids to play in so they don't mess up the whole house. I need another room so they can do nothing with. And also, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, please, do me a favor. Teach my wife how to cook. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu, please, please, do me a favor. My boss, kill him. Give me the job. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu, do me a favor. You know, that customer, that customer, make him, you know, like give me all of his money without realizing it.

35:53And HaKadosh Baruch Hu, my car, I don't, it's a kind of car. No, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I'm a Jew. After all, I'm Your son. You're going to give me this, this goyishe, this garbage car. Come on, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I have to have at least a Lexus or a Mercedes or something. Come on, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. What are we praying for? It's a joke. What are we praying for? We go to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, we pray like this. This is what we pray for. Give me more, more, more. Like homeless people. That's what we pray. That homeless person. Poor person, when he prays to HaKadosh Baruch Hu while in war, what does he pray for? He says, "HaKadosh Baruch Hu, give me some food so I can live under these conditions, but live. Those who give my wife somehow some miracle that she'll have health to continue this miserable life." I want to live. Why does he pray for this? The poor person prays for real stuff. Us? We pray for extras. Extras we pray for—it's a joke. Who walks with him? With us, maybe Hashem walks away sometimes because of the stuff we pray for. What do we pray for?

37:14Five texts a day, Rabbi, is there a segulah to make more money this year? Five out of six texts ask, "Is there something I could do to make more money this year?" Now, if the guy is poor, struggling, and so on, no problem. Okay, listen, got to pray, got to do this, got to do that. But the reality is, most people that tell me they have money problems, with all due respect, they make a bunch of money. We're talking about people that usually make $100,000 plus. They complain they want more. They want $200,000 plus. $400,000 plus. A million dollars. Funny thing is, none of them donate. But that's a different story. It's not funded by rich people. I don't want you guys to think that we're funded by rich people. We're only funded by poor people. Best people on earth. Why? They give with their heart. Now, Vita-mela tells us that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is standing next to these poor people. Now, if a person carries this knowledge, the next time they see some guy with a kippah that's from 1937 walk into the shul...

38:19He looks like he just came out of a garbage pail, and he's asking for a little tzedakah. Instead of saying, "No, no, no, let me finish. I'll talk to you after," instead of giving him this dishonor, this disrespect, this disgusting behavior, if you remember, "Wait a minute, this guy with the 1937 kippah—who's right next to him? He came in?" All of a sudden, you look at the guy differently. You want to give him. Why? Because you can tell who's watching, for sure. He's right there. This, Rabotai, this type of knowledge is priceless if a person wants to become kind. But if a person doesn’t want to become kind, then I would refer them to Mesilat Yesharim, shiur number 84. I won't spoil what the name of the shiur is, though.

39:20So now, a person needs to understand that it's all about how you perceive yourself and then others. Be critical of yourself, kind to others. Now, of course, I'm not saying start self-deprecating. Some people like to insult themselves. That's not allowed. That's completely ridiculous. You're not allowed to say Lashon Hara about yourself. You're not allowed to say, "Listen, I'm such a loser." These things that I say are really more for entertainment purposes. I'm not telling you that you should start calling yourself a loser. You're not supposed to start making fun of yourself. That's not a joke. Some people take me word for word. They start— that's the only thing they write down. The wrong stuff. No, you're not allowed to insult yourself. But the point is, is that have to always think of yourself as in the middle. One mitzvah, you're going to the right side, one sin, you go to the left side. You're always in the middle, always in the middle. And even after you made the one mitzvah, still you're in the middle. You're always in the middle. Don't ever look at yourself as someone that's a terrible person unless you really did something terrible. But the point being is that this is

40:36Right perspective you should have for yourself and never think of yourself as much more than what you are, which unfortunately happens very, very often with ba'alei teshuva. It happens very often with people who don't have any type of real leadership. They don't have a real rabbi that they listen to. They have rabbis they listen to, but no rabbi they listen to. Difference is, if you listen to rabbis, that means you like different speeches, you like his style of speaking, his mindset, but you care less about what they say about you. You just care that they say stuff, and you think that they're talking to everybody else, and you'll pick and choose what you want. That's someone that has rabbis. Someone that has a rabbi, all you care about is what does he think of you and... everything he says is about you. Why? Because your job is to take everything he says and apply it to your life. Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant. You have to treat that rabbi like it's God. Why? Because God sent him to you. How many people are willing to do that? The sad part is, I will type, is that one of the ways that the Satan fools us is...

41:59is with mitzvot. How so? Rabbi Efraim Sheikhiye spoke to one of the gedolim in this generation, and probably for the last 30 or 40 years recently, and he said, what would you say is the biggest obstacle that Baalei Teshuva have? Now, Baal Teshuva doesn't necessarily always mean someone that didn't do any mitzvot his whole life, was secular, and then now started doing teshuva. No, that doesn't necessarily always mean that. A Baal Teshuva is simply someone that's elevating himself. Even if he grew up or she grew up religious her whole life, she didn't really know what real religion was. She didn't really know what real Yirat Shamayim is until the last couple of years when she started learning Mussar. So that's still a Baal Teshuva. If she or he considers themselves frum from birth, they know that over the last one, two, three, four, five years, they've elevated themselves tremendously. That's still a Baal Teshuva. So if I ask this Gadol HaTorah, and also someone that's been in the Kiruv HaKehillim industry for over 30 years, what would you say is the biggest obstacle for Baalei Teshuva? And surprisingly, he says...

43:13The biggest obstacle is that Baalei Teshuva have a different Yetzer Hara than anyone that's been religious for a while. Why? The guy that's been religious for a while, Yetzer Hara bothers him with average things. Average standard stuff. Maybe don't go to shul. Maybe go to shul. Maybe pray today. Maybe don't pray today. Maybe look at her. Maybe don't look at her. Regular stuff. Baal Teshuva, he doesn't bother him. Once the guy's on fire, once he's on, yirat shamayim, gehinnom, ga'ava kehilla, he wants everything. Yetzer Hara says, "I'm not even messing with this guy. Go, you want tefillin? What, you want to pray at 3 o'clock in the morning? Go, go, habibi, go. Go pray at 3 o'clock in the morning. Nobody's there except you. Go. You're the minyan by yourself." Why? You want to watch shiurim on Gehinnom five times a day? Go, go, learn it. Go, go. Yetzer Hara is with you, watching with you. "Yeah, yeah, I'm right there. It's good, it's good, right? You like it?" He doesn't bother you for a bit. Learn, go learn, learn, yeah, finish this, that, go do it, yeah, it's cheering you on. Where does he come to him? He comes to him, he sneaks up on him, sneaks up on her with ga’avah (pride) and how they view the world. They start viewing everybody else as zeros. No one, all of a sudden, is religious enough for them.

44:41This rabbi is not good enough. This rabbi is a kofer. This rabbi is a monkey. This rebbetzin is a this. This kehillah is not good enough for me. That kehillah is not good enough for me. I'm not good enough. That's it. I'm already above everybody. I'm only, what? I'm only ba'al teshuvah for a year, but I already know more than all of you guys. That's how he comes to him. He comes to him, no, don't learn. Don't go pray. Don't go this. No, he says go. Give yourself the illusion that you're actually better than everybody else. Start canceling out rabbis for no good reason. Of course, there are many rabbis that are not rabbis, the heretics that call themselves rabbis that we've talked about many times, and Problem is, is that now people start looking for something wrong. They're not watching the rabbi to learn something from him. They're watching the rabbi to see what he is going to say wrong so they can make fun of him. What is she going to say wrong so they can make fun of her? They look for the wrong in everyone.

45:47They don't look for the right. Why? Because they already know the right, as if they know everything already. They learn one, two, five, ten, three, a hundred, a thousand shiurim online, and already they think of themselves, "This one is a gaon. This one, when he walks in, you should levitate, not stand." This is the problem. This happens. This happens every single day and one of the saddest things that you deal with when you're in the Kiruv world helping people do teshuva for an extended period of time and actually have real results of people changing, one of the saddest things is to see people drop off. or she has been watching your shiurim for one, two, or three years straight. You see them go from being an Esav to Yaakov. This person was Amalek when you met them, and all of a sudden, this person is wow—you praise their name. Then, all of a sudden, they are missing in action.

46:59Emails, no text messages. No 500 phone calls. No questions anymore all of a sudden. They know everything by themselves. No consulting, no advising, nothing. They stop coming to the shiurim. If they come, it's to chat. All of a sudden, they're on vacation—an extended one, three, six, eight months, a year. It's the saddest thing. Why is it the saddest thing? It's not because you need them. I It's not because you need them to come to shiurim. It's not because you need them to send you more text messages. God only knows how I need fewer text messages. It's that you know that it's only a matter of time before all of that work that they did in three years to get themselves to become a tzaddik or tzaddeket goes right in the garbage. All of it. And many times, they end up becoming much, much worse than they started.

48:00Why? Because now they think that they know it all. Now they think that they're righteous enough. They've graduated. They treated your Torah like it's a college class. They thought they completed the course. They went three years, four years. "I finished. I graduated. Now I'm on to bigger and better." Hashem yerachem aleinu from such people. Bigger and better. Abutai Hakareem, learning Torah, learning Mussar, working on yourself, is a lifelong commitment. There is no graduation; you could be learning it for 80 years, 80 thousand years, 80 million years. You're still never gonna be finished. There is no graduation. There is no unfinished. There is no higher level of You go to Rav Kanievsky, Sar HaTorah, Sar HaTorah, go to Rav Kanievsky, he reads an enormous amount of Torah, enormous amount of Torah. Seven pages of the Gemara Bavli, seven pages of Gemara Yerushalmi, every single day. A bunch of Midrashim, the Zohar, and so on and so forth. He has such a regimen of Torah, he completes more in one day than most people do in a year. He completes more in one year than most people do in a lifetime.

49:17But you look at his books. What's the most recent book? Mussar. Mussar he teaches. That's what he wrote in the book. How to be a decent human being. How to be yashar. How to be honest. How to have integrity. How to be kind, and so on and so forth. That's what he writes about. Why? Which means what? Which means he himself also learns it. He himself learns it every single day. Why does he have to worry about being kind and generous to people? He's at home all day learning Torah. Who are you going to be kind to? Who are you going to be generous to? The people that come in whenever they do. This, rabotai, is one of the things that if you don't pay attention to it, the Satan can sneak up into a person's neshama and literally destroy them from within. You start having a perspective on people, especially talmidei chachamim, Especially people that know Torah in such a warped way that you're just going to cancel people out eventually just by their looks, just by where they live, just by what congregation they're a member of, without even hearing a single sentence of Torah. You decide you already know more than them; you decide you already know better than them. This is a very, very serious disease, and it's very common, unfortunately, that

50:45now, if a person has the right perspective on people, whether they tell me or not, obviously this problem will be dealt with. But as long as a person does not have the right perspective, and he doesn't have the right amount of kindness towards other people, he's bound to fail. Why does this matter so much, and what is this connection to Hanukkah? Because if you notice about Hanukkah, we fought, just a few rabbanim. We fought in order to save the Oral Torah. Now, the Oral Torah is very interesting in that the Oral Torah... was already spoken about in the Torah itself. The Prophet Hoshea, Chapter 8, verse 12, says that HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to the prophet: If I write for him great quantities of my Torah, the Jews would be considered like aliens. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, if I give Am Yisrael

52:13...of my Torah, not just the Written Torah, the Five Books of Moses, and eventually the Tanakh. But if I give them a large portion of my Torah, meaning everything in writing, everyone is going to start looking at it. There's not going to be any difference between Jews and non-Jews, and everyone is going to treat it as if it's available, hefker, for everyone. Because the greatest portion of the Torah is the Oral Torah. You look at the Tanakh, the entire Tanakh, Rabotai, is this book... This is the entire Tanakh. The Oral Torah, you could fill this building up a million times from floor to ceiling with books, and you still are never going to be finished. A million times, this building, a million times you fill it up with books, and still never finished with the Oral Torah. HaKadosh Baruch Hu made it so that the Oral Torah is not only endless, but it's also incomplete.

53:13Why incomplete? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted us to know that when you look at a Mishnah, there's a rule. You'll notice the Mishnah without commentary doesn't make any sense most of the time. You look at the Mishnah, it looks like half a sentence, a sentence and a half, three and a half sentences—there's always something missing. It's like they're speaking in code sometimes. But then you look at the Gemara about this Mishnah, endless arguments, endless debates of what, who, what, when, how, and this is like a condensed version of the arguments. The rest of the millions of books are the expanded version of the arguments, and who, what, when, and how the emet really is. Why didn't HaKadosh Baruch Hu just tell Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi when he wrote the Mishnah, "Rabbi, do me a favor, write the whole thing. Write the whole thing." Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi and his generation, they had hundreds—hundreds of tractates of the Mishnah. All we have is six. Six. Not because he didn't know it, but because he condensed it as much as possible.

54:39condenses as much as possible. Therefore, when you read the Mishnah, you have no idea what's going on until you go to the commentary, until you go to the rabbis. You go ask Rabbi Rashi. You go ask your local rabbi who's learning with you. You go ask your rabbi that you watch shiurim with. What does this mean? What does that mean? How come it says here this and over there that, and who and what and what? Wait, how come you can't do it by yourself? Why can't you do it by yourself? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't want you to do it by yourself. You're not allowed to do it by yourself. You will arrive at the wrong conclusion by yourself. The whole point of the Oral Torah is to show us that we need the rabbis like we need life. We need the Talmidei Chachamim like we need air in our lungs. There is no Torah without Talmidei Chachamim. You have to have somebody to learn with. You have to.

55:53Without the commentaries, you're going to start reading parashat haShavua, like the Christians, just based on the verses, and whatever you understand out of it. Guess what? You'll become a Christian. You won't become a Jew. You'll read the weekly parasha, the Five Books of Moses, the easiest part of the Torah as far as understanding it literally, because it's the clearest prophecy. Not that it's easy Torah, but it's the highest level of prophecy. If you notice, the difference between the Five Books of Moses versus any of the prophets... Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and so on—as you see, the further the prophet is from the time of Moshe Rabbeinu, the more difficult it is to understand what he's talking about. Now, when Ezekiel explains to us that he saw what’s happening in heaven, how Hashem opened up the sky and showed him what’s there, when you read what he says... have no idea whatsoever what he's talking about. No idea. You can imagine whatever you want, and everything you imagine is wrong and right at the same time, but you're not even sure which one it is. You're so confused by the time you finish it, you actually think that you've become like retarded during the actual reading because you have no idea what happened here. How did this happen to me? How did I read this for three hours and I still don't know what happened? But then you go to Moshe...

57:21reading. It's like, oh, Hashem spoke to Moshe. Moshe, tell them He said to make tzitzit with corners, and it's easy to understand. Did Moshe speak a different language than Ezekiel? No. The Rambam elaborates on this point, and he says that there are different levels of prophecy. The higher the level, meaning the more... Can't really see the righteous because you can't judge them based on righteousness, but, in essence, the more perfect the human being is, the fewer flaws they have in their character. The more clear their message was between them and Hashem. So Moshe Rabbeinu, who was the humblest human being that ever existed, had virtually no separation between him and Hashem when they spoke. It was like me and you speaking; I speak, you understand, as long as you're listening and not sleeping, you understand what I'm talking about. That's how HaKadosh Baruch Hu spoke to Moshe Rabbeinu. On the other hand, some of the later prophets, even though they understood the message...

58:38But the way they understood it, because of certain flaws they had, if you will, in their level—their extremely high level, we would be like the dust under their feet. But in their extremely high level, the way they understood it wasn't as clear to us. So when we read their prophecy, it is almost impossible for us to understand unless we think with the mindset of the sages. we look at the Gemara. We look at the Mishnah. We look at the Midrashim. We look at all of the Rambam and so on. You see how the sages interpreted each and every single word that they said. And then we finally understand what Ezekiel saw to a certain extent. What Isaiah, who saw the same thing, how come he's using different words? What is really the message with this Tzitzit? And why is it mentioned three different times? why this and why that. We look at all these different things, and when we look at it from the eyes of the Rabbis and our sages, we start understanding the picture clearly. And that's what the Pachad Yitzchak says is the beauty of Chanukah—that most people simply do not understand. Judaism was nearly destroyed.

1:00:05by lefty, liberal Jewish people that befriended the Yevanim, befriended the Greeks. They literally tried to destroy the Torah, but not the Written Torah. They had no problem with the Written Torah. They had a problem with the Oral Torah. And unfortunately, in the beginning, many other Jews joined them. they judged the rabbis very unfavorably and literally almost helped the enemy destroy the Torah altogether. He says here that the Oral Torah that we celebrate today is a celebration of the fact that we have a connection to the sages, we have a connection to Talmidei Chachamim today. You don't have to look too far to find someone that learns Torah; it's only a phone call away, it's only an email away, sometimes only a text away. You don't have to worry about whether someone's going to kill you for talking to him.

1:01:11You don't have to worry about whether this guy is alive or dead. There's plenty available to us. So what's the missing ingredient? How come we're still fools? How come we're still struggling? We're still struggling because we do not appreciate these Talmidei Chachamim. We do not appreciate these sages because our ego is getting in the way, and we're not judging people favorably. Now, We're looking at people in a way where, automatically, when we look at someone, we look for their flaws. We look for their weaknesses. Why? Because we want to make sure that we're better than them. And even if we can't find something, we still find something. We create something out of nothing. Even if we can't create something, what do we do? Okay? Well, he's my rabbi. He's my talmid chacham, so he's not everybody else's. So, in essence, yeah, he's good. He's perfect. He's the biggest rabbi in the world, but that's only because he's my rabbi. Your rabbi is homeless. Your rabbi is retarded. Your rabbi needs to go to some shelter. Your rabbi needs to go to a zoo. My rabbi is the best, meaning he's only the best because he's yours, not because he, by himself, and

1:02:27That's not a value for him. It's a value for yourself, and your judgment of character. And that's a flaw. That's a flaw in our mentality. It's a flaw in how we perceive the world. Rav Moshe Feinstein, alav ha-shalom, was one of the people that in his generation, if somebody would have said he has to be the Gilgul of Moshe Rabbeinu, nobody would have doubted it. He was so humble. that some of the things he would do, enamor us till this day. Now, Rav Moshe Feinstein was very, very careful with how he treated everybody. So much so that one time, he was going to a very important meeting as the Rosh Yeshiva, and right before he was going to enter the car, a poor guy walked up to him and asked for tzedakah. Rav Moshe Feinstein stops, takes money out of his pocket, and gives the guy a few dollars. But then the poor guy insists on talking to him, starts talking to him. Okay, one minute, two minutes, three minutes, he's talking to him. The driver and, you know, the couple of people that are with the kvod harav

1:03:48started getting frustrated like, "Who's this homeless guy? Go away, shoo shoo. He gave you some money. Hollis, no, go celebrate already. I have a few dollars from the gadol hador. You shouldn't even spend it, like go already. No, hold up the biggest rabbi in the world to talk to him right now. You didn't find anybody else to talk to?" So after a few minutes, they started getting annoyed, and they started telling the guy, "Listen, the rabbi is busy, he needs to go." Rav Moshe Feinstein shoos them away. Not the homeless guy, but his helpers. "Go away. Let him talk." And he continues talking to him for ten minutes. Now, this may not seem like a lot because we waste a lot of time. Just in the morning, we waste 45 minutes figuring out what we're going to do for the day. By the time we figure out what we want to do for the day, we've forgotten, so we start a whole new plan, and... That's how much time we waste every day. For a G-d to waste ten minutes, Rabotai, it's like you've wasted a whole day. So, maybe more. Ten minutes. For Rav Moshe Feinstein, it's a lot of time. So after he finished talking to him for ten minutes, he says, okay, I now need to go. The homeless guy was very happy. Thank you, Kavod HaRav. And he left. So the people asked the Rabbi,

1:05:13he got into the car like lamdeni, like "you know, teach me." "Why did you spend so much time with this poor guy?" He says, "For him, me listening to him and to his troubles was much, much more valuable to him than any money that I could give him because he wanted me to care about what he's saying. So that's what I did, because my mitzvah of tzedakah was to listen to him, not the money. The money was an extra. The tzedakah that I really gave him was, and what he was looking for, was a listening ear and for someone important to care about what he's saying. Only the mind of a tzadik thinks like that. Why? Because the average person says, hey, guy, listen, $10, now go, okay? Why? You don't want my time? How about this? I'll give you $20, you go faster. Why? I'm busy. Go where? I'll go buy fast food. That's where you're busy. What are you busy with? What are you so busy with? You don't want to give me the time of day. You don't want to talk to him. You don't want to talk to her. Sometimes people call me and say, listen, I have a problem. I have a shalom bayit problem. And I say, okay, so talk to your husband about it. Why are you telling me? Tell your husband you have shalom bayit problems. He's usually the one to fix it with you. He's the husband. She goes, no, that's the problem. He doesn't talk to me.

1:06:35What do you mean he doesn't come home? No, he comes home. After he comes home, usually there's, I don't know, "hi." Sometimes, do you eat together? Yeah, kind of. And then what? Quiet. Aharon HaKohen was quiet after his two sons died. He was quiet. The husband's quiet, doesn't say a single word. Why not? Why doesn't he say a single word? Oh. Maybe he's upset, maybe he had a long day, maybe he has nothing to say. What's the matter with us? We sometimes think that our problems are the only problems that exist in the world. We never think that the other person, our spouse, our wife, our husband, our kids, our partners, have problems too. We think that the whole world was created for us and only us. It's the wrong mentality. It's the opposite of kindness. Sometimes a listening ear is all that somebody needs. They don't need a solution from you. They don't need advice from you. They simply need you to listen to them. A Jew came to a rabbi, it was a talmid chacham, and said to him, "I don't know what's going on, but I keep praying to Hashem. Nothing's happening. It's almost like I'm praying to a wall. None of my prayers are being fulfilled. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I come to minyan. I pray nets. I put on tefillin. Also, Shabbat I keep an hour before."

1:07:58keep praying to Hashem. Nothing's happening. It's almost like I'm praying to a wall. None of my prayers are being fulfilled. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I come to minyan, I pray neitz, I put on tefillin. Also, Shabbat I keep an hour before. I keep Rabbeinu Tam; I extend it and everything. My kashrut is the best in the world. I'll spend extra just to make sure I get Beit Yosef, or this, or that. The matzot that I had, I already ordered a year before. All the segulot, all this, the love that I have, people were praising me for. The etrog, people thought I got it from heaven. All the mitzvot, mehadrin min hamehadrin. I pray to HaKadosh Baruch Hu for this, for that. Kvod HaRav. Pop kiss. Nothing. This Rav was a serious Talmid Chacham, but Harif. Someone that tells you how it is. He says, wait, aren't you the one that told me that your wife is very annoying? She's like a child.

1:09:14He goes, "Yeah, yeah, for the love, exactly. It's what I'm praying for. Hashem is not answering my prayers." He goes, "No, He is. He is." He says, you're the one who said your wife is younger than you. There is a 10 to 15-year difference between you, you know, and now, you know, you liked it before you got married because you wanted a young one. But after you got married and she started talking, you know, you didn't want that as much anymore. You know, she was 20 when you got married, and you only really wanted everything else. But the talking part, you didn't want so much. But, you know, wives talk once in a while. Sometimes more often than once in a while. And guess what? Once she started talking, you're like, ah, she's like a kid. It's like a child. She's talking about nonsense. She's talking about dresses. She's talking about her friend. What do I care about her friend? This child. All of her problems are a little minuscule. That's what he told me, right? Yeah, Kavod HaRav, you remember the conversation I said? I remember like it was yesterday. He says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is giving you measure for measure. He says, explain. He says, listen. When your wife comes to you,

1:10:22And she, you worked the whole day, you lifted a building over your head, you fixed a few cars, you made certain deals, and she comes to you with her little mini problems: that the baby hasn't pooped in three days, that one of them has a scratch on his face because of the accident that his brother caused, but he didn't really mean it, and that the neighbor hasn't said hello in three days. And maybe we need to repair... the water fountain, and I think that the fridge may be broken, but it may not be. And all of these things, and you're like, "This child is probably, I care about this stuff. I have big stuff to do. I build buildings, you think, right?" So you complain, right? So let's see, you're praying for what you pray: "I know You gave me a little bit of money, but why don't You give me a little bit more? I know You gave me a house, but give me another one." HaKadosh Baruch Hu, give me another car and give me this and give me this and give me this. Now the Malachei HaSharet, the angels of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, each one of them is the size of a planet. Different shapes, different sizes, different images. They come, they look at this prayer, and they say, look at this guy.

1:11:43Look at this guy. He finally got to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He got to the King of Kings. He got to the King. He didn't go to the IRS and finally get the clerk. He didn't go to the President of the United States and get an answer to his letter. No, he got to the King of Kings, the only one who could do something. What does he pray for? Look at this guy. What is he praying for? He prays for another house. You finally got to the only one that can give life. And what you pray for is some brick and mortar that may go bad tomorrow. You pray for a car. You got to the King of Kings. That's what you want? A car? He's so childish. Hashem is a child. Hashem says, I agree. He's a child. Put his... I don't deal with children. I don't deal with children. Measure for measure. You treat her like she's a child. You don't want to pay attention to her. Guess what? HaKadosh Baruch Hu treats you the same way. Why? Because at the end of it all, your prayers are also childish. Because your perspective of her is that she's less than you. Because her biggest chiddush of the day is that the baby pooped. Thank God.

1:12:58That the neighbor finally came back from vacation. That the car worked. That the check cleared. Like that's the chiddush. She's Baruch Hashem, a tzadika. She takes care of the kids. She doesn't have Wall Street like you. She doesn't have. She's not building buildings. She's not doing big stuff. She's just a simple woman who takes care of the kids. Baruch Hashem. But you think it's childish. You think it's nothing. Why? Because you're Mr. Bigwig. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says you're right. Okay. So you're Bigwig. Let's compare you to Me then. Let's compare you to Me. You build buildings. I build worlds. Everything you have, I did. You just pretended like you're doing it. Child, what are you praying for? A car? A car is too small for Me. If you ask for a planet, maybe I'll give it to you. A car is too small. I don't create cars. Cars, I let you guys create. It's too small for Me. Child. That's what happens when a person only looks at themselves, and everyone else falls by the wayside as nothing. Everyone else is a child, everyone else is a fool, everyone else is not enough—they're not smart enough, they're not rich enough, they're not this enough, and they're not that enough. This is one of the things that destroys your connection to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, as well as destroying your connection

1:14:23the world around you, suddenly your wife hates you, suddenly your kids can't wait to not see you, suddenly every Shabbat they don't want to be home—they have a sleepover somewhere, just not at home. If your kids constantly want to sleep away from your house, that's a problem. I understand kids like their friends, but it also means that if they haven't seen you all week and they did see their friends all week, and the only time they see you is on the weekend because you're so busy building buildings, but their friends they could just simply see another day, but they still prefer to go see their friends only—that means they don't like you. There's a reason for that. You made them feel like nothing. You made them feel like their problems are not important. Their little sevivon that they were spinning and going, "hey!" wasn't important to you. Why? Because it wasn't worth a million dollars. So when you pray to HaKadosh Baruch Hu for different things, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has to return the favor, measure for measure. So what we see here, Rabotai, is that lack of kindness...

1:15:46can be very, very damaging, not just with our relationship with our spouse, our friends, our children, our customers, our Rabbis, but also our relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Now, sometimes a person, all they want is a little bit of attention, and if they get it, to them, it's like you gave them a million dollars. One of the times that Rav Moshe Feinstein walked into the Beit Midrash, he saw that the janitor, who was an old Russian man, was holding his face. And Rav Moshe Feinstein noticed it. He stopped and he asked him, and he spoke to him in Russian. He said, what's wrong? And this old man said, oh, it's my tooth. Rav Moshe Feinstein spoke to him a little bit for a few minutes, and the people, you know, people were following the Rav all the time. Imagine you have Moshe Rabbeinu among you. You're going to follow what he does. What does he do now? What does he do now? Where is he here? You're like behind the chair, everywhere. After the janitor walked away, the people that already knew this janitor for years, for decades—he's worked in the same building for a long time—say, we've never seen a happier person. All of a sudden the toothache didn't matter. All of a sudden the pain didn't matter. Why? Rav Moshe Feinstein spoke to me for a few minutes.

1:17:15He cared about my problem. He cared. He cared that I had a little bit of pain. And he spoke to me in my language. And he spoke to me without telling me, "Listen, I have to go, but... Good luck to you. I'll pray for you. What's your name again? Text it to me. Text it to me. Text it to me." Now, when you work on yourself... HaKadosh Baruch Hu pays you in this world and the next. And Rav Moshe Feinstein had the merit to have a son-in-law by the name of Rav Eliyahu Moshe Schisgal. And his son-in-law tried to follow in the footsteps of his father-in-law in worrying about people, being conscious of other people's issues, so much so that he befriended young man who was a special needs person had some mental issues where he thought of himself as an expert doctor but also a military secret agent, and he liked to be referred to as "the Professor." Of course, the Rav treated him well, inviting him and talking to him in his way and

1:18:42One of the times that he invited him to the house, you know, with other people, this professor came with his radio and he decided to turn on the radio and blast it. It was really, really loud, and no one had the heart to tell him to shut it off, including the Rav. But it was extremely loud. So what do you do? When you care about people... So much that you never, ever want to hurt a fly. You get chiddushim like this. What does he do? He thinks of an idea. He says, "Professor, wait a minute." He listens to the radio even closer. He says to him, "Are those military secrets?" And the professor says, "Yes, yes, they are." Like somebody else gets him, he says, "But, Professor..." Do you know I'm not in the military? I don't know if I have the authority to listen to such things. The professor says, "You're right." He shuts it off. "You're right. Only a person that cares about everyone thinks of a chiddush like this."

1:20:05What does the average person do? "Let me steal it from him." But you take his attention. You get his attention. "I'll take the radio when he comes back. He won't see it." They think like bank robbers, criminals. But if you care about everybody because you see that everyone else has something that's better than yours, and not the opposite, that you have something better than everybody else... This is one of the things that is very easy and pleasing to talk about but very hard to do because naturally, most people are arrogant to a certain extent. Most people do not think there's a consequence for their crime. Most people think they can tell everybody what to do, not just anybody, everybody what to do. There was a woman that lived in a building of Rav Ovadia.

1:21:08And one time, everyone knew that Rav Ovadia did not want to waste a single minute. Every single minute of his life was accounted for learning Torah, doing chesed, doing kiruv, helping Am Yisrael do teshuva. I don't believe there's anybody, anybody that has done more for Klal Yisrael, whether you're Sephardi or Ashkenazi. The last hundred years, like he did. Of course, some people are going to tell you somebody else. No problem. It's not a debate. It's not a race, but the point being is that Klal Yisrael was in a horrendous shape before Rav Ovadia came into this world. Rav Ovadia was somebody that took leadership by the horns and ran with it, and the power that he had all came from the Torah. And he would spend every waking hour learning Torah. Many times people would ask him if he would be the sandak, hold the baby when they do the brit milah. And he would agree because it meant a lot to them, but under the condition of no party, no waiting for music, this, that, just tell me exactly the minute to come, hold the baby, brit milah, I'm leaving. The whole thing, two minutes.

1:22:31Don't wait for me a whole line. Five hours, people one after another asking for blessings, the music, the... no, no, no. Two minutes. Comes down from his house, comes to the shul, comes down from the house. Give me the baby. Brit milah finished. No problem. You want to have gadol hador, you have the Moshe Rabbeinu of the generation hold your baby. We have brit milah. It's a big berachah. He gives them a blessing. Alvai, you should have such a thing. But it has conditions. Why? Because I want to go study Torah. That's my baby. I want to go study Torah. I'll hold your baby because I also care about him and I care about you. But I want to go study Torah because that's my baby. So when you have somebody calculate their time like that, chas v'shalom, you waste it. This foolish woman that lived in this building, it's a famous story. Witnesses saw this. It's actually even written in kids' books and children's books. They were having a board meeting in the building about something that had to do with the building. And it was known that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is not going to come to these meetings. He has much more important things to do than board meetings. But she made a stink about it. "No, we cannot have the meeting of the board to decide something really critical unless all the tenants..."

1:23:55unless all of the people that own a house here in this building attend. So everybody looks around, they see everybody's here. Everyone knows Rabbi Ovadia is not coming. It's not even a question. He's the biggest rabbi in the world, you foolish lady. You're not actually expecting him to come, are you? She goes, nope. The tenant, he's not here. Rabbi Ovadia has to come. I'm not starting the meeting until he comes. Hashem, what embarrassment this caused. But, Word got to Rav Ovadia, and he got up from his learning and went to the board meeting. And he sat there and he listened to them, to the nonsense that they talk about. Board meetings of buildings, by the way, are the biggest waste of life in history, just so you know. It's egocentric, idea central, and a lot of other things I don't even want to mention. It's a nightmare of nightmares. But anyway,

1:24:55I was privy to a few of them. I regret every single one. It's one of the regrets of my life. If Hashem has to reincarnate me, just make sure I don't come as someone that owns any buildings or anything, that I don't have any board meetings. So now, Rabotai, Rav Ovadia, you're sitting over there. The board meeting starts, the board meeting finishes, everybody gets up, Kevod Harav gets up, and everyone walks away. But as Rav leaves, Everyone walks, and they wait for the woman to come. She can't move. I said, "No, come on, let's go." She goes, "I can't move." She goes, "What do you mean you can't move?" She goes, "I can't move. I don't have any feeling in my legs. I don't have feeling in my body. I can't move." Witnesses, they're watching this woman who can't move. She starts crying hysterically. "I don't know what's going on! I don't know what's happening!" Ha ha, everyone in a second understood. What's going on? You just wasted the time of the biggest Rav in the world, the biggest Talmid Chacham in the world, to come to your stupid board meeting to talk about plumbing? That's what you want to waste his time with?

1:26:15You're playing with fire. Lady, you're playing with fire. They run to Rav Ovadia. They go, Rav, please, please, Rav, don't be upset. Don't be upset at her. She can't move. Rav Ovadia says, no, no. Who said that she shouldn't move? Who says she shouldn't move? The second he said it, she got up and left. I didn't say she shouldn't move. The second he said it, she got up and walked away. Shocked. Like, we're talking about someone that literally lost the feeling in their body. And there were witnesses there. He says upstairs, "Who says she doesn't move?" She walks away. She got up that second. Why? You're playing with fire when you play with Talmidei Chachamim. People think they can say and do whatever they want to Talmidei Chachamim. They don't realize these are the people that simply serve Hashem. These are soldiers of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You insult the Talmidei Chachamim like you spit on HaKadosh Baruch Hu's face. Needless to say, you have to be kind. Needless to say, you have to have and give them the benefit of the doubt.

1:27:29The Gemara says, if you see a Talmid Chacham sinning, you actually see a Talmid Chacham making a sin, don't even have bad thoughts about him, but surely he's going to do teshuva at night. He’s known as a Talmid Chacham. You saw him make a mistake? Don't have a second thought for a second that he already didn’t do teshuva. He’s doing teshuva. Because that’s the point of this Torah. Of course, if someone was known as a Talmid Chacham in the past but already has a repeated crime against HaKadosh Baruch Hu in public, it's a different story. But people are looking for every flaw, every word to mistranslate. They look to create machloket between rabbis. You know how many times a week people send me things about different rabbis that I'm friends with? In order to get me to comment on it and say something nasty in order to agree with their nastiness, so maybe they could send it to the rabbi also and create a war. "Yeah, but Rabbi said this and you said something else. So what should I say?" They look for wars, they look for action, the shame, the shame, bullying. But that's because they already canceled both of us.

1:28:53Before the argument even started, they see themselves as better. You just want to cancel both of us out. But if we have an argument, that means that they're right, not that the rabbis are right. People are constantly looking for ways to justify their sins, constantly. It is by far one of the most evil things in the world, but also one of the most annoying. It's an evil trait. It's my master, Satan, himself. Trying to create war is trying to say, "Yeah, but Rabbi such-and-such said the opposite of you. He said the opposite of you. How come he said the opposite of you? What do you have to say about that?" Why do I have to say anything about it? Why do I have to say anything about it? You do realize that sometimes there are two different opinions, right? Why do I have to say anything about it? But no... They want you to say something. Why? So they can advertise it. Why do they want to advertise it? Because they want to justify their sins. They want to justify their evil. Something happened recently. I told you guys, you're in for a story. This video clip that we made recently about music has been one of my recent tikkunim. Sh'tabach shemo la'ad.

1:30:18Trying to explain to people that a musical tune, by default, is not kosher or non-kosher, meaning whether it's a guitar from the Middle East like some of our recent teshuva music videos, or it's one of the different, I don't know, equipment that they use over there, whatever those things are called, and It's some DJ at some club, boom boom boom boom, all that stuff, whatever it is. Or it's what they use in hip-hop, or what they use with violins as part of an orchestra. By default, the musical tune is not kosher or non-kosher. It's music; you may like it, you may dislike it. Halachically, it's allowed, whatever it is. Words, the behavior, the things that are connected to it, will determine a lot of that. It stays kosher or not, meaning if you use whatever music you want, something from the Middle East, from times of Farid al-Atrash, the Arab, that a lot of our prayers are used today, and

1:31:30are from the tunes of Arabs. It's not really that that's how it was initially, but a lot of the tunes we have that we pray in Sephardi shuls and so on, come from Arabic songs. It's not the prayer itself that comes from Arabs; it's the tune, how we pray it. All that stuff comes from different tunes that originated from Arabs. So the tune itself was for a different song, a completely nonsensical song, but we use the tune, we use the music to make it something good. There's no problem with that. There's no problem with using this tune. It's not the words from the Arabs. It's not the words of idolatry. It's the tune, it's the musical notes. That by itself, There's no way to make—there's nothing to say whether you like it or not. That's your problem. No one cares if you like it or not. A lot of kli doesn't make a difference if you like it or not. If someone says prayers that go with that tune, someone says praises that go with that tune, whether it's trance or it's a Farida latrash or it's a—I don't know—some rap song.

1:32:39No problem. Good for you. The reality is that some of the music is more aggressive than others, but that doesn't make it not kosher. If the words, the behavior that goes with it is arrogance, is cursing, swear words of all types, insults, and things of that nature, then even if it's part of an orchestra, even if it's a nice tune of an orchestra, but you're saying, "I hope everyone dies," or "I hate everyone," if you don't do it, guess what? You and the music are not kosher. Why? Because it's not kosher. What do you mean? It doesn't matter that there's a little violin. It doesn't make a difference. The words and the behavior are not kosher. You start singing a tune, "I am the best." You're not kosher. You're not kosher. What do you mean you're the best? Who told you you're allowed to be arrogant? It's not kosher. The music didn't make it kosher or not kosher. It's the words, the behavior.

1:33:53That's it. That's what people fail to get through their thick skulls, because that skull is wrapped by their ego. So, when I tried to explain this twice—one video that was already made, I don't know, a year and a half ago—we took a clip out of it, the original clip, and then the explanation last week, a couple of people lost their minds and started just behaving like true animals. and started just behaving like true animals. Public defacement, embarrassment, all types of good things for me, Baruch Hashem, because we need these types of insults. It's good for our neshama to clean the soul. But the point being, Rabotai, is that you see that people's true colors come out when you disagree with them.

1:34:55when you disagree with them and you stand up for the truth, you realize that many times people who are cheering for you, people who are saying they like what you're saying, they like what you're doing, don't actually mean it. They agree with it, therefore they like it. But the second you say something that they don't agree with, everything you've said for three, four, five, six years that has changed and transformed their life, everything goes into the garbage as if you've never said it. You become enemy number one. Now, this is one of the problems that I will always have. This is not a problem there's a solution to. I spoke to somebody today... I explained to him that one of the reasons why we don't get really rich people to donate to us is that, I think, there are a couple of people who have a few dollars, but I don't think there are any billionaires or even multi-millionaires who donate to us, at least not to my knowledge. If they do, please inform me.

1:36:20the point is that I don't, and the reason why is because one of the things that millionaires—and I have a lot of experience with millionaires—want as a result of their donation, as a result of their business, is recognition, respect, honor, and an arrangement Which means if they're gonna donate a million dollars to you, half a million, ten thousand, twenty thousand, a certain amount of money to you, they are, in essence, buying you. They are, in essence, expecting that from now on, when you look at them, you see angels. You see no foul, you see no harm, you see no flaw. You praise their name as if they're the greatest thing in the world. Like, for example, sometimes you get some of these sefarim. In the beginning of the sefarim, it says all the people that they honor. Oh, this guy's a big tzaddik, he's this, he's that. In reality, sometimes these people are not tzaddikim. They just donated some money. But the poor author that wrote this book needed the money, so that was the condition. Write something nice about this guy that donated 25,000 or 200,000 or whatever he donated. That's part of the deal.

1:37:34Even if you don't know that he's really a tzaddik, he's generous at least. And the Gemara says, it's better to have a generous am ha'aretz, which is an ignorant person. It's better to have a generous ignorant person than a talmid chacham that's cheap. That's how much Hashem hates cheap people. Even if they know Torah, He doesn't like them. So the point is, Rabotai, sometimes rich people want to make donations, they want conditions. They want you to call them, they want you to praise them. They want you to see no wrong in their actions. And that means that they want you to change the truth for them. Now, in business and in politics, this is done all the time. Unfortunately, in the Torah world, it's also done all the time with the people that are fake. If you're a faker, you can be fake whenever you feel like it. If the rasha that just donated a million dollars wants you to call him a big tzaddik in public, you'll do it. Why? He paid to be called tzaddik, a million dollars. If you're a faker, you'll say, yeah, yeah, he's the biggest tzaddik, he donated a million dollars, he's such a righteous person, and so on. If you're a faker, you'll say it. Baruch Hashem, I can't do that. It's not even a matter of free choice. I simply can't.

1:38:56You could pay me a billion dollars. I can't do it. It's one of the things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu created me with. I simply can't do it. I can't give compliments unless they're deserved. It's actually one of the things that was difficult for me in the business world because I would only give you a compliment that you're doing a good job if you actually did a good job, not because you felt bad for the day. If you are a customer of mine, you're a customer, you're just another guy. If you're a donor, you're a donor. Okay, I'll say thank you, I'll be appreciative, but you're not getting a cent more than you deserve. I'm never going to change the truth for you. That's a problem with rich people. Why? They want you to. That's the point. They want to invest a million dollars, so you put their name on the building. You can give me ten million dollars; I'm not putting your name on the building. Why should I put your name on the building? What, so every single time that people come in they can look at your name? If I hate you, I'll do that. If I hate you, I'll do that. Why? Because that means that all of the merits for your donation will be spent in this world. Why should I do that to you? I want you to deserve the merits when you get to Olam HaBa.

1:40:08you get something for it. Not a bunch of people saying, "Your building was donated." Who cares what people say? It matters what Hashem says. But that's the problem. Rich people sometimes don't think like this. They want the name of the building now. They want the kavod now. They want you to tell them they're right now. And that's a problem. So, when I said what I said in the original video, and some people that donate a few dollars, rejected it. I said that music is based on what the words are and not the tune. I said that Nissim Black, he says the right words, he praises Hashem. It doesn't matter that his music, the beats are hip-hop or rap or whatever. The point is, his words and his behavior are kosher. So, a few racist people, I have to actually make sure that you guys know, that has to do more with race and ego than anything else. a few racist people, a few people that simply are just haters of everyone, including themselves, hated this. "How could it be that he is kosher? No way! He's this, he's that, he's what? Why? What do you have to say?" So, not only did I not change my mind, especially when they started making...

1:41:30Whole thing sending me a million emails and making comments on Facebook and on YouTube in different places. We went even stronger. We made a second clip about it to elaborate to the people and give them an opportunity to do teshuva and explain to them that they're doing wrong, that they're wrong about what they're saying because they're judging based on their ego and their heart. We are making decisions based on halacha, based on the sages, based on the Torah, not based on feelings. It's irrelevant whether you like the music or I like the music. You don't like it, don't listen. You like the music of how your head sounds against the wall, I'll give you the wall. Smash your head a few times. We'll both record it if you want. Why do I care what music you like? I'm telling you what's allowed, what's not allowed. People can't get through that. They can't get through that hump. It's like everything has to be according to them. So when we went stronger... Immediately, literally within 24 hours, I got a couple of messages but also a couple of cancellations of donations. So, so far, this clip has already cost, I don't know, maybe a few dollars, five, ten thousand dollars, whatever it is. So far, now, if we were a big organization, millions of dollars, this wouldn't really be a big deal as far as money. But it's still not a big deal, and the reason why is because I know Hashem runs the world.

1:42:54That's the reason I mention it again in case they're watching. Hopefully, they could do teshuvah. Because it doesn't matter how much you donate; you could donate a billion dollars. The truth will never change. You'll never buy me. Because it's not me. I'm telling you what the Torah says. For heaven's sake, if it was me, I wouldn't even talk to you in the first place. I'd be on Wall Street. I don't need donations. I'm a Wall Street guy. I'm here simply because I'm telling what Hashem says. Because I'm saving the time. Because you're not going to read all these books. That's what people can't get through their head. They think they can, you know, they donate a few dollars. Oh, I'm canceling my $200 a month. I'm canceling my $50. I'm canceling my $1000. Cancel. Chabad. You just lost Olam Haba. What do I care? You think you're hurting me? There's a lot of— I should cry. I'm crying for you. Your only hope, your only hope was some kiruv that you were contributing to. The only thing that's gonna get you out of the gehenom that you build yourself every single day was to help people do teshuvah. Now you stopped. Hashem yirachem, that simply shows you how far you are from the truth. But this is nothing but ego. Nothing but ego.

1:44:21You cannot be kind to people and have an ego at the same time. Sometimes you hear stories of such-and-such rich person donating money to some, you know, poor couple. You know, Mr. This and Mr. That just, you know, they helped him, you know, fix a car one time, so he gave them a free house. Oh, wow, he's so kind. No, he's not kind. he's really good at marketing. If he was kind, no one would know the story. There would be a deal with the house. What's the deal? Here's the house, and here's an agreement: don't tell anyone anything. Don't tell anyone who bought you this house. It's between me and you. Because I'm doing it because it's me and you. But once everybody finds out that this guy or that guy bought these poor people the house, all it is is marketing—marketing his name. He looks better, a better image. More people do business with him, more people invest with him, more people do this with him and that with him. Guess what? That half a million dollar investment, he makes it twentyfold. Twentyfold he makes.

1:45:42People say there used to be a show. I remember years ago, we used to watch TV. We used to watch these shows with something like "Undercover Boss." It goes like this: the president of a company would pretend to be an employee of the company, and the regular employees wouldn't know that... he's really the president or the CEO, so you pretend to be an employee and work at different places to see what's going on. Then, at the end of the show, you would tell them, "Oh, I'm really the CEO of the company. I have a zillion dollars. I'm the guy, and I saw how you work. You get a bonus, you get a vacation, you get this, and you get that." And you would cry, "Well, it's so nice. This poor single mom is now getting a new vacation, a new house, a new this." He's so kind, so stupid. We're so dumb. We don't realize that the only purpose of why they're doing their show is not because they care. It's fantastic marketing. The next day, their stock goes up one dollar a share. That's a hundred billion dollars, that's twenty billion dollars, that's however many shares they have times a dollar, and...

1:46:59Okay, so he gave a few people, I don't know, $20,000. They spent a quarter million dollars, let's say, on the show. The next day, all the stock has to do is move a penny, and they make $50 or $100 million. A penny! And people, ah, so kind. What kind? It's all a show. It's all a show. Kindness doesn't come with glamour. You want kindness? I'll give you a story of kindness. And we'll finish with this. There's an amazing story that Rav Shlomo Levenstein, shlita, said in one of his shiurim, and I heard it from Rav Ephraim. Rav Shlomo Levenstein used to live in Petach Tikva on a street called Salomon. And he lived in the building number eight. He said his neighbor for many years was an unknown rabbi, meaning he was a talmid chacham. He had a little shul, but the world till this day doesn't even know who he is. People in the community knew who he was, but if I tell you his name, no one's gonna say, "Oh yeah," nothing. His name was Rav Aharon Beifus. Rav Aharon Beifus.

1:48:27lived at number six Solomon, so literally a building over from Rav Levinstein. And Rav Beifus was married but didn't have any children. But everyone saw the master light on his face. He had a shul, yet his Beit Midrash. He was a talmid chacham but relatively unknown outside of And the Maharil Diskin sent certain talmidim that he had to Petach Tikva to build a religious Jewish community to fight against the Zionist reshaim. The Zionists did everything they could to destroy Am Yisrael, much more than the Nazis, by the way. It's an unfortunate truth. Many people who are Zionists or call themselves Zionists today simply do not know the history of Zionism, but we've talked about this in the past. So anyway, a few tzaddikim came to Petach Tikva to fight against the Zionists, but the fight means both sides fight. So Rav Beifus was one of those people who was there for many, many years.

1:49:39Big tzaddik, you'd see him, you'd see he had light on his face. Certain people, you look at them, it's like you see beautiful people. Righteous people, never heard a scream from his house, never heard any problems, never heard any issues. Everybody could say this. Now, as he got older, he started losing it a little bit, as sometimes happens to people as they get older. Once in a while, he would say something off. Like a word would come out that didn't make any sense. You know, he'd say something, and it just came out as a blab. We just didn't understand what he said. It happens as you get older. Shimmy, I have now, during his last days, his nephews were around him. And they saw that he's sick, and they called Hatzalah. Hatzalah came, and they picked him up from his house, and they put him on a bed, and they were taking him to the ambulance. He was still conscious, but everyone knew there's obviously something not so good here.

1:51:02Now, right before he went into the ambulance, there were people there. The nephews were there, especially. And everyone was worried, but there wasn't much they could do. But everyone was looking at him, paying attention just to see anything. And right before he entered the ambulance, he screamed, "What about the Filipino dancers?" and died. Now the nephews, these old tzaddikim, yirei shamayim, talmidei yeshiva, kollel, they wanted to simply bury themselves in the ground. Their uncle, the big tzaddik, instead of saying what you're supposed to do before going to shamayim, supposed to say, "I'm sorry Hashem," last minute teshuva, what is this guy doing?

1:52:04What about the Filipino dancers and the tickets? Hashem Yirachem. They didn't know what to do with themselves the whole shiva. They're crying, but they're confused about what to do. How do we handle it? They want to keep the story a secret. It's already embarrassing enough that the word got around. And one time... After a little time passed, a big Talmid Chacham came, older, came to the nephews and he said to them, I heard the story about Rav Beifus, alev haShalom, tell me exactly what happened. So the nephews were very embarrassed. They said, "I don't know what to say, how to say it, but listen, our uncle was a tzaddik, but once in a while maybe he would say something off, but we have no idea how to explain this. Right before he died, his last words, his last words were, 'What about the Filipino dancers? Get the tickets. What about the Filipino dancers? Get the tickets.' What do we do with this?"

1:53:25Tamid Chacham, who was around for many, many years, knew Rav Beifus. He says, "Sit down, let me tell you the story." He says, "Over 40 years ago, over 40 years ago, your uncle came here to Petach Tikva. In those days, Petach Tikva wasn't like it is today. The Zionists had a lot more power, and they did everything possible to destroy Klal Yisrael." They would spend a fortune just to kill Judaism, just exactly like the Yevanim. Maybe a little worse. So, what did they decide to do? Ah, we have a new idea. What's the idea? We're going to make a huge concert in Petach Tikva and bring Filipino dancers. And everyone's going to come. Fall in love with his Filipino dances and commit all types of sins against Hashem. When Rav Beifus heard this, he couldn't live with himself. He immediately called the place and he said, "How big is this event?" They said, "For 5,000 people." He says, "Have you sold any tickets?" "No. No, we haven't put them on sale yet." He said, "Okay. I'll buy every ticket. So what?"

1:54:55What do you mean you're going to buy every ticket? He goes, "No, I need all the tickets. I need all of them. I have people. Well, I don't want to lose out. I have 5,000 people. You have 5,000 seats? I got 5,000. I got 5,000. I need 5,000 tickets." The ticket guy was like, "Ah, sold out. Sold out. Finished. Best thing in the world. That's what you hoped for. Sold out in one phone call. We should have made 10,000 seats." Rav Beifus goes to the bank. borrows money that he's never going to have to pay back. He simply borrows money to pay for these tickets, buys all the tickets, takes them to his house, the show happens, and the Filipinos are dancing to themselves. No one's there. Now, after the show is finished and the sakana (danger) of this disaster is out of the way and but you still get a loan that's hundreds of thousands of dollars.

1:56:00How are you going to pay for this? You still got to pay for it now. Okay, you did a good deed. Chazak u'Baruch. You still got to pay for it now. Where are you going to get this money from? Your $400 a month that you get from the kollel? Where are you going to get it from? So Rav Bifus came to a few family members. He said, please, please help me out. I took on this big mitzvah to protect Am Yisrael from sinning in this concert. Help me out a little bit maybe. They laughed at him. His family laughed at him and said, "What are you doing? Are you crazy? Why did you do that? So what, you canceled the concert for three hours? So for three hours, they didn't sin; they'll sin in the fourth hour on their own, or they'll make another concert. What's the point? Why did you do that? You put yourself in a hole. No, we're not going to pay for it." So not only did they not help him, but they made fun of him. Rav Bifus goes to the Gadol HaDor... Stapler Gaon He goes to the Steipler Gaon. He tells him exactly what he did. He says, "I just need to know, did I do good or not?" The Steipler says, "Not only did you do good, but you now have 5,000 tickets to Olam HaBa. You take those tickets with you to Olam HaBa. You have nothing to worry about."

1:57:29So, the Talmid Chacham tells the nephews, "That's what your uncle was saying. Why? He was already seeing the next world in his last moments. You already see what's going on. He was telling Shamayim, 'Bring the tickets, the 5,000 tickets.' Why? That's my entry to the next world. That's kindness. In the name of Hashem, we try to do the same." Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.