Being Jewish During Corona Virus Crisis - MUSSAR Iggeret HaRAMBAN (34)

0:17In the name of G-d, we will do and we will succeed. Tonight, with the help of G-d, will be a lesson for complete healing to Rabbi Levana bat Sara, Rabbi Efraim ben Shulamit, Rabbi Sara bat Anat, David ben Esriah, Doris bat Jorah, also for Dvora bat Mercedes, Esther bat Zipora, Serach bat Batya. Tonight, with the help of G-d, will be a lesson for complete healing for Rabbi Levana bat Sara, Rabbi Efraim ben Shulamit, Rabbi Sara bat Anat, David ben Esriah, Doris bat Jorah, Dvora bat Mercedes, Esther bat Zipora, and Serach bat Batya. and... Okay, and...

1:24Okay, so... Sure, also for Ilui Nishmat of Eliyahu ben Avraham. and also for the community of New Rochelle and also all of Am Yisrael across the world that are suffering right now with this coronavirus crisis.

2:26The coronavirus crisis is going to be part of the conversation tonight. A key part of the conversation tonight. But it's not going to be what you've probably heard so far. And the reason why is because we're trying to fix, we're trying to fix the Chilul Hashem, and complete... panic behavior that's happening in the world that is beyond ridiculous right now with some information, with some insights. Now... You okay? Oh, I think I just shared it with you. I shared it with somebody. Okay, so... the situation right now is dire, and it's going to get much, much worse. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's not going to get worse for the reasons that you think. Now, if you remember, a little over a month ago, a month and a half ago,

3:50I spoke to you guys about what's happening when this whole coronavirus situation came to light maybe two months ago, and we discussed how the stock market would eventually react. And indeed, it reacted just like we thought. But this is, again, just the beginning. And if you remember, I also told you that I'm not so worried about the virus. I'm worried about how the government reacts to it because viruses happen. Viruses happen. They've happened since the beginning of time, since HaKadosh Baruch Hu created the world. At some point, when Yaakov Avinu asked HaKadosh Baruch Hu to bring sickness to the world, it was because there was no indication that someone was going to die. you know, people would just look healthy, act healthy, and then one day they'd sneeze and die, and that's it. To this day, there's a custom to say "God bless you," or in Hebrew, they say "livriut." The reason why is because almost five thousand years ago, forty-five hundred years ago, someone who sneezed died on the spot.

5:12...why? Because Yaakov asked for kindness to at least give the people some indication that they're going to die soon, and thereby they will be able to prepare themselves and prepare their families for it, whether it's through an inheritance, leadership, and so on. You know, when someone dies abruptly, which is unfortunately a good majority of deaths in the world still to this day, people don't usually expect to die even if they're sick. And that's the reason why many of them are not prepared. And when someone dies and the family is not prepared, sometimes there's no will, sometimes there are all types of difficulties that are caused in partnerships, in businesses, and so on. So Yaakov Avinu, with his Ruach HaKodesh and his prophecy, understood that this is something that's much needed, and of course, Hashem liked this idea. Not that Hashem did not know this, but He wanted to give Yaakov the merit for having such an idea that he brought to the world. The same thing, for example, with Yitro.

6:21Yitro gave Moshe Rabbeinu the idea of having a judicial court, where there's a higher court and a lower court, and he told him, don't judge everyone yourself, have different court systems. Smaller cases here, higher cases there, and eventually the Supreme Court is you. To this day, the whole judicial system that we use is based on what Moshe Rabbeinu implemented. Who had this idea? Yitro. Now what, did Moshe Rabbeinu, who was the smartest human being that ever lived, spoke to HaKadosh Baruch Hu face to face, couldn't come up with this idea? Sure he could, but HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted Yitro to have the merit of having such an idea. The situation today is that you have a government around the world panicking in such a fashion that it is creating damage much worse than any epidemic we've had in recent years. And the reason why is because they have no God. When you have no God, that means that you think that you are God. Even if you say, "I believe in God."

7:36Jew or Gentile. But you are panicking right now, that means you have no God. Why? Because if you knew the God of Israel, you know HaKadosh Baruch Hu, there is nothing to worry about. As the Chafetz Chaim told us 100 years ago, every bullet has its name. Why? Because the Gemara says it. There's not a single human being in the world that gets pricked on his finger by a needle without there being a Din in Shamayim to decide it. Meaning, if someone is meant to die, they're going to die. If they're not meant to die, they're not going to die. No power in the world is going to change that. If you understand the mechanics, the basic level mechanics of how HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world, what are you panicking for? If you're meant to die, you're meant to die. You think being worried is going to help you? On the other hand, the goyim don't have such a thing. They don't have such a thing. Why? Because they're all panicking. and they're panicking in such a way that they're literally shutting down commerce. They're shutting down the business world. And there are entire industries that are being shut down right now, whether it's the restaurants, bars, all types of theaters, which, Baruch Hashem, these places should be shut down permanently, many of them, because they're full of znut and garbage, all types of immorality and so on. But the point is that on the business sense,

9:04For a restaurant to survive is a miracle. I was in New York, I spoke to a guy, there was a restaurant here. a few restaurants made, uh, uh, lots of successes and failures in the restaurant business, and he told me, in New York, there are literally more restaurants. In New York City, there are more restaurants in New York than if you went for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to a different restaurant every single day for an entire year, you still wouldn't go to all the restaurants. That's how many restaurants there are. Now, the problem is that most restaurants don't survive their first year. The first year in business, most restaurants don't survive. They go out of business. That's why real estate companies, companies that own buildings, consider restaurants the worst tenants in the world. They never want restaurants. why? Because very likely that whatever lease you sign—five years, ten years, twenty years—most likely you're not going to survive the lease, which means that the landlord is stuck with an absent tenant. Sometimes they don't pay the last several months and so on and so forth. It's a really, really bad tenant. The best tenants are usually banks, but the point is that for a restaurant, a restaurant is like a blue-collar worker.

10:23if he doesn't make money this month, most likely he's going to have to declare bankruptcy. Why? Because people live above their means and they don't have much savings. At best, they have, let's say, one, two, or three months max saved, and that's it. Then they have no resources and start going to family, friends, and so on to borrow some money. Restaurants are even worse. restaurants literally live by the day sometimes, even if they're big famous restaurants that are making, you know, tens, twenties, or hundreds of thousands of dollars by the week. It doesn't make a difference; the expenses are very, very high, and the reality is that these restaurants depend on specific days of the week and so on. So for a restaurant to simply shut down for a month, it's not like a regular business. If you're, let's say, you're You're selling cars, or you're selling houses, or you're selling software, and you close down for a month. Usually, it's a very different type of business. The same thing goes with a lot of these industries in America. A lot of these mom-and-pop shops, small businesses, whether it's a small pharmacy store or it's a store that sells all types of other tchotchkes. These businesses cannot survive not being in business.

11:41Because nobody prepares for a complete shutdown in 24 hours. So, what's happening right now, Rabotai HaYekarim, is an effect on the economy that is going to be impossible to fix. All you can do is hope that more survive than not. More survive than not. Because simply, the longer... they keep corporate America and the world on shutdown, the bigger the impact is going to be, and the more difficult it's going to be to fix without some type of major, unusual, once-in-a-lifetime government intervention, where pretty much the government starts writing checks to businesses—big checks—which is not happening. know somebody said yesterday, I think it was, uh, uh, listen, uh, you know they're considering giving an economic stimulus in America. Trump is gonna give every family a thousand dollars. Now, this may sound like, wow, great, yeah, I want a thousand bucks, I want a thousand bucks, yeah, sure. A thousand dollars, we can do a thousand dollars. Can't pay rent with a thousand dollars today. Rent you can't pay with a thousand dollars. What are you gonna do with a thousand dollars?

12:56Survives on a thousand dollars in America? Almost nobody. The reality is that there's a very, very small minority of people that survive on such a little amount of money. The vast majority of people are living at a much, much higher level than that. They have rental or mortgage payments that are fifteen hundred, twenty-five hundred, three thousand dollars a month, four thousand dollars a month. A thousand dollars is maybe their weekly shopping for food. And that's a reality, which means that even though it sounds like a big number, $1,000 times 400 million people, ooh, wow, that's a lot of money, they're not gonna do it anyway. But the point is, let's say they do it, it's not gonna do anything anyway. It's just a complete waste of money. Complete waste of money. It would have to be tens of thousands of dollars, which is not possible. So, the longer people don't go to work, the more the damage is going to be for corporate America, for the average Joe, and even eventually for the big companies. Because the big companies need the average Joes. The vast majority of the money that's made by corporate America is made by average people, not by multimillionaires. People think that multimillionaires are the best customers. They're usually not, actually.

14:14It's the guys, the average people, that barely make a living, who are the best shoppers. So now that they're shutting down corporate America, this obviously had an initial shock on the stock market. The market has already dropped 30% since we've spoken about it. The market is going to drop. It's already dropped 30%. Baruch Hashem, one of my students actually smart enough not only to listen to the Torah but also to listen to the business advice we gave indirectly, and he sold out his retirement account. Now, he told me that—I don't know where people buy or sell, I don't know what people do with their personal lives—but he told me, "Listen, you just gave me a ton of money." So there was a day last week the market dropped almost 15 percent in one day. So when you have half a million, a million, two million dollars in the stock market and you just saved yourself 30 percent, you're talking about big money. talking about huge money. So anyone that has a portfolio today that could reverse time and could have sold a month ago would be happier than anything in the world. Why? Because right now it's more difficult to sell. Why? Because you still have maybe a little bit of profits if you invested a few years ago, and you don't really want to sell because you think it's going to rebound, and that's what happens. That's the monster. Now, for anyone that wants to know, I'm not going to talk necessarily so much about the stock market, but I'll tell you this in short.

15:40If the government reaction continues the way it is right now, which it looks like it will, and the measures that they're taking are going to continue being what they are or worse, where they're simply going to continue putting curfews in different neighborhoods, shutting down certain industries, certain streets in hopes that this thing goes away in a month or two months or three months or whatever it is, then what you've seen in the economy, in the market in the last month is a little pussycat in comparison to what's coming in the next couple of months. You're going to see the market drop to levels we haven't seen in decades. And there are a few reasons for it. Number one, as soon as people realize there's no light at the end of the tunnel, they're gonna expect earnings reports in about a month from now. Companies are gonna have to report their earnings, but during earnings, no one really cares about what happened in the last three months. Everyone's gonna care about what's gonna happen in the next three months. And if nobody knows when business is gonna go back to normal, that means that the projections of every single company are gonna be 50, 60, 70% less than what they were expecting to start off this year. So you're talking about a market plummeting to levels that we haven't seen in decades. Worse yet,

17:00Worse yet, there are, as I told you briefly, hidden monsters within the market and the way it's structured today. One of them is called ETFs, exchange-traded funds. Now, these ETFs make the market too liquid, overly liquid, to the extent where people can buy and sell baskets of stocks intraday. The problem is that many of these ETFs have something called illiquid assets. They have all types of bonds and debt vehicles where they buy them with the expectation of holding on to them for years, because you can't sell these things easily. Now, the owners of these ETFs have no idea this is actually happening. They have no idea that these things are illiquid. Why? Because they can buy and sell their stock. But that means that once these people want to start getting out of the market, they're going to start selling these ETFs. These ETF companies are going to have to liquidate these illiquid assets at sellout prices. Meaning if it's priced at 100, they're going to have to sell it at 20. Because it's illiquid, it's hard to sell anyway. Which means you're going to see certain things drop 60, 70, 80% in one trade.

18:24Now, I told somebody who knows a little bit about the market that I believe the market can drop 50% in a week. That was a month ago. I wasn't so off. It took a little longer than a week. But the way things look, it could happen tomorrow. But that's, again, assuming the government continues doing the foolish things that they're doing right now. Now you're going to say, wait a minute, hold on a second. All these other rabbis, all these communities, they're all worried. What, what do you think, we should all go outside? I'm not necessarily against it. And I'll tell you why. You see, the Ramban writes here, in the Iggeret HaRamban, of course we have to connect to the Shechinah. What do you guys think, I'm going to give you an economy session? The Ramban says here in the Iggeret HaRamban, over 800 years ago, And a letter that you could evaluate, study this letter from here until the end of the world and you won't finish. The way that the Rishonim, the sages of 800 years ago, the way they thought was something that is beyond human if you compare it to anyone today. Anyone that studied the Rishonim, which is Rambam, Rashi, Ramban, and so on, versus the Acharonim.

19:45Let's say the Gaon of Vilna or Rav Ovadia was, let's say, the last of the Acharonim. Now, anyone that studied the two, you will see that the language that the Rishonim used was much clearer than the language that the most recent sages used. Meaning, for the Rambam to say his thought, what the halacha is and why, took one, two, three sentences. whereas the sages of now in the previous, let's say, 100-200 years, to say the same thought could have taken them a whole book—500, a thousand pages. The same thought to explain what the Rambam wrote 800 years ago would take a whole book, two books, three books. Someone asked, how come the Rishonim... just give you the whole idea in a few sentences, but to actually understand it today, it takes a whole book, two books, three books, sometimes a whole library. What is this like? This is like comparing the Five Books of Moses versus the Prophets—Isaiah, all of these Prophets that we have. After you see what Moshe wrote, you can understand what's going on relatively easily. You...

21:00with an English translation, with a Hebrew if you understand, or any other language, you can pretty much understand at least the basics of what's going on—not necessarily the hidden details in it, but the basics of what's going on—you can understand by simply reading the peshat, the basic meaning of the Five Books of Moses. But if you go to the Prophets, you go to Isaiah, you go to Zechariah, you have no idea what's going on. Everything is in parables and analogies, sophisticated language, which is, by the way, a very interesting side note on this. The Christians that fight the Torah always fight the Oral Torah. They always fight the Oral Torah. They don't fight the Written Torah. They say the Five Books of Moses and Tanakh are all good. But the Written Torah is considered the Five Books of Moses. The Christians consider the rest of it also part of the Written Torah. And they say it's all valid.

22:04The problem for them is that they're so foolish that they don't realize that they're contradicting themselves with this. And the reason why is because the original Christians believed in the Oral Torah. The Christians from 2,000 years ago believed in the Oral Torah. The Christians from even 800 years ago, at the time of the Ramban, had the whole debate in Barcelona. What was the whole argument? The whole argument was that this kofer, who was originally a Jew but became a Christian, was trying to prove that Yeshu actually is in the written Torah and is part of the Oral Torah. He tried to prove Yeshu through the Oral Torah, not the written Torah. So only the Christians of today say that the Oral Torah is not valid. What's the problem? Why did the original ones not do this? Because the original ones were much smarter than the ones of today. Why? They understood that without the Oral Torah, it's not just that there's no Judaism. Without the Oral Torah, there's no Christianity either.

23:15And the reason why is because the Oral Torah is the one, the sages of the Oral Torah are the ones that decided and decreed that the rest of the Tanakh, meaning all of the other 19 books, aside from the 5 Books of Moses, are holy. Meaning, originally it was just the 5 Books of Moses. But then there were the prophets, but they weren't part of the Five Books of Moses. The sages of the Gemara decided that these are also holy and these are all written with divine intervention and so on. Now, why is this critical for the Christians? Because all of their so-called proofs for Yoshke come from where? From the prophets. they're referring to it every time they mention something to somebody to recruit them for their Christianity idol worship, where they're saying, "Look at Isaiah 53, look at Daniel 9." They're relying on the prophets, but who gave the prophets their validity? We had 1.2 million prophets throughout history.

24:20But only 55 of them are mentioned in the Tanach, which means that everything that they wrote is for all generations. Hence, meaning that the five books of Moses, as well as the other 19 books, the prophets, are divine. So without the Oral Torah saying this, in the Gemara Masechet Megillah and other places, you can't use Yeshayahu as a source for anything. You can't use Zechariah or Mishlei or Kohelet or anything else. But that's what happens when you don't learn Torah, and people don't know anything, so they end up debating with these fools that don't have a debate. Now, The key is to understand that our Torah has everything in it, including the coronavirus, including what's happening in the market, including what's going to happen at the end of days, and including what's happened before and what's going to happen after. Our holy Torah tells us that when you have people who have emunah in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, they have nothing to worry about.

25:27Someone who has confidence in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, not only will kindness surround him. Now, when the Rambam, the Ramban, Rashi, and other sages delivered these messages, explained these messages, it was very simple for them to understand the halakha from it and the law from these statements that are in the Torah. When Moshe Rabbeinu said it to Am Yisrael, it was very easy, very clear. Prophets, different. Why? The level of prophecy was different. What's the difference between the Rishonim and today's sages, or the sages of the last couple of hundred years? One chacham said it best. He said, when someone is walking in darkness, looking for a light switch, what does he do? He tries to touch everything. Why? He doesn't know where everything is. He doesn't know. It's dark. He doesn't know where anything is. So he just tries to touch everything—the wall, this, that, the ceiling—just to find a switch. When someone walks and the light's already on, and he wants to turn it off, he just goes directly to it. That's the difference. The difference between Moshe Rabbeinu versus the rest of the prophets is for Moshe Rabbeinu, the light was on.

26:48not that the other prophets were not good or anything like that, but in comparison, there's no comparison. It's similar to comparing the sages of 900 years ago versus the rabbis of 200 years ago, needless to say, the rabbis of today, no matter how great they are. So, the Ramban, when he wrote this, wasn't suggesting it. was simply telling you that this is a law of life according to the Torah, and in this letter from 800 years ago, he told us about staying away from anger, staying away from ego, and controlling your behavior. But now he tells us even more. He says something that sounds simple; he says something that sounds to the average person like, "What's the big deal?" But when you study the words, you'll understand. The Ramban writes, "Ponder your words before you utter them. Think about what you're going to say before you say it. Surely you've heard this before from your teachers, from your parents, from your spouse, from associates, and so on. But they were telling you as maybe a one-time suggestion because maybe you said something off."

28:13The Ramban is telling you, this is, if you want Gan Eden, this has to be all the time. Before you say anything, think about it first. What impact is what you're going to say going to have on the other party, on yourself, on the other people listening? Don't just speak out with emotions of anger, sadness, or excitement. Think about what you're going to say. Why? It's going to carry a lot of weight. In fact, not only think about what you're going to say, but think about whether you should even say anything at all. Now, the truth is that when you look at this, it sounds like it's not such a big deal. Truth is that when you look at this, it sounds like it's not such a big deal. But then you go and you see, what did the Rambam base this on? What kind of knowledge did he base this on? What did he base it on? If you look at Proverbs, chapter 18, verse number 21.

29:37Shlomo HaMelech says, "Life and death are in the power of the tongue." This means literally what you say can determine whether you're going to live or die. Now, sometimes you say, "Wait a minute, what am I just saying? I'm just telling her I don't want this food. I'm just telling her I don't want this. I'm just telling her I want this. I'm just telling her this." People think, "I'm just." Everything is, "I'm just," until they realize it's usually not, "I'm just." Because to you, you were just doing whatever it is. You were saying just whatever it is. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu didn't take it that way. You may treat it that way. HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't treat it that way. And... tells us that there is a lot more to speech than we know. First and foremost, the Sefer Doresh Tov by Rabbi Ephraim, our own dear Rabbi Ephraim Kahlon, brings in Parashat Beshalach, brings a few,

30:59Key items a person needs to know about speech. Gemara in Masechet Yoma, page 19b, Amar Rava: "Ha'sach sichat chulin over be'aseh shenemar 've'dibarta bam'—bam, and not in other things." Uh, Rava, one of the greatest sages that ever lived—you'll see him mentioned on almost every page of Gemara—says the following: He says someone who speaks mundane talk, unnecessary talk, not, "Oh, listen, I want to eat something; you want to eat something? Okay, let's get something—that's fine, you need to eat, no problem." Or, "You want to buy this, I want to sell this"—that's business talk, you need to talk business. we're not talking about that. Or sometimes your wife or your husband needs a little extra attention, so you have a little conversation with them. That's fine too. Or your kids need a little attention, they need some love, you need to talk to them, make them laugh a little bit. No, that's okay too.

32:03We're talking about simply nonsense. Nothing. Just have nothing to do. You go to a coffee shop and just shmooze. You just want to talk about sports. You want to talk about the stock market. You want to talk about coronavirus. You want to talk about toilet paper. All types of things that have no purpose whatsoever. They serve no purpose in the world. The conversation serves no purpose. The words serve no purpose whatsoever. Which all of us are guilty of. You want to do that. Rav says it's a sin. It's not only a bad idea; it's a sin from the Torah. Why is it a sin from the Torah? It says in the Pesukim that we say every single day as Jews. When you say Shema Yisrael: Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad. Right? After that, you read a few paragraphs. Now, in those paragraphs, it says that you have to teach your children Torah and you have to speak these words: v'dibarta bam.

33:03So Rava says from these specific two words, we learn one of the 613 commandments. What? V'dibarta bam, bam ve'lo b'dvarim acherim. "Bam" is referring to divrei Torah. These words that we're referring to, that you're supposed to be speaking, have to either have a classification of being Torah or something that's necessary for life. That's what you're allowed to talk about. business, marriage, children, education, no problem. Torah, obviously. Everything else, you're doing it, sin. Already, 90% of most of our speeches are gone. Most of our conversations with people, people talk to people, but absolutely nothing. Now, the danger here is not just what happens, let's say, after a person, after 120 years or after coronavirus, whatever it is, gets up to Shamayim. It's not just that. You see, Rabbi Ephraim continues, and he brings something from the Maharal, Rabbi Chaim Vital in Sefer...

34:03danger here is not just what happens, let's say, after a person, after 120 years or after coronavirus, whatever it is, gets up to Shamayim. It's not just that. You see, Rabbi Ephraim continues, and he brings something from the Maharal, Rabbi Chaim Vital in Sefer This is actually worded by the Chida, who brings Rabbi Chaim Vital in Sefer Nachal Kedumim, Parashat Chukat, Ot Bet. And he says, the speaking is part of the soul. Your ability to speak is one of the unique things that makes you a human being versus an animal. And it's a key part that you have in your neshama that doesn't exist in other creatures. And every bit of speech takes away a piece of the neshama. Meaning, the Chida says, what's Rabbi Chaim trying to tell us here? Someone that speaks a lot of nonsense is simply cutting the years out of his life. Hashem yishmor. And the Kuntres, Mitzahav Mipaz, the Marhu says even more. He says that kol adam...

35:25Meaning, the Hida says, what's Rabbi Chaim trying to tell us here? Someone that speaks a lot of nonsense is simply cutting the years out of his life. Hashem yishmor. And in the Kuntres, Mitzahav Mipaz, the Maharhu says even more. He says that kol adam, every person has a certain amount of words that are in his "bank," if you will, and there's a great danger—yes, there's a very big danger—that he'll overuse, you know, that he'll spend too much of his speech because if he speaks or she speaks too much, she could simply cut her own life short. She could bring death early to herself, more than what she was supposed to. Even though Hashem, let's say for example, decided to give her a hundred years in this world, but she likes to, you know, talk about all types of nothings.

36:33coffee with this one, coffee with that one, tea with this one, oh, you didn't have tea? Let's have another tea and let's go to the mall and let's go to the shop and let's talk about this and we'll talk about Corona, we'll talk about Verona, we'll talk, we'll talk, we'll talk, we'll talk, we'll talk so much she dies at 60. Yeah, but she was supposed to live to 100. Hashem, yes, she was. Well, it's not my fault that she, uh, she spent 100 years with more than 60 years. She lived over budget now. Shlomo HaMelech says, the source that the Maharhu, Rabbi Chaim Vital, uses—where did he get this from? He says, in Song of Songs, chapter 5, verse number 6, Shlomo HaMelech says, "My soul departed at His decree." The second that he heard Hashem's words, His decrees, his soul almost came out. And the Maharhu says, this is the hint, this is where we learn the secret. We learn the secret that a person's life is in his Devarim, in his words. Every word that comes out of his mouth. Now, what about if it's Divrei Torah? Divrei Torah, you could speak from here until the end of the millennia. Why? Because that adds to your Neshamah.

38:00But the whole mundane talk that's not necessary is problematic. This connects to the coronavirus in a moment, you'll see. Now, Rabbi Ephraim continues, and he says here, we see from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 57, verse 19, that Hashem says, "I create the speech of the lips." Now, Neve is where the word Nevuah, prophecy, or prophets, Nevi'im, come from the word Neve. Neve is to speak. That's why speakers that speak the truth are also considered prophets, in essence. Even though there's no prophecy, no one is talking to Hashem and Hashem talking to him back, like the times of Moshe Rabbeinu, or the other prophets from 2500 years ago, but when you speak Divrei Emet, it's like being a prophet. So, who says, "I created the speech of his lips." God is the one that created, and here is where Hashem tells us that at the moment that He created Adam, He already put His own life in his lips, meaning the speech that came out of his mouth was connected to his life. And also, you'll notice that the word Neve...

39:27Niv itself is three letters: Nun, Yud, Bet, which also matches what Shlomo HaMelech says. Nun stands for Nafshi, Yud is Yatza, and Bet is Bedavro, which means Niv is connected to the speech being connected to life itself. So, here, We see that a person has to think twice before they say things, has to think a thousand times before they say things. Unfortunately, this is simply not happening right now. Every few minutes, there's a new video by some other yo-yo coming out, telling people about what his feelings are or her feelings are about what's happening in the world today, either on television or on other forms of media, these WhatsApps and Facebooks, and so on. In essence, just creating more havoc than necessary.

40:31Now, if the goyim come out with speeches, whether it's Donald Trump or his associates or some newscaster from CNN or Fox or any of these media, that's in essence their life. If they don't speak, they're in essence considered dead anyway. Because these people, you know, they live to speak. They just like to hear themselves talk. Whether it's a lie or true is irrelevant. They just need to talk. They need to hear themselves talk, and the world needs to hear them talk also because the world doesn't know what else to do. They don't have a Torah. That's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the disappointment, the awful, awful disappointment in the Jewish world. And specifically the religious Jewish world. Where you have simply the leaders of today acting worse than many of the followers. Panicking in such dramatic ways as if we do not have a God. You have these rabbis that are either giving speeches or they're writing these letters telling the people, "Oh no, this is horrible, it's the end! We have to all stay home. Okay, take care of your life." One guy sent a message, I don't think he's a rabbi, but he sent the message which went, you know, of course the yetzer hara makes sure these things go viral. The stupidity of the message, surely it's going to go viral. This guy started crying. ...have these rabbis that are either giving speeches or writing these letters telling the people, "Oh no, this is horrible, it's the end! We have to all stay home. Okay, take care of your life." One guy sent a message—I don't think he's a rabbi—but he sent the message which went, you know, of course the yetzer hara makes sure these things go viral. The stupidity of the message, surely it's going to go viral. This guy started crying...

41:59Religious guy, religious Jewish guy, started crying on the video. Please, stay home, stay home. Where is Hashem? Where is Hashem in your life? Where is Hashem in your life? Where is Hashem? Where does this panic come from? Where in the Torah does it tell you that you're allowed to panic like this? Worse yet, send people. You want to panic yourself, you want to smash your head against the wall 500 times until corona comes or your head explodes? Go ahead, do whatever you want, it's your life. But once you go public, you cannot give such a message to the public, creating panic in people suffering for no reason. The guy starts crying. All the people, all types of things, oh, we're closing down the community, there's no shul, there's no prayer, there's nothing. Hashem Yishmor, we have sinned for such leaders.

43:01What do you think is going to save us? The medicine? Or maybe it's Dani from the White House. What do you think is going to save us? You think medicine is going to save us? Logistically speaking, it's impossible anyway. Even if all of us just stop the shiur right now, chas v'shalom, and we decide we're all scientists. We'll get some medical supplies and some type of stuff from CVS. Maybe it's still open. Make some stuff together. Okay, we got a new medicine. we're gonna bring it to the government because Sonny's a genius. I'm sure he can figure out a medicine. Joshua is creative; he'll come up with something. Medicine looks pretty cool also, and next thing you know, we have medicine, maybe with some music to it also. Next thing you know, we got a medicine. Now we bring it to the White House. Mr. Trump and associates, we got ourselves a medicine. Now, let's say we have a medicine, right? Ah, we got the cure. Guess what? You have to try it out. The trial takes three to six months. you think he's going to prove it because Sonny said it's good. Don't trust Sonny, even though Sonny's a good-looking guy. He's going to finish the entire shot soon, but the reality is they still can't trust his word. Why? There are billions of people that are waiting for this. H can send it to the market minimum. If you stop all commerce, it's going to take three to six months to test this thing.

44:18now, after three to six months, let's say we discovered it, this is it, we're all gonna be billionaires. Let's say, okay, oh, they're probably not gonna pay us anyway, but anyway, let's say we got it, we got the medicine six months into it, right? Guess what? You gotta produce this stuff. Mass production takes a long time. We're not talking about producing a million vials of it, we're talking about billions. Just to hit the local American market is going to take no less than a year and a half. And that's just America. Forget the rest of the world. Forget medicine. Only HaKadosh Baruch Hu can take us out of this dump that we're in. For people to act crazy like they are right now is not helping either though. Now the question is, do we really need medicine? Which we're going to get to in a moment. If everyone is dying on the streets like the videos, then the guy should be crying. I should be crying with him. You guys should be crying. If he thought about what he said, and the other yo-yos that come up with all types of nonsense thought about what they said,

45:42Then we should all be crying. One foolish woman came out and said, "Hey, listen, my friend that works for Donald Trump, he said that starting tomorrow it's gonna be a national shutdown. Everyone is locked in their houses." First of all, listen, I'm gonna tell you a little secret. I, my whole life in the business world, almost two decades, dealt with some of the richest people in the world. And I know one rule: Anyone that drops names is a liar. People that know people don't drop names. They don't say, "I know such and such that works for Donald Trump." People that actually know people don't tell people they know people. Anytime you hear a speech where someone says, "Oh yeah, yeah, I'm friends with Donald Trump. Yeah, yeah, I got a relationship at the White House. Yeah, my friend's an FBI agent. Oh, my friend is the mayor over here," that person's a liar, and everything else that he says is unreliable. Why? Because he's trying to impress you too much.

46:47Now, this woman was trying to impress the world with her scary message. Why did she want to tell everybody to pretty much just go crazy, go insane? After we watched the other message of the guy crying, now she's "helping" us by telling us that tomorrow it's going to be a concentration camp because she has a friend that works for Donald Trump. Life doesn't work that way. Life doesn't work that way. People who drop names are liars; never believe them. The funny thing is, the guy she apparently knows actually made another recording a little while later, saying, "By the way, I'm the guy she talked about. I don't work for Donald Trump." Meaning, not only is she an idiot for making this message, but she's a liar too. And the internet is full of these things. Full of them. Other people are making all types of holograms on the back screens, like sometimes we make in our own movies.

47:49You know, a bunch of Chinese people sitting over there saying, "Wow, wow, wow." They may be looking at a whale jumping, but the CGI in the background makes it look like there are angels in the clouds and all types of scary creatures. Anyone who believes this stuff should put himself in a mental institution. And then there's just people that believe, and they start doing a voiceover. Oh, guys, this is live. I'm telling you, look, they can't fake it. There's 400 people watching. It must be real. And people buy into this shtuyot. Where is your God? Where is your God? Anyone that knows about HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows all of this stuff is nonsense. It's not in the power of Donald Trump or the people that work for him, or the people that think they work for him, or the people that know the people that may or may not work for him. Only HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the one that runs the world. No one else. He does not need our help. Don't listen to fools like Manis Friedman who says God needs us. God does not need us.

49:06So now the question is, should we be scared? The answer is yes and no. Yes, we should be scared, but not from Corona. We have the right amount of fear, but we're worried about the wrong thing. Why? If HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the one that brought us this coronavirus, which surely He is, just like He brought everything else before and He will bring everything after, including the Mashiach, then surely He has a plan. And the plan, Rabotai, is to cause Am Yisrael to do Teshuva. Our sages teach us that nothing in the world happens without it being connected to Am Yisrael. Whether it's a tsunami in India, an earthquake in Japan, or a scary virus with no cure all over the world, it's all for the sake of Am Yisrael. So, just like all of the prophets gave us a message to do Teshuva, in essence, that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu is doing. But at the same token, we're all scared like it's the end of the world. Why are we all scared like it's the end of the world? Two reasons.

50:25Number one, it's a curse in the Torah. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that when we do not do what He commands us to do, instead of keeping Shabbat, we drive on Shabbat. Instead of keeping kashrut, we go eat anywhere, whether it has or it doesn't have kashrut. Instead of having a kosher bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, or wedding, we have these mixed dancing parties that are not only a gilui arayot fest, but also a chilul Hashem, because sometimes you'll see some religious people attending these places. Instead of learning Torah, we learn the salary cap of every sports team in the NBA, NFL, and MLB. We know how much Messi makes every single year and how many goals he scored last year. But what Rava is and who he is, we have no idea. We just heard the name one time in a lecture. So part of the reason is, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives us this because we don't listen to His commandments. It's a curse in the Torah. Parashat Bechukotai, Parashat Ki Tavo, specifically says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I'm going to scare you and you're going to be scared of nothing.

51:41Now, how do we know this is nothing? Because of Hasdei Hashem, because of the kindness of Hashem. Now, for me to just tell you guys this is the kindness of Hashem, that coronavirus is actually a kindness from Hashem, is not enough for you. How do I know people want sources? 500 times a day people ask me, "Can you mention this in a lecture? Can you give me a source?" Can you give me a source? Can you give me a source? Well, it's not enough that I said it. You have to have a source? No problem. I told you guys to get a source, so I'll give you a source. I'm not going to come unprepared for you guys. Now, there are sources that HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves us. But that, you don't need me to give you sources. Almost every lecture by every rabbi is about how much HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves us. I'm going to give you some sources from the world we've lived in. Now, epidemics, pandemics, viruses, and so on have been around since the beginning. have been around since the beginning. Now, we have to compare where we're at versus what's already happened. The cholera outbreak, which also happened in the time of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, and also the Chazon Ish.

53:05killed a million people. A million people died from cholera. The Spanish flu, about 100 years ago, killed 50 million people. 50 million. At that time, there were about 2 billion people in the world. Today, there are 8 billion. So, 50 million is a decent number. It's 2.5% of the population. Today, it's not even 1%. 500 years ago, there was something called smallpox, which killed 56 million people. There was also a plague called the Justinian, 1500 years ago, estimated to have killed about 50 million people. The Hong Kong flu, 50 years ago, caused a million deaths. The Asian flu, 70 years ago, resulted in 1.1 million deaths. The Russian flu caused 1 million deaths. The Spanish flu led to 40 to 50 million deaths.

54:07AIDS, HIV, which is still ongoing to this day because of homosexuality and promiscuity, to date has killed about 35 million people, which is approximately half of the people who have it. Most people think that everyone who has HIV dies instantly. It's not true. People live with HIV; many of them, half of them, live. Obviously, their life has to be adjusted, but nonetheless, they live. One perfect example is this guy, Irvin, what is it, Magic Johnson, the basketball player. He was with a prostitute, ruined his life, ruined his career, ruined his marriage, but nonetheless, he's still alive 30 years later. Became a multi-billionaire, owns all types of restaurants, and so on. But the point is, he's still alive with the virus. Now, the worst one that we have on record is the Black Plague. Seven hundred years ago, 200 million people died. So I'm not mentioning to you all the plagues that have happened; obviously, that would take pretty much a whole hour. But the point is, I'm mentioning the biggest ones that I have in front of me here. The ones that you've heard of, like AIDS, where 35 million people died.

55:31Okay, Black Plague, maybe you heard about it in history class. 200 million people died. That's a lot of people who died, not just got the virus, but died. It's not like today where there's a website that I follow that has the exact, you know... hour-to-hour statistics, maybe even more, of what's reported. How many people got this coronavirus and how many people died. The last I checked it, which was right before I left the house, less than 200,000 people in the world of 8 billion people got the virus. are confirmed cases that have the virus, not died. 200,000 people got the virus, confirmed cases. Okay, out of the 200,000 people, only 7,000 people actually died. Now, with all due respect and sadness for the families that lost their loved ones...

56:39The reality is 7,000 people versus 200,000. What's the panic? Now, if that's not enough, we have to also know a little bit of numbers about, statistics about the world we live in, because everybody lives apparently in La La Land, where they think no one dies. Right now, according to a study that was done in 2017, so it's not too old, 57 million people die every single year. From all types of things. Viruses, car accidents, natural death. numbers about statistics in the world we live in, because apparently, everybody lives in La La Land, where they think no one dies. Right now, according to a study done in 2017, so it's not too old, 57 million people die every single year. From all types of things: viruses, car accidents, natural death. 57 million people. You're talking about a couple of hundred thousand people dying every single day just because Hashem said it's finished. Done. Everyone is buying enough toilet paper to build buildings. They're killing each other over a piece of meat.

57:56And they're simply crying out to each other as if it's the end of the world because 7,000 people died and 200,000 people got infected, of which almost half are cured already. Over 80,000 people are cured. Now... You have to understand, when you have a world of 8 billion people, of which 57 million people die, not everyone dies of a virus. Some people die from things that we would deem unusual. Like, for example, if someone fell and broke their hip and they're young, usually it's okay. But if they're over 50 years old, according to research, they have a 33% chance of dying within a year. from what? Falling and breaking their hip. Not a virus, not a car accident. Just breaking their hip. And if they're older than 50 years old, they have now a 33% chance of dying within a year. There are 300,000 cases of broken hip in America alone every year, meaning 100,000 people potentially will die every year from breaking their hip. Now, this is not to cool people off in a sense and to just go out there in the uh in the open and just start hugging everyone.

59:18cases of broken hip in America alone every year, meaning 100,000 people potentially will die every year from breaking their hip. Now, this is not to cool people off in a sense and to just go out there in the open and just start hugging everyone. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is get yourself under control and understand the message and stop acting like a goy that has no God. Understand that HaKadosh Baruch Hu brought this specific plague to the world for a reason. It's not for us to buy toilet paper. It's not for us to just make videos of ourselves being hysterical. It's not for us to do nothing, play video games all day, or what the idiots in Italy are doing, which is they're giving the Italian people free subscriptions to pornography.

1:00:28Because they're stuck at home, this pornography company is giving everyone a free subscription. My prediction when I saw this was that a lot more people would die in Italy. So far, I'm alright. If that was a stock, I would have invested in it. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu hates it. Not just for the Jews, but also for the non-Jews. He hates wasting seed. He hates people who are promiscuous. He hates pornography. He hates immorality. Now, It's important for us to know that when the Goyim see a plague of such nature, they really don't have much to rely on because until now they relied on themselves. Last week's parasha, parashat Ki Tisa, had a Fantastic chiddush that I got from a friend of mine, talmid chacham Adam Sommer, Rabbi Adam Sommer from Eretz Yisrael. He gave me a fantastic chiddush. He says, look at last week's parasha. Pretty much last week was when everything hit the fan. Everybody started panicking to a higher extent. You saw the news said that the Pope was walking around the streets, roaming the streets and...

1:01:54you know, trying to bring hope to people, to something, praying, or whatever he was doing. He says that, look, in that same parasha, we had a haftarah. And the haftarah talked about Eliyahu Hanavi. Eliyahu Hanavi, Zachur L'tov, talks about how Eliyahu Hanavi spoke to Achav, the Rasha, who brought idolatry to the people of Israel because he was married to a Goya. His evil wife was a Goya. A Jewish king married to a Goya, Hashem yishmor. And after bringing famine to the world, Eliyahu Hanavi comes back and he says to the prophet Ovadia, who was working for Achav but secretly was a righteous person who was actually helping save many of the prophets because Achav and his wife Izevel were killing all the prophets that they could find. So Ovadia was a tzaddik that Hashem made into a prophet. He was hiding them in the caves, 50 per cave, hundreds of prophets, hiding them in order to save them from this rasha, from this king.

1:03:21And Eliyahu Hanavi comes to Ovadia and tells Ovadia, "Go tell Achav, that I'm here. Three years of famine, I'm here to meet. I know he wants to kill me. Tell him I'm here to meet and bring all of his false prophets—Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Pikachu, his friends. Bring everybody. Bring all your idol worship. Let's see, we're gonna do a showdown. They brought 450 prophets, 450 prophets they brought. and now all of Am Yisrael is looking, what's gonna be? Eliyahu HaNavi says, you bring a sacrifice to your god. I'll bring a sacrifice to the God of Yisrael, to our God. No fire of your own. You pray, you do whatever you need to do. If a fire consumes your sacrifice, then your god is the real God. So they start in the morning,

1:04:34all the way to the afternoon hours. Hours and hours of time pass. No fire, no bupkis. Yeshu's not coming, Mohammed's not coming, Mustafa's not coming, Peter and Paul and James and I and Buddha. No one's coming. Even Pikachu took a day off. No one's coming now. says, "Maybe, uh, you have to speak a little louder. Maybe your god is, uh, busy talking to somebody else. Maybe you can speak a little louder. Well, maybe he's sleeping. Maybe your god's sleeping, so wake him up. Maybe, maybe he's tired." He starts messing with them. Why? It's a mitzvah to make fun of avodah zarah, to make fun of idol worship. After all of this is done, everyone is losing their patience because they've been waiting for hours and nothing's happening. Eliyahu HaNavi starts telling the people to take buckets of water and start pouring it on the sacrifice. Meaning, make it less flammable. Put buckets of water on this korban. Go ahead, more water, more water.

1:05:56And then he starts praying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu at the time of Mincha, which is the reason why we learn that Mincha is the most critical prayer of the day. Even though Shacharit, the morning prayer, is the longest, Mincha is the most critical prayer of the day. And Eliyahu HaNavi brings the sacrifice and starts praying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Vayigash Eliyahu HaNavi vayomar, "Adonai Elohei Avraham, Yitzchak v'Yisrael, hayom yivada ki ata Elohim b'Yisrael v'ani avdecha uv'dvarecha asiti et kol ha'devarim ha'eleh. Aneni, Adonai, aneni v'yedu ha'am hazeh ki ata Adonai ha'Elohim v'ata hesibota et libam acharonit." Eliyahu HaNavi, the prophet says, "Hashem, God of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yisrael, today it will become known that you are God with Yisrael and I am your servant, and at your word have I done all of these things. Answer me, Hashem, answer me. And let these people know that you are Hashem, the God, and you will turn their heart back."

1:07:15V'tipol esh Hashem v'tochal et ha'olah et ha'etzim v'et ha'avanim v'et ha'afar v'et ha'mayim asher ba't'alah lachcha. Vayar kol ha'am v'yiplu al p'neihem v'yomru Hashem hu ha'Elohim Hashem hu ha'Elohim. A fire of Hashem descended and consumed the olah offering, the wood, the stones, the earth, and it licked the water in the trench. The entire people saw and fell on their faces and said, "Hashem, He is the God. Hashem, He is the God." We see, Rabotai Yekarim, that here HaKadosh Baruch Hu sometimes will put us up to the test. put us in a desperate situation where we have nothing to do, we have nothing to do but go to Him. And sometimes we think that we should go somewhere else, Christianity, Buddhism, stock market, business, all types of things that steer us away from Hashem.

1:08:30Which means that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has to raise the stakes, make the challenges even more difficult. And put us in a situation where we admit that He is the only God. He is the only God. That's Rabotai HaYekarim, what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants from us. He doesn't want us to send crying videos and fake news to each other to scare each other, just to stay in the house, or to close our synagogues, or to close the schools, or to act like crazy paranoid people. What HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants and expects from us is to admit that He is the only God, and He is the only God. Now, if that's not enough, my dear friend also said, look what else Eliyahu HaNavi said during this time. Look what else he says if you look at the book of Chronicles. In chapter 21, in verse number 12 it says, a letter came to him from Eliyahu. Meaning this whole story that we just talked about is about Eliyahu HaNavi.

1:09:37And Eliyahu HaNavi also had dealings with others, other kings, and other people that were wicked. At another time, Eliyahu HaNavi sent a letter saying, "Thus said Hashem, the God of your forefather David." He was talking to Yehoram, who wasn't doing good, wasn't doing good things at the time. Because you did not follow the ways of your father, Yehoshafat—this is actually his son—and the ways of Asa, king of Yehudah, who was the grandfather, but you followed the ways of the kings of Yisrael, and you caused Yehudah and the inhabitants of Yerushalayim to go astray, as the house of Achav caused people to go astray, and you even murdered your brothers, your father's household, who were superior to you. Behold, Hashem is inflicting a great plague upon your people, your sons, your wives, and your wealth. You will suffer many diseases and intestinal illness until your innards come out because of your illness, year after year. So here, Eliyahu HaNavi gives us a different message. He says when

1:10:57Hashem brings us a sign to do something, and we don't pay attention, Hashem has to make things worse. Now, sometimes the sign is a plague that scares the lights out of us, but in reality only kills 7,000 people. We're scared to death, but in reality, in the grand scheme of things, It's not killing more people than those who break their hip. On the other hand, Eliyahu HaNavi says, if you continue doing what you were doing to get yourself into this mess in the first place, things will get worse. I'll bring a different plague. I'll bring a plague that's going to destroy you. What kind of sin is this? He says if you lead people astray, if you cause people to sin, when you cause Am Yisrael to sin, HaKadosh Baruch Hu can't stand it. This is the reason why we speak out against wicked people who call themselves rabbis or such. We have to speak out because they're literally murdering people.

1:12:19Now, when HaKadosh Baruch Hu told Eliyahu what to say, He didn't tell him to sugarcoat it and He didn't tell him to exaggerate it. He told him that when someone leads other people astray, they're going to get a plague that's much, much worse than whatever damage they got until this point. Right now, as we speak, there is a virus much worse than Corona. In Brazil. You may have never heard of it, and most likely you haven't. And b'ezrat Hashem you won't, other than this you. But even worse than all of this, is what causes this virus. Because the same thing that caused the virus that we have today, is what causes the much worse virus.

1:13:21The Igeret HaGra, the Vilna Gaon, it's impossible for us to understand his wisdom. When Rav Zalman, who was one of the Gedolei HaDor, would study for really long hours, he was one time next to the Gaon MiVilna. And because he was so tired, in the middle of being there, he fell asleep a little bit. And he said he went down, and the Gaon put his hand under his head. And he slept for a few moments, but while he was sleeping, the Gaon said, "Right now I have the entire Torah in my hand." That's how much Torah Rabbenu Zalman had. But Rabbenu Zalman himself, When they asked him, "Oh, you know, Gaon Mivilna," he says, "What I achieved, what I achieved in my later years, at 70, 80 years old, the Gaon Mivilna already knew when he was 9. 9 years old." Meaning, the genius of the Gaon Mivilna is not something for us to comprehend. He was like a Navi. But,

1:14:46The greatest thing that you can see about the sages sometimes is how they communicated with their day-to-day stuff. Not just their books, but how they communicated their day-to-day. And one of the ways that we see it from the Gaon of Vilna's life is what he wrote to his wife when he was going to Eretz Yisrael. Now, there's a famous letter called the Iggeret HaGra. And in this letter, he gives his wife instructions on what to do while he's gone. I'm not going to read you the whole letter. I'm just going to read you something very interesting that he says. He says, I caution you to accustom yourself as much as possible to dwell alone, because the sin of the misuse of the tongue is the most severe. As our sages of blessed memory said in Tosefta Masechet Pe'ah, these are the things that man enjoys their fruits, and Lashon Hara is equivalent to all. And I don't have to elaborate on this, which is the most stringent of sins. the most severe, as our sages of blessed memory said in Tosefta Masechet Pe'ah, "These are the things that man enjoys their fruits, and Lashon Hara is equivalent to all." And I don't have to elaborate on this, which is the most stringent of sins. He says to her, "While I'm gone, don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. Don't even go to shul."

1:16:15why people, he later on says, don't go. Why? Over there, the people are just speaking, and if they're not speaking, they're just speaking mundane talk. People think that this is just as bad because every other lecture is about, "No, no, forget about it." He says even if you just waste your speech talking about nothing, that's also bad. If you're going to go to shul, you're going to go to kollel, you're going to go and just chit-chat, better you don't go. Better you don't go. All man's toil is for his mouth. He says that everything, just like Shlomo HaMelech and the Ramban say, that all of his, everything is in his mouth, everything relies on his mouth. He quotes the Kohelet, he quotes Ecclesiastes, chapter 6, verse 7. It says, our Sages of blessed memory said that all of man's mitzvot and teachings do not suffice to counterbalance what emerges from his mouth.

1:17:19meaning even if you keep Shabbat and you keep kosher and you keep Sukkot and you have a nice little sukkah with little bells on it and your Pesach matzah is the most kosher on the block and your tallit is the most beautiful, and you're keeping all the customs—great, that's all good. But if you're wasting your life talking about nothing It's not going to be enough to counterbalance. Your good is not going to be enough to counterbalance the bad of wasting your time, wasting your speech. Needless to say, if your speech is Lashon Hara, where you're saying bad stuff about people, which is Rechilut, or you're saying things that other people are not supposed to find out, because it's his private information, like saying, "Oh no, yeah, I think you should go to his house, I think he's pretty rich." Like telling somebody that someone else is rich is Lashon Hara. So, people who speak about others because they have nothing else to talk about don't realize that they're murdering themselves. Not only by wasting words but also by using speech that's illegal in the eyes of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And this is what he's writing to his wife. This is a regular letter, a handwritten letter.

1:18:38You know, when you write handwritten letters, you write a letter to your wife, you don't worry about spelling errors, and the things you're going to say, there's usually not that much thought in it. This is how we see the genius of the Gaon MiVilna and our sages, when their regular conversation is this. And he says to her the following: What is man's vocation in the world? Meaning, what's the point of a person in this life? He should make himself silent like a mute. And one must seal his lips closed as tight as two millstones. A person should get themselves used to speaking less. Unless you're saying Divrei Torah or things that are necessary for survival, whether it be business, marriage, or educating your kids, a person has to contain themselves. Why? That's what the Ramban is trying to tell us 800 years ago. Too much is on the line.

1:19:41Now, what does the Gaon say about what happens to such people if they ignore this? He says the entire heavenly judgment known as Kaf HaKela center is all centered around the breath cloud of meaningless words, and for each of those meaningless words, a person deserves to be slung from one end of the world to the other. You know, people always watch this. You did a shiur about Gehinnom; I'm not too sure about Kaf HaKela. We kind of did, but don't worry about Kaf HaKela so much. Why? If you're simply wasting your time talking about nothing, you're going to get to know it firsthand. You're not going to give a shiur; you're going to give us a shiur. That's, Rabotai, what the Ramban, what the Gemara, and what, needless to say, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is trying to tell us when it says,

1:20:48you spoke those words but not others. You spoke the words of Hashem and not words that are simply meaningless. Because when you speak meaningless words, you can get yourself in trouble by simply acting like a fool, crying on a video, or saying things that are a lie about your connection to Donald Trump, or simply just leading people astray by making them feel as if there's no God. Now, one thing you will notice though, is this: You spoke those words but not others. You spoke the words of Hashem and not words that are simply meaningless. Because when you speak meaningless words, you can get yourself in trouble by simply acting like a fool, crying on a video, or saying things that are a lie about your connection to Donald Trump, or simply just leading people astray by making them feel as if there's no God. When we speak hard words, we tell people about Chilul Shabbat. Someone that violates Shabbat on purpose, the Rambam says, is considered an idol worshiper. The whole issue of idolatry in the weeks today. The whole issue of these fake rabbis teaching things that are against the Torah. What do we have? 500,000 comments. "Oh, you're saying Lashon Hara." "Oh, you're fanatic." "Oh, it's too much." Right? When we speak hard words, we tell people about Chilul Shabbat. Someone that violates Shabbat on purpose, the Rambam says, is considered an idol worshiper. The whole issue of idolatry in the weeks today. The whole issue of these fake rabbis teaching things that are against the Torah. What do we have? 500,000 comments. "Oh, you're saying Lashon Hara." "Oh, you're fanatic." "Oh, it's too much." Right?

1:21:54But now, Corona arrives, and all of a sudden, they're fanatic. Stay at home. Don't move. Buy toilet paper. Stay in a room. Don't even touch each other. Don't look at each other. If you can smell each other, you can already do that. Why are you so fanatic? Why are you so fanatic? 7,000 people died out of 200,000. Out of 8 billion people in the world. Why are you so fanatic? You know why you're so fanatic? How come you're fanatic about this? You know why? Because you care about this. You care about your money, your house, your convenience, your this-world. Where was your fanaticism when you found out that almost 80% of Am Yisrael are mechalelim Shabbat? Where were your tears? Where were your tears when you heard that almost 95% of American Jews use money on Shabbat? Which means it includes some of the people who claim to keep Shabbat. Where was your fanaticism when you heard that almost 80% of Am Yisrael are marrying goyim in America? Where? Where was your fanaticism?

1:23:11Where was the fanaticism when I was crying tears of crocodile five years ago trying to warn people that Goldberg and Company was bringing an idol-worshipping missionary to the kehillah in Boca Raton? Where's your fanaticism? Where's the fanaticism when we cry every single day and we tell people to stop building buildings and having more campaigns to cure some horses? Let's try to cure Am Yisrael. Where's the fanaticism? You want to be fanatic about Corona? No problem. At least be as fanatic about Am Yisrael. At least be as fanatic about HaKadosh Baruch Hu. How come there's no fanaticism about the Chilul Hashem that's happening in the world right now? All of these so-called leaders telling people to just stay in the house as if there's no God.

1:24:16Everyone is so worried about their pocket, they forgot who gave them the money that's inside. How come you're so fanatic about Corona? How come you're not fanatic about your next-door neighbor that's Mechalel Shabbat? How come you're not fanatic about helping the poor people in your neighborhood? How come you're not fanatic about your cousin marrying a non-Jew? How come you're not fanatic about your entire class going against Hashem on a regular basis with their gay parades? How come you're not fanatic about all the Chilul Hashem that's happening in practically every shul where no one knows how to be quiet during the prayer? They go to the Beit Hashem, but they talk to each other about nonsense. How come you're not fanatic about that? Well, here's the hint. HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us a hint. He told us, when we say things that we're not supposed to, we get Tzara'at. That's what it says in the Torah.

1:25:30Why? The words that come out of our mouth, whether we like it or not, they affect other people. You tell other people something that this person doesn't want anyone to know about them, it's called Lashon Hara. You rip your friend in half by telling people, no, she's the worst person in the world, she's cheap, she's ugly, she's this, she's that. He cheats on his taxes, he cheats on his business, he does this. You tell people about this stuff? If it's not true, it's Rechilut. If it's true, it's Lashon Hara. People ripping each other to pieces in Beit Knesset, in the business world. They do business with each other, but it's not business. What is it? Yeah, give me the goods. They get the goods, but they don't give the money. How come you're not paying? Oh, no, I don't have it yet. I'll give you the money when I get it. What do you mean? But how come you didn't tell me that before you got the goods? You said you had the money. Yeah, yeah, I thought I did, but now I don't. Yeah, but I could have given it to somebody else. Or better yet, they so-called buy an Aliyah at the Beit Knesset, but they never pay.

1:26:36Yom Kippur, they want to look like a superhero. Buy 15, 20, 30, $50,000. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to get the Aliyah for parnassah. Yom Kippur is over. Rosh Hashanah is over. Sukkot is over. Chanukah is over. Everything is over. The guy still doesn't pay. How come you didn't pay? How come you're dishonest? Oh no, I thought I was going to have it. And this continues. I've been crying to you people for the last year or so about this epidemic we have in the Jewish business world called cash advance, merchant cash advance. Unfortunately, it's an industry full of crooks, many of them being Jewish, and some of them consider themselves religious. It's simply a predatory industry that takes advantage of people by charging them unreasonable interest rates and unreasonable terms.

1:27:39How come nobody's crying about this? How come I'm the only one talking about it? Every rabbi I talk to, I say, "So, what do you think of this?" He goes, "Yeah, it's horrible." Oh, thank you. I didn't really ask you if it's horrible. I already knew it's horrible. How come you're not talking about it? You know that there's a lot of Jews running this industry who call themselves religious. I'm not talking about the non-religious people. They're not going to listen to the rabbi. I'm talking about the religious ones. How come you're not fanatic about it? Ah, you know, it's difficult. It's parnassah. Oh, it's parnassah. But coronavirus you're fanatic about. Coronavirus you're fanatic about. You tell everybody no matter what. Scare the lights out of people. Tell them to stay in the house. This is pikuach nefesh. What pikuach nefesh? What pikuach nefesh? I spoke to a doctor, an expert. Someone that's a very serious doctor. Yesterday. He told me this. I actually told it to my wife. He said this: "What do you think of this coronavirus?" He says, "I hope we just all get it so we can move on with our lives." He says, "Surely, there are going to be some people that die. But what's happening now and how people are reacting to it is much worse."

1:28:58It's much worse. Why? We're acting like there's no God running the world. We're not getting the message, rabotai. And that's what I'm scared of. I'm scared if we don't get the message from this, the message will get stronger. Because what happens when we say things we're not supposed to, Hashem gives us tzaraat. Thrown out of the camp. For how long? Two weeks. Just like the quarantines are. Two weeks, thrown out of the camp. But it's not guaranteed two weeks. It's a minimum of two weeks. Why is it not guaranteed? If you do teshuva, you come back after two weeks. If you don't do teshuva, you stay there forever. This nightmare can be a couple of weeks if we actually start doing teshuva and become fanatic about HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Start caring about each other to the point where we care that we keep mitzvot and not just make money. Start saying things that mean something to the kehillah. Stop being a beit knesset full of people that don't keep Shabbat. There's no point in having a beit knesset without a shiur Torah. And there's no point in having a shiur Torah if the shiur Torah doesn't help people do teshuva. The vast majority of places are just places people gather.

1:30:28Guys, coming to shul for 20 years, still mechalel Shabbat. What's the point of the place? It's better there's a quarantine, a place they shut down. Even after the quarantine, such a place? It's time we become fanatic about the right thing. That's the message. The message is, Rabotai, that right now we're acting like animals. We're acting like scared animals that saw fire or smoke three miles down the road, and we're running away already, instead of realizing we can do something about it. We can do something about it. We collect our heads and start using our minds. Each person analyzes his own life. Okay, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? What am I doing, not just what you're doing right—you already know what you're doing right, and there are plenty of people telling you you're doing stuff right. Every place, every person, every community has to start analyzing what's going on. That's the cure.

1:31:34That's the cure. If your kehillah has a bunch of people that don't keep Shabbat, that don't keep kashrut, that are intermarried, that are not learning Torah, guess what? All of those things are wrong. According to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, none of those people have olam haba. And whether you're Chabad, or you're Breslov, or you're Litvish, or you're Sephardi, or you're Ashkenazi, or you're whatever you are, it doesn't make a difference. If you don't keep Shabbat, there's no olam haba. If you don't put on tefillin every day, there's no olam haba. If you don't learn Torah, there's no olam haba. Why? You're not going to know how to be a Jew without learning Torah. If we start becoming fanatic about that stuff, guess what? Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. Without extra toilet paper. Without the extra granola bars. Without all the extra stuff. Without extra money even. Instead of worrying about your next-door neighbor and your cousin and your uncle and your friend and your parents and your son and your daughter that are going against Hashem, we're worrying about Corona. Corona.

1:32:59Now, again, like I told you, I'm not telling anyone to just go out and go against the law. If the law tells you, you can't go to a certain place, don't go. No one's telling you to break the law. Because that would be assur. But at the very least, Use this time of quarantine. Use this time of the world being on hold to reflect a little bit and start fixing stuff. Stop telling me that you want to fix yourself. Fix yourself. You don't need to tell me. You don't need permission from me. I'm nobody. Oh, Rabbi, yeah, I need to do this. You don't need to tell me. Do it. If you need guidance, tell me, "Listen, I need to learn about this." Okay, I'll send you the shiurim, or just go to my channel and search for yourself. I'm not Rabbi Google. You know, 50 times a day, people ask me to send them a shiur about different topics. You can find it yourself. Go to Google, go to my YouTube page. There's a search box just for my channel. Type whatever word you want, you'll find whatever topic. We have hundreds and hundreds of shiurim. We've spoken about a lot of topics.

1:34:14Just like you asking me, I need to go search. Well, you think I remember every single shiur and every word I've ever said? Save me the time, have some mercy, find it yourself. But the point is, do something. Stop telling me you're going to do it. Stop telling your other rabbi you're going to do it. Stop telling your wife or your husband you're going to do it. Stop telling Hashem you're going to do it. Do it. Enough with the worry about shtuyot, about nonsense. Enough. Enough ripping each other off. Enough ripping each other apart. Enough wasting our time talking about this. Enough watching the news. The source of all Lashon Hara in the world is the news. Don't you realize that it's all lashon hara? All news is lashon hara. You're tainting your mind with lashon hara all day. And the chachamim say that whether you're listening to lashon hara or saying lashon hara or believe lashon hara, you're a sinner.

1:35:27The Gaon of Vilna is telling us there's an entire department in heaven called Kaf HaKela, designated for those people that waste their time talking about nothing. He's not exaggerating. He's not trying to get hits on YouTube. It's time we start addressing things like HaKadosh Baruch Hu is trying to get us to address them. He puts you in a situation; it's uncomfortable. Okay, use that situation that's uncomfortable to do something that you weren't doing before. Why? Because you're in that situation because apparently you were doing something wrong, not because you're unlucky. Rabotai, it's time we act like Jews and not like goyim, thinking that they can cure this virus. There is no cure that's going to come from a doctor that's going to help any one of us. The only cure is us doing teshuva. That has always been a cure since the beginning of time, and that will always be a cure. If we start taking things on ourselves,

1:36:47Right now, every single person should be thinking, what am I going to take on myself as of today? Not tomorrow and not next week. What am I going to take on myself as of today? Now that I heard this message, what am I going to do about it? What will I start doing better? My Shabbat needs to get better. My learning Torah needs to get better. My kashrut needs to be better. My eyes need to get better. Stop looking at things that are inappropriate. My mouth needs to get better. My business needs to get better. Something needs to get better. Everybody here, everybody that's watching has to get better. That's the cure. Why don't we get the message? Stop watching the news. They're not going to give you the cure. This is the cure. And I'm afraid that if you don't listen, then the damage will be much more than we can even handle. If we continue wasting our time giving purposeless messages to Am Yisrael, just to make them worry about something we can't do anything about anyway, which will veer our attention away from the problem. The problem is here, the news, the media, the friends, the family, the associates, are taking us over there.

1:37:57which will veer our attention away from the problem. The problem is here: the news, the media, the friends, the family, and the associates are taking us over there. That's what's happening. You watch the news. You watch all these waste-of-life lectures that talk about absolutely nothing. Bill Gates from a few years ago, some TED talk that he had nothing else to do with his billions, so he decided to give a TED talk about how he said that there's going to be an epidemic in the future. And now people call him a prophet. He didn't have to be a prophet. It happens every few years. It's no genius. Our Torah said it a million times. We have, Rabotai, Ma'amar HaBitachon VeHitchazkut, which is in Shomer Emunim. Muvar Rabbeinu HaAri, the Arizal says that there is a clear line that can't be controlled only by those who have fear, but by those who are fortified in their hearts and their security over G-d, and they are over the fear, nothing can control them. HaArizal HaKadosh,

1:39:09said half a millennium ago, when there is a plague, that plague could only hurt people who are scared. But anyone who gets closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, with the mitzvot, with the Torah, with the bitachon in Hashem, with the emunah, and overcomes this fear, nothing bad will happen to them. As long as you watch the news and listen to crazy people, you will not be able to overcome this fear. In fact, you'll get more and more scared every day. Why? That's what media does; it sells based on fear. without the virus, as soon as the virus is over, guess what—they'll tell you about something else that's scary: a hurricane, a tsunami, a possible earthquake, the end of the world because of some volcano, a recession, depression, starvation, overpopulation, UFOs—all types of things. Whatever they can do because fear is what moves people.

1:40:29Psychologically, that's what works. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows it. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu instilled in us to be scared. The problem is we're scared of the wrong thing. We're scared of everything but HaKadosh Baruch Hu. We're scared of not having money, we're scared of having too much money. We're scared of having somebody, we're scared of not having somebody. We're scared of having kids, we're scared of not having kids. We're scared of the economy, we're scared of no economy. We're scared of getting a job, we're scared of having a job that we don't like. We're scared of food, we're scared of eating too much food or too little food. We're scared of the virus, we're scared we're the only one that's gonna survive if there's a virus and everyone else dies. We're scared of having air, we're scared of not having air. I mean, there are so many things we're scared of, we're scared of bugs. But then if there's no bugs, maybe there's something wrong. Like we're scared of all types of shtuyot, but we're not scared of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. We have no problem sinning against Him. Going out with a non-Jewish boyfriend or girlfriend. Going to a non-kosher bar, party, or wedding.

1:41:34Wearing a wig that's not kosher, longer than the exile. Wearing a dress, or a skirt, or a shirt that's not kosher. Going to a beach, going to a pub, a club. We're not scared about that. Being dishonest in business. We don't think twice. Stealing from people. Ah, he has enough. I can take it. Yelling at our spouses like they're some enemy. No problem. Why? She's my wife. She understands. We're not scared of saying Lashon Hara about each other. We're not scared of tearing each other apart. We're not scared of ruining reputations. We're not scared of destroying families. We're not scared of even killing somebody sometimes, or at least making them think we're going to kill them. We're not scared of any of that stuff. What are we scared of? We're not scared of Hashem. We're not scared of anything. We do everything wrong. That's the problem. That's the problem. It's time we use that fear that we have for the right thing. There are a million and a half places where you can find this plague, this epidemic, in the Torah. This is no secret. In the last couple of weeks, there have been so many Chachamim who found different secrets about this plague in the Torah that it's almost like Hashem wrote us this letter a thousand times, but we've been ignoring it, like it's junk mail.

1:43:03It's time we start taking things seriously. Instead of panicking like crazy people, crying, and pretending like we can do something about it physically. Let's stop, collect ourselves, and realize that the only cure we have is doing teshuvah. But teshuvah is not just about you yourself. Teshuvah is about your community. Teshuvah is about your kehillah. Teshuvah is about the world. We have to start caring about each other because that's what got us out of the camp in the first place. We got thrown out of the camp because we said things that weren't appropriate about each other and about all types of people. About rabbis, about Talmidei Chachamim, about holy people, about HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And Hashem is throwing us out of the camp for a couple of weeks. Not to keep us out. Not to kill us. If He wanted to kill us, He has much better ways.

1:44:08But to give us enough time to reflect and do teshuva. To come back into camp completely renewed. With a new outlook, a new mindset, a new strategy, where from now on I understand that when Shlomo HaMelech says, I'm going to take it seriously. Shlomo HaMelech says, will save you from death. He didn't say it because he was collecting money for his Kiruv organization. He was the richest man in the world. He was telling you what HaKadosh Baruch Hu told him. You are in danger, you have to increase your tzedakah. You were giving 20, 30, 50 dollars a week, now you gotta give more. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that's going to help Him justify giving you life when your life is in danger. Yeah, but I already give myself. Okay, so give more. Oh, but I already give this, so give more. Oh, but it doesn't make a difference. This is a time you increase tzedakah. Secondly, stop being scared of the news and what's said on the news. Be scared of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Be scared of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Understand HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the one, it's the hand that controls all of this. No one else.

1:45:37Third, if you're going to be fanatic, you're only allowed to be fanatic about Hashem. If you're going to be fanatic about every little article, every little paper, every little beep that comes out of this stupid coronavirus, or anything that's related to it, whether it's the market effects, or it's everything else, you better be as fanatic about Klal Yisrael. You better be as fanatic about HaKadosh Baruch Hu and His Torah. You better be reading just as much Torah as you are about Corona. Because as long as there are Jews that look like goyim among us, guess what? We are the wicked, not them. They're ignorant. They violate Shabbat because they're ignorant. When we don't do anything about it, we're the wicked ones. Don't think it's the secular people that broke Corona. It's the religious people that broke Corona. Why? We know better. Don't think it's the secular people that destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. It's the religious people that destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. Why? We know better. We were supposed to go tell them, "Stop doing wrong against Hashem. Start keeping Shabbat."

1:47:02Stop studying Sports Illustrated. Study the Chumash. Stop watching sports. Watch the shiur Torah. Stop believing some rabbi is going to save you like Christianity. Only you can save yourself with your own actions. We, the religious people, are obligated to do this. Don't think that you're okay if Mashiach comes tomorrow. Stop saying it. Mashiach now. What's going to happen to 80% of Am Yisrael if Mashiach comes now? Oh, you don't care? You're going to be saved? Guess what? Just for that attitude, you won't be saved. 80% of Am Yisrael, 80% of Hashem's children are going to be destroyed, and you want Mashiach to come? You should be praying to Hashem for Mashiach not to come. What, you don't care that 80% of His kids are going to be destroyed?

1:48:04Mashiach now, Aleichem. People need to start understanding that if we don't do anything about Klal Yisrael doing teshuva, the situation will get worse for all of us. Corona is just simply a warning shot in the air. Hashem is trying to get our attention. Stop destroying each other for no reason. Stop focusing on your looks. Stop focusing on your dropping names. Stop all of this stuff. It's a time to do teshuva. Doesn't matter if you're a rabbi or you're a student or you're completely secular. You have to now, you're listening to this, you have to start taking something on yourself. You have to keep Shabbat. There's no half Shabbat, once-a-year Shabbat. Whoever told you that is simply mistaken. He was hoping you'd get the message, but he failed. Or she failed. You have to keep Shabbat every week. You have to learn Torah every day. It doesn't have to be 10 hours a day, but you have to learn every day. You want to learn my shiurim every day? That's your limud Torah. At least start that way. No problem. But you have to do it every day.

1:49:21You have to learn in the morning, you have to learn at night. Whether you're a male or a female, you have to learn Torah. Without learning Torah, you're not going to know how to be a Jew. Stop pretending that there's going to be something else more important. There is nothing else. That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu is trying to tell you. Right now, everything that was important to us, He's throwing it in the garbage. He's throwing it all in the garbage. Everything can be taken away in a second. If this continues, if we don't do anything, it's going to continue. And even without coronavirus being bad, even without coronavirus killing another person, we will be in a much worse situation than we've been in 2,000 years. Because the economy will go to a level worse than the Great Depression. And don't go start praying for parnasah. That's not going to help either. Like I said, there are certain things each person needs to do. You have to give tzedakah. Whatever you're giving, you have to give more. Whatever learning Torah you're doing, you have to learn more. Whatever your difficult character traits are, you have to work on them. Pick one, start fixing it. You're an angry person, start working on your anger. You're a jealous person, start working on your jealousy. You're a stingy person, start working on your stinginess. Fix those things.

1:50:48If you're single, find yourself a person, get married as soon as possible. It better be a Jew though. Why? It's not good for a person to be alone. Stop being so picky. The shidduch crisis is nonsense. People are picky. They want Malchat and Melech HaYofi, the princes of beauty, and rich, and smart, and this, and that, and compliment you. Pick someone. Let's go. Move on already. Love is something you build over time. There's no love at first sight for Am Yisrael. It's nonsense. Love is something you build over time. There's no feelings of love before marriage, and there's no understanding of love until you have kids. You have to start understanding. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is giving us a warning. It's not Corona. It's not Corona that's the problem. It's us that's the problem. But Corona is the way that He's trying to get our attention. If we get the point, we'll be allowed back into the camp. All the projections of horrible things of the future could simply disappear just like that.

1:52:05simply disappear just like that. If every single one of us that's watching this takes something on themselves, takes a serious mitzvah on themselves, or two, or three, And on top of that, start using their time, money, resources, ability, something, to start helping Klal Yisrael. You've got 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 more people, 5,000 more people, doing Kiruv in the world, doing something for Kiruv, whether it be money, or time, or skill, or something. Guess what? You're gonna start seeing that spread, that Kedusha spread, much faster than Corona. That's what we have to do. That's the cure. But it starts with listening to our sages, who tell us that simply mundane speech can lead us to very bad places. That's what the Ramban was telling us 800 years ago. It's not just about the obvious. It's even listening or talking about nonsense.

1:53:17wasting our life, doing nothing. If we simply took Hashem at His word, what we see, that He told us that He'll do certain things, and we believe in Him, that's it. We'll take it seriously. Rabotai, there's no reason for anyone to be sad. Today, at my house, Baruch Hashem, there was no sadness. You know what we did at my house? And that's how we're going to finish this shiur. I'll tell you what we did at my house. At my house, Baruch Hashem, may it always continue, this is what we were doing. We were dancing around the house. Am Yisrael, don't be scared. Just do teshuva. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen and Amen. Am Yisrael, don't be scared. Just do teshuva. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen v'Amen.