Chanukah 5780 What Are We celebrating ??

0:16Thank you very much for the mitzvot. from local that you are zealous for the Torah to come learn it on a Sunday night when everyone else doesn't always necessarily do the same. So today, Baruch Hashem, is the first night of Chanukah, and hopefully, everybody lit the candles. If you haven't... ...from knowing that you are zealous for the Torah to come learn it on a Sunday night when everyone else doesn't always necessarily do the same. So today, Baruch Hashem, is the first night of Chanukah, and hopefully, everybody lit the candles. If you haven't... you should know that halacha is you can light the candles throughout the night. Also, before I forget, the shiur tonight will be for refuah shlema for Avi Mori, David ben Nasria, my dear mother, Doris bat Jorah, Levana bat Sara, Sarah bat Levana, Yosef ben Levana, Netanya, Sarah bat Meital, and

1:31and the baby, b'ezrat Hashem, that was born premature, b'ezrat Hashem, will give him the strength to overcome all obstacles and become a big tzaddik, bringing light to the world, b'ezrat Hashem. And all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat Hashem, will have refuah sheleimah, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf. So tonight is the first night of Chanukah. We lit the candles, Baruch Hashem, and The question is, you know, many people light candles every year. Maybe sometimes they eat sufganiyot. Maybe sometimes they just focus on the chocolate. Maybe sometimes they eat latkes, you know. The question is, does lighting the candles on Chanukah make you religious? It's a trick question. The answer is no. Why? Because the vast majority of Jewish people today do not keep Shabbat, but many of them light the candles for Chanukah. I was one of them for many, many years, most of my life. I don't remember any year in my entire life that I didn't light Chanukah candles. But I do remember many, many years, Hashem Yaachem Alai, hopefully, that I didn't keep Shabbat, and I didn't keep mitzvot, and I didn't learn Torah.

2:33do not keep Shabbat, but many of them light the candles for Chanukah. I was one of them for many, many years, most of my life. I don't remember any year in my entire life that I didn't light Chanukah candles. But I do remember many, many years, Hashem yeraḥem alai, hopefully, that I didn't keep Shabbat, and I didn't keep mitzvot, and I didn't learn Torah. And I wasn't unique. In fact, the vast majority of our brothers and sisters are the same way. They like the holiday of Chanukah much more than most holidays, if not the most out of all the holidays. It almost has become the symbol of Judaism in today's world. Now the question is, why do most Jews love Chanukah?

3:33so much. You cannot say it's sufganiyot because, technically, you can go and make doughnuts all year. You cannot say it's the candles because we have Shabbat candles. Latkes? We eat fried stuff all year round. Someone asked once, "What's the connection between Chanukah and sufganiyot?" Now... The Chachamim say the connection between Chanukah and sufganiyot is the commemoration of the oil. Jokesters like to say that there's a different connection. Different connection. Jokesters to the Chachamim say there's the best connection. What's the best connection? The Arizal, the love of Shalom, or even though the Arizal says that,

4:35says that the power of Chanukah is more powerful than any other holiday that we have throughout the year, where even though HaKadosh Baruch Hu gets closer to the nation throughout all of the holidays, on Chanukah it's a special time, it's a special time of brachot, a special time of nisim, of miracles, special time for different things to happen in a person's life if you're praying for something, whether it's to have a child or to overcome a major obstacle, get married, illnesses, or money issues. This is the time to overcome all of those obstacles. And the Gemara Masechet Shabbat is the place where we actually learn about Chanukah. And that's why some Chachamim make the connection that one of the tikkunim for chilul Shabbat is to have extra kavanah and extra segulot during the time of Chanukah, if anyone ever violated Shabbat. Now, the question is, what's the connection between this powerful holiday and sufganiyot? So Rabbi Ephraim says,

5:54These segulot and the power of Hanukkah, if you do it right, if you have kavanah every time you light the candles, if you don’t skimp on the lamp, you get something with oil—not that it’s that expensive anyway, but you get oil instead of getting these wax candles you get at the 99-cent store sometimes. You know, if you light it in a Beit Knesset, things like that, no problem. But in your own house, you spend a half a million dollars on the house, spend a couple of dollars on oil sometimes. That's the way it's supposed to be. If you do it right, the blessings of Hanukkah can come all year round. If you eat sufganiyot right, the extra fat you're going to gain is also going to stay all year round. So Chachamim in the Gemara said that you have to sometimes start a shiur with a bedichah, with a joke. I think this is the second time in history. So the question is, on a serious note, what are we celebrating? Who wants to volunteer some ideas? Sutton usually has ideas. No, Sutton? Give me something. Okay, so Sutton started the idea. The rest of you are still asleep.

7:21If it wasn't Sutton, I think I would cancel the lectures because he's the only one awake here. But anyway, Sutton told us, gave us a nice pshat. He says, the Greeks came, desecrated the Beit HaMikdash. The Chashmonaim, after miraculously beating them, destroying them, starting with a dozen people, 13 people, destroyed an army of millions. You go tell this to Donald Trump, he'll tell you, "Listen, there are many mental institutions in every state in the country. I built some of them if you want. Thirteen people are going to beat millions? No, come on. How much can you believe?" People don't want to believe stuff like this. As a side note, there's a very famous story in the Tanach. In the Tanakh, it's not even the Oral Torah, it's the Written Torah. Which means that whether you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, you have to believe this. Yet the vast majority of people either don't know it or don't believe it. What's the story? The story is, Chizkiyahu HaMelech, Chizkiyahu HaMelech, was one of the righteous kings of Am Yisrael. At his time, there were the Assyrians. The Assyrians were the most powerful people that lived in their generation.

8:43They literally were a war machine that was demolishing anything in their sight. One day, they decided there's a place called Yerushalayim where all these Jews are. They don't want to comply with our rules. Let's just destroy them. Let's destroy them. Why not? It's on the way. You know, it's like on the way. What's Yerushalayim in size in comparison to Assyria? Just compare, let's say, for example, America versus, let's say, Tahiti. Most of you maybe know what Tahiti is. There are like six people there; the rest of them are tourists. That's how you compare the Assyrians to Yerushalayim, as far as people, manpower, as far as weapons, and so on. But the Assyrian king, Sanheriv, says, let's go destroy Yerushalayim. So, the Tanakh says he brought 185,000 soldiers. Some say much more. It was 185,000 leaders, each one of them had thousands of soldiers. Needless to say, it was a lot of people, a lot of people. They come to the outskirts of Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim wasn't as big as it is today. It was tiny.

10:01Meaning, if these people, whether it's 185,000 or millions, it doesn't make a difference. If they just spit, Yerushalayim drowns. Forget the swords and everything else. Just spit, saliva, the whole place drowns. The Tanakh says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, I did what you wanted me to do. I'm going to sleep now. You take care of the war. You want me to teach Torah? Every single child from the age of six and up knows the entire Torah by heart. No other generation in history had something like this. To such an extent, the Torah says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted to make Chizkiyahu Mashiach. It's the only person in the entire Torah that actually says HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted to make Chizkiyahu the actual Mashiach. No one else made such kiruv. No one. Six-year-olds know the entire Torah by heart? Today, six-year-olds don't know alef bet. Unless my wife is your teacher. And Michal. Then you know, Baruch Hashem. Six-year-olds, other than that? You don't have much hope in this generation. Six-year-olds, they know the entire Torah. So now, he says to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, Hashem, I'm going to sleep.

11:28Meaning, he's not even fighting. He's not like, "Hey guys, let's get it together. We'll pray, we'll bring some swords, maybe some bombs. We got it. We got this. Guys, we got this." Nothing. "I'm going to sleep." He goes to sleep. They wake up in the morning. They see hundreds of thousands of bodies. Dead. Corpses. All over the ground. Everywhere. Of not the Jews, chas v'shalom. The entire army, the entire Assyrian army demolished to nothing. The only thing that's left is Sennacherib and his sons. That's it. Everyone else is dead. The Torah says how did this happen? HaKadosh Baruch Hu sent a Malach, killed everybody. Two seconds. A Malach doesn't need too many weapons. Killed everybody in one second. There's no sword fight. Ah, ooh, ah, oh, he got me. No, none of that stuff. There's no movie scene. If they made a movie out of this, it would be the worst seller in history. Why? The movie would end in half a second. Everybody dies. That's it. Finished. So now, this is in the Torah. The Jews are obviously supposed to believe this. The Christians say they believe in the Torah. They call it the Old Testament, but nonetheless, they don't say it's a fake Testament. They say it's the Old Testament, meaning they believe it.

12:46The Arabs also say, they call it Torah. That's their beginning. But yet, rabotai ha'kerim, the vast majority of people do not believe it. You know what they believe? You know what they, because everyone knows this is a historical account, meaning they definitely died. No one is saying these people didn't die. Everybody believes they died. But they're having trouble with the angel part. They're saying maybe they died. Historians, even today in Yale University, in different books that were written, say maybe it was a plague. A plague killed everybody overnight. How come it didn't hit Sanheriv and his sons? How come it didn't hit Am Yisrael? How come nobody else heard about it? How come the history books don't write any of this stuff? But I'll give you the best one: a plague wasn't in it and famous historian scholar says no, no, it wasn't a plague. It wasn't a plague. The entire army of the most powerful army in the world was destroyed by desert mice. Desert mice attacked them and killed everybody. This is the most common opinion today.

14:08Mice. Mice killed the most powerful army. It's like saying, oh, yeah, you know China. China just lost the war, so who beat them? Oh, it was, you know, all the mice they eat. The mice fought back. The mice fought back. They said, no, we're not taking this anymore. Stop eating us. This is what people believe. What does this show us about today's generation, Rabotai? It shows us that it's easier for us to believe in mice than it is to believe in HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So now we go back to Satan. Satan said we are celebrating that we found oil after the Greeks desecrated the Beit HaMikdash. We came in there and we saw that there was oil, but the oil wasn't kosher, if you will. ...a kosher, if you will. Only one can of oil was kosher, which was enough to light the menorah for one day. By the way, just so you know, the term "Chanukiah," which is what most people refer to as the menorah that you have in your house, is a modern term. The Torah calls it a menorah. That's really what you're supposed to call it. You're not supposed to call it a Chanukiah; you could call it that, it's not a sin...

15:29But it's actually called a menorah. It's not called a Chanukiah. Chanukiah is more of a modern-day term. But anyway, so Chachamim go back and forth about why didn't he just use the other oil? Since when does oil have to be stamped by the Kohen Gadol? Since when does oil have kosher, not kosher? And they go back and forth about this whole thing, but we're not going to go into all of that. We're still focused on, okay, so he found the oil. Now, I'm going to ask you guys a second question. I'm going to ask Sutton a second question. Maybe you guys could help him this time because he helped you the first time. Give him back something. Now let's say that's the reason. We found the oil. What's more amazing? Finding oil in a place that's supposed to be full of oil. I mean, Beit Hamikdash is huge. Menorah wasn't the first time they ever lit it. They lit it many times. So you happen to find oil that wasn't touched. It's not like the Greeks had some special obsession with oil or something. I don't know that from any of the books. So one canister wasn't touched. The other ones you could have used anyway, by the way. But let's say one of them wasn't touched. Okay, big deal. Is that more amazing than 13 people destroying millions?

16:53Even in a video game, even in a video game, it'd be more amazing if you beat the entire army by yourself than if you found one canister of oil somewhere under something that you have, right? I mean, you beat the whole team by yourself. What's the millions of people? So why do we celebrate the oil and not the war? No, who attended last week's shiur, you sleepy people? I gave you the answer last week. Why are we celebrating the oil and not the war? We're just 13 people beating millions. You take one elephant; he could step on all 13 people. You know how big elephants are? That's how they fought wars in those days. You go on an elephant; it's like a tank. You could shoot spears until you turn blue in your face; it doesn't do anything. Why is 13 people beating millions, the most powerful army in the world?

17:54Why is that not celebrated? Why are we celebrating that we found some oil? Explain, explain to us. The war was physical and the war was spiritual. Wait, so the war was spiritual, not physical? The war was physical. Okay. The war was spiritual. Right. Okay, so let me reword what Netanel just told us in a way that all of us could understand. In so many words, Netanel said that really the only reason why we won the physical war is because of our spiritual connection to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And therefore, we celebrate the spiritual aspect of Chanukah, which is the connection to the oil.

19:05is because of our spiritual connection to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And therefore, we celebrate the spiritual aspect of Chanukah, which is the connection to the oil. Now that answers one part of the question. That explains why we celebrate the spirituality. We celebrate Chanukah, the oil, because of the connection to the spirituality. That's the reason why 13, obviously there’s no logical human reason that we can explain how 13 people could beat millions. It's only through Hashem, just like the angel killed 185,000 in less than a second. The same thing, 13 people are beating millions. It's the same miracles. No, it's no different for Hashem. So that gives us the reason of why we're celebrating the oil. But it still doesn't give us the reason of why we're not celebrating the war. So you give us half an answer. Thank you very much. I War is half the battle. That still doesn't give me the half. Why are we not celebrating it? How come we're not all walking around dressed like Chashmonaim with some swords? You know, maybe like, you know, they have Star Wars. We'll have Chashmonaim start hitting each other with swords. Ta, ta, ta. You know, like, I don't know, a second pulling. Poor costume. No. Hashem did it. You're just copying your brother. That's just plagiarism.

20:30He just said it. It's your brother. You don't have to steal his answer. He's already said it. I was a witness. No, hold on. Let me give him the rest of the answer. I'm just busting his chops. No? I mean, celebrating the war would be like, okay, you celebrate something that you didn't do. So, Elchanan is telling us that technically what we have here is, yes, there's a physical war, but we won it spiritually. It has something to do with our spirituality. The reason why we're not celebrating the physical aspect of it is because of the spiritual aspect of it. Okay. Well, just like...

21:39Netanel gave us an answer, he gave us another answer, we'll reword it a little bit and see what the Pri Chadash says. The Pri Chadash and also the Pachad Yitzchak, Rav Hutner, and many others tell us many times over that the reason why we celebrate the spiritual aspect of it is because that's the only thing that we won. The physical war we're still losing. We never actually won the physical war. Yeah, we killed a bunch of people, but the physical war we're still losing. How are we losing? The Midrash in Otzar Midrashim says that the Greeks, what do they care about Am Yisrael? What do they care about us? What do they want from us? I mean, they were literally running the whole world. What do they care about these Jewish people? They came to us and they told us, "Listen, we don't like that you're practicing a religion. It bothers us even though you're never going and doing kiruv with goyim. It's not like the Jews went to Greece and said, 'Oh, you guys got to do teshuvah.' They didn't do that. We just minded our own business in Eretz Yisrael. Leave us alone. But for some reason, we're bothering them; our existence bothers them." And the Greeks came...

23:04and forced decrees on Am Yisrael, darkening their vision, and decreed that whoever dares mention the name of HaKadosh Baruch Hu will be killed by the sword. You just mentioned Hashem, death penalty. That's how much they hated Judaism. Now you ask them, "Do you guys believe in God?" They say, "Of course we believe in God." So how come you don't want us to say God? No, He left. The Greeks believed that HaKadosh Baruch Hu created the world, but then He left. Many people today believe the same thing, unfortunately, even if they're Jews. But the Jews say, we believe in Hashem, we want to practice as much as we want. The Greeks say, no. The Greeks say, if you even say Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, death penalty. Further, they also told us, you're not allowed to celebrate Rosh Chodesh. Why Rosh Chodesh? Because they knew that our holidays, our Chanukah, our Purim, our Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Shavuot, Pesach— all of these holidays, that's what makes you a Jew. If you don't connect to the holidays, your Judaism is questionable.

24:34If when you hear, oh, there's another Jewish holiday coming up, you're not excited, what kind of Jew are you? What are you, a Jew that doesn't like to be a Jew? You're like a self-hating Jew? No, no, I'm religious. It's just that, you know, the holidays are tough. Holidays are tough. What's the point of being a Jew without the holidays? There's a month called Cheshvan. We call it Mar Cheshvan. "Mar" means bitter. Why? Because Cheshvan doesn't have holidays. We call it a bitter month. It's a month that doesn't have holidays. A month without holidays for us is a nightmare. You don't like holidays? You don't like Jewish holidays? What kind of Jew are you? Are you sure you're really Jewish? Maybe we should take you to the Beit Din to check. So now, the Greeks say all of these holidays have a specific time that it's dictated to have these holidays in the Torah. Pesach has to be during spring. Rosh Hashanah, first of the year, and so on and so forth.

25:39So if you don't know when Rosh Chodesh is, if you don't know when the beginning of the month is, you're not going to be able to celebrate the rest of the year, the rest of the holidays. You can't just celebrate Purim whenever you feel like it. You can't just celebrate Pesach whenever you feel like it. You can't just celebrate Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach, all these holidays whenever you feel like it. Specific days. The Torah says you have to have these holidays. Even the rabbinical holidays have specific days. Purim and Chanukah. So the Greeks said, how are we going to ruin this whole thing? We can't just outlaw all the holidays. What are we going to do? Outlaw Rosh Chodesh. Outlaw your counting system, your month system. Within a few months, everybody's going to forget. You know, in the beginning, everybody's going to remember. But after a few months or even a couple of years, everybody's going to forget. And that way, it's like putting a virus in a computer. Even if it doesn't ruin the computer right away, it's only a matter of time.

26:41So now, they said no Rosh Chodesh. But that's not enough for them. They said also, no Shabbat. Why? You can still count the days, you can still connect to the days, connect to the months, once a week. How? Shabbat. Every seven days, Shabbat. You celebrate Shabbat, we're going to kill you. No Shabbat. No Shabbat. Today, he tells you, no Shabbat. Oh, wow, thank God, it's not a sin anymore. I'm an anus, I'm an anus. I'm absolved from the mitzvah, right? In those days, Jews were willing to die just to honor Shabbat. What's the difference between us and them? They understood what it means. But now they still have a problem. The Greeks still have a problem with their decree. They're saying, listen, even though we canceled Shabbat, even though we canceled Rosh Chodesh, still there's a sign, there's a sign on a Jew. Being a Jew, what is it? Brit Milah. A Jew is always going to remember he's a Jew if he has brit milah. No brit milah. You do brit milah to your kid, we're going to chop off your fingers. No brit milah. Now, if that wasn't enough, rabotai, they wanted to make sure that the Jewish people forget HaKadosh Baruch Hu completely. So what did they say? "Listen, you cannot say Hashem's name." How can you make Jews not even want to say Hashem's name?

28:09They made a decree that on every shofar, on every horn of the bull, the Jews had to engrave: "We have no share in the God of Israel." We're not connected to God anymore. So the Jews simply got rid of all the cows. They didn't want to engrave it on the horns; they didn't want to engrave this. In those days, they used the horn also, not just as a shofar, they used it also as a baby bottle. The Greeks wanted the babies, when they were drinking, the first words they ever saw to be, "I have no share in the God of Israel." Already the Greeks from over 2,000 years ago knew that television affects you. Internet affects you even if you don't mean it, even if you just want to do this and you want to do that, it affects you. What you watch is going to affect you. A little baby drinking from a bottle sees "Don't believe in God," that baby is going to be a heretic. The Greeks already knew this 2,000 years ago, and no one can tell you today that the Greeks were stupid people. They weren't; they were very smart people. They're sheim resha'im yirkav, but smart. I'm not the Chafetz Chaim; I'm a certain maggid who says, "Oh my, the Greeks were wise, but wicked."

29:26Wisdom in the goyim, believe. Torah in the goyim, don't believe. Meaning, if a goy tells you, "I want to teach you wisdom, I want to teach you how to be an architect, how to be a doctor, how to build a satellite, go to outer space," all that stuff, no problem, believe him. He knows that stuff. But if a goy tells you, "Listen, I can teach you Torah," you are not allowed to learn Torah from him. Not allowed to learn Torah from him. Not just not allowed, don't believe he even knows any Torah. Yeah, what if he read a thousand books? He could read a million books. Still not allowed to learn Torah from him. Goyim are allowed to learn from him, but you as a Jew are not allowed to learn from him. So now, the goyim wanted to simply take HaKadosh Baruch Hu out of the life of the Jew. In essence, make the Jew a Greek. The question is, rabotai yikarim, how do they know all this stuff? How do they know about the shofar? What, is there Greek stores in Greece? Hey, come now, discount on shofar, two for ten. Well, how do you know about shofarot? How do you know about Shabbat? Was there a little Jewish community in Greece that really ticked everybody off? So now they want revenge against the rest of the people in Yerushalayim? How do they know about Rosh Chodesh?

30:51How do I know? Informants. The good news is the Jewish people are the best, indisputably, the best at keeping records. Not only do we know who the enemy is, but we have documentation of names and numbers, of who and what, even if that enemy is a Jew. So the Midrash, Otzar HaMidrashim, Eisenstein, in Chanukah, page 193, says that many Jews ended up converting and becoming Hellenists, turning their backs on their heritage. They saw that to become a Greek, you have money now, you can go with girls, you can go with boys. The Beit Midrash of the Greeks was called a gymnasium. You know what, today people go to the gym. It comes from the word gymnasium. The Greeks invented this word. What is the root of this word in Greek? Walking around naked. Why? Because that's how the Greeks wanted it to be. They just wanted to walk around naked, no clothes. The gladiators that would fight in the coliseums and all of that stuff would fight naked. People would walk around naked. There's one other time in history that it mentions

32:17that people walked around naked. Dor HaMabul. Who are they? The daughters of Cain. The Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Eliezer ben Horkenos, has a Midrash, uncovered about maybe five, six hundred years ago, that says that Cain's daughters were completely evil and would walk around naked. Being with anybody anywhere, anytime, shem yachem. Don't be so shocked. We're almost in that generation again. It's almost like Cain's daughters came back to this generation. But not just a few. So now, the Greeks walk around naked. Go to the gym—girls and boys together in bodysuits. Why even have the bodysuit? The Jews that joined them, they like this. They're like having a new girlfriend every day. You don't even have to marry her. No ketubah. What do I need this for? If she leaves, I have to give her a bunch of money. Why? I have it today, tomorrow I have something else. The ketubah, by the way, is because the woman in the Jewish religion is a princess. The ketubah is to remind the husband that a Jewish girl doesn't come for free.

33:46Even if the husband wants to act like an animal, he cannot act like an animal with a Jewish woman. Why? You do it, you have to pay. So all of these young Jewish women that are giving themselves away for free for non-husbands, Hashem, you're selling yourself worse than the king's daughters. A Jewish woman is supposed to be priceless. That's what the ketubah says. She's priceless. With a price, but priceless nonetheless. Giving yourself for free to some boyfriend. What did you do? So now the Greeks wanted to change us, and unfortunately, many of the weak among us, who liked to look at girls, liked to go to the gym, liked to watch sports, liked money a little bit too much, liked the materialism connected to this, got caught by this. Our Yetzer Hara was too strong. They became Hellenists.

34:48But that alone wasn't enough to give the Greeks all of this knowledge. Who gave them all this knowledge? One kofer, by the name of Tattenai, the son of Pachat. He was a Jew who knew a lot about the Jewish religion. And he constantly thought of ways to undermine his brothers and sisters, Am Yisrael, who still kept the Torah and mitzvot. And he advised his Greek friends, his new Greek cronies, because he wanted to get higher in the Greek government, in the Greek ladder. He told them, "Listen, all of this war, threatening, killing, all that stuff, you're never going to beat them. These people survived the Egyptians. You think they're not going to survive you? You want to destroy them? You have to destroy the religion. Body? You can never destroy the body. HaKadosh Baruch Hu will create more. You're never going to destroy them." But if you let them destroy themselves, then you can destroy them. So he told them, as long as the Jews offer a sacrifice in the morning and the afternoon to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, they will never fall into your hands. Immediately, the Greeks forced the Kohanim to stop making these sacrifices. So the Beit HaMikdash

36:12became disorganized and out of order. Without the sacrifices, the Beit HaMikdash became a building, not a place of worship. Then he told the Greeks, "The God of Israel hates immorality, hates prostitution, hates immodesty. If you can induce them to live sexually immoral lives, you will gain control over them." So the Greeks then decreed that anyone who writes a ketubah for his wife will have his fingers ripped off. You want to be with somebody? Be with them because you feel like it. No ketubah. Why? Maybe you don't want it tomorrow. Be like us Greeks. The next stage of his treachery, this Titos, Titos ben Pachat, told the Greeks, if you will prevent them from fulfilling the mitzvah of lighting the menorah in the Beit HaMikdash, they'll be annihilated. Because the Torah says that you have to have this menorah lit continuously. And continuously means literally all the time. So that's what the Greeks did. Next decree. And he told them about the horn, the shofar.

37:33so the Greeks demanded inscribe on the horns of the oxen a declaration that we have no connection to the God of Israel. Because this will force the Jews that whether they're working and plowing or their kids are drinking, they're constantly going to read heresy. This is the reason why a Jew is not allowed to go look at other wisdoms just because he's curious. Somebody asked me yesterday, are we allowed to go learn about Christianity or Islam in school because it's part of our curriculum? So the halacha is that it's 100% forbidden for you to go learn about Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or anything else other than Judaism if it's simply for curiosity or it's simply part of your class in your secular school. Not allowed. You're only allowed to go learn about those subjects if you are a professional in debating the goyim, like the Ramban.

38:47He had to know about Christianity in order to win that very famous debate 800 years ago. The Chachamim in the Gemara had many, many debates against all of the heretics of their day. They had to know what was going on in other places in order to know how to defend themselves. You can't just defend your side without knowing the other side in the debate. But these are professionals. Young kids who have not completed the Shas, which is our Gemara, at least several times and become experts in it. have no business whatsoever toiling and wasting their time learning about Christianity or Islam or anything else but Torah. You haven't even fulfilled your obligation of learning Torah and knowing why you're even a Jew. You're going to go spend time learning why you're not a goy? Who says that you're going to survive that tumah and not actually become a goy as a result of it? Many people think they're smarter than the Rambam who wrote this halacha, think they're smarter than the Gemara that established this halacha, think they're smarter than HaKadosh Baruch Hu who says that you're not allowed to look at tumah, and they went and toiled in it. Who were some of those people? The people at the time of Greece.

39:56They want to go look at the philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and all of these, you know, these philosophers, these wisdom possessors. They like the toil and the wisdom of the Greeks and so on. And guess what, Rabotai? The second that wisdom came with some girls, that wisdom came with some money, that wisdom came with some popcorn, they took it. Why? As soon as they already had some wisdom, they connected themselves to this tumah. The second they got something material out of it, finished. That's why the church spends over 300 million dollars a year just in Eretz Yisrael to convert Israelis to Christianity. 300 million dollars a year. Anyone that thinks about this number, it doesn't even make any sense. Why would you even waste your money? Even if, chas v'shalom, you got all eight million Jews in Eretz Yisrael to convert, chas v'shalom, chas v'shalom, even if you got all of them, so what? You have two and a half billion already. Anyway, Christians, what's another eight million?

41:12It's not even a rounding error. What do you care about these eight million Jews? You have two and a half billion goyim already that are worshiping this idol Yoshke. What do you need another eight million for? It shows you it's a spiritual battle. It's not a physical battle. But they spent $300 million a year to eliminate the only memory in this world that they are wrong. The only memory in this world that exists that all of the religions, whether it's Islam or Christianity or anything else, all of them are wrong are the Jews. That's why everybody's fighting us tooth and nail. And they'll spend billions if they could. They just have to find more places for the money. It's not that they're limiting their budget to 300 million because they're out of money. If you told them 300 billion, they'd spend it too. But Israel is such a small country, they don't even know what to do, how to spend this money. So now, rabotai yekarim, this Tatni, this Rasha Merusha Jew that became a Greek, became a Hellenist, and not only a Hellenist but a Hellenist in charge, helped the Greeks hurt his brothers and sisters because he wanted to get some more money. He wanted to get some more of everything else. So the Greeks' approach was that

42:39A man must rely totally on his own intellect and his own power of reason. That's what philosophy, all of these Aristotle and Plato and Socrates and so on, in essence, all of them, what are they really telling you? Socrates, what's his motto? His motto is, "I know I don't know, so therefore I know." I know I don't know, so therefore I know. Why did Socrates, why did he get such praise by all of his followers and so on until this day? Based on the concept that he knows he doesn't know, so therefore that makes him smarter than everybody else because they're not even smart enough to not know. They're not even smart enough to know that they don't know. And he knows he doesn't know, so therefore he's smarter than them. That's what philosophy is, pretty much. people that spend literally decades of their life learning this complete nonsense have probably never heard of this. Why? Because they're already working off of the crumbs of the descendants of this shtuyot, of this nonsense. But that's what the whole thing starts with. It starts with the concept of, you don't know enough, so therefore, that's already what makes you knowledgeable, that you don't know.

44:00and the Torah says, you don't know, but you can know. Why? There's the Torah. Learn, you'll know. Will you ever know the entire Torah? No. But you'll know a lot more than you don't know. But the Greeks did not like this. The Greeks wanted to say that their own intellect, their own powers of reason, that's in control. They felt that a man could learn to control his environment and destiny completely if he only knew how and what was the goal of his existence. So the Greeks postulated that a man did not need God's assistance. They chose to ignore Him and separate themselves away from Him. This is the exact opposite of Judaism. of reason, that's in control. They felt that a man could learn to control his environment and destiny completely if he only knew how and what was the goal of his existence. So the Greeks postulated that a man did not need God's assistance. They chose to ignore Him and separate themselves away from Him. This is the exact opposite of Judaism. polar opposite. They pretty much said we don't need God. Am Yisrael says we cannot live a second, half a second without God. So how did they get Tati to join them? He's a Jew after all. Unfortunately, Rabotai, just because your parents are Jewish

45:20doesn't make you a kosher Jew as we talked about a week ago or two weeks ago. Sometimes people, they're born Jewish. They may even learn a few Jewish things; they go to some modern Orthodox school, they go to some school that teaches Modeh Ani, and they think of themselves as Jews. But yet they grow up, and the older they get, the more they mature, and the more distant they become from the foundation of what Judaism is really about. Why? Because throughout all this time, in this modern society, they've allowed their brains to be infected with Greek mythology. And the entire Greek mythology is simply based on materialism, your own power, your own wisdom, you can do it. And different generations have called it different names. I know maybe 10-15 years ago, something became very popular in the business world, and I'm sure it's still popular today, called "The Secret." A bunch of self-help gurus, in those days, called themselves something else.

46:37motivational speakers and so on, came up with, oh, if you guys want to become the next best thing, you have to read the book called "The Secret." Why? Because "The Secret" says all the power in the world is in your hands. You can do whatever you want. You just got to feel it. If you want it, you'll get it. I don't know. I've wanted an endless amount of money my whole life. It doesn't necessarily mean it comes to me that way. People want to get married all the time. It doesn't mean they get married. People want to be healthy. It doesn't mean they stay healthy. People want food. The food doesn't necessarily just appear. What's the whole concept about? The whole concept is Greek mythology. The whole concept of "The Secret" is that it's all in your hands. You can do it. You don't need God. You can do it. The power of attraction, they call it today. It changed. Now it's the power of attraction. If you think good, it'll be good. This all comes from a little bit of Judaism that was tainted with materialism and Greek mythology and everything in your hands. It's not a complete lie, but there's enough truth in it to make it believable. Unfortunately, today, Rabotai HaYekarim, many of our Jewish communities are infiltrated with this type of mentality where

48:03Everything is in your hands. You should connect to the physicality, spend hours and hours of your day making yourself look better, go to the gym, and eat a certain type of diet because if you eat a certain type of diet, then you will live longer, as if God is going to give you more life because you're eating grass like the cows. You eat grass every day like the cows, you're going to live longer. What about if God says, "No, I don't want you to live longer. I want you to only live 25 years." How is that grass going to help you? Now, of course, one of these smarty-pants is going to tell me, "Yeah, but you have to be healthy. Isn't that how we try to be healthy?" Yes, we try to be healthy. But don't ever think that just because you're healthy, you're going to live longer. The two have no connection whatsoever. You could eat healthy, no problem. You should eat healthy. But don't for a second think that that's the reason why you'll live longer. It's not. You thinking you will live longer because you're eating healthy is a hundred percent kefirah in the Torah. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu decides if you're going to live or die. Rosh Hashanah. Every year He decides. You're going to live or you're going to die. Not your diet.

49:19Now, of course, if you eat pig every single day, that's definitely not going to help the situation. If you're eating nails for breakfast, then of course that's not going to help the situation. But I'm talking about normal circumstances. When we start thinking that the power of life and death, success and failure, is in our hands, that's coming from the Greeks. In fact, even if you think that your Torah wisdom is coming from your studying and your IQ, that's also Greek. Why? Because every day, if you learn Gemara, before you start learning Gemara, you say a few Pesukim. Tradition, it's a custom. Say a few Pesukim from the Torah. One of the Pesukim that you say, one of the verses that you say, Hashem gives wisdom. Meaning what? Your studying is not the reason you became a talmid chacham. Your studying earned you the ticket for Hashem to say, you know what, I'll give him some knowledge. Why? He likes knowledge. Gemara Masechet Berachot. Gemara Masechet Berachot says what? It says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives wisdom to people who like wisdom. People that are wise, He gives it to them.

50:37Shouldn't He give, Rabban Yochanan says, shouldn't He give wisdom to fools? So that everyone else will be wise? Rabban Yochanan says absolutely not. Why? People that are wise are people that like wisdom. And therefore, when Hashem gives it to them, they'll know what to do with it. People that are wise weren't just born wise. They toiled for it. They tried hard for it. They work on it every day. They study. They repeat. They treat it a certain way. They write down notes. You know, despite the Rabbi saying it 500 times, no one shows up with a notebook anyway. They actually listen to the Rabbi after the first time. They do it. That's people who like wisdom. People who don't like wisdom stay donkeys their whole life. What do they do? They come watch a lecture like it's a movie. the price you pay to play. They watch a show this week. What a few? What issue? This should change my life next. The essence was the issue about... I'll send you the link, but I don't know how to do that all the time. Can you just tell me what you heard?

51:44What I heard. The Rabbi said good night. Chag Sameach. He said Chag Sameach. He said it was Chanukah. It was Chanukah. There was some guy that went off the derech, some paiti, tati, something like that. Yeah, he said you should do teshuva. Great teshuva. Three hours he spoke, that's what you remember? What'd you go for? Stay home. You would have at least gotten some sleep. The Gemara says HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives knowledge to people who like knowledge. They work on it. They toil over it. They repeat it. They write it down. Why? Because they appreciate it. Fools don't appreciate knowledge. Fools don't appreciate knowledge. You know what fools do? Fools simply expect the knowledge to come to them by themselves, just through age. But that's why the Gemara in Masechet Pesachim says

52:46An ignorant person gets more ignorant as he ages, not less. That's why old men, old men that didn't learn Torah become unbearable as they age. Those sharp knives, swords, when they were younger, 20, 30, 40, 50 years old, sharp as a sword. You talk to the guy at 65, 70, 75 years old, already he's a little slow. At 80, you can't wait for him to die. Why? You have to change him. You ask him a question. He tells you a color. You know, you ask him what he wants to eat. He forgot what time it is. He doesn't know anything. His head is not there anymore. Why? He has no Torah to keep everything else in the right place. Why does Hashem punish him so badly? Because for 80 years he didn't care about wisdom. Therefore, he has nothing to hold him. A person that appreciates wisdom works very hard on it his whole life. Works hard on it his whole life. Why? Because he appreciates it. That's why Rabban Yochanan says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives the wisdom to people that appreciate wisdom. Not to fools who don't appreciate wisdom because the fools don't know what to do with it. Even if he gave the entire Torah as a chumash and it showed up in their house for free as a gift, guess what? It'll go on the shelf and they'll never touch it.

54:11Many times you go to people's houses, you see a million and a half different books. By the look of the books, this guy should be the Gadol HaDor. You ask the guy, "So what happened in this week's parasha?" "Oh, what is it, Bereshit?" "No, no, it's not Bereshit. It's the end of the parasha." "What Bereshit? What Bereshit? What Bereshit?" "Oh, yeah, no, I didn't get to it. I didn't get to it." You didn't get to it? What do you have all these books for? Why are they all still brand new? Did you just collect them? Are they paintings? The books are there to read, not to collect. People ask me all the time, "What books should I read?" You know what the answer is? The books you have already. That's the one you should read. Stop buying books—read them. Books are not paintings. Now, if you're an avid reader and you know you're going to read them, then buy. No problem. It's good to have Mosif Re Kedusha in your house. But if you're just collecting, and you know that you haven't read even half the books you already have in your house, what are you buying more for?

55:11The point is, rabotai, if we want HaKadosh Baruch Hu to give us wisdom, we have to start appreciating wisdom. And the Greeks thought the opposite. The Greeks wanted us to think that wisdom is just supposed to come by itself. Now, the Greeks could not accept the existence of the Torah, could not accept the existence that the Torah is simply going to force you to depend on God. Because to a philosopher, this would mean that there are concepts that a human mind cannot fathom. And to the Greeks, this was completely unacceptable. They wanted to tell you that everything is understandable by them, by Jews, by Greeks, by anybody—just simply put some effort into it and... ...simply going to force you to depend on God. Because to a philosopher, this would mean that there are concepts that a human mind cannot fathom, and to the Greeks, this was completely unacceptable. They wanted to tell you that everything is understandable by them, by Jews, by Greeks, by anybody—just simply put some effort into it and... Now today, Rabotai, in many places you have kids that go to yeshiva, people that go to Beit Knesset, and if you compare their mentality to the Greeks, there's no difference whatsoever. They believe that everything is from them, from their effort. They succeeded because they were at the right place at the right time and had a good idea and they're smart and they invented something and they know how to get customers, and they know how to check people, and so on and so forth.

56:42Torah says the opposite. HaKadosh Baruch Hu decides everything except whether you're going to serve Him or not. That's in your hands. The only thing that's in your hands is whether you're going to serve Hashem or not. Whether you're going to learn Torah or not. Whether you actually end up succeeding in anything, Hashem decides. The effort is in your hands. Everything is from Heaven except the fear of Heaven. What does that mean? That means that whether you go to work or not, you could decide. Why? Because serving Hashem also comes through your job. If you decide to work at some nightclub, obviously, what are you doing? You're going against Hashem. So your job has become a tool for you to fight against Hashem. You go work in a casino? Guess what? You're an enemy of Hashem. Why? Because you're working in a place that's not allowed for Jews. You go work for one of these people that make all types of immorality, types of crimes, these websites, magazines, and so on. Guess what? Your job has become a tool for how you are killing Jews and non-Jews.

57:53So, your job becomes a tool against Hashem. On the other hand, if your job is to do kiruv, to help people do teshuvah, or your job is to do accounting, or your job is to do some other type of profession to build buildings, no problem. Then the next question is, what do you do with the money? Let's say your job itself is kosher. Let's say. What do you do with the money? If all the money that you make, you go spend it on going to bars and parties and vacations, guess what? Your job might as well be in a casino anyway. Why? Because it's the same thing. Same thing against Hashem again. On the other hand, if you use your money to do mitzvot, to fulfill the Torah, to give tzedakah, chazak u'baruch, your job becomes a mitzvah. It's like you're learning Torah all day. Whether you succeed or not in your job is going to be decreed by Hashem. Whether you have children or not is going to be decided by Hashem. You can try as hard as you want. Not everybody has kids. Many people try and fail. Why? Hashem doesn't want them to have kids. Not at that time. One couple came to me. Five years they were married. Never had a kid.

59:08I spoke to them for a little while, helped them do teshuva, baruch Hashem. I told them, listen, you do a couple of things, baruch Hashem, you're going to have a kid. In the beginning, if people are smart, usually they listen to what I say. After they become smarter than what they're supposed to, they stop listening, because they think they're smarter than the rabbi now. That's what happens with a lot of people. They come, they do teshuva, they read a book or two, they think they're rabbis already. They stop listening. This couple, baruch Hashem, they listened in the beginning, Nine months later, there's a baby. It has nothing to do with me. It's what the Torah says. If HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives you a blessing, you're going to have a baby. If HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't bless you, you're not going to have a baby. If the wife puts on a kisui rosh, if the husband learns Torah every day, if you fulfill mitzvot, if you keep Shabbat, why not? Why wouldn't HaKadosh Baruch Hu want to bless you with children? When a person thinks that everything is in their hands, that's a Greek mentality. And there are many, many people, unfortunately, today that believe that anything is in their hands except serving HaKadosh Baruch Hu. This is the remainder, some of the remainder, of what happened to us 2,000 years ago that hasn't left. Now,

1:00:36You would think that this should have been destroyed when we won the battle. We won the battle against the Greeks, the Chashmonaim. The Chashmonaim should have, at the very least, made everybody do teshuvah. You know, they killed a bunch of Greeks. They killed a bunch of Jews also, by the way. All those Jews that went completely off the derech and didn't start keeping mitzvot, they killed them. People that started keeping mitzvot, they kept them on. But then you see that the Chashmonaim themselves, the Gemara says Not a single one of them is left in the world. The Chashmonaim, which themselves were Yirei Shamayim, kept Torah and mitzvot; they were superheroes. What did they defend? They defended the Torah. Why would a dozen rabbis, who never fought a day in their life, decide to fight against millions of Greeks?

1:01:50Power of the Torah. He says, listen, we're going to defend the Torah. We're not going to worship idols. We're not going to go to the gym. We're not going to go with women that are not our wives and so on and so forth. So they defended the Torah. You would think the world should be full of Chashmonaim. They're all from the tribe of the Kohanim. They're all Kohanim. You would think the world would be full of Kohanim. Some kehilot don't even have one. How come? How come there's not a single descendant from their family? Not a single descendant from their family is in the world today. For anyone who doesn't know the story, the Rambam writes that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, although the Chashmonaim, the house of the Chashmonaim, were very righteous before the war,

1:02:50They made a critical mistake after the war, and that is the Chashmonaim were all Kohanim. The job of the Kohen is to go learn Torah and teach it, go work in the Beit Hamikdash, go help Am Yisrael do teshuva, go help Am Yisrael connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But the Chashmonaim, since they were the leaders, they had just won this massive battle. They didn't want to go back to the Beit Midrash and learn Gemara. They didn't want to go to the Beit Midrash and go back and forth, did Rashi say this, did Tosafot say that, Halacha is this, Halacha is that. Listen, we'll keep Torah and Mitzvot, we'll keep Shabbat and everything, but I'm not going back to the Beit Midrash as a simple Avrech making $1500 a month. You go do it. I'm a king. I just won a battle. I just beat millions of Greeks. I'm not going back. Finally, I got some respect now. You want me to go to the Beit Midrash again and make $400 a month? You go do it! HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "Everybody has a role. Everyone has a role. Your job in this world is to play your role and do the best in your role, not somebody else's role."

1:04:14Rabbi Aharon Kotler says, if the pilot and the flight attendant who goes like this, like this, when he tells you about the seatbelt and putting the stuff in and makes fun of the whole thing, switch jobs in the middle of the flight. Guess what? You're not going to make it. Why? Because even though the guy that knows how to put the seatbelt on has been on a thousand flights, he doesn't know how to fly a plane. And even though he really means well and he wants to land the plane, wanting is not enough. Liking it is not enough. Even if he played a bunch of video games that kind of taught him how to fly, it doesn't mean he knows how to fly. That's not his role. He's not a pilot. He's going to crash the plane. When we as Jews do not play our role, when we as men do not play our role, when the women, when the B'not Yisrael do not play their role, when the goyim do not play their role, when every person doesn't play their role, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gets really upset. Why? You've officially lost your purpose to exist.

1:05:29You are a Bat Yisrael. You are supposed to reproduce and bring more children to the world that are going to serve HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You don't want to have kids? What's the point of you? I'm not saying you don't have kids because you can't, but because you don't feel like it. You just don't feel like it because you want to look like a supermodel when you're 90 years old. You have no point to live. Yeah, but it's not a mitzvah on the woman. It's a mitzvah on the man. Yes, but the man needs the woman for that. He can't do it by himself. You're a guy. You don't want to learn Torah. You don't want to fulfill mitzvot. Guess what? There's no point to you. There's no point for you to exist. What? To build buildings? Hashem has eight billion Goyim to build buildings. He doesn't need a Jew to build buildings. You want to build buildings and learn Torah? No problem. Yeah, you could do that. But if you only want to build buildings, but no Torah, there's no point for you to exist. Because the Torah is the only reason that you are different from the Goyim. Without you complying with Torah, there's no point for you to exist. Hashem has 8 billion Goyim. He doesn't need another Goy. That's not your role. It's not your role.

1:06:57This sounds simple, but even the tzaddikim fell for this. How? Bribery. Bribery doesn't always come in the form of money where somebody is giving you money under the table in some sneaky, nasty way. Bribery sometimes comes when somebody says When somebody gives you some kavod, somebody gives you some honor, somebody gives you an extra nice chair. Everybody else has some ugly blue chair, but you have a nice white chair. And you like your white chair, even though it's the same $99 chair or 99 cents chair, but you like your white chair. That extra kavod, that bribery, that could destroy a person. What's our proof? Chanukah. The war was won by tzaddikim, talmidei chachamim, the Chashmonaim. How come there are no more Chashmonaim in the world? Because after they won this battle and they got so much kavod, so much honor from everybody else, they didn't want to leave this and go back to the Beit Midrash, be regular avreichim, making 400 bucks a month. Maybe they'll write a book every few years and you'll give them samei chazak u'baruch. They wanted to stay kings.

1:08:17So they wanted to go back to being Kohanim. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that's not your role. Your role was to be talmidei chachamim, go back to the Beit Midrash, go back to learning, go back to doing your mitzvot. You want to be kings? You want to be in control? You want to be politicians? You want to be businessmen? I'll destroy all of you. And that's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu destroyed them. That's what the Ramban says. HaKadosh Baruch Hu destroyed the Chashmonaim, the tzaddikim. Because they did not want to play their role. They did not want to be Kohanim anymore. They liked the honor they were getting from the people and did not want to give back the seat of kingship to the tribe of Yehudah. The tribe of Yehudah is the tribe that HaKadosh Baruch Hu says they are the kings. Mashiach comes from the tribe of Yehudah. We learned from last week's parasha, Parashat Vayeshev, the story of Yehuda and Tamar. Yehuda and Tamar have two children, one of them is Peretz, and from him comes Mashiach. From the tribe of Yehuda, from Peretz all the way to David HaMelech, Shlomo HaMelech, and so on. But in the same exact parasha also lies the answer. Also lies the answer that distinguishes the difference

1:09:46between Yehuda and the Chashmonaim. Now, no one in the world could ever tell you that the Chashmonaim were reshaim. Because after all, the only reason we're still here today is thanks to the Chashmonaim. If the Chashmonaim did not defend Am Yisrael, did not defend the Torah, did not say, "Whoever is for Hashem, come with me," if Matityahu didn't come and say this, guess what, Rabotai? There's no Am Yisrael. Shem Yirachem. Imagine you have millions and millions of Greeks with nuclear weapons. You have a knife, a plastic one you bought from the 99 cent store, or you found, you got it from a Chinese food place. That's what you have. And what are you saying? You with the nuclear weapons? I want to beat you with my little plastic knife. Actually, I'll use the knife to eat, and then I'll beat you with nothing. You have to have some serious emunah in Hashem. If you had such emunah, you give a lecture, everybody does teshuva.

1:10:58You start a whole organization. Emunah, Emunah, Emunah.com, Emunah.org, Emunah Inc., Emunah everything else. You do Emunah everything. Why? Emunah, you tell people, I beat the entire Greek army simply with Emunah. What? Emunah. But then HaKadosh Baruch Hu did not agree with this. Long term, short term He agreed. Long term He didn't agree. Short term, you got him on the derech. Good. Long-term he won't stay on the derech with emunah alone. Why? Emunah is good. The Chashmonaim had emunah. Believe in Hashem. We're gonna fight for Hashem. We're gonna win this battle with the power of Hashem, not us. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu destroyed them anyway. Now you cannot say they were reshaim mechalel Shabbat because that's not the truth. They were tzaddikim. But you cannot deny that there's no more of them. He cannot deny the fact that they did still sin, even though they had emunah. So I'll give you the answer. The Chashmonaim had an enormous amount of emunah in Hashem, enough to go to war. They didn't even think about winning the war.

1:12:25They simply knew what was wrong. They simply knew that it is wrong to violate Shabbat. It's wrong to go against the Torah. It's wrong to be an atheist. It's wrong. We're gonna fight for it. So that emunah got them on the right path. But the fact is that after the war was finished, they didn't want to go back to the old days. They wanted to stay. And there's a reason why. There's a reason why they failed. In the same parasha that we learn about the tribe of Yehuda, we also learn about his brother Yosef, Yosef HaTzadik. Why is Yosef called Yosef HaTzadik? The Gemara in Masechet Sotah says, because Yosef did not waste seed. That's why he's called Yosef HaTzadik. Anyone who does not waste seed,

1:13:26It's called Tzadik. Yosef had an opportunity to be not only with one of the four most beautiful women that ever existed. Potiphar's wife was beautiful. Don't think that she was some troll with three heads, four arms, and things coming out of her face. You're not even sure if it's a real species or not. This woman was absolutely beautiful. Not only that, she was powerful too. She told Yosef, "Yosef, I'm really the head of the household. I tell my husband, Potiphar, 'Jump,' and he already jumps before I say it. If I tell my husband to give you a raise, he'll give you a raise. If I tell my husband to just leave you alone and let me manage you all day, he'll leave you alone and I'll manage you all day." If I tell my husband to give you half the money we have, he'll give it to you. But if I tell him to send you to jail, he'll do it too. If I tell him to send you to some hole in the middle of the desert, where anyone who enters doesn't come out, he'll send you there. That's the jail that Yosef went to. And this beautiful woman comes to Yosef and says, "Listen,

1:14:56All I want is for you to be with me. That's it. If you're with me, I'll make you rich, I'll make you powerful, I'll make you popular, eventually, I'll kill off my husband too if you want. Whatever you want, everything is on my head, everything is yours, whatever you want, I'll give it to you. Just be with me. And again, this is not some troll with three heads, four arms, and a tail. This is what the Gemara says: one of the four most beautiful women that ever lived comes to you and says, "I come with gifts." Today, usually, people come with baggage, not full of gifts. Usually, it's problems. She says, "Will you marry me?" I don't know. "How many problems do you have?" Well, you know, not so many. I only, you know, am overdrafting on five checking accounts and 18 credit cards. and I'm divorced, but my husband doesn't know it yet. You know, people come with baggage today. This woman is coming to you and says, I'll give you money, I'll give you power, I'll give you everything. And on top of that, she's beautiful. But if you don't listen to me,

1:16:10I will ruin your life. You will regret the day you were born. Just as I am powerful in bringing gifts, I can also bring the staff right on top of your head. You're gonna go inside a hole, and that hole whoever enters it doesn't leave. And on top of that, everyone's gonna make fun of you for the rest of your life because they're gonna think that you tried to be with me and this and that. She's threatening him to ruin his life. And Yosef HaTzadik says... No, I'm not going to be with you. How could somebody have such power? This is not human power. Don't think for a second this is a human being's power. Guys today, guys today, Hashem Yerachem Aleinu, Hashem Yerachem Aleinu, how far we are from Yosef HaTzadik. Guys today have an idea in their head. They already act on it. The cashier says thank you to them. Oh, yeah, she likes me. What? She likes you because she said thank you? She thanked you because you gave her money. What likes you? What are you talking about? She's a married woman with three kids. What likes you? No, no, she's in love with me. Guys today have such junk in their heads. They act on it. No. No, she loves me. Yeah, what loves you? What are you talking about? Why? Because she said thank you? How could Yosef HaTzadik do this?

1:17:39The answer, Rabotai, will answer both how Yosef did it and how the Chashmonaim did it. And the answer is, Rabotai, when Potiphar's wife comes to Yosef, the Gemara in Masechet Yoma says that she threatens him with all types of things. She says that I'll get them to beat you up and they'll break your back. He says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu makes the bent straight again. I'll make them take your eyes out. HaKadosh Baruch Hu makes the blind see. Anything she said to him, he has a response from the Torah. But she tells him, just be with me once. And he says to her, Rabotai, Ve'ech e'eseh ha'ra'ah ha'gedolah hazot ve'chatati le'Elohim.

1:18:42He says in chapter 39, verse number 9, he says, since you are his wife, how then can I perpetrate this great evil and sin against God? Meaning it's not because you are going to blind me or not going to blind me. It's not because of the money or no money. It's not because you're ugly or you're beautiful. It's not because of any of those reasons. It's because if I'm with you, I'm making a sin. And that is enough for me to decide—I cannot do it. I'd rather die and live in Gehinom for eternity than make a sin against Hashem. Because, what do you have? What do you have here? Option A: Go spend some quality time with the most beautiful woman on earth. On top of it, make a bunch of money. On top of it, you're going to be powerful forever. On top of that, you can have all the things that this materialism, this Greek world tells you you should have. You can have it in one second. For what? For being with somebody you really want to be with.

1:20:04It's not like he thinks she's ugly. He's not attracted to her. He's already taken, his heart belongs to somebody else. No, no, no, no, no, no. The Gemara Masechet Sotah says he actually wanted to be with her, and he almost was. Physically attractive, physically wanted. Last second, last second, when he said this, the image of his father Yaakov appeared and told him, Right now there's 12 tribes. All of you will serve in the Beit HaMikdash. Your names will be remembered forever because you're going to be on the choshen of the Kohen Gadol. Your names are going to be inscribed. You touch this woman, your name is wiped out forever. And the Gemara Masechet Yoma says, when Yosef told her, listen, it's not the money. It's not the power. It's not the attraction. It's not all of that. It's that I know that if I'm with you one second, make a sin against God. What does it mean? I make a sin against God, everybody sins. Why is Yosef so fanatic? He says if I sin with a woman that Hashem says no, I'm going to be tied to you forever. The Gemara says my neshama will be connected to yours forever. It will never leave. I

1:21:33I'm gonna be connected to you in Gehinnom. I'm gonna be connected to you in Kaf HaKela. I'm never gonna leave. You're always gonna be attached to me. There's no getting out of this. It's not one time I'm finished. Bye-bye. I had fun while it lasted. If we act, we make this act one time, I'm finished. In HaKadosh Baruch Hu's world, there's no such thing as one sin, a million sins. Oh, he's worse than this one. You make a sin. You make a sin against HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Are you out of your mind, Yosef says? You want me to make a sin against HaKadosh Baruch Hu? Are you crazy, lady? The Chashmonaim, the Tzaddikim, when they were in the Beit Midrash, they knew and they had emunah in HaKadosh Baruch Hu. They knew enough to defend the Torah.

1:22:34But after spending so much time in war, apparently their Torah went into their subconscious. Their Torah went into the back of their memory, where they forgot that emunah by itself is not enough. You have to have yirat Shamayim. You have to be afraid to make a sin against HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Emunah is not enough. Why? Because even if you have emunah, if Potiphar's wife shows up, my friend, you're going to become her best friend. You're going to become a puppy if you want. Without yirat Shamayim, your emunah will go in the garbage. And that's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu said to the Chashmonaim, "You did good when you played your role. Once you didn't want to play your role anymore, there's no use for you anymore." There's no use for you anymore. Today, many, many people like to talk about emunah, and that's wonderful. It's important for us to have emunah to survive the day, to survive the troubles, to survive the turmoil, to survive the upside-down world.

1:23:49But if we're not worried about chatati laHashem, we're not worried about making sins against HaKadosh Baruch Hu, we're not going to survive the war. This is the reason why for 2,000 years we're celebrating Chanukah because of the spirituality. Because the materialism aspect of it, we're losing every day. You tell a guy, "Listen, if I pay $10,000, will you drive on Shabbat?" Most people say, "$20,000, I'll drive it." Increase it a little bit, I'll drive. Everybody's got a price. I'm not talking about the chiloni that drives for free. Drives for Uber for $15. He works the whole day like a slave, losing his olam haba. Why? Because he's going to make an extra hundred bucks. Working on Shabbat. I'm talking about the people that keep Shabbat. You tell the guy to keep Shabbat, listen. 25,000, 100,000, 200,000, 500,000, a million dollars. You drive on Shabbat? They'll start asking you, "Pay cash or Bitcoin?" Why? We're not afraid of sinning. Many people have emunah, but it's an emunah shefalah. It's an emunah that's damaged.

1:25:18it's emunah that's missing yirat Shamayim. It's critical for us to have emunah because, unfortunately, there are many, many tests all of us endure every day. The difference between the mentality of a Jew that's kosher and a Jew that's almost a Greek is that yirat Shamayim. Now, if you heard just now after they lit the candles, it's common—it's a common custom—to sing the song "Maoz Tzur Yeshuati." "Maoz Tzur Yeshuati." And then everybody forgets the words. Everybody knows the first verse, and after that, it's "na na na na na na na na na." nobody knows the words, even though it's on paper. We still don't know. And then you read them and you have no idea how it goes with the rhyme. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it with these songs already. The Jewish name becomes anti-Semitic after they hear you sing. Now, this song, by the way, many Chachamim say, who wrote it? Mordechai.

1:26:41Mordechai wrote it. Maoz Tzur, this is divided into six paragraphs. And the first letter of each one of the paragraphs, the first five of them, spells Mem, Resh, Dalet, Chaf, Yud, Mordechai. And then the last paragraph, if you take the first letter of the first three words, says Chazak, Mordechai Chazak. So many say that Maoz Tzur was written by Mordechai; some say somebody else wrote it, but the point is that we see there's a connection. Now in this Maoz Tzur, it talks about different aspects of Hanukkah, but in the fifth paragraph, he says that the Yevanim, the Greeks, that the Greeks came in at the time of the Chashmonaim and they broke the barriers between the Jews and the Greeks and made us all tamei, made everything tamei. So what are these barriers really? At the time of the Beit HaMikdash

1:28:08Shlomo HaMelech wanted everybody to benefit from the Beit HaMikdash, and he prayed to Hashem that even if a goy comes to the Beit HaMikdash to bring a sacrifice, Hashem should answer his prayer and fulfill his request. In fact, the entire holiday of Sukkot was a time when we would bring sacrifices for the 70 nations. So much was the benefit of of the Beit HaMikdash for the nations, that had they known how much of a benefit the Beit HaMikdash is for them, for the goyim, they would have actually sent all of their armies to defend the Beit HaMikdash. Because all of their blessings were coming due to the Beit HaMikdash. When they destroyed the Beit HaMikdash, they were destroying their own bracha. But Shlomo HaMelech prayed to HaKadosh Baruch Hu to answer the goyim's prayers. always, if he comes to the Beit HaMikdash and brings a sacrifice, even if he doesn't mean it, even if he doesn't care, even if he doesn't want to be there, but Hashem answers his prayer also, always. Why? He says, so that the goyim never think that the G-d of Israel is weak, so there's no Chilul Hashem. But whenever these goyim would come to the Beit HaMikdash,

1:29:28They wouldn't be allowed to enter the Beit HaMikdash the same way as the Jews. There was a barrier that separated the place of the goyim and the place of the Jews. Now, this little barrier wasn't a huge choma like the Kotel, just a tiny little thing, a few feet. You can look over it. That was the barrier that separated the Jews and the non-Jews. It's like lehavdil, but when you go to some park or something, there are these little things that separate the lines. You make sure that you're in line. You're not all becoming one big mush of people just jumping on top of each other. You know, so they have a little thing that separates everybody. Similar to this. Small little barrier between the Goyim and the Jews. So there's no confusion. This is a Jew, this is a Goy, so on and so forth. Because in those days, they actually looked the same. The Jews and the non-Jews. Everybody looked like they're the Rambam. Had a tarbush on, had a gilmah. That's it. No one looked like Shem HaAchem what people look like today. So Shlomo HaMelech says,

1:30:32answered their prayers. Mordechai says these Yevanim, these Greeks, broke the barrier. What barrier are you talking about? This barrier—what? They could just hop over it, break it. The barrier is tiny. It's not like a barrier that's supposed to, you know, keep us away from them. It's just to separate, to know there's a difference. Mordechai says that's the difference. That's the point. What did the Greeks do? They didn't come with the sword right away to kill everybody. They broke the barrier by infiltrating into our beit knesset, into our school, into our community, into our living room, into our phone, into our job, into our mentality, into our heart. To make us want to be like them. Make us want to be like the goyim. Now you have Christmas. Now, all of a sudden, Jews have a Chanukah bush. They've already had Chanukah bushes for 30 years, but now it's become a big thing. If you are going to celebrate Chanukah, you have to have a Chanukah bush. And chas v'shalom, you show up to Chanukah without presents.

1:31:51Why? Because the goyim have presents. The Jews have to have presents eight days in a row. Now, let's listen. Giving a little bit of gelt, a little bit of chocolate, a little bit of presents, five, ten, twenty dollars to your kids, no problem. But once adults start giving presents to each other, that's goyish mentality. That's Christian mentality. That's the Greek mentality. You're now competing holidays. Why? Because they give presents because of Yoshke. You're giving presents because of Hanukkah. New Year's coming up, Hashem yerachem, what New Year? People are gonna go out for New Year. People are gonna go make all types of sins on New Year. Has anybody even spent a little bit of time learning what they actually did on New Year? What Silvester HaRashah did to Am Yisrael on New Year? The whole holiday, the whole holiday of New Year was based on slaughtering Jews. That's what they did historically on New Year. It was a day they would slaughter Jews in the streets.

1:32:58burn their stores, burn them with it. That's New Year. No, but they're going to go celebrate it now. They're going to go and have l'chaim at 12 o'clock at night. Their grandparents died in cold blood in the middle of the street just because they were Jewish, but they're saying l'chaim now. I'm going to stay up all night. The shiur is too late though. I can't go to the shiur, but I must stay up all night. That means that the Greek mentality, it's not them killing us with the sword, with the gun, with anti-Semitism. Opposite! It's already in our mind, it's in our heart, we want to be goyim, Hashem yerachem aleinu. You ask the average guy today, how come you don't wear a kippah all the time? How come you only wear a kippah sometimes? No, no, I work when I go to Beit Knesset. Okay, but how come you don't wear it outside of the Beit Knesset? What, Hashem is not outside? He's only inside the Beit Knesset? He's such a small God? No, you know, I work with goyim, and you know, I don't know if I want them to know I'm Jewish. Why not? What, do you work for Hitler?

1:34:12Why, is your boss Hitler? Or is your boss Mubarak? Your boss is Saddam Hussein? Why? Why don't you want them to know that you're Jewish? No, you know, why? No, I don't know. Why? Why are you embarrassed of being a Jew? Why are you afraid of being a Jew? What, you can't wear a kippah? If I were allowed, if my rabbi would permit it, I'd wear a turban like the Rambam. I want everybody to know I'm a Jew. What's the point? Why are you embarrassed about being a Jew? But to wear a jersey of some moron that's nine feet tall and can put a piece of pig inside a basket, that you're proud of. You wear the jersey; you pay $150 for it. But to wear a kippah that the Gemara Masechet Shabbat, last chapter, says you have to keep, you have to put on your head, no, no, I'm embarrassed. Embarrassed? What about tzitzit? You wear tzitzit. No, you know, it's hot. It's hot. Okay. It's hot? No, it's also hot. It's also hot over there. How come you're embarrassed to be a Jew? How come you're embarrassed to be a Jewish lady? How come you want to look like one of these zonot that work for free in the streets? Why, why? Why can't you look like a Bat Yisrael? What, do you want to be a movie star?

1:35:40makes 20 million dollars a year. That's what you want? How come you don't want to be like a Bat Yisrael? How come you're going to let every guy get the benefit of seeing you and leave nothing to the imagination? Now, you know, it's not the style anymore. Style of who? Maybe you're not in style. I Maybe you're not stylish. Who says you need to be in style? What, some homosexual woman decided that this is going to be the style in Paris? That's why you're going to wear this style? You're going to pay $5,000 for some piece of fabric that you could get for free from some homeless shelter? Style? What's a style? How come you're embarrassed of being a Jew? How come you're embarrassed of being modest? No, it's not stylish. Stylish? What do you want? You want to be stylish, or you want to be in Gan Eden? You want to be stylish? You want to have kids that respect you, call you ima, not by your first name. You want a husband that honors you? Or you want a husband that says, "Hey you, did you make something to eat?" Or instead of saying "Shabbat Shalom," he says, "What's up?"

1:37:02Anything good? Did you pay the bills? Good, good. Okay, I'm going to sleep. That's the husband you want? You're embarrassed to be a Jew? You're embarrassed to be by the Torah? What do you have? What do you have? What are you comparing it against? You want to be stylish. Rabotai, you look at the world around you, you see that all of those stylish people are simply miserable people. The more stylish, the more miserable. Most stylish people, that in essence dictate what the next fashion line is going to be, have the highest rate of divorce in the history of mankind. Hollywood's divorce rates are simply not even counted anymore because it's just a waste of people's time. If you are a member of Hollywood, it's already known that you're going to be divorced several times over. And the people that everyone makes fun of, the religious few, that get married after only three dates without even touching each other, guess what? They're almost never divorced. The ones that never touch each other, the ones that never pretend to be husband and wife even for a moment before marriage, the ones that preserve themselves, the ones that don't look wherever they don't belong to look, their marriage lasts forever. You miss one world in the next, but the people that say "I love you, I love you" and they act on it before marriage, guess what? It's only a matter of time before "I hate him, I hate him," "I hate her, I hate her." Why? Because that works. You wanted to act like Hollywood.

1:38:28ones that don't look wherever they don't belong to look, their marriage lasts forever. You miss one world in the next, but the people that say, "I love you, I love you," and they act on it before marriage, guess what? It's only a matter of time before, "I hate him, I hate him," "I hate her, I hate her." Why? Because that's how it works. You wanted to act like Hollywood. Like you saw in the movie. He fell in love with her. She fell in love with him. Hashem says, no problem. You want to act like the movie? You'll have the results of the movie. But in real life, not in the movie version. In real life, after the credits are over, that's when the divorce papers come. In the movie, they still say, "I love you." But they don't tell you about the divorce in the movie. They just finish right before the lawyers show up. Why? Because you want to be stylish. Be stylish, want to be with the times—a Greek mentality. It's a Greek mentality. There are things that are allowed, not a problem, such as making money. You want to make money? No problem, make money, make millions. But never for a second think that you're allowed to cancel even a half-hour shiur for it.

1:39:55no matter how much money. Never think for a second that you're allowed to cancel even the smallest mitzvah in the Torah for money. You want to go make money? No problem. Go make money. Try your best. But you still have to comply with the entire Torah, which means you need to comply with all of the laws, you have to learn every day, you have to fulfill what it says, your business needs to be clean, you need to be clean, you need to be ethical, and so on and so forth. You're allowed to benefit from certain things in this world, no problem. But never for a second think that the Torah will be the sacrifice for it. Never think for a second that you are the one that's even making it. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the one that's deciding whether you'll succeed or not. You could simply try. But just like you try to go make money, you have to go try to learn Torah too. You cannot just try on one of them. You can't just say, no, no, I'm trying to make money so I can, instead of me going to learn in a kollel and so on, I'm just gonna make so much money, I'm gonna buy a kollel. Doesn't work that way. Doesn't work that way. Hillel HaZaken. His brother,

1:41:10was a big businessman, a multi-millionaire. After Hillel HaZaken became the Gadol HaDor, one of the giants from whom we know all of our halachot, his brother, a big businessman, came to him and said, "Listen, I'm already older, I made a lot of money, you made a lot of mitzvot, let's do business. I'll buy half of your mitzvot, half of the Torah that you learned, I'll buy it." Hillel was so humble, he didn't want to tell his brother no. He wanted to say yes. But as he was about to say yes, he had such merit that there was a bat kol, a heavenly voice, that came from heaven out loud saying to Hillel and his brother, even if he bought, took all of the money It's in the entire world, not just his money. The money that belongs to everybody, that everybody has in their bank accounts, in their safes, under the carpet, under the rocks, under the pillow, in the attic, in the safe, take everybody's savings, all of it. And if he wanted to buy a single mitzvah of Hillel, we'd simply laugh at him from Shamayim. Mitzvot are only something that you can invest in before they're done, not after.

1:42:35You cannot buy somebody's mitzvot after his gadol hador. You want to invest in an avrech, you want to sponsor somebody's learning Torah, you want to sponsor somebody's kiruv, sponsor somebody's results, you do it before. Before they do it. You can't buy an existing baal teshuva, an existing success. You have to invest in it beforehand. If his brother would have learned Torah, he would have known this. Rabotai yekarim. We have allowed the Greeks to break the fence, to break the small fence, and literally enter our minds, enter our houses, enter our living rooms in such a way that we see no wrong. We see no wrong in the aspirations of the average young person to want to be a famous celebrity, to want to be a movie star, to want to be an athlete. We see no wrong in the fact that people want to be everything except Moshe Rabbeinu. I went to a few yeshivot. Usually, when I go to yeshivot, I ask the same questions. I ask, how many kids here want to be Moshe Rabbeinu?

1:44:00Out of all the places that I've gone to, I believe only one person raised their hand. I'm talking about the yeshiva. I'm not talking about going to some public school. How many kids want to be Moshe Rabbeinu? Because over there they ask, "Who's Moshe Rabbeinu? Who is he? Is he on the Knicks? Is he in the NFL or NBA? Which team is he on?" They're not going to know who he is. I'm talking about going to a yeshiva and asking them, how many people want to be Moshe Rabbeinu? One kid raises his hand. I'm not sure if you understood the question, though. But when I asked the follow-up question, I said, how many kids want to be LeBron James? Even a teacher raises his hand. Everybody wants to be LeBron James. Some extremely tall and athletic guy that makes millions and millions of dollars but spends all of his time on Twitter. That's what everybody wants to do. That's what everybody wants to do. Everybody wants to be him.

1:45:02Because he can put the ball in the basket. Nobody thinks there's anything wrong with this. I've been saying this for years. This is Greek mentality that's entered the minds of almost every Jew in the world. There are certain Avreichim, people that learn Torah every single day, that see nothing wrong with this. They're actually jealous of their brothers that are secular. But they're still staying religious and learning because that's all they know. It's not that they're learning because they want to. It's almost like an outcome of events that led to this. But if they get an opportunity, they'll leave also. How many people today are actually going to keep the Torah if they were allowed to not keep it? If there was a heavenly voice that came down and said, "You know what? You don't have to keep the Torah anymore. I'll give you heaven anyway." How many people are going to continue keeping the Torah? Virtually none. Few. Few lovers of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Few. Few. That's not because we don't know what the truth is, but rather because we've allowed

1:46:24the Yevanim, the Greeks, to enter our minds and make us believe as much in avodah zarah, as much in the materialism of this world, as much in the benefits of this world, as much as we do in Hashem. Meaning that when people think of good, they don't think of Hashem. They think of money. They think of women. They think of promiscuity. They think of food. They think of materialism. They don't relate good with Hashem, with learning Torah, taking a 3,000-year-old book and reading it a million times. They don't think that's good. They think good is like I'll eat good food and be at the best hotels, have the nicest cars, and brand-new clothes every week. I'll have the nicest wife, and if I don't like her, I'll switch. If I don't like my husband, I'll switch. If I don't like my kids, I'll switch them too. Switch everything—everything is replaceable, like an app. I'll get a new one in the app store. People do not relate good with Hashem.

1:47:39Why? Because the Greeks have entered our minds and convinced us that good exists outside of Hashem, which is the exact opposite of reality. The reality is that there is no good without Hashem. That's reality. Good does not exist if you do not have Hashem also. Pleasure exists without you thinking that it's connected to Hashem, but even that pleasure comes from Hashem. You could be an enemy of Hashem and still have pleasure, but a good life, a good eternity, a good anything does not exist without Hashem. When we think of things... Clearly, everything that I said fits like a perfect puzzle that only has one piece that can fit. When we think with the bias of liking and enjoying certain things of this world, things start to become a little cloudy. Nah, he's extreme. Nah, I know this type of fanatic people. The only one, it's too much. That's not because it's fanatic.

1:49:01It's simply because you like the Greek world too much. If you think that discussing politics, talking about whether Trump is going to be re-elected or impeached or elected and impeached together, and you think that the economy or the stock market or the deals and all the tariff wars that you have between China and America, if you think all of that stuff, that's good conversation, that's Greek. That's Greek. That's how the Greek entered your mind, entered your household, entered your phone, entered your job, entered your life. The only reason you should discuss the economy or politics is if that's your job. If you're not a politician and you're not a professional investor, there's no reason whatsoever for you to discuss either one. Who cares what your political opinion is? Who cares?

1:50:02It amazes me how many rabbis love to talk about politics. I have no idea why. What purpose does it serve? Now if you guys say, no, we need to educate the public about politics. Trust me, they're getting the education elsewhere. With you, they need Torah. They don't need the rabbi to teach them about politics. If the rabbi's going to teach them about politics, who's going to teach them Torah? People spend a lot of time living in this world without even knowing that they're infected with the Greek bug. living in this world without even knowing that they're infected with the Greek bug. And the only way to eliminate it, Rabotai, is by first and foremost understanding that the difference between the Jew and the non-Jew was not a big fence, a big difference, you could tell he's a Jew, you could tell he's a non-Jew. No, it's a very small difference. It's a minute difference. It's almost unseeable to the naked eye. You could look at two people and guess the wrong one to be Jewish.

1:51:07especially today. The difference between a Jew and a non-Jew is literally microscopic. It's simply a book. One follows the Torah 100%, and the other one, if he's doing what he's supposed to be doing, follows the Torah to 100%, but to his extent. Seven Noahide laws versus 613 laws. That's the difference. One is concerned about olam hazeh, one is concerned about olam haba. The Greek, atheist, heretic, is someone who's simply going to tell you to do everything the opposite of the Torah. But he's going to tell you it's a mitzvah to do it. He's not going to come to you like a foolish person saying, "Go against Hashem openly." He's going to tell you to do it in a certain way where it's going to make you think it's a mitzvah to do it. So one thing I would suggest that we learn is: the Torah tells us that the difference between the Jew and the Greek is a very small difference. You have to know that if you do not learn Torah every single day, if you do not work on yourself and develop your character traits...

1:52:31and work on how you serve HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and always, always remember that Emunah is important, but Yirat Shamayim is even more important. If your Emunah does not have Yirat Shamayim, eventually you won't have Emunah either. But if you have Yirah, eventually you will have Emunah. This is one of the things we learn from the Pasuk after Kriat Yam Suf. It says that Am Yisrael saw Hashem, they feared Him, and then they believed in Him. We see that if we fear Hashem, eventually we get to Emunah. But if you only have Emunah, you skip the step of Yirat Shamayim, and eventually, you'll be like the Chashmonaim. They were righteous at the right time, but also not enough at the wrong time. Not enough at the wrong time. That's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu, even though they kept Torah, they kept mitzvot, they weren't some criminals, they didn't play their role. Because they weren't afraid of sinning against Hashem. Like Yosef HaTzaddik.

1:53:42Yosef HaTzaddik became Yosef HaTzaddik simply because he was afraid of sinning against Hashem. Not because he didn't want the woman. Not because of any other reason. He was simply afraid of sinning against Hashem. That's the difference between somebody that's a kosher Jew and someone that's a Yevani, someone with a Greek mentality. Someone who's not afraid of sinning simply is going to adopt the Greek mentality. Because if you're afraid of sinning, You're not going to say, "Listen, I'm not eating the Big Mac with cheese because I don't like it." No, no. You like it. You do like it. Don't be a liar. Don't say, "I'm not eating pig because I don't like it." You like it. Don't be a liar. I don't know. I've never had pig, but people that eat pig told me that it's delicious. Bacon is delicious. Don't say you don't like bacon. Liar. You like it. But you don't do it because your Father in Heaven says no. Don't ever say you don't like the sin. You like the sin, but you don't do it because your Father in Heaven said no. You don't have to lie to yourself and say, "No, no, I don't like non-kosher. I don't like girls. I don't like boys. I don't like money." Don't be a fanatic crazy. You like it, but you're not allowed to do it. That's the difference.

1:55:06That's the difference. That's what Yirat Shamayim is. Yirat Shamayim is not putting you in a room where it's a round room and telling you to go look for a corner. Circles don't have corners, guys. That's not Yirat Shamayim. Yirat Shamayim is, listen, there's a room, you're allowed everything on the right side. Left side, not allowed. It exists, the left side. But you're not allowed. The Tree of Knowledge exists, but you're not allowed to eat from it. If you don't eat, guess what? You have Yirat Shamayim. The second you eat, you're a Rasha. You can do Teshuva though, as long as you're alive. But who's promised tomorrow? This, Rabotai, is the difference between the Jew and the The Jew thinks about tomorrow and eternity. The Greek thinks about today and today only. "Let us eat because who knows if we're going to live till tomorrow," the Torah says. B'ezrat Hashem, we use this Chanukah as a time we connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, but at the same time remove as much of the Greek that's in us as we possibly can.

1:56:34immediately, as fast as we can. Now again, you're still living in the world; you still need to work, you still need to eat, you still need to breathe. No one's telling you not to do that stuff, but don't make that your life. Don't ever think that you're the one responsible for success. Don't ever think that you're the one responsible for the outcome. You are responsible for effort. Try your best at work, try your best at learning, try your best at marriage, try your best at raising kids. That's what your responsibility is. That's what Torah says your responsibility is. The outcome of all that stuff, HaKadosh Baruch Hu decides. As long as we have our heads straight and we realize that's it, all of a sudden the world becomes less overwhelming. The mitzvot become less overwhelming. The Torah becomes less overwhelming. Marriage becomes less overwhelming because we know that all we have to do is try our best. Trying our best we can do. But if you think that you have to be the best, then all of a sudden everything is overwhelming, including the Torah.

1:57:37Because who could keep all of these mitzvot? Who could be the biggest talmid chacham? Who could do this and who could do that? You know, everybody says already they give up before they even start. That's what the Greeks want you to do. They want you to think the Torah is too big for you to keep, so you might as well not keep everything anyway and enjoy this world while you can. That's what the yetzer hara wants us to do. Don't be a Greek. Don't even think like a Greek. Just simply worry about the effort and the effort alone. Do your best. but really your best. The first step of doing your best is to remove the Greek. After that, everything becomes easier. Why? There's nothing in the way. B'ezrat Hashem, the miracles of Chanukah will miraculously remove, or help us remove, all of the Greeks within our neshamot, within our hearts, within our minds, and B'ezrat Hashem, within our households. Baruch Adonai l'olam. Amen ve'amen.