Cleaning Out Our Inner Chametz In Far Rockaway ( Rabbi Yaron Reuven New York LECTURE TOUR)

0:13First of all, thank you very much for hosting the event, for having me. From where I came from, it's like the end of the world, but Baruch Hashem, we got here. The shiurim usually are not planned. It's really based on the crowd, based on what you guys want to talk about. We talked a little bit about the situation today, the difference between Judaism today versus the past, the truth versus the lies. And it has to do with everything, really. Mussar, in general, is something that each one of us is obligated to do every day. It's not just something that you do once a year. are not planned. It's really based on the crowd, based on what you guys want to talk about. We talked a little bit about the situation today, the difference between Judaism today versus the past, the truth versus the lies. And it has to do with everything, really. Mussar, in general, is something that each one of us is obligated to do every day. It's not just something that you do once a year. It's not something that you do once a month. It's something you're supposed to do every day. Learning Mussar is cleaning out the inner chametz throughout the entire year. And that's generally the topics that we've been talking about, or we're going to be talking about over the next few days, is cleaning out the inner chametz. Because Am Yisrael, Baruch Hashem, is spending so much effort, so much time, cleaning out little breadcrumbs in every corner, you know,

1:15torturing each other and the family and everything, turning dust into chametz. Dust is not chametz, and the husband is not a korban either. The reality is that sometimes we worry so much about cleaning up the house and eating a certain type of kosher, this and that, and we forget the real purpose. Now, you can ask most Jews, in my opinion, what is really the number one most important part of Pesach, and most Jews will tell you, is about kosher for Pesach, the matzah, making sure that you don't eat chametz, and don't violate. Very few are going to tell you that the Magid, the part where you actually tell the stories of Yetziat Mitzrayim until you fall asleep, is the number one mitzvah, but that's the truth and... The truth is, the number one most important mitzvah in all of Pesach is the Magid. It's the part where you stop and you start talking about, how did we get here? 3,300 years ago, we got Matan Torah, there was Yetziat Mitzrayim, and there was a lot of balagan, and everything happened. Fine, fast forward to now. How did we get here? Where are we now? And I think that most of us have no idea, because we've never really asked the question.

2:39Some of us know the stories, Baruch Hashem, of what happened—you know, the plagues in Egypt. Some of us even know a little bit more. We know the little details of the measure-for-measure from each one of the plagues. Hashem didn't, you know, make the water turn into blood just because. He made the water turn into blood because the Egyptians didn't allow us to drink. He also made everything smell really bad because they didn't allow us to bathe. So, they tortured us; He tortured them. Everything has a principle. But then you fast forward and… And you get to Makkat Choshech. Makkat Choshech, we had three days of darkness, and most people do not know that the Makkat Choshech was not only a plague that killed the Egyptians. In fact, the Makkat Choshech, at the best estimate, meaning the most conservative, the lowest number, the nicest way, killed 80% of Am Yisrael. The best way.

3:47The Midrash Me'am Loez says something scary. Rav Nachmani says, most think they killed one out of five, that Hashem preserved one out of five, meaning 20% left Egypt. He says no. Some say He preserved one out of 500. Because halavai it was one out of 5,000 that actually survived Egypt. Halavai, it was one out of 5,000. But we all know, Rav Nachmani says, we all know it was one out of 500,000 at best. Meaning, the nicest way, the Rashi peirush says, one out of five survived Egypt. Meaning 80% Hashem killed, 20% survived. That's the pshat. But Rav Nachmani says, halavai it was one out of 500,000 survived. meaning 99.9%, two out of every million survived. Shem HaShem, you just think of such numbers, like, why not just leave us in Egypt? Why not just leave us in Egypt? And it's a serious question. Why didn't He just leave us in Egypt? And the second question is, why did He kill them? Why didn't He just tell them, listen, no, come on?

5:10That question is still applicable today, 3,300 years later. And the reason why Hashem killed so many of us is because when He told us, listen, all of the plagues, all of the miracles, all of everything that's happened, it's all for the Matan Torah. All of it is for you to receive the Torah. Torah is not going to be given in a place of avodah zarah. It's not going to be given in a place where people are worshipping idols and worshipping themselves. It's not going to be given. It has to be given on Har Sinai. Go to the desert like, yeah, but listen. If you told us this a year, two, three, four, five years ago, we would have done it. Why? We were slaves back then. It's comfortable for us to leave slavery and go to the desert. Why? It can't get worse than slavery. Now, we're not slaves anymore. Now, we have stores, we have banks, and we have, you know, all these different things. We have Bitcoin. We have everything. We don't need, we don't want slaves anymore. Why should we leave Egypt?

6:10go to the desert to downgrade. They missed the whole point. The whole reason why Hashem did what He did was for you to leave Egypt, not for you to like Egypt. The whole reason why Hashem sent us to America is for us to have the ability to learn Torah without any distractions and without any problems. What happened? We became American and... Instead of being Am Yisrael as a result of all of the miracles that Hashem did for us in Egypt, we became Egyptians. We became Americans. We became Europeans. We became everything but what Hashem wanted. He says, now I'm giving you one last chance. You have a Torah to get. It's on Har Sinai. You have to go get it. You have to raise yourself up to Matan Torah. Not that the Torah comes to you. They said, no, no. We'll get back to you on that. You get back to me. I don't need you. And He killed them. So, rabotai, when we read on Yom Shishi, the tefillah and all the songs before, we say a lot of nice songs. On Yom Shishi, it brings a nice atmosphere. But actually, if you read the words, the meaning of the words of tefillah and your siddur, it's probably one of the best Mussar books in the world.

7:34Just you read, just you listen to what you're saying on Yom Shishi. God sat while the Mabul was destroying the world, in so many words. What does it mean? In so many words, Hashem is telling you, listen, I created the world in order for you to fear me, in order for you to honor me, in order for you to serve me, in order for you to learn my Torah, not for me to serve you. Not for Me to give you money every time you pray. Not for Me to give you every time you cry. For you to serve Me, we get the roles reversed. So Hashem reminds us every Yom Shishi, He says, I don't need you. I want you, you're My children, I love you, but I don't need you. Don't ever get it twisted and think that I need you. And unfortunately, we got it twisted. think Hashem needs us. There are many speakers today that will actually say this outright: "Hashem needs us in order to honor Him. Hashem needs us in order to serve Him." In essence, people believe that Hashem needs us. That's how Reform was born, Conservative was born, and even certain parts of Modern Orthodoxy were born—the concept that Hashem needs us instead of us needing Hashem. Because if you really think that we need Hashem...

9:02You'll think twice before you sin. Why do we sin? Because we think that He needs us or He's not watching, but definitely not that we need Him. Because if you need somebody, if you need a loan from somebody, are you going to mouth off? Are you going to say, "Hey, listen, you're late to work again," or "Hey, your wife cooks terribly," or "Hey, you smell today"? You're not going to tell him anything silly. Why? Because you need a loan. You need help. You need something. You need a ride. Reality is, anytime you need somebody, all of a sudden you become nice. All of a sudden, you start worrying about how you're behaving. We don't worry so much about how we're behaving, and the reason why is because, simply put, most people do not realize that we need God and So now, we were talking before about the problem that we have today. It's not necessarily because of the students. It's not necessarily because of Am Yisrael, the regular people, whether secular or religious. In reality, the big problem today is with leadership. Simply put, leadership is fulfilling the prophecy that it says at the end of Gemara Masechet Sotah, page 49b.

10:14it says at the end of times the truth will be hated. Anyone that will say the truth automatically is going to be hated. Chutzpah is going to be abundant; there’s going to be a lot of chutzpanim, people that have no manners. So instead of saying, "You know what? Yeah, I agree with what is said. What he is saying is actually written in the Torah. It's not his own opinion." Instead, what do they say? Ah, they start writing bad stuff about you on the internet. Instead of saying, you know what, listen, what he's saying is in the Torah. I'm a loser, I have to do teshuva. Okay, or whatever, I don't agree with it. Whatever you're going to say. But instead, what he's doing is starting to insult you. Like as if you wrote the Torah. Why? There's a lot of chutzpanim in this generation. And I saw just in a lecture I did maybe two months ago, preparing for the shiur, and you know, as usual thing, what Ami said, we're always late. Mashiach is late 2,000 years, he's definitely a Jew. We're always late, we're always late. So, as usual, we were supposed to start at 8, but it was already 8:15, and I asked the rabbi, "Do you want me to start today?" He goes, "No, you know, wait a little bit more." And one of the guys that already showed up...

11:27says, "Ah, no, no, come on, come on, let's do it now. I'm already here for 15 minutes. Let's start." And the rabbi is saying to him, "Listen, but there's not enough people. It's only, you know, half the people came. Let's wait a little bit more, and then we'll start." He starts arguing with the rabbi. This, Rabotai, is as far from reality as can be. You're arguing with the rabbi? Just forget about whether you're right or you're wrong. It's irrelevant. First of all, you can't do such a thing in public. Second of all, you're only looking at your own personal situation. The rabbi is looking at the kehillah. He's saying, listen, 50 out of 100 people showed up. So let's wait a little, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes even, to get to all 100. He's like, no, no, I'm here, so I have to do it. So you have to do it because I'm here. And this, Rabotai, is not... Just his fault. It's not just the guy's fault. It's actually the rabbi's fault. Why? If the rabbi would have taught him Mussar, and taught him that you're supposed to fear your rabbi as much as you fear God, he would have never been a chutzpan. So it's not just the guy's fault. He's just an am ha'aretz. He doesn't know anything. He thinks that this is like an opera show. You show up at, it says 8 o'clock, it's supposed to start at 8 o'clock.

12:47or else they close the door. He doesn't realize that the whole point of this shiur is to get Am Yisrael to do teshuva. He doesn't realize that. He doesn't care. He's there. He wants the shiur to start. The rabbi, on the other hand, is saying, listen, somebody, Chaim, is going to speak. Hopefully people are going to do teshuva. Let's at least get as many people as possible. So on one hand, the rabbi means well. On the other hand, the guy also means well. The problem is, There was a disconnect before this shiur. The disconnect already started before this shiur. The disconnect is that we're not teaching Am Yisrael the truth to such an extent that they know that such things are not allowed. It is not allowed to talk to your rabbi that way, especially not, you know, show bizayon (disrespect) in public and such things. If you disagree, disagree. The problem is, and the reason why things like this happen in almost every kehillah, is because many rabbis have left the role of the rabbi. They kept the title, but the role of the rabbi, they left, and they became friends with people.

13:48And you'll see many rabbis very, very friendly with kehillah. Very friendly with the teenagers. Very friendly with the gevirim, the people that are rich. Very friendly with people. They invite them to the house. They go to their house. And they talk, they schmooze about personal life. Oh, where are you going for Pesach? Or where are you staying? Or where this? There's a lot of schmoozing going around. Very little teshuvah. A lot of schmoozing, but very little teshuvah. That friendship... even though it looks good, theoretically looks good, it is destroying kehillah. You're not supposed to be friends with your rabbi. As nice as it sounds to be friends with your rabbi, and you connect, and he inspires you and so on, the reality is that the Chachamim already told us in Pirkei Avot that you have to be careful not to get too close to the Chachamim. Why? They'll burn you. Meaning, if they're really Kedoshim, if they're really Kedoshim, you're not allowed to get so close to them. You're not allowed to befriend them. Why? Because you'll lose honor. You'll lose the respect you have for them. From far away, you have a lot of respect for them. As soon as you become friends with them, you're not going to have respect for them, and that's going to burn you.

14:59That's going to burn you in Shamayim. Instead of saying, "What do you think?" you're going to say, "I think." The conversation changes. And that's one of the flaws that, again, is an outcome. It's an outcome of lack of teaching. But the biggest thing, the biggest thing, the biggest thing, is that the Mishnah in Avot says, Place that there's no leader, you'll be the leader. You'll be the leader. So when it comes to the end of times, what the Gemara says, what's gonna happen before the Mashiach comes? So there's gonna be a lot of chutzpah, the truth is gonna be hated. The leaders are going to do things that are the opposite of what's good for their own people. A lot of the things that we see, it's almost like reading the newspaper. You read this Gemara, it's like reading the newspaper and... Everything is unbelievable. Inflation, people chasing money non-stop, and so on and so forth. So, how do we fight this? If the leaders are going to be hated, the truth speakers are going to be hated, and the leaders that are there are going to be giving us the poison. So, how do we fight it? How do we survive? Makom she'ein ish, hishtadel lihyot ish. Be the leader. You be the guy. Yeah, but I don't know how to speak. Doesn't make a difference.

16:25Does it make a difference? You don't have to be just a speaker. There are many ways to be a leader. If I told you, listen, that for every time you make a phone call, you get a million dollars in your business, how many calls are you going to make a day? Until your fingers fall off. Why? Because every call is a million dollars. You're going to call. I remember I was in an investment business. I told the guys, listen, every single call you can make a million dollars. How? Each guy can invest a certain amount of money. You can make a million dollars. Yeah, but come on, it's too much. Okay, hold on a second. Here, give me the phone. I'd make the phone call to one of my clients. I'd call him, "Hey, Mr. Jones," talk to him for a half hour. At the end of the phone call, the guy's investing X amount of money. I give him $50,000. And they all see it. I said, "Wow, you can do the same thing. Is there anything that I say that you can't say? No, you can say it. How do I know you can say it? I wrote it to you. Just repeat what I wrote. You don't even have to think. Just repeat what I wrote. I wrote you the script. Here, here's the script. Just repeat what I wrote and just say it to somebody else. If your somebody else does the same thing my guy did, you also make $50,000. What's the problem? For an hour's call, for a half hour, for five minutes."

17:36And this is how a lot of people got motivated and became very successful, but they had to see it. Rabotai, even if you were to make a million dollars in a phone call, it's still not anything in comparison to saving one Jewish soul. Now, our misunderstanding today is that we think that to save a Jewish soul means that you have to go into the secular world. You have to go to the people that are Mechalelei Shabbat, they're not even keeping kosher, they're intermarried, they're, no, no, no. That's the wrong mentality. The reality is that many people that consider themselves frum need even more saving than a secular person. And the reason why is because I remember when I was, most of my life I was secular. Viewed my life, as far as religiosity is concerned: religion, Torah, God, and so on. I knew that the Torah existed. I knew God existed. I believed in Him. We had kiddush on Yom Shishi, and then we went to the movies right after. You know, we went to the club right after. I said, "Oh, you know how to work on Shabbat? Fine. I won't work on Shabbat. I'll go to the casino instead. I'll have some fun." To me, there was nothing wrong with my life. I

18:53My secular mindset and my secular mindset is no different than every secular person in the world unless he's just a hater of himself, Judaism, and God, and so on. A normal person, every secular person, thinks the same. They see nothing wrong with their life. They just see you religious people as if you chose to be religious. That's for you, but not for me. He says, "You chose to keep Shabbat. I don't feel like it. I..." you chose to wear a hat. I don't want to. I want to wear a baseball cap. You chose not to drive on Shabbat. I drive extra. It's your choice. It's freedom of choice. Next thing you know, they'll start quoting the Constitution too. Freedom of this and freedom of that. All of a sudden, everybody's a scholar in the Constitution. No one knows anything about the Torah, but they know about the Constitution. The reality is, as a secular person, Rabotai, You are sleepwalking. You have no idea that you're walking on fire. You have no idea that you're going one way. You have a one-way ticket to Gehenom that never ends. Because anyone that dies as a Mechalel Shabbat, anyone that dies as a Mechalel Shabbat befarhesya, drives on Shabbat, smokes a cigarette on Shabbat, people know, ten people know he's driving on Shabbat. Not even ten people see him. A lot of people think it's, oh no, ten people need to see that he's driving on Shabbat. No, that's not true.

20:17That's not true. The Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah specifically says ten people need to know that you're Mechalel Shabbat. If ten people know you're Mechalel Shabbat, that's Mechalel Shabbat befarhesya. Ten people know you're Mechalel Shabbat, you have a serious problem. Why? The Reshit Chochmah says the Gehenom starts and never ends. Where does he get it from? The Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 17. So the reality, Rabotai, is someone is sleepwalking. He has no idea there's anything wrong. He doesn't realize he's walking on a minefield. He doesn't realize that there's anything wrong with his life. Why? He's just looking at you religiously. Look, he wears a suit every day. I wear a suit to work only. He wears a hat. I don't. He decides to get together with his family on Shabbat and go to the Knesset. I decide to go to the casino instead or go to the beach. It's a freedom of choice. It's nothing more than that. He has no idea there's anything wrong with it. So for him, that's why a lot of people are dying to conclude that he's considered a tinok shenishba, like some kidnapped baby.

21:23Like they used to, Hashem Aleichem, what used to happen to us during the Shoah and after and before and so on, many, many times throughout all of history, the Christians have always capitalized on our torture. How? They always took our kids and told them they were Christians. Because for them, getting one Jew to be a Christian is more valuable than a thousand of any other nation. That's why, in any of their missionary websites, they always highlight the one Jew that converted to Christianity. They don't highlight the 50,000 people from Africa or from anywhere else in the world. They highlight the one Jew, the one Jew that converted to Christianity. And that's what they've been doing to us for 2,000 years. Now, the reality is that the secular guy sees nothing wrong with any of this. He's nothing wrong with any of this because he doesn't realize it's an obligation. He doesn't realize that God didn't give us a choice. We have choice, but it's not free choice. Free choice would mean that you could just do whatever you want.

22:29If you do it, great. You get rewarded. If you don't do it, you don't get rewarded. That's freedom of choice. We don't have freedom of choice. We have choice. Choice means if you do it, good. If you don't do it, you get punished. That's not free choice. That's choice. What's it similar to? Let's say, for example, you worked for a certain unusual business. You worked for the mob. And the mob told you, the Mafia boss told you, "Listen, if you go and do such-and-such, I'm gonna pay you. If not, I'm gonna kill you instead." Which one do you want? Is that really a choice? Yeah, it's a choice. It's not free choice though. It's a choice with a price. That's what we have. Rav Din, that's what we have. Hashem told us you have a choice. In Gemara Shabbat, page 88, it says... He says something scary. When we got Matan Torah, it says that Har Sinai became like a chuppah on top of Am Yisrael. Am Yisrael went, they came to Har Sinai. And then it says that Am Yisrael was under the mountain. What do you mean under the mountain? It had a cave? No, it didn't have a cave.

23:47What do you mean under the mountain? Under the mountain, Hashem took the mountain and put it on top of Am Yisrael and said to them, "This is our chuppah. If you receive the Torah and you accept it, you accept the Torah, this is our chuppah, we get married. If you don't, this will be your burial ground." This is Gemara Mephoreshet. This is not like some commentary; this is just Gemara. Oral Torah, this is basic. This is basic level Judaism. This is not, we're not talking about anything from the Mekubalim or Machmirim or something. This is basic level Judaism. Hashem says it's chuppah or burial. Which one do you want? So the Chachamim ask, wait a minute, what kind of choice is this? If you'd look at the halacha of someone that wants to get married, someone wants to get married, and he tells the woman, "Hey, you want to get married to me?" She says, "Yes." Okay, Baruch Hashem, good for you. But if he says, "Listen, you want to get married?" He has a gun to her head. Is she considered married? He's putting a gun to her head. It's not fair. She's anusah. So, the pshat is even more valuable than the basics. Why? Why?

25:07commentaries are telling us, of course it wasn't up in the air. Of course it wasn't up in the air, because if you notice in the first days of creation, every time Hashem finished His work on a day He said, it was night, it was day, end of the first day. Night, it was day, end of the second day. Night, it was night, it was day, end of the third day, fourth day, fifth day, all the way until the sixth day, Yom Shishi. Yom Shishi, it says, it was evening, it was morning, Yom HaShishi. So the Gemara asks, what is this extra letter, HaShishi? There's an extra hei. We know there's no extra anything. Why do we have an extra hei? So Bar Reish Lakish, Reish Lakish comes and he says, the extra hei is a signature. What signature? Signature of the deal that Hashem made between Himself and the malach that runs the planet. There's a malach that runs the earth. He says, listen malach,

26:22We have a deal. If Am Yisrael receive the Torah, down the road, if they receive the Torah, they accept it, good, we'll get the Shabbat. We'll get the Shabbat. But if they reject it, I'm bringing you back to Tohu Va'vohu. I'm bringing you back to Tohu Va'vohu. What's the signature that's going to remind us of this deal? The extra hei. Extra hei is what? Five. Five? Five books of Moses. So the Mefarshim say, wait a minute, if Hashem put the whole mountain on top of us, and He said, if I receive the Torah, good; if I don't accept the Torah, no good, then you're going to kill me. It's not real, it's ones, you're forcing me into it. So the Tosafot say, of course it wasn't free choice. What did you think? We have some irresponsible God that's just going to leave the creation at large up to some people?

27:24If they say no, He has to destroy everyone—the Jews, the non-Jews, the animals—everything gets destroyed just because a bunch of people decide to say no. What do you think? What kind of God do you think we have? He's not going to leave it up to you. Yes, you have choice, but it's only choice, not free choice. The secular person does not understand this; the secular person believes we have free choice. The religious person, on the other hand, the one that went to yeshiva... And if you went to yeshiva today, you most likely did not learn about topics like wasting seed. Even though the Torah tells us, the Shulchan Aruch explicitly says, it's the number one sin in Judaism. The number one worst possible sin is wasting seed for men. Oh gosh, we're gonna find where it says number one. I’ll also call it the number one sin in Judaism. The Zohar HaKadosh makes it even worse. But if you look online, whoever has internet, you look online. You see there’s a total of maybe seven hours worth of shiurim, worth of material, in English about wasting seed. I’m five and a half hours.

28:46Now, this is not kavod to me. This is busha. This is busha. This is an embarrassment. Why? It's like you have a problem. What? We don't have any water on the planet, but no one wants to talk about it. What do you mean? It's the number one resource you need to survive. You realize you need water. Somebody's talking about it. No, no, don't talk about it. Don't talk about it. It's not for us. Yeah, but if we don't talk about it, everyone's going to die. They'll figure it out. That's the problem with the religious world. In the religious world, we choose, we pick and choose our topics like it's a grocery list. You tell people, "Let's talk about wasting seed," because practically every teenager, religious or non-religious, has this problem. Every adult, religious or not religious, has this problem unless they've worked on it and... Why? They didn't know there's anything wrong with it. Three hours ago, I got a text from somebody. This is every day because apparently I am the one that talks about this. People contact me constantly. And they say, "Listen, I have a problem. How do I stop?" Okay, watch this shiur, watch this shiur, watch this shiur. It's all education-based. But the point is that no one knew there's anything wrong with it.

30:06even though the Torah tells us it's the number one sin in Judaism. So, you see how far we are? If it was like a chumra, or a minhag, like wearing a hat. Wearing a hat is a minhag. It's not halacha. It's a hat. It's a nice minhag that started recently, relatively recently. In the old days, they used to wear the turban. They didn't wear hats. So it's a minhag. It's a nice minhag. If someone says, listen, I don't feel like wearing a hat. I don't feel like wearing a hat. Okay, don't wear a hat. Keep Shabbat? Keep Shabbat. Keep kosher? Keep kosher. Taharat HaMishpacha? Taharat HaMishpacha. You learn Torah every day? Learn Torah every day. Chazak u'Baruch. I'll allow all Am Yisrael to be like you. I'll allow all of Am Yisrael to be like you. Learn Torah, Taharat HaMishpacha, kosher, Shabbat. What's the problem? You don't want to wear a hat? Don't wear a hat. What do I care about this? It's a minhag. It's not, it's not, it's like, it's a minhag. It's nice. It's like you like potato chips or you like, I don't know, Pringles or something. I don't know. To me, that's nice. Good for you. You want to wear a hat? Wear a hat. The key is the ikar. Do you keep the ikar? Do you keep Shabbat? Do you learn Torah every day? Do you have yirat Shamayim? Do you learn mussar? Do you do anything that Hashem said? Hashem didn't say wear a hat. Do you do everything Hashem says? If you do everything Hashem says, I have no problem with you. But if you turned the hat into the ikar and Shabbat into the tafel, wearing a hat is important but keeping Shabbat is not so important, then we have a problem.

31:35Unfortunately, rabotai, that's the problem we have. The religious world has turned Judaism into an exterior-based religion. People express their religiosity through their exterior. No one really double-checks what's in the interior, what's under the engine. And that's why a lot of people that are religious come to me, and they ask me the very same questions that Baalei Teshuva ask. The very same questions that new converts ask. Basic-level questions. To this day, after doing this for over four years, I don't think any religious person has ever asked me a more complicated question than a non-religious person. It's all very basic-level questions. Proofs, halakha, basic stuff. Nothing like... Meaning it's the same problem in both places, but it's treated differently. It's treated differently. On the one hand, the secular person didn't realize it was a problem until you woke him up. On the other hand, with the religious guy, the religious guy is skinned. Why? He's been learning for 20 years, but he doesn't realize he's been missing half the material. Because the teachers didn't teach him. Because they thought, please. They thought that...

32:59The teachers thought that if I teach this young generation about wasting seed, or I teach them about Yirat Shamayim, or I teach them their obligation to learn Mussar, I teach them that they actually have to fear God in order for them to even have a chance to actually believe in Him at all. All these basic level stuff. They're not going to come anymore. They're not going to donate anymore. They're not going to this. They're not going to that. And we start doing cheshbonot (calculations) of what other people are going to do because they don't like it. And the reality is, Rabotai (my friends), this creates a very big black hole within our education system. So a lot of the religious Jews ask the same questions. Ask the very same basic-level questions. As the Baal Teshuva. And the reason why is because they also don't know. They also don't know. No one ever taught them. I can tell you from experience that most religious people that watch me, they watch me simply because they want to learn about Yirat Shamayim. In the beginning, this was unusual to me. Because I come from the secular world. They say, what do you mean? I'm secular, so I'm learning about Yirat Shamayim because that's the foundation. Why are you learning from me?

34:19I was a Mechalel Shabbat a few years ago. What do you have to learn from me? He says, no, no, no. I've been learning for 20 years. I've never learned about Yirat Shamayim. He says, what did you learn? If you learned about Yirat Shamayim, what did you learn? He says, oh, we learned about loving Hashem. We learned halachot. We learned about different things, but we didn't learn about Yirat Shamayim. He said, yeah, but that's the foundation. Yirat Hashem. Hashem says to the prophet, the prophet, The treasure of Hashem is Yirat Shamayim. And the Gemara says in Masechet Berachot, He didn't create the world for any other reason other than Yirat Shamayim. Other than tefillin. That's the only reason why He created the world. For your tefillin. So what did you learn for 20 years? That's what I learned. So there's like a missing ingredient in our Judaism today. And that also leads us to the third outcome, the third part. The third part is the outcome. The outcome of all of this is that we have very little Jewish pride. Very, very little Jewish pride. Very few people are actually proud Jews.

35:37You can start saying, "No, no, but what about all the guys from Chabad? That a print feeling in the middle of the street is not Jewish pride." No, it's not Jewish pride. It's something completely different. It's a mission that they have for certain things. It's not Jewish pride. "Well, what about the people that, you know, have the parades?" Parades are fine, but that's not Jewish pride. If you look at all of the other nations around us and... you go to the Spanish people. You'll see they stick with each other. You'll see that when there's a certain holiday, they have no questions their mind of where they're gonna put the Christmas lights on or where they're gonna put these lights on or this candle or this flag or this statue. They don't ask for permission from the city. They don't ask if you like it, if it's gonna disturb you. They just have their parade. They're proud of it, they're ecstatic about it, and they're looking at you like, why don't you come join us? Like, why wouldn't you want to be part of it? You look at the Irish people, same thing.

36:49They've made it a national holiday to drink. It's not just for the Irish people; it's for anyone. But really, the Irish people started it. You look at the Italians. Every Italian will tell you, "Come on, eat pasta. You eat this, you eat this; come eat it all. I'll bless it for you." I remember my secular, non-Jewish friends in public school. I would tell them, "No, no, it's not kosher." Because we still kept kosher meat. Even though we weren't keeping Shabbat, we were keeping kosher meat. So he's like, "What? Just come eat with us. We'll go into a restaurant or go into whatever." I said, "No, it's not kosher." He said, "What is kosher? Blessed? I'll bless it for you." The Italian guy would tell me he's going to bless my food. But to him, he's perfectly proud of his linguini and his pasta and his holidays and his Italian flag and the soccer and all the things that make them what they are. Same thing with Black people. You're never going to see a Black person, at least not a normal one, that's ashamed of being Black. In fact, he's proud of it. He's even proud of the slavery that happened 400 years ago. Some of them are still mourning over it, even though it has no connection to today's Black people. But the reality is they're upset and they're proud at the same time. They're upset and they're proud, but they're never embarrassed. They're never embarrassed. They're never embarrassed if they're normal.

38:14And many of them are wonderful people. Some of my converts, some of my students are Black people. They're amazing people. Baruch Hashem, Hashem gave me the ability not to see color. I don't see color. I see color like I see blue and black and all that stuff. But as far as whether you're Black, green, Chinese, or not Chinese, my whole life I never cared what you are. It doesn't make a difference to me. So I speak very comfortably about topics like this. Most people are very shaky when they talk about Black people and Spanish people because, in reality, they're racist. So they know that when they see Black, it doesn't... To them, me, I see everybody as the same. So I'm very comfortable talking about topics like this in my shiurim. Anyone that's uncomfortable, it's because they're racist, not because of me. So the reality is, you're never going to see a normal Black person embarrassed of being Black. If he's normal. If he's not normal, it's a different situation. Same thing with a Jew, same thing with everybody else. But with Jews, unfortunately, It's very rare to find one that's proud. You can say, why? He's religious, he's not making him proud? No. A proud Jew, by definition, number one, has to be a Jew. A Jew, what is the definition of a Jew? Does a Jew mean because your mom is Jewish? Technically, halachically, yes, but in reality, no.

39:40Reality, no, a lot quickly. Yes. He's a Jew. He's gonna be judged as a Jew, but is he really a Jew? No. What makes you a Jew is the Torah. Before we got to Mount Sinai, we were on the side with me saying. After Matan Torah, we are on the side where we are a nation of Israel. Later on, fast-forward, where you have the first time in the entire Tanakh that's written "Jew" is Mordechai HaYehudi. Meaning, what changed between Avraham Avinu and Mordechai? Something that happened in between. What was it? Matan Torah. The Torah is what makes you Jewish. Nothing else. The fact that your mom is Jewish is giving you a ticket in. You don't have to convert. But what keeps you Jewish, what makes you Jewish, is whether you abide by the Torah or not. Now, if you abide by the Torah, that means you have to abide by all of the laws that are applicable to you. One of those laws is a law that's called, "You must rebuke your brother." Meaning, you see your brother, one of your friends drives on Shabbat every week. One of your friends works on Shabbat. One of your friends eats non-kosher. One of your friends is going out with a non-Jewish woman, a non-Jewish man. You see this, you are obligated to say something.

41:00Especially because he's close to you, especially because he's within your inner circle, you are obligated to say something. Why? Because you're obligated to be zealous. There are obviously degrees of zealousness. If you're as zealous as Pinchas, you're allowed to even kill somebody. But in reality, none of us are, so we just say words. Don't kill anybody and... But that obligation is what makes you Jewish. The other thing that makes you Jewish, according to the Gemara in Masechet Megillah, is if you go against Avodah Zarah. The Gemara asks, why is Mordechai the first person that's called Yehudi? What makes him a Yehudi? What made Batya, the daughter of Pharaoh, become a Yehudiya? What's- there was no Torah yet. So why did Hashem make her Batya? Batya means the daughter of Hashem. Her father really was Paro HaRasha. Why did Hashem change her name to "she's my daughter"? Why did He let her, you know, raise the most important human being that ever lived, Moshe Rabbeinu? Why? Because she biza, she went against idolatry. She went against idolatry.

42:17So here we see just two simple things. Number one, you see that in order for you to be a Jew, by definition, it has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with whether you're black or white. It has to do with how proud you are of the Torah. To such an extent that you're willing to get yourself out of the comfort zone and tell your friends, tell your family, tell your surroundings, "Hey, by the way, every time you violate Shabbat, you're going against my Father. And He happens to be your Father too." Every time you steal, you're stealing from my people. Every time, how proud are you of being Jewish? The second thing is, are you proud enough that when you see the missionaries that are roaming the streets like cockroaches, you say something and... They don't ask twice before they knock on a Jewish door. They see the mezuzah; you tell them don't come to houses with the mezuzah on. What do they do? That's where they go—to the house with the mezuzah on. Why? Because that's what they want. That's what they want—they want the Jew that's practicing, the Jew that has a mezuzah, and...

43:28How proud are you, how proud are you of the Torah to the point where you're going to say something, do something, or at the very least do the same thing they are. They're going door to door. At least tell the people in the Beit Knesset to come to a shiur. The reality is, Rabotai, that we're not so proud. We're not so proud because you see people in the airport. Anytime I travel, I always see, especially morning flights, I see people pray. You see the Arabs. They pray in the middle of Broadway. In the middle of traffic, they'll pray. They have this concept called dawah. Dawah is for them to get people to come closer to Islam, and their mission for the last 20 years is to get the entire world to become Muslim, to such an extent that every Muslim, by default, every single one of them, in order for them to... ...be Muslim, they have to do dawah. So all these people in the kiosks that are selling halal food, every single one of them is doing dawah. There actually was an undercover report done in Israel, and it was published in English and Hebrew by this journalist called Tzvi Yehezkeli...

44:44And he came to the United States. He went to different countries. And he talked to the people running the halal foods and so on. He told them, "Oh, why do you have these stickers on top of your cart? You're selling halal food. Why do you have these stickers?" And the guy tells him, "Alright, he goes, because we believe that God runs the world and that Muhammad is our prophet." Yeah, but that's your belief. That's your belief. It's not everybody else's belief. He goes, "No, we hope that when people eat the food, they become Muslim too. They become Muslim too, and I give them stickers, I give them presents, I tell them that if they become Muslim, they go to Gan Eden." This is a guy selling hot dogs. He's selling conditions. Not one, not two, not three—every single one of them, one after another. He says, "Oh, so you're doing dawah while you're working?" He goes, "No, no, no, no. Dawah is what I'm doing. The food is secondary. That's why they have two billion people. Because they're proud. They're proud of what they are. They're proud of their falsehood. They have the sheker, but they work it like it's true. We have the emet, but we work it like it's false."

46:09That's the difference. The hotdog stand guy is going to try to recruit every single one of you. Just give him a chance. The missionary will try to recruit every single one of you. Just give him a chance. But the local rabbi? "Tom, listen, yeah, I want to learn today." "No, no, I'm busy today. Come back next week." "I'm interested in converting." "Yeah, yeah, I don't do that. Can you connect me with somebody?" "No, you just call the Beit Din." Everybody's busy. Everybody's doing something else. Everybody's not interested. Everybody's ashamed. Arabs that have the falsehood and the Christians that the fossil will pray in the middle of the street. The Jew in the corner hiding. There's always a good Jew in the corner of every airport praying daily. No one is praying in the middle. No one has the chutzpah to pray in the middle of the airport with tallit and tefillin. And explain there, "By the way guys, this is what the Mashiach is gonna look like." Just so you know, it's not your JCPenney, it's not your Muhammad. The guy with tefillin, that's what the Mashiach is going to look like. Get used to it. You don't have to say those words, but the reality is when you pray in the corner, that means you're ashamed. But that's all of us. We're all victims, myself included. We're all ashamed. We're all in the corner. Why? We don't want to disturb anybody. We don't want to put anything on anyone. We're all like scared of our own shadows.

47:34We're scared of our own shadows. And that's the problem. That's the problem, that we don't have any Jewish pride. We don't have any pride in the Torah to let them admit that we have. We don't have. We're scared of our own shadows. We're scared to do kiruv. Every time I tell somebody, listen, why don't you do kiruv? Why don't you get people to do teshuva? Ah, no, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. What do you mean, I don't know? Why don't you know? Ah, they're already somewhat religious. If I tell them about your shuvim, maybe they're not going to like it. If I tell them about this, maybe this. They always have all these cheshbonot, all of this accounting they do. There's all this accounting, but if I tell them, listen, I have a deal for you. I have a deal for you. We can make $50,000 next week. Oh, okay, okay, but it's going to be really hard. Oh, okay, fine, fine. But you're not going to be able to sleep for three months. Oh, okay, no problem. And by the way, you're going to have to divorce your wife. Oh, okay, no problem. Oh, you're going to have to sell your kids. Oh, okay, no problem. Everything, no problem. Life for money, no problem. For money, no problem. But to go save a Jew, there's always this accounting. Oh, I'm busy, and I don't have, and no one has any money. All of a sudden, they have a $5 million house, but don't have any money. They have 50 friends, but nobody comes to the shiur. They have a mouth that doesn't stop talking, but they can't tell anybody the truth. That's what's missing. That's what's missing, Rabotai. Both in the religious world and the secular world.

48:58But the secular world will only do teshuva if the religious world does teshuva first. The secular world will only do teshuva if the religious world does teshuva first. Why? Because the secular world will never know. No one's teaching them. They don't go to Beit Knesset. And even if they do, their entire Torah for the week is what they learn in Seudah Shlishit, the five minutes they let some guy talk. That's their Torah for the entire week. If they even come back every week. So unless the religious guy that's talking for the five minutes actually does teshuva himself and starts utilizing that five minutes to tell him the truth. Hey, by the way, all of you guys that drove on Shabbat, you should know, according to the Rambam, in Hilchot Shabbat, chapter 30, it says a Jew that's a Mechalel Shabbat is considered 100% an idol worshiper. Just so you know, Shabbat Shalom. That's a shiur. Why? Someone's going to change from that shiur. They may hate you, a few of them. They may even throw a few salads at you. But one guy's going to change. One guy's going to change. That's enough. That's enough. Do you need to be a big rabbi to say what I just said? No. Do you need to be a big talmid chacham? No. All you need to do is speak and be proud of what you are. And don't do any accounting.

50:25And that's what's missing. That's what's missing. We're missing that zealousness. We're missing that Jewish pride, that we're proud to be religious. We're proud to have the truth because it's the truth. Because it's the truth, let's be proud of it. And that's, you don't need to be a big speaker. You don't need to have the gift of gab. You don't have to have a certain look. You don't have to be a certain height. You don't need to be anything. All you need to be is proud. At least as proud as the Muslims. At least as proud as the Christians. That's it. At least as proud as the Italian guy with his flag. At least as proud as him. There's nothing wrong with him. As a matter of fact, I envy him. I envy all of them. Why? I wish we were like them. I wish we were as proud as the Arabs praying in the middle of Broadway, stopping traffic without a care in the world. care in the world. They stop traffic every day as if there are a few people in line at the supermarket who don't know to let the Arab guy go; they have the right of way. No, no, we could wait. We can wait with the Torah. Let him go first. We don't want the Arab guy or the Christian guy to wait in line at the supermarket. We let him go ahead of us. Why? Chas v'Shalom, he's going to wait. We don't want to distract them. We even say it's a little bit of a chillul Hashem to make somebody else wait in line with us and

51:48Stopped traffic. Why? Because they want you to be just like them. But we don't want anyone to be like us. Why? Because we ourselves don't want to be us. We ourselves are not so proud to be ourselves. And that's the biggest problem. The reason why is because most of Judaism today is based on the exterior. it's based on the exterior. It's based on the hats, the jackets, and the beards that are free. That's why even a goat has one. And all of these things that are exterior, the tzitzit, and all of these different things are nice. But it doesn't make you Jewish. It's good things. Chazak u'baruch for doing it. I have a beard also. And, you know, I don't wear a hat, but hey, I don't think that makes me less Jewish. But a lot of people will tell you that if you don't have a beard, you shouldn't be a rabbi. If you don't wear a hat, you're on a lesser level of Jew. As a matter of fact, there are certain sects of Judaism that if you wear a different hat than them, they think you're less of a Jew. There are different types of hats now. Certain sects of Judaism wear the round hat. Other sects wear different ones. There are different types of hats, which means that each one of these sects

53:10that wears a different hat believes that their hat makes them more Jewish. Their beard makes them more Jewish. You groom your beard, oh, you're less Jewish because we don't groom our beards. We let it grow. Oh, your peyos are this way, they're behind the ear, oh, that's less. Our peyos are on the side, they go all the way, and so on and so forth. So this type of Judaism cannot last because it's fake. It's fake. It's not real Judaism. It's not real Judaism. Not one time do you see in the entire Five Books of Moses, not one time do you see anyone, any of the major leaders, defined by their looks. Modesty is, of course, needless to say. The women and the men need to be modest. But Moshe Rabbeinu did not become Moshe Rabbeinu because of his peyos. Avraham Avinu did not become Avraham Avinu because of his hat. Yaakov Avinu was not selected to be Yaakov Avinu because of his beard. How? How were they selected? Based on Yirat Shamayim. Based on Yirat Shamayim. When you start with Avraham Avinu,

54:31At the Akedat Yitzchak, you say this verse every day in prayer. Every day you say this: "Now I know you fear Me." Hashem tells him, "Now I know you fear Me. Don't touch the boy. Now I know you fear Me." Now you know I fear? What, the first nine tests you didn't know? The first nine tests: I left my father's house, I went into Egypt, I was starving—these different tests, you didn't know I feared You? Now I know you fear Me. The 10th test, Hashem says you got to the highest level. What did you get to? Yirat Shamayim. Meaning to have Yirat Shamayim is the highest compliment you could have. That's what made him a Jew. Not the beard, not the hat, not the exterior. You want to do the exterior? Good. But it's not going to make you a Jew. What's going to make you a Jew is how you express this. How the exterior is matching the interior. But if the interior is rotten, no exterior is going to save us. And that's one ingredient that's missing today.

55:34Most of us are worried too much about the exterior. As soon as you see somebody just did Teshuvah three months ago, already has a beard. In my opinion, you shouldn't have a beard until you at least read the Chumash five times. Why? Because at least you know something. You know something. You read commentary. You read the Chumash five times. Okay, you know something. Okay, now you're allowed to have a beard. But today, every joker wears a beard. He looks like he's a rabbi already. unfortunately, sometimes it's you can't do anything about it. And because of this, we have a lot of issues in Judaism today. Actually, I have a guy that I helped do Teshuva four years ago, and he decided to speed up the process. He said, "Okay, you know what? I'm gonna go to Kollel. I'm gonna leave everything—leave the job, leave everything—and I'm going to..." I said, yeah, it's a big adjustment. It's a big adjustment to go from working all day to learning all day. Why don't you do a little bit of both in the beginning? Study and work. Because it's a big test, unless you have a bunch of money, which I knew he didn't. No, no, no, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. You're just slowing me down. All of a sudden, I helped you do teshuva, now I'm slowing you down. Okay, Baruch Hashem. Good luck to you. Seder. He did what he did. He had a lot of difficult tests.

57:02And he went to a kollel, wanted to kill his wife a few times because of the financial issues that they were going through. But nonetheless, within maybe a year after that, he decided the next big move. What's the next big move? He's gonna open a synagogue. Now, we're talking about someone that is 18 months in. 18 months in, he wants to open a synagogue. Meaning, now he's going to be responsible for telling everybody the day-to-day halachot, and so on and so forth. Now, this is a problem. Why is this a problem? Because he still doesn't know anything yet himself. He still hasn't finished the Chumash twice. But this type of mentality is there. Why? Because he learned a little bit, Got the beard, he thought that's Judaism. The exterior is Judaism. So now he would, one time I remember when I knew already he was going in the wrong direction, he asked me, he's like, listen, are you also going to wear white? I said, what do you mean wear white? He goes, no, on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, are you going to wear white? I said, no, we don't wear white anymore. That's a minhag that was lost many, many years ago. It's not something that we do. And actually, Rav Ovadia says that only chutzpanim do it.

58:20because no one else does it, you look very odd doing it. In a world that has no such thing, it's like, "No, what are you talking about? Me and all my friends are wearing white." It's like, "Oh, every one of them looks like a kabbalist. This guy started keeping Shabbat last week. This one started keeping Shabbat two weeks ago. This one is still not keeping Shabbat. But everybody has turned it into exterior Judaism. Why? Leadership. Leadership. He left me. He went somewhere else. The leader in the next place Ptolemies do good. Just grow a beard, wear white. You could start a kehillah within nine months. And that's what happened. So this wouldn't happen. This wouldn't happen if there were real leaders in different places. If everybody was proud to be a Jew in different places. By proud to be a Jew, I constantly tell you the same thing. It means you have Yirat Shamayim. Yirat Shamayim to such an extent that you know that it's your obligation not only to fulfill the truth,

59:20but to tell people about it. Tell people, listen, you have to keep Shabbat. Tell people you have to keep kosher. Tell people the truth and not be ashamed of it. Not be ashamed of it. And that's the main thing that I think we're missing today. Now, I'm sure you guys have some questions we can talk about. So go ahead. You had a question. Yes. So the halacha is this: If it's a rabbinical mitzvah, you must rebuke your brother. It's a mitzvah that you must rebuke him if it's a rabbinical mitzvah, like Purim, Hanukkah, Netilat Yadayim, or even a blessing over food. Blessings over food are all rabbinical mitzvot. If you know that if you tell your friend, "Listen, by the way, before you eat that apple, make a blessing. Make a blessing." And you know, this guy is such a malicious guy that he's dafka not going to do it, that he's going to start eating in your face and start making a scene out of it and so on. It's a mitzvah not to tell him. Mitzvah not to tell him. Why? Because you know for sure he's not going to listen to it. But that's only because it's a rabbinical mitzvah.

1:00:40If it's a biblical mitzvah—Shabbat, Taharat Mishpacha, Kosher, Tefillin—all of these biblical mitzvot, regardless of whether he listens or he doesn't listen, you have to tell him. Up to what extent? The Rambam says up to the extent where he hits you. Up to that extent. Meaning, I'm going to tell him to go keep Shabbat, he's going to threaten to slap me. He's not going to slap you? Tell him. I'm going to tell him to keep Shabbat, this time he's going to slap me. Okay, if he slaps you, then you stop telling him after that. But until he slaps you, you keep telling him. Over and over and over and over again. That's the actual halacha. So what happened, as far as what's lost in translation today, is that most people just read the first part I told you, which is the rabbinical mitzvah: don't tell him if he's not going to listen. They turn it into, if it's a biblical mitzvah, also don't tell him. But that's not true. The actual halacha is, if it's a biblical mitzvah, you have to tell him. So your friend or your family member or whoever it is, the reality is that you have to tell them. You have to tell them one way or another. And one secret I could tell you guys in regards to kiruv in general is that without mesirut nefesh, without self-sacrifice, there's no success. Because the Rambam says that at the end of times, a lot of the things we saw in Egypt, we're going to see again.

1:02:05But this time it's going to be magnified. How so? Just like we had three days of darkness in Egypt, before Mashiach comes, it's going to be 15 days of darkness. Because in Egypt, He was only getting rid of the Egyptians, the firstborn of the Egyptians, and the wicked Jews that didn't want to do teshuva. The rest of the world, in China, in Africa, and the rest of the world out there, we left them alone. When the Messiah comes, it's his bond for everyone. You do teshuva as a Jew or as a non-Jew; either you do teshuva, you're good. You didn't do teshuva, you're finished. No more teshuva. The Gemara in Avodah Zarah, page 4a at the end of 3b, talks specifically about how there's no more conversions, there's no more teshuva once the Messiah arrives. Why? Because at that point, there's no more free choice. You already know the truth. You already know the God of Israel. That's it. You're finished. So whatever you are at that point, that's it. But that's why it's going to be 15 days of darkness. Why? A lot of people. A lot of people. That's why it says actually at the end of days, just the first count is two-thirds of the world will be wiped away. Two-thirds of the world. Meaning one-third have a chance to make it. Not for sure, but they have a chance. So now, the Sefarim HaKedoshim...

1:03:31say that the Mashiach himself, how did he, obviously there's major merit, this is not like the Christians think it's some guy that died and came back to life, or that it's God, it's a regular person. The Mashiach is a regular person. Obviously, once he becomes Mashiach, Hashem instills power in him, and so on and so forth, but in reality, before all of that takes place, he's a regular person, he's an average Joe. How did he get to such a point? How did he get to such a point to inherit such an amazing neshama that the Chachamim say is partially Moshe Rabbeinu, partially David HaMelech? How? Mesirut nefesh. Self-sacrifice. Three types of sufferings were given to Am Yisrael. One-third was given to Avot: Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, David, Shlomo, Moshe Rabbeinu, Aharon—all of the giants. One-third of all of Am Yisrael's suffering was given to them. One-third of the suffering was given

1:04:43The generations of pogroms, inquisitions, Holocaust, Hashem Yirachem, all the nightmares Am Yisrael has gone through for the last 3,300 years. One-third of all the suffering to them. And one-third, Rabotai, to Mashiach, by himself. That soul, that soul that's gonna save all of us, has one-third of all the world's suffering. And every day, Chazal say, every single day, Every single day, he has more and more wounds because of our sins. And each Rosh Chodesh, every Rosh Chodesh, all of the Avot, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon, David, Shlomo, all of them come to that soul, come to that neshamah and beg him, please continue. Please continue taking on more suffering. And what's going to be the big busha for all of us when we see Mashiach, alei vai we get the merit to see Mashiach, What's going to be the big bushah? When each one of us is going to see which wound we caused. Which suffering we caused on him. Imagine, Gadol HaDor is suffering because of you. Gadol HaDor is suffering because of you. He has a scar over here because you went out with a non-Jew one time. Because you ate a little shawarma that's not kosher from the halal guy. Oh, it's only a sandwich. Okay, he's suffering now because of you.

1:06:11It's a nightmare. That's the bushah we're going to have if we make it. But how do we get to such a point? Obviously, we have no connection with Mashiach. We're not Mashiach. It's teaching us that in order for Mashiach to be Mashiach, he has to not only welcome mesirut nefesh, but expect it. Expect mesirut nefesh. Abraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon—all of these giants. Mesirut nefesh, self-sacrifice, was a given. Meaning, the Torah is telling us that in order for you to have even a remote chance of being a leader, you have to already get used to sacrificing. Sacrificing your comfort zone. Sacrificing everything that makes you comfortable. Start there.

1:07:12You're comfortable financially? Start there. You're comfortable with your time? You have a lot of extra time? Start there. You're comfortable with your learning? Start there. Make that uncomfortable. If you're comfortable with your learning, that means you're not learning anything difficult. If you're comfortable, if you're not sweating every day at the end of your learning and thinking about it constantly, that means you're not learning anything difficult. It means you're just like grinding water. Learning just to repeat the same thing over and over again, but nothing ever changes if your neshama is not traumatized at the end of every single day because you learned something that you have no idea what happened. What's right? What's left? Something is happening. I can't believe it, and you're not walking back and forth because there's some solution yourself. Something's wrong with your learning. I ask people all the time, "No, what'd you learn this week?" People are religious, not people not religious. This is for religious people. "What'd you learn this week?" "I don't know." What do you mean? We all know you went to yeshiva. Yeah, you went, you learned, you had shiurim. Yeah, what'd you learn? "I don't know." What do you mean you don't know? So what did you do for a whole week? "I don't remember." So it was better off the week never existed. It means that you're not pushing yourself. So if your learning is not pushing, start there. If your time, start there. If your money, start there. Whatever is your comfort zone, start moving.

1:08:32start moving, start getting used to self-sacrifice because if you want to have the merit of saving a Jew from Gehinnom and bringing him to Gan Eden, you have to realize you're going to have to sacrifice something for that because the reward is endless. The reward is extraordinary. You can't do it in comfort. You can't do it just like walking in, expecting there's going to be a standing ovation for you. It's not gonna happen, and that's how you look at all of the Gedolei HaDor. Each one of the supporters that he had, each one of them is this one story that I remember. It is Rav Ovadia, zt"l, during the Yamim Noraim. It was a few rich guys who donated a helicopter for him to go from place to place, and during those 10 days of Teshuva in order for him to give as many lectures as possible. So he would go literally from stadium to stadium. Each stadium, 5, 10, 20,000 people. One day, as soon as he finished the lecture, he came back into the helicopter and he told the pilot,

1:09:56immediately to the hospital. Immediately go to the hospital. Don't go back anywhere else, go straight to the hospital. So, on the way there, they asked, "Rav, what happened?" He said, "I believe I had a heart attack. I've had a heart attack." They asked, "When did you start feeling this pain? When did this pain start? Did it just start now, or did it start in the middle of the lecture?" He responded, "No, it was on the way there." When we were flying there, I had the heart attack. I had the pain in my chest and I was having a heart attack. He goes, "Sakoot Rav, why don't you just tell me to stop, turn around, go to the hospital? You just sacrificed your life." He goes, "Do you know how many people are waiting to go learn Torah? You think I have any possibility to give any accounting to my heart? People are waiting to learn Torah. Do you think I can give any consideration to my heart, b'chlal?" That's Mesirat Nefesh. We're not Rabbi Ovadia. We're not Rabbi Ovadia. But we can get five guys to come to a shiur. We can get a few CDs to a few people. We can donate maaser. We can do the basic things that we do. But just a little more. Push ourselves a little more. Instead of learning for five minutes, learn for ten minutes. Instead of learning for an hour, learn for two hours. Instead of just learning the stuff you're comfortable with, learn something that you're a little uncomfortable with.

1:11:23That's it. That's Mesirat Nefesh. It starts there. Once you start doing that, once you open up that door for Hashem, and He shows, ah, this guy really wants to do teshuvah himself, regardless, religious, not religious, once you open that door, a lot of good things happen after that. The siyata diShmaya starts, and a lot of amazing things happen. But until we actually become like Nachshon ben Aminadav. Nachshon ben Aminadav was the one that saved all of Am Yisrael when we got to Yam Suf. Until Nachshon, Am Yisrael did not have the merit. Am Yisrael did not have the merit to cross the Sea of Reeds. It wouldn't open, it wouldn't split. Moshe Rabbeinu screamed to Hashem, "What are we going to do? On the right side and left side there's scorpions and snakes. There's nothing we can do. Behind us there's the Egyptians. In front of us is an ocean." Hashem says, "What are you screaming to Me for? Tell Am Yisrael to move forward." What do you mean move forward? There’s an ocean. Nachshon ben Aminadav and the tribe of Yehuda, and then after that Binyamin, all understood the point. Let’s go into the water. Why? Hashem wants us to do mesirat nefesh. Hashem wants us to sacrifice. Sacrifice our comfort zone. Our comfort zone at that time was our logic. Our logic. It didn’t make sense that Hashem would split the ocean. So that’s where we have to go.

1:12:48That's what we have to do today. In the American world, we're very comfortable. American Judaism is very, very comfortable. People do everything they possibly can to be more comfortable. If the old seats weren't good enough, now they have leather seats. If the leather seats weren't good enough, now it's heated leather seats. If that's not good enough, now they have even heated doorknobs for the cars, just in case, chas v'shalom, your little fingers will touch something cold. And if that's not enough, the steering wheel is heated also, because, chas v'shalom, your steering wheel will be cold or normal temperature. And it's all these convenient things, which is it. Enjoy. I enjoy it also, and... had a conversation, my wife and I admitted this a few weeks ago, so it's just repeating the same bushah that I had, but it's okay, it helps me do teshuvah. We had to consider, we were talking, my wife and I, about doing aliyah. And because of what I do, or what we do really, my wife and I, she's a much bigger part of it than I am, um...

1:14:01It's difficult. Not because of the money. Not because of where we live. If it was up to that, I'd leave tomorrow. With no money, with nothing. It makes no difference to me. Go to Eretz Yisrael. Why? I know that over there, Hashem takes care of us, just like He takes care of us over here. What's the consideration? The consideration is that there's really more of a need for what we do here than there is in Israel. Much more of a need. In Israel, there's quite a few truth speakers in Hebrew. It's quite a few. Baruch Hashem, let's say there's at least a dozen. That's not really a lot, but relative to the English speakers in the world, it's considered a lot. In the English-speaking world, you can count them on one hand. You can count them on one hand. There's a lot of English speakers. There's a lot of really good speakers. A lot of entertaining speakers, but people that actually help people do teshuva, according to one of the big rabbis, one of the biggest rabbis in Jerusalem that I know, he told me in his opinion, there's only five in the entire world. That's his opinion. I think his opinion is worth something. He says that people that actually get people to do teshuva, not people that speak. There's a lot of people. People that speak, there are a thousand of them.

1:15:21People actually get people to do teshuva. Since you actually help people do teshuva, you can't just go wherever you want. You have to go wherever you're needed. So then, to go back to the story, we'll consider, okay, so what's going to change if we do go there? Maybe I'll travel back and, you know, take breaks and so on and so forth. But what's the lifestyle change? Let's start talking about the logistics of it. Logistics of moving to Eretz Yisrael. Do you know what the first consideration was? Amazon. That was the first consideration. I'm dead serious. As embarrassing as it is, I know it was really a consideration. Why? The convenience of Amazon boxes arriving at my house helps my life. Why? That means I don't have to leave the house. I could learn. I could do kiruv. I don't have to leave the house. And also, Baruch Hashem, my wife doesn't have to leave much. Why? Whatever I want, it arrives at my house. That's not the same everywhere else. But that convenience, that convenience is something that we have to consider. We have to debate it. Are we willing to lose it? Yeah, they have something there, but it's not the same. But that's the convenience we're used to in America. We're not willing to be inconvenienced. We're not willing to be inconvenienced. Tell people, listen, can you give me a ride? Ah, you're out of the way. Why, are you carrying the guy on your head? You're in a car, you just press the button.

1:16:44You're out of the way for 15 minutes. What, are you carrying the guy for 15 minutes on your head now? Or you're riding a camel in the heat? You're in an air-conditioned car. You have a shiur Torah maybe on the CD player. What's the big deal? To give the guy a ride. We're very, very reluctant to make ourselves inconvenienced. But when it comes to kiruv, when it comes to Torah, when it comes to the truth, you have to be inconvenienced. You have to be. It's the only way. It's the only chance we have. Next question, shorter answer. But at the same time, at what point were we able to transition to Ahava if Avraham Avinu himself wasn't able to even get to that point? Because only then, after the Akedah, did Hashem say, "Oh, now you have Yirah." So the Chachamim teach the following: The Ahavat Hashem and Yirat Hashem, each have multiple levels. It's not just Ahava or just Yirah. There are levels of each. Now, the lowest level of Yirat Shamayim is purely fearing punishment. I don't want to go against Hashem because I don't want to lose money. I don't want to go against Hashem because I don't want to go to Gehenom forever. Or I don't want to go to Gehenom for three days even. Whatever it is. There's actually a story in Reshit Chochmah, a Tzaddik

1:18:10went up to Olam Ha'Emet, and they told him, "Listen, you did fantastic, except this one small thing you messed up on, so you have a choice. Either come back to the world as a Gilgul again, live a whole new life, or go to Gehenom for three days. That's it, just go to Gehenom for three days." says, "I'm not going back to the world for 70 more years. Who knows, maybe I'll be a rasha this time. You know how hard I worked to get here? To do something, I've got to go to Gehenom for three days. I'm going to Gehenom for three days." "Okay, no problem," they say. The malachim come and take him. They're not so nice; they come and take him and they start walking. As they're walking closer and closer to the gate of Gehenom, he starts feeling the heat. Well, we're here. He goes, no. We're miles away. He goes, it's hot though. He goes, oh, we're far, we're far. They get closer. He's like, I can't take it. It's too hot. He goes, well, we still have two, three miles left. What are you scared of? He goes, no, no, I can't take it. I can't take it. He goes, what can't you take? You already made your own judgment. He started crying to Hashem. Hashem, help me. Hashem, help me. Hashem, help me. And Hashem sent an angel. He goes, because you were a Tzaddik, I'll give you the ability to change your mind. What do you want? He says, I want to go back for 70 years.

1:19:29go back for 70 years and try my luck, then go to Gehinom for three days. The lowest level, the lowest level of Yirat Shamayim is not to be that guy. Not to go to Gehinom for one minute. That's the lowest Yira. The highest level of Yirat Shamayim is Yirat HaRomemut. Yirat HaRomemut means you fear Hashem not because of punishment only, but rather also because you fear His Majesty. You fear hurting the relationship between you and Him. What is this like? A relationship between a husband, a normal husband and a wife. Today I always have to say normal because... Today, there are a lot of things that are... normal is not normal anymore. So yeah, you guys understand what I mean when I say normal. Normal is not "cuckoo." Even though what is considered normal today is "cuckoo." But the thing is, a normal couple is not going to yell at each other. The husband is not going to yell at the wife. The wife is not going to yell at the husband. Not because they're scared that there's going to be violence.

1:20:39He's not scared that if he yells at her, she's going to slap him in the face, or she's not going to yell at him because she's scared that he's going to slap her. That's not the reason they're not doing it. If they're normal, they're not doing it because they're afraid of hurting the relationship. She knows that if she disrespects her husband, he's going to be offended. If he's offended, it's going to hurt him. It's going to hurt her too. Why? Because his neshama is like one with hers. That's a good quality couple. that's on the same page. She doesn't want to hurt him because she knows that, number one, hurting him is hurting herself. She doesn't want to do it. So it's not because she's afraid he's going to beat her up or anything like that. We're not in Saddam Hussein's country. We're here. We're normal. We're not afraid of getting beat up. We just don't want to yell at each other. We don't want to disrespect each other simply because we don't want to offend each other. We don't want to hurt the relationship. I know that if I yell at her, she's not going to be open to me anymore and...

1:21:41she's not going to talk to me anymore. She's not going to smile the next time I say a joke. She's not going to even want to listen to my stories anymore. Something's going to change. The quality of the relationship is going to change forever. Even though it's one yell, something's going to change forever. It's a tattoo. It's a tattoo. Once you break that barrier, that's it. Something changes. And you have to work. And what took you one second to ruin, it'll take you 20 years to fix. So when we care about the relationship, we don't want to do it. Why? Because we care about the relationship. That's the highest level of Yirat Shamayim. The highest level of Yirat Shamayim is when you start caring about the relationship between you and Hashem. Not purely because you're scared of punishment. You're always scared of punishment. That's always a necessity. But you're also scared of hurting that connection with Him. And that, Rabotai Yekarim, Chazal says, is the beginning of Ahavat Hashem. The highest level of Yirat Shamayim is the beginning of loving Hashem. Which means that most people in this generation have no concept of what Ahavat Hashem really means.

1:22:54Ahavat Hashem means you have no choice. You have no desire. You have nothing. It's only what He wants. I ask you, so what do you want to do this weekend? What does Hashem want? What do you want to talk about? What does Hashem want? That's Ahavat Hashem. Ahavat Hashem means you've removed your desires and replaced them with God's desires. That's Ahavat Hashem. That's something that's very, very high level. No. No. No, he did. That's why I said, I called him later on when he was taking the book of Malachi. He says, "I've got all of this because of His love," meaning he had Ahavat Hashem. The sages tell us that the beginning is fear of punishment. The highest level of Yirah is the beginning of Ahavat Hashem. The beginning of Ahavat Hashem. Now, the conclusion is, you can fear Hashem, but not love Him. You can fear Hashem, but not love Him. But you can't love Him without fearing Him.

1:24:10You can't love Him without fearing Him. The reason why you can't love Him without fearing Him is because, in order to love somebody, anyone, you have to know what you're dealing with first. Before you say, "I love my wife," you have to get to know her a little bit. Until you get to know her, all you like are her looks. What she looks like, maybe if she has money or she doesn't have money, if she has this, you like qualities about her, but you don't love her. Same thing about your husband. You may like a joke that he said, but you don't know what's inside. You have to get to know someone in order to love them. It takes time. Once you get to know Hashem, just a little bit of what He says, you just read the Five Books of Moses with commentary by Rashi. That's it. In English, if English is your first language, read it in English. If Hebrew is your first language, and you dominate biblical Hebrew, read it in Hebrew. But a lot of people try to be heroes and read it in Hebrew even though they don't understand one word. That's not chokhmah. That's just foolishness. You're wasting your time.

1:25:15You need to understand what it says. Read the Five Books of Moses with Rashi's commentary. If you want more commentary, do more commentary, but just read the Five Books at one time and actually understand what it means. Once you read it one time, whether it's Parashat Haazinu, Bechukotai, Ki Tavo, the entire book of Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim, a lot of the books. Once you read it with basic level commentary, you're immediately scared. immediately scared. Why? You realize that half the Torah talks about punishment. Half the Torah talks about if you don't do what I say, boom. Half the Torah, Hashem is constantly repeating Himself, saying I'm not your friend. I'm not your buddy. Not the guy from the bar. Not your classmate. I'm not your chavruta. I'm God. I love you. But there's a condition. There is a condition. You have to listen to me. So once we understand who we're dealing with, we can't get to Ahavat Hashem without fearing Him first. We have to fear Him first. And that's why Chazal says this very, very extraordinary statement. They say that purely Yirat Shamayim by itself, just having Yirat Shamayim, is an incomplete connection to Hashem.

1:26:41It's a connection, but it's incomplete. Why? The ideal is Ahava and Yirah. The ideal. Avraham Avinu, Moshe Rabbeinu, Yitzchak, Yaakov, David HaMelech, Shlomo. Ahava and Yirah. Ahava and Yirah. So the ideal connection is to have Ahava and Yirah. So if you only have Yirah, you only have fear of Hashem, it's an incomplete connection. But if you only have Ahava, it's no connection at all. What do you mean it's no connection? There's no such thing. It's impossible to simply love Hashem. Why? Because as soon as you realize who you're dealing with, you must be scared. If you're not scared, you're also not there mentally. There's something wrong. And that's one of the things that people try to teach today very often. A lot of these so-called Emunah teachers. These people that teach Emunah. Emunah this, Emunah that. Think this and it'll be this. Think positive and it'll be positive. All of this shtuyot that people teach—just because you think something is going to happen—doesn't necessarily mean anything. You can think you'll be a millionaire all day, but unless you go to work, you don't have a chance. Yes, you can believe that you're going to find a wife, but unless you leave the four walls that you're around, you're not going to find anybody. You could think a lot of things, but in reality, it's not going to make it so. There has to be a reason why Hashem is going to make it so. You simply thinking it is not enough. There's no mesirat nefesh in thinking.

1:28:06There's no mesirat nefesh in thinking. You have to do something. Take some type of action. Even if it's, let's say, there's a famous story of a certain avrech that went into a room and didn't leave for like seven, eight years. Ezra told him, "Listen, you haven't left your room in seven years. You learned Torah, Baruch Hashem, you're a tzaddik and everything else, but you have to find a zivug." He goes, "No, I believe that zivug is going to come to me." I believe zivug is gonna come to me. And lo and behold, the way it happened is that actually zivug actually came to him. One day, somebody sent a woman to deliver food to him. And it was the first woman he saw in seven years that he was in his room. But all day he's learning Torah non-stop. He's sleeping two hours a day. And he said to the woman at first, "Listen, you're the first woman I've seen in seven years. Is there any chance you'd be willing to marry me?" He saw she has no kisui rosh. She saw that she was single. She wasn't wearing a wig, Baruch Hashem. So he saw, no, she's single. So I, because today you can't tell if they're married or not married with the wigs. So he saw she's not wearing a wig, so would you be willing to marry me? She goes, I don't even know you. He goes, no, listen, I'll try, I'll show you. He got married. Why? He did mesirut nefesh though. He did something that most of us are not willing to do.

1:29:25But for all of those Emunah teachers that teach people, oh yeah, listen, if you think it's going to be good, it's not necessarily so. There's more to it. There's more to the equation. There's more to it. You have to push yourself a little bit. There's a little bit of Hishtadlut. Just like there's Hishtadlut in your work, there's Hishtadlut in your spirituality. There's Hishtadlut in everything else. And that's the thing that every one of us needs to know. But the biggest part that I think all of us need help on, is number one, doing teshuva ourselves, and two, ultimately having a goal of having enough teshuva in our system that we're proud of what we are. We feel comfortable publicizing it. So when it comes to, let's say, for example, you want to do something, like the idea that you mentioned to me with the bands and so on. How do you know that's a good idea or a bad idea? How do you know any idea that you have is a good idea or a bad idea? Once you have a basic level of Yirat Shamayim, a basic level of connection to Hashem, you have to repeat the verse every day. Meaning, I'm always thinking that Hashem is next to me. Hashem is always next to me. What does that mean, Hashem is always next to me? It's always in the Batei Knesset, on the Parochet, you see it everywhere. What does it actually mean? It means, this is the foundation of Yirat Shamayim.

1:30:53Before I do something, I ask, what's God's opinion? Not what's my opinion. Not what's going to make me money. Not what's going to make me popular. Not what people are going to like or not like. What is God's opinion? Now, how do I know what God's opinion is? You see from the five books of Moses, the five books of Moses, our Torah, tells us what His goal is: to spread the Torah around the world. To make sure that is Am Yisrael does teshuva, to make sure that everybody learns Torah, to make sure that everybody knows who He is, and follows what He says. That's the ultimate goal. That's the ultimate goal. To fix the world, to fix the world through His word, through Hashem's word. That's the purpose of the world. So, is what you're doing, doing that? what you're doing is what you're doing connected to Hashem at all? If it's a spiritual thing, for example, the bands. If this is going to help you, he had some wristbands that he would write some type of a pasuk, I guess. Okay, so yeah, this is very similar to a ring, a ring that I believe it was given to another king as a present. And it says, when he had this ring, it said, "this too shall pass."

1:32:18gave it to another king as a present. And it says, when he had this ring, it said, "This too shall pass." Maybe, yeah, maybe you're right. Yeah, maybe somebody gave it to David or the moment I gave it to somebody else. Let me have the second story. Either way, the point is that it was a certain ring that would remind the person that regardless of what the circumstances are, this too shall pass. This too shall pass. If what you're doing is going to spread Hashem's name in one way or another and get one more person to do a tefillah, get one more person to eat kosher, get one more person to go through a certain difficulty without getting off the derech, why not? There's no downside here. But if this is going to make people lose their Yiddishkeit, people are going to become less religious or it's purely money-based,

1:33:19Obviously there's no point. So basically, from what you've told me, I don't see a downside. You're saying, "Think about God." What could be so wrong about telling people to think about God? You're not telling people, "Listen, think about God while you're eating treif. Think about God while you're with a non-Jew. Think about God while you're stealing like Madoff did." You're not saying that. You're just saying, "Think about God." What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with it, but what you don't want is you don't want people to turn to this to supplement... the exterior Judaism that we have today. The exterior Judaism that we have today is that a lot of people have turned Judaism into things that are exterior. So in the religious world, it's the jackets, it's the hats, it's the beard. In the non-religious world, it's segulot. People love segulot. They love these little short prayers, and they think that that's going to get them to get money, get a zivug. You know, you see all these WhatsApp groups and Facebook groups, and even kehillos. You see people that come to the shul half-naked. They're like, "Oh, what's this segulah for parnassah tovah?" They're like, "Keep Shabbat."

1:34:24No, no, no, something easier. Something easier. Keep modesty. No, no, no, no. Something easier. Something easier. Everybody's looking for a shortcut. So you don't want us to supplement that world where we've turned all of Judaism into a wristband or into a small little prayer. You want to tell them, listen, this is good to have. And if you go into a struggle, you know, if, and obviously, if you're giving it hand by hand, then you want to give them a little d'var Torah. If it's someone religious, tell them, listen, next time you go into some emunah, this is good to have. If it's someone that's, let's say, not religious. Hey, take this and come to this shiur. Remind him to come to this shiur on Tuesday, on Wednesday, or whenever. Like, try to do kiruv while you're doing this. Give a little something. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Give it to somebody. Give it to somebody. In essence, use it as a tool to get people to come closer. Not as the tool. This is not the end all, be all. But yeah, if what your decision is has to do with Hashem,

1:35:29You can only win. If it has nothing to do with Hashem, if it has nothing to do with Hashem, usually it's against Him. So that's really one of the main things because usually people don't do anything. No one does anything for no reason. No one ever built a table for no reason. You're never going to see a table for no reason. You're never going to tell the guy, "Okay, why did you build a table?" "No, no reason." "Is somebody going to use it?" "No, I don't know." "Is somebody going to eat on it?" "No, I don't know." "Are you going to sell it?" "No, no, I don't think so." "Why did you build it?" "I don't know." You're never going to see such a thing. Every creation has a purpose. So if the purpose of whatever we're doing does not have Hashem in mind, it usually has Satan instead. just don't call it that. We call it our bank account, we call it our ego, we call it a lot of other things. We don't call it him, but that's really what it is. So you have to make sure which one it is. Just like Hashem made Himself a Throne of Glory, He also made a throne of glory for Satan. He also has one, and he only gets up out of that chair...

1:36:39when it comes to kiruv, when it comes to you recruiting Am Yisrael to come do teshuva. Otherwise, he has servants to do that. The rest of the work, he has servants to do that. So you'll notice that the things that are meaningless, if you're trying to make money, if you want to have, I don't know, a basketball tournament, you want to have, I don't know, one of these crazy batei knesset that has in Florida, a few weeks ago had a backgammon. tournament in the beit knesset, a gambling tournament in the beit knesset, an Orthodox gambling tournament inside the beit knesset. Someone had died a year ago. The guy is probably screaming at them, "Please don't do the tournament! Don't do the tournament! You're killing me. I had a chance, now you guys are killing me with your stupid tournament." But that's the thing. So all of those things, Satan is never going to interfere with. Why? He's like, oh, listen, everybody come to the backgammon tournament. Everybody come to the basketball tournament. Everyone come to the baseball game for the chol hamoed. Everyone come to the Super Bowl party. He's never going to get in the way. Why? You're doing his work. But if you try to get people to come do teshuva, shiur Torah, or somebody's going to do teshuva, every person that comes is like pulling teeth.

1:37:52Every single person. It's difficult. Why? Sometimes it's getting in the way. So you'll know also. This is a good way to gauge. The more difficult, the closer you are to the truth. The closer you are to Retzon Hashem. And again, it's a necessary thing. For me, that was one of the biggest adjustments for me. Going from the business world, where people would pay to talk to me. ...to going to the religious world where I would think the same logic applies, but in reality, I have to pay them to talk to them. That's the reality. There, they would pay me $3,000 an hour just to talk to me. Here, I have to pay them $3,000 an hour for me to talk to them. That's it. That's how you know you're in the right direction. That's just the reality. Next question. Yeah? What is the process that, I guess, you and the other four people follow for... So yirah, in reality, fear is the number one motivator we all have, whether we like it or not, to do everything that we do. Everything that we do is based on fear. When you leave and you're going to drive home, you're going to have traffic laws that you're going to abide by, even subconsciously.

1:39:12subconsciously, you're going to abide by the traffic light. Why? You're afraid to get into a car accident. You're afraid to get a ticket. You're afraid that someone is going to curse you out. You're afraid of things happening. That's why you're going to abide by those laws even if you disagree with them, even if you think like me. I don't think there should be any speed limit. Personally, I don't think speed limits actually help the environment in any way, shape, or form. And statistically speaking, the countries that actually have no speed limits have fewer accidents than countries that do have speed limits. But I still have to abide by the law of the country. Why? Because that's the law. And I'm scared to get a ticket. So fear is a motivator, even in traffic. Fear also motivates us to get married. Why? We don't want to be alone. Everyone that's normal knows that at some point, even though I enjoy myself being alone now as an 18, 20, 25, or 30-year-old, he's partying, he's got a new girl every other day, but the reality is at the end of the day, he knows every day he's alone. Why? You want to have a partner. You want to have somebody with you that can share the stories.

1:40:17can share life with you. You can't have it with some girl you met in the club. Even the most secular person on earth wants somebody to share their life with, and the most religious person, even more so. He realizes a more significant meaning to life. He realizes, "Listen, I can't have kids without a wife. I can't get to the highest level of Torah without a wife. I can't get to where I want to be without a partner that's going to support me." So we get married not just because we love somebody. You don't love them when you get married to them. you love the concept of them, you love what could be with them, but you also love the fact that you're no longer scared because you're not alone anymore. So, fear motivates us constantly. In business, most people work because they'll tell you that they're ambitious. They'll tell you they're ambitious. They work really hard because they're ambitious. They're ambitious to make a lot of money. In reality, that ambition is flawed. And the reason why is because the ambition is also fear-based. The first fear for anyone that's ambitious, including Donald Trump or any millionaire or billionaire, is to be broke. Even though it's as far from them as possible, they have billions of dollars,

1:41:35Every single one of them is scared to be broke. Every single one of them is scared to not have any money. I remember that fear myself when I had plenty of money in the old days. That fear was the number one motivator. But you have 10 million, you have 20 million, you have 20 zillion. It's still very much a fear because everyone that's a real businessman knows that he could lose it all. There's a guy in Brazil. His name is Eike Batista. A few years ago, he was on the roll to be the richest man in the world. I think he was number seven. He had like $37 billion. $37 billion. Today, he has zero. He actually has debt. He has a negative balance. You would never think someone with even $30 million can go broke. I'm the example. $30 billion could also go broke. Every single person that's rich, the number one motivator is not to go broke. The second motivator is what other people think. You're scared of what other people think. There's a constant competition with the Joneses, especially in American Judaism. We're constantly competing with the Joneses. The Joneses are both Jews and non-Jews. We're competing with, you know, there's a contest all over religious America of who has the biggest house. Apparently, every year there's a new floor.

1:43:01If you don't have it, every year you have to build a new floor. I went to some rich guy's house one time, maybe two years ago, three years ago, in Boca Raton. I think he's a doctor or whatever. Some successful guy. Never really got to know him well, but I think he's a doctor. Anyway, he had some other guests. He was hosting and so on, and he asked me to tell my story. And I remember that one of, I guess the guys that were there were more comfortable with him because they've been there a few times. They saw that there were ladders and paint; the whole place was brand new, like it just came out of a box. It was a beautiful place, but there were ladders and paint in different places. One of the guests asked the wife, "What are you doing now?" She replied, "Oh, we're going to destroy this whole thing. We'll destroy this whole kitchen, this whole living room, and we're going to redo it. I don't really like it." He’s like, “Didn't you just build this one like a year ago?” She responds, “Yeah, you know, I don’t like it. We’re gonna have to destroy it.” It’s like a quarter-million dollar investment, two, three, four hundred thousand dollar investment. But chas v'shalom, someone's not gonna like where the fridge is located and the light and the chandelier. So we have to waste three hundred thousand dollars to fix it. Chas v'shalom, someone’s not gonna like it. This is unfortunately a disease. This is a disease.

1:44:26It actually talks about it also in the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat. It says that there are certain women, unfortunately, that have this problem. This problem is actually a punishment for them. Why? Because that money, that $300,000, could be used to save Am Yisrael. You're not allowed to be wasteful like this. There's no problem with you having nice things. You can have a nice chandelier, a nice house, and a nice car. There's no problem with having nice things. But to be wasteful like that is 100% a sin. Why do we get to such a point? The fear that we're not the Joneses. We're not the richest. We don't have the nicest things. And that's why people get new cars every year instead of every two or three years when their lease is over. They get a new house, and they get a second house, and they tell people about all their successes, never their failures. And you see a very shallow environment where people always tell you about all their good stock picks, never their losses. All their good deals, never their bad ones. All their good conversations. Everybody looks like a Facebook profile. You ever see a Facebook profile, if any of you have spent time on Facebook? Everyone looks like they're in Gan Eden. Everyone's always on vacation. Everyone's always eating the best meal in the world. They take pictures of it, for heaven's sake. Take pictures of their meal. They put it online for some strange reason.

1:45:43You know, everyone's always on vacation. Everyone's kids are always groomed and in good positions, always happy. They're never crying. No parent in the world ever takes a picture and puts it online of their kids crying, even though the kids are crying 90% of the day. I know, I have two of them. They don't stop crying. But that's what kids do; that's the thing. But no parent is going to put a picture of their kid crying. Why? Because we want to show the world we are Adam and Chava, we're Adam and Eve. It's all falsehood. It's all a shallow world. Why? Because we're scared of other people's opinion. So in reality, fear is something that motivates us whether we like it or not. From small places like traffic, to business, to marriage, to how we raise our kids, to what schools we send them to, to even what we read. You could be reading the Mussar book, Or Yisrael, by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, or a compilation of his letters. Have blayzer. It's like blayzer, one of his time. He'd move up his main for me to put together maybe 40 of his letters or so. Amazing. We saw a book. You could be reading that. Someone's gonna ask you also, "So what are you learning now?" I don't. Gemara. I mean, what? Yeah, I

1:46:52Why don't you tell them you're reading what we said? No, because they don't understand Mussar. It's like we're ashamed to tell them that we're not learning Gemara or we're not learning this. And the reality is that we're not comfortable in our own skin. So fear motivates us whether we like it or not. It motivates us regardless. So just like it motivates us in these basic nonsensical things, it also motivates us in everything else. So, when you explain to people that there's a price for everything that they do, immediately you'll get attention from some people. If we go to a restaurant, and the restaurant has a list of different things, but no prices, any normal person will just say, "Give me everything." Why? It's free. It's assumed to be free. There's no price next to it. I'll just take all of it. It's like my mom's house. You go to your mom's house. You don't ask, "Hey, how much does it cost?" You just tell her, "Just give me whatever you have." And she will give you whatever she has and more. Why? She's your mom. And if a restaurant has the same policy, you say, "Give me everything." But then the guy tells you, "No, no, no, sir, turn the menu around. Turn the menu around. You'll see the prices." And you turn the menu around. You see that the cheapest item on the entire menu is $100. All of a sudden, your appetite just went away. All of a sudden, you're not hungry anymore. You're like, "Oh, do you have water?"

1:48:17Water? Do they have water here? Does that cost anything? Oh, that's salad. I'll just take one leaf. What's one leaf? Yeah, $10. Okay, I'll take one salad. It's embarrassing to leave without eating. It's embarrassing to us. I'll have one leaf of salad. All of a sudden, you don't want anything. But why? Because you know the price. You know the cost. The cost for actually doing business is the cost for living. Most people don't know this. They know it, but they've never really thought about it that way. They know it everywhere else in their life. They know it in traffic. They know it in their Beit Knesset. They know it in their work. They know it in their marriage. They know it everywhere else, but they don't know it with God. Why? Because very few people actually told them. Very few people actually told them that if you don't do this, you will get a punishment that's so bad, it's hard for you to imagine it. Most people think that if I don't do what God says, okay, maybe I won't make as much money. Or maybe I'll have a flat tire. No one thinks that just like Hashem has unlimited love, He also has unlimited wrath. People don't think of Hashem that way. But that's what the Gemara, that's what Masechet Gehinnom in Reishit Chochmah talks about, and also the Gemara talks about in a few places, and the Zohar talks about in a few places.

1:49:39Just like Hashem has unlimited love for us, where He's constantly willing to take us back, He's constantly willing to accept our teshuva, even if we're as bad as Menashe. Menashe, who brought idol worship to Beit HaMikdash, took his grandfather Isaiah the Prophet and cut him up into little pieces. grandfather, he cut him up into little pieces. He raped his mom, he raped his sister. He accepted his teshuva to show us He's always going to accept your teshuva if you do teshuva genuinely. But just like He has unlimited love, He also has unlimited wrath. So, when I had my shiur that I did a few months ago about Gehinnom, anyone that watched it did teshuva. Why? Because for the first time in their life, frum, not frum, Jews and non-Jews, whoever watched did teshuva. Why? For the first time in their life, they realized God has unlimited wrath too. Because the details of the punishment, which I didn't even go into even 5% of it. But the details that I went into, which is a small section of it, it's a nightmare of nightmares. And the reality is, many people that don't do teshuva will go exactly there.

1:50:54That's just the reality. Someone that doesn't learn Torah every day, doesn't learn Yirat Shamayim, doesn't do full teshuva, they have to go there. Why? It's the only way to clean the soul. The soul doesn't get cleaned by Scotch-Brite and Windex. Each time we make a sin, we make an indent, an indent, a burn, or some type of mark on this pure soul. Something has to clean it. That something hurts a lot. So Hashem doesn't want to send us over there. He wants to send us to Gan Eden. That's why He has Gan Eden. But He also gives us an opportunity to avoid it. Do teshuva. So, when you explain to people that there is, you don't even need to tell them the details of Gehinnom. Most people, it's not even necessary to tell them the details of Gehinnom. You just tell them, listen, if you violate Shabbat according to God, not according to me, I like you anyway, but according to God, you're considered the same thing as the guy praying to Buddha. you're considered 100% an idol worshiper. According to God. Where? No less than 7 sources in the Shulchan Aruch, no less than 12 sources in the Five Books of Moses, and countless other sources in the Gemara and Zohar and many other places. So you're considered an idol worshiper when you violate Shabbat on purpose.

1:52:14When you don't wear your tzitzit, it looks like it's not such a big deal. Why? Because according to us, according to the halacha, you're only supposed to wear tzitzit if you have four corners. Right? That's the halacha. Because in the old days, we wore clothes that had four corners. So the halacha is you have to wear tzitzit if you have four corners. But if you look at the Gemara, Masechet Menachot, page 25, it says, is it a sin to not wear tzitzit if you're not wearing four corners? Is it bad? Sayyidina Yahweh says, yes, it's bad. It's bad when there's gezera, when there is a decree on Am Yisrael, when there's a decree against Am Yisrael, such as a Holocaust, such as an Inquisition, such as something bad, the nation sinned, first people that get punished are those people who don't wear tzitzit. Why? Because they have no rights whatsoever. They were arrogant about their mitzvot, but they just decide not to wear tzitzit. The one mitzvah you make a mitzvah every second. They were so arrogant that, with how many mitzvot they have, they figured, "You know what, I could just let this one go." Chazal say it's something that we didn't even think of. The sin is a problem. Something that is a sin most people don't know is a sin, like Shabbat. So when you explain to people that the small things and the big things have a cost and...

1:53:31You don't need to go too far. You don't need to go into the details of Gehinnom with the worms and the hooks and all the crazy stuff that's there. You don't need to go into that. Just tell the guy, listen, do you really want to be considered an idol worshiper in the eyes of Hashem? Do you really want to be considered one of His haters? He hates you like He hates Esav? It says in Parashat Va'etchanan. It says in Parashat Yitro. Who He specifically hates. Do you really want to be one of those people? Any normal human being that has any connection to Hashem says absolutely not. So why haven't they done teshuva? Because no one told them. No one told them. Especially in the English language. So the yirah, you don't have to go for the home run on day one. You don't have to go to Gehinnom right away. Just explain to them there's a cost. The steak costs 100 bucks. Know before you buy. Violating Shabbat has a cost. Eating non-kosher has a cost. Being non-kosher, as a non-kosher person, has a cost.

1:54:31Do what you want, but at least you now know what the cost is. And plenty of people will do teshuva because of that. They don't need to know the details again. No, they just need to know that, oh, Hashem really wants me to keep Shabbat. And that, rabotai, is how you get people to do teshuva. That's how somebody that wasn't keeping Shabbat himself just a few years ago is helping people do teshuva. It doesn't make any sense that I'm a speaker. It doesn't make any sense. The only reason I do it is that my Rav told me, "Listen, you have to do it." I have to do what he says. But the point is that, in reality, it doesn't make any sense. Why? There are plenty of people who have learned a lot more Torah than I did. Okay, Hashem gives knowledge, I learn a lot. All those things are wonderful. In reality, there are still plenty of people who know a lot more than I do. Plenty of people. Why don't they get people to do teshuva? One reason only, money. It's only one reason that stops people from telling people the truth: money. And the reason why is because if you tell people what I just said, donations immediately leave, fees for lectures immediately disappear. You can't charge people for a lecture like this. Why? No one's going to pay to get hit on the head.

1:55:47No one's going to do it unless it's Tony Robbins or one of these motivational speakers. By the way, those motivational speakers, if you guys ever heard of any of them, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, any of these guys that are motivational speakers, really what they're teaching you is Mussar. They just call it something else. They call it self-help or motivational speaking or coaching. In reality, they teach you Mussar and they tell you about all the things that you're doing wrong. And you have to fix it. Stop being lazy. Stop being tired. Stop being this. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. They're teaching exactly what we're teaching. The only difference is they're not obligating you because you already paid for that. You paid $5,000 to see them, so you don't have to do anything. Just pay the money. That's the only obligation. Here, on the other hand, there's no fee. The only thing you're obligated to do is everything I say. There's no fee though. It's free, but it's not free. Any questions? Is it possible for the Mashiach to be a male? No. The verses specifically say it's a male. For example, Bar Tzion Goel. Goel is a masculine word. It's a masculine word. Plus it's Mashiach ben David.

1:57:10Mashiach ben David is the Mashiach son of David, not daughter of David. If it was Mashiach bat David, then it would be a female. But the good news is that he will have a wife, so everybody can marry the Mashiach. But I think more importantly than worrying, a lot of people love the Mashiach topic simply because it's a... It's like an out-of-this-world experience. It's like an end to our troubles. It's something we've been waiting for for so many years. Everyone says we're the generation that's going to see it and so on. And we are. The missing ingredient, though, is that most people are worried a lot more about the Mashiach that will save all of Am Yisrael instead of their own personal Mashiach. Meaning, there's a passage that we read in tefillah every day. It says, it's a passage in Tehillim. It says that the Mashiach will come to save all of those that did teshuvah. All those that used to be posh'im, all those that used to be wicked. They did teshuvah. He's going to save them. So, in essence, this means that Mashiach is only going to save a certain select group of people.

1:58:37Not everyone. Not like a lot of people think that every Jew just by default is going to be saved. This is complete falsehood. Not every Jew is going to be saved. So the Mishnah that's read on Shabbat, that all of Israel has a share in the world to come, is on page 98 and it continues to 98b. It says, yes, all of Israel has a share in the world to come. And then the next eight pages say, and these are the ones that do not. have a share in the world to come. So what does it mean, Kol Yisrael? It says, based on the verse, all of the tzaddikim that are Israel have a share in the world to come. And all of the following, who are not tzaddikim, don't have a share in the world to come. And it gives the definition of who doesn't have a share in the world to come. One that goes with esh and so on and so forth. So, many people like to think that they're part of that list. they're part of that list of being saved when the Mashiach comes, which I hope we will be. Hopefully, we are part of that list that will be saved when the Mashiach comes. But the truth is that there's a bigger problem. The problem is that our own personal Mashiach can arrive at any moment. It's called death. Just like Hashem is going to give the Mashiach a

2:00:07The power, just like it says in the book of Deuteronomy, in the book of Jeremiah, says he's going to give the Mashiach the power to smell our sins. Smell our sins. Smell Yirat Shamayim. And Shamayim, in the Beit Din of Shamayim, don't even need that. Why? Because they're going to show you all your sins on a screen. The reality is that same Beit Din that would be created when the Mashiach comes to do all the cheshbonot for everybody. They're accounting for everyone. This one's righteous. This one's wicked. This one's righteous. This one's wicked. I'm gonna protect this one. I'm gonna destroy this one, and so on and so forth, because the Mashiach himself is gonna smell the sins and destroy the sinners. It's not, "Oh, you're not doing Teshuvah, go over there." There's no "go over there." It's destroyed on the spot. So, it's a very, very... crazy, extraordinary thing. It's not like the happy ever after all the time. If you did Teshuvah, then it is. So now, that's scary enough. The scary thing is that it could arrive even before the actual Mashiach. Why? It's called death. People die.

2:01:14Had a cousin, a young cousin; I didn't know him personally. He comes from a very rich family. Unfortunately, he died a little over a year ago on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. He was only 23 or 24 years old. He fell off a scooter. Now, did anyone think that he's going to die at 24 years old? No. Did he wake up in the morning thinking this is his last day? No. Did he wake up thinking that Hashem doesn't want him to drive on a scooter on Rosh Hashanah? No. Did he think he had his whole life ahead of him? Absolutely. Did his parents, who were on vacation in Israel at that time, think so also? Yes. Meaning that no one expects death. But it comes. And that's our personal Mashiach. That's our personal cheshbon. And that's how every single person needs to live. Realize that today may be the last day. Is this how I want to finish it? I want to finish it. If you think every day could be your last day, you'll become much more productive. You'll become a much better husband, much better wife, much better father, much better mother, much better student, much better Rabbi, and much better at everything. Why? Because you're going to put it out on the field every day. Every day you're going to try your best. Every day you're going to eliminate the thought of "I'm waiting to be comfortable." There's no comfortable in this world. I

2:02:35There's no comfort. Everyone that's trying to be comfortable is just ultimately realizing how miserable it is that they're not comfortable because there's no comfort in this world. No one's comfortable. The guy that has a lot of money has problems elsewhere. The guy that has a lot of kids has problems elsewhere. The guy that's not married has problems. Everyone has problems. The reality is that when we realize that we came here to work, and that ultimate day doesn't always have to be just Mashiach. It could also be our own Cheshbon in Shamayim. It changes the entire picture. Of course, it could be Mashiach, which is glamorous and great and so on, but we should only be excited if we're really doing teshuva every day. If we're doing teshuva every day, then we should pray for Mashiach to come, and b'ezrat Hashem to save Am Yisrael, but realistically speaking, if we're not doing teshuva, we should pray for him not to come. Be'emet, we should pray for him not to come. Right now, personally, I don't think it would be a good idea for Am Yisrael to pray for Mashiach to come.

2:03:36Even though it's one of the 13 principles of faith, they are supposed to believe that he's going to come and even expect him to come. You're not obligated to pray for him to come. And in reality, it would be better if he didn't come right now because right now we have 90% of Am Yisrael in America, and probably similar statistics around the world, who do not keep Shabbat. 90% of the American Jews do not keep Shabbat. 94% believe that it's okay to work on Shabbat, which means that 40% of the religious people—44 out of the 10% that keep Shabbat—so 4% of 10 is 40%. So 40% of the religious people, the so-called religious American Jews, think it's okay to work on Shabbat. So, we're both damaged. Religious, not religious. The problem is, the 90% usually just don't know better. The 10% should know better, but they still don't. Why? Not enough people are delivering the message. Not enough people care enough to do kiruv. Not enough people care enough to put themselves out there to go do it. And that's why you'll see, for example, even when it comes to donations.

2:04:57People that don't keep anything will donate to the big Beit Knesset. They'll buy an aliyah for Yom Kippur for $10,000, for $20,000, for the Beit Knesset for a million dollars. They don't even keep Shabbat, but they'll pay a million dollars for an aliyah on Yom Kippur. We tell them, "Listen, can you maybe sponsor some CDs, some lectures, a flight, anything for Kiruv?" "Nah, it's not for me." Why is it not for you? There's no glamour in it. When he donates the $50,000 at the Beit Knesset, everyone knows he donated $50,000 to the Beit Knesset. So he feels proud of it. But if he donated $50,000 to get Am Yisrael to do teshuva, he doesn't see any immediate results. Why? Because no one knows he donated $50,000. The difference is, that donation to the Beit Knesset, his entire reward is paid on the spot. All those people giving him kavod, that's his reward. Chazal says he's gonna cry in Shamayim when he realizes that all of his kavod was the reward that he got and only 1% of 1% was left and...

2:06:04Shemayim for that donation, and he's gonna cry. He's gonna realize how much he missed out on. Whereas with Kiruv, that same amount of money—you saved even one soul, one Jew started keeping Shabbat because of it. One Jew—not even 50,000—one Jew kept Shabbat because of it. It's 50 million times bigger than any reward you could have gotten for donating to a Knesset. But why don't people donate for the Q? Simply put, it's not as glamorous. It's not giving you as much kavod to your yetzer hara. It's not something that people care about. And that's a problem. Because in order for us to do teshuva, part of the mission of doing teshuva is caring about Am Yisrael. Love your brother as much as you love yourself. Your brother, at the very least, means getting him out of the train tracks. The very least, if you love your brother, is to tell him, "By the way, the train's coming. Move to the left. Move to the left. It's coming." That's a minimum of love. Minimum love. Everybody says, "No, no, you should love your brothers." Okay, you love your brother? Okay, tell him to move. The train's coming. The Shabbat train is coming, and if he doesn't move, it's going to run him over.

2:07:18That's love. And that's why Rabbi Yonatan Eibeschutz says the biggest sinat chinam is when one Jew sees another sin and doesn't say anything. That's the biggest sinat chinam. Why? He sees the train's coming. He doesn't say move. It's coming though. You're not going to tell him. You say you love your brothers. You love Am Yisrael. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh. All these nice pesukim. No. Train's coming. No. It's this. It's this. It always makes us uncomfortable. So that's the main thing. We have to know that we have to become uncomfortable in order to get people to do teshuva. Yeah? Sure. Well, that's the thing. You can't rebuke people for things that you're not doing because people, by nature, are not going to listen to you. They're going to think it's a joke. So just like you're never going to ask for millionaire advice from a homeless person. You know, if somebody's homeless, you're not going to ask him, "How can I become a millionaire?" Why? It doesn't make any sense. What could he possibly know about being a millionaire? Even though there is a small chance he may know and just went broke. But naturally, normally, you're not going to ask for millionaire advice from a homeless person. Because if...

2:08:46It was so good. He would use it and he wouldn't be homeless. The same concept goes for everything in your life. We're not saying to teach him how to be the Ramchal because we're not the Ramchal. We're not saying to be Moshe Rabbeinu. We're not Moshe Rabbeinu. We're saying that you have to teach, number one, what you're already doing. You keep Shabbat, teach Shabbat. You keep taharat mishpacha, teach taharat mishpacha. You keep kosher, tell them to keep kosher. That's one. Second thing is, teach what you aspire to do. Teach what you aspire to do. So if you're aspiring to work on your middot, your character traits, anger, stinginess, ga'ava, pride, and so on and so forth. All these horrible character traits that all of us have. Part of working on them is teaching them. Because once you start teaching certain subjects, number one, it forces you to learn. Number two, it forces you to embody that attitude. Oh, it's really bad to be angry. Why? Because look, I'm teaching it and you're actually teaching yourself while you're teaching them. So what you aspire to do is also what you teach. And I can tell you from my own personal experience, the biggest help for my teshuva has been teaching.

2:10:09Because it forces me, number one, to learn, and number two, it forces me to embody what I am teaching others. So, you're not portraying yourself as Moshe Rabbeinu. You're not talking to them from a higher ground, like, "Hey, I'm here, and you're there." No, what you're doing is you're saying, "Listen, I care about you. That's why I tell you. Musar is not an egotistical thing to do; it's the opposite." Teaching somebody Mussar, giving them a rebuke, it's not like the secular world where you're saying, "I told you so." "I told you so," by the way, is a big aveira. We did a whole shiur about it maybe two months ago, about what it actually means to say, "I told you so," and a person could actually literally lose Olam HaBa for saying, "I told you so." It's that bad. There's a Mishnah about it, there's a Mishlei about it, a Proverbs about it, and there's also a Gemara about it. So it's a really, really serious thing. And actually, if you look at every one of your Gemarot, at the beginning of the Gemara, it's tradition that you read this blessing at the beginning. And it says that I don't want, so my colleagues will not, that I may not stumble in a matter of law and cause my colleagues to rejoice over me.

2:11:26They and I don't rejoice over them like I'm not happy that they're failing, and they're not happy that I'm failing. Why is it mentioned here? Why? Because if they're happy that I failed, they lose a lot. If I'm happy they failed, I lose a lot. That's why it says it. It's not just, "Oh, it's not nice." It's not nice. It's about truth and falsehood. So saying "I told you so" is not the attitude. So how do you rebuke? You rebuke as "I'm trying to help you and I'm also trying to help myself. I'm obligated to tell you the truth. I see that you're a very angry guy. I see that you're a very stingy guy. Every time a dollar leaves your pocket, George Washington is going like this. Wow, finally there's light." You know you're a stingy guy. You don't want to go to the bathroom because you want to buy another sandwich. You're stingy on yourself. Your wife is wearing the same clothes since she was 12 years old, and she's already 40. You're stingy; you have a problem. Okay, so I want to let you know you have a problem. I'm not doing it because I'm telling you "I told you so." I'm telling you because it's to help you, because I'm trying to also help myself. I'm going to help myself, number one. I'm also stingy, number two. I'm obligated to tell you, so any type of issue you have to...

2:12:41Show it to them as if you're helping them because you are really helping them, but you're also helping yourself. You're not talking to them from a higher ground, as if you're better than them and they're less than you. You're not talking down to them. You're talking to them either at the same level or even up. And that's why different people have different shittot. Some people will give compliments before the rebuke. Some people will say a joke before the rebuke. Some people will even say a joke after the rebuke. But don't make a joke out of the rebuke. You can use different tactics, but don't make a joke out of it. You understand? Because sometimes you'll tell somebody something, and there'll be so much joking that you'll forget the truth. And there's a lot of tzchok, a lot of, you know, it becomes like a, you know, a lot of shtuyot. It doesn't, they're not going to do anything. So, there's a way to do it, and obviously practice makes perfect. Practice makes perfect, but I think usually, The best way to do it is if you have experience, get to know the people. If you're doing it one-on-one, if you have experience. If you don't have experience at all, the best thing to do is to bring it to somebody else. Send them a lecture, send them a video. You saw that this guy, his wife is walking around half-naked, and you know that he's scared to tell her something or maybe he doesn't know. Send him a video and tell him, "Wow, I just saw this video, it's amazing." "What is it about?" "I don't know, just you have to watch it."

2:14:08Let his curiosity, you know, actually cause him to watch it. He watches this so-called rabbi actually talk about modesty and, hopefully, a light bulb goes off in his brain. He says, "Oh, yo, by the way, he's talking about my wife." But now he took it and he owned that idea. Now, he didn't think that you were telling him because of his wife. He thought you just liked this rabbi, you just liked this idea. But now it's his idea to tell his wife, "Hey honey, you have to actually start wearing clothes." So now something changed. Usually, it's better to get somebody else to do the job, especially if that person is really close to you. If it's a family member, if it's a brother, a sister, someone that's really, really close to you, usually it's better for the rebuke to come from somebody else. The best people to actually help as far as rebuke and to get them to do teshuva are people that are far away from you. Because it's much easier for a stranger to listen to you than someone that's close to you. Much easier. It's much easier for me to help you guys than to help my own family. It's just a reality. Your own family is much more comfortable with you. Your own family remembers you from the past. If it's your parents, let's say, they're always going to think of you the same way I think of my kids, as little babies. Even if you're 30 years old, you're still a little baby to them.

2:15:31You don't think of yourself as a baby, but to them, you are. To them, you're like talking to them about Moshe Rabbeinu, and they're thinking about you in diapers. It's just a reality. So, rebuking your parents is practically a waste of time. But to not say anything is also not good either. So you have to get the rebuke in a different way. Get the rabbi, bring the shiur to the house, give the CD, send the video. There are a million and a half different ways. All you have to do is just try. Once you start trying, actively try every day. Spend 5, 10, 20 minutes every day to start doing kiruv for everybody, religious, not religious, without thinking much. Just doing. More focus on doing than thinking. You'll start seeing siyata dishmaya. You'll start seeing help from Hashem and how you'll start noticing that the videos, the right video is going to the right place. The right book is going to the right place. A lot of things that you didn't even mean to happen are happening. But that's when you don't think much. When you just focus on doing and you let Hashem do the thinking. Once you start thinking too much, oh maybe she's going to like this or she's not going to like this or this is too much for her or this is too little for him. You start doing all that accounting, you end up doing nothing.

2:16:38So that's the number one thing that, you know, when you're doing kiruv, you have to do it. The most important thing is to know, is to care. Most important thing. Yeah? What about this, like, new group where there's so many people that are becoming secular because they grew up religious and they've seen too many going off, and they said, I'm done with this, this can't be true. I don't want to approach this. So the Gemara in Masechet Berachot... There's no such thing as someone going off the derech. There's no such thing as someone going off the derech because of somebody else's sin. No such thing. Reality is, it's at the end of the masechet—I forgot the page though. The reality is, there's always something wrong from the roots. Something wrong from the roots, and the example that they use is Elisha ben Avuyah. Elisha ben Avuyah was the rabbi of rabbis... Tanna, he was one of the four people that were able to go to the Pardes to see extraordinary things in Shamayim that no other person was able to see. One person died, one person went crazy, one person became a great giant, which was Rabbi Akiva, and one person went off the derech and became a kofer, which is Elisha ben Avuyah, or they call him Acher. So Elisha, Acher...

2:18:01They say, how could it be that someone who knows so much Torah goes off the derech? I mean, he saw things, he did things. How could such a thing be? The reason why is because they say that the original foundation he had was rotten. When he was born, his father was actually a chacham also. His father was a chacham. And when he was born, he invited all the Chachamim to his house. He said, come, let's celebrate for my newborn son. A couple of the Chachamim, I think it was Rabbi Yitzchak and Rabbi Yehuda, but I'm not really sure, said, let's study. They do their things; they're celebrating. Let us do our thing. Let's learn Torah. They started learning Torah to such an extent that they created a spiritual fire. The father came to them and said, what are you doing? You came to destroy my house? They replied, no, don't worry. This is spiritual fire. This is Torah. And the father said, "Oh, if this is what Torah is going to yield, then I promise to dedicate my son, Elisha, to Torah." So the Chachamim say, "How is it possible? He was a Chacham himself. The father was a Chacham himself. Why didn't he decide to dedicate his son to Torah before he saw the fire?"

2:19:10He says, that was the problem with Elisha ben Avuyah. The problem is that he learned his Torah, but not for the right reason. He learned his Torah for fame, for fortune, for the whole geshmak of all of it. Not for Hashem Himself. Meaning it was Torah without Yirat Shamayim. And Torah without Yirat Shamayim is not Torah at all. To such an extent that the Chachamim say it was better off you don't study at all. If you're not going to learn Yirat Shamayim, it's better off you don't study at all. Sources, Masechet Shabbat, page 31. Better off not to study at all if you're not going to study Yirat Shamayim. so, meaning that even the one who knew a lot didn't fall off the deck because he saw something; he fell because that was the excuse he finally used. That was the excuse. The same thing with all of these people who are falling off the deck. They see this guy who left his wife, and they see this guy who stole from that one, and this guy who raped this one, and this guy who did all these crazy things that are happening around the world, and they use that as the story, as the nail.

2:20:13That pretty much, you know, the last nail in the coffin, they say, okay, I'm leaving. That's all an excuse. Why is it an excuse? Because it's the last thing, but it's just an excuse. The excuse, why? Because Judaism has nothing to do with the Jews. Again, Judaism has nothing to do with the Jews. Judaism has to do with Torah. Torah, fulfilling it between you and Hashem. Meaning, if there was no Torah, there would be no Jews. What makes you a Jew, a Jew is Torah. If there's no Torah, there's no Jew. If the Jew doesn't want to keep Torah, he's also not considered a Jew. He's considered an idol worshiper. Meaning that once you realize that the Torah is your connection between you and Hashem, it doesn't make a difference if everyone around you is an Esav himself. It makes no difference. You're still obligated to do what you're supposed to, what the Torah says. Even if everybody's Esav and Paro and Nebuchadnezzar and Haman HaRasha and Hitler and his brother and everybody else, it makes no difference. Why? Because the Torah commands you to fulfill it with or without anyone else being a rasha or a tzaddik. It has nothing to do with anybody. The obligation of the Torah is for you specifically. If he's a rasha, that's his problem. He's gonna pay for it. And if you learn Torah, that means you know what he's gonna pay.

2:21:31If you're going to be a sinner like him, that means you don't know. That means you never learned. That means your whole thing was exterior-based Judaism. Exterior-based Judaism eventually falls. All of those people will fall eventually, either now or when the Mashiach comes. But eventually, all of them will fall. Why? Because all of these people that don't have Yirat Shamayim, there's no chance for them to fulfill the Torah. So what mechanism can one use? Or is the actual mechanism that, oh no, don't worry about them, worry about you? Worry about you? Yes. Worry about... The thing is, the same mechanism is applicable everywhere. You teach people the truth, and the truth is, you have to do teshuva. Once you do teshuva, you help other people do teshuva. You help other people do teshuva, that helps your teshuva get even stronger. But how to do teshuva? Focusing on the truth. Not embellishing it, not telling somebody, listen, if you keep Shabbat, you're going to be a millionaire, and if you... All these things that people try to market Judaism... People try to market Judaism like it's a business. They try to sell: No, if you keep Shabbat, it's going to give you a lot of money. There are plenty of people who keep Shabbat and are broke. If you don't waste seed, that means you're going to become a millionaire. There are plenty of people who don't waste seed and are also broke. And if you read a certain prayer, you're going to find a zivug. Plenty of people read that prayer and don't have a zivug.

2:22:53And if you cover your hair, you can have a kid. Plenty of women cover their hair, and they have no kids. Don't sell Judaism as a segulah, as something if you do it, you get paid in this world. Why? Because that's not Judaism. The Pirkei Avot specifically says, your reward is Olam HaBa. That's your reward. Anything you get here is an extra. Anything you get here is extra. It's not the real reward. Isn't this sort of meant for you to get back on track? Is it? Yes, but pain, yes, there are different levels of pain. There are different levels of pain. There's minimal pain, which is still pain. There's no suffering without sin. A flat tire, a headache, an ear infection. We commit sins. I commit sins at least. And I have an ear infection. That's one pain. It's a different type of pain also. Pain, you lose money. Okay, so you lost a hundred bucks. Okay, that's pain. It's annoying. Or you can lose twenty million. It's a little more painful. Or you could just go from healthy to really sick and start screaming your lungs out day and night for seven years. That's a different level of pain. The point is, it's different levels of pain, different levels of punishment. The point is that Hashem is obviously always talking to you. He's always talking to you. And the pain is to wake you up. But the reward is different.

2:24:16The reward is not something that's instead of the pain. The reward is not. The Rambam explains why we get any reward in this world. He says anyone that thinks that he gets any reward in this world because it's for one of his mitzvot does not understand anything about Torah. In reality, any reward that you get is just to encourage you to make more mitzvot. Meaning, if let's say, for example, you gave 10% of your salary to tzedakah, Hashem now gives you more money. Next month, you made, let's say, a thousand this month. The following month, you made two thousand. Hashem rewarded you with an extra thousand. He didn't reward you with the extra thousand because you gave the ma'aser last month. He rewarded you because, "Oh, you like this mitzvah. Let me give you the ability to do even more." And... It's not because you did it, it's probably because you fulfilled it. The same concept applies, for example, when somebody gets married. Oh, you got married? Okay, so let me give you kids.

2:25:25He didn't give you kids because you got married. He gave you kids because you made the mitzvah of getting married. This means that every time He gives you a reward, it's in order for you to fulfill more mitzvot. That's the reward. The reward is an opportunity for you to make more mitzvot, not a reward as an end-all-be-all. I'm not going to give you more money because you kept Shabbat. No. I'm going to give you more money so you can give more tzedakah and make more mitzvot, enabling more people to keep Shabbat. Because you honored the Shabbat, I'm going to give you money so you can help others to keep Shabbat. And that's the confusion that a lot of people have. They think that if they keep something and they do something, they're going to get a reward for it. And that's not, that's marketing Judaism. It's just not true. The reward is a catalyst for you to make more mitzvot, to continue doing what you already started. He's going to reward you in the direction that you already were good at. So, if you are good at, let's say, Shabbat, He's going to reward you in a way that connects to Shabbat. That connects to Shabbat, so you get other people to keep Shabbat, to make your Shabbat even better, and so on and so forth. To learn more things about Shabbat and make, you know, and so on and so forth. But He's going to reward you in a way to give, I guess, more of an embellishment to your existing mitzvah, magnified even more.

2:26:43And that's real Judaism. When we market it like it's a business, like if we do this and Hashem pays us this way, if we do this, Hashem pays us this way, that's simply wrong. It's not true. Additionally, it's bound to fail. It's bound to fail. If you tell people, if you keep Shabbat, you're going to get parnassah tova. If you get married, you're going to get this. If you make it a rewards-based system where your reward is here, it's only a matter of time before people start falling off like flies. Why? Because eventually, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen for everybody. Not every woman that covers her hair is going to have kids. Not every guy that keeps Shabbat is going to be rich. It's not a foolproof system. Because the reward is not here. Some people get rich, some people don't. Some people have kids, some people don't. Because the reward is over there. And most importantly, sometimes Hashem simply doesn't want to give it. Sometimes you'll pray for something, and Hashem says no. Simply no. That's it. The answer is no. Just like in Parashat Va'etchanan, Moshe Rabbeinu prayed to Hashem 515 times.

2:27:44Let me go and tell it to say: Hashem says, "No, it's enough. You don't need to pray anymore. The answer is no. I don't want you to come in." Why? My own reasons. My own reasons. There are plenty of reasons that Chazal explain to us, but the point is the answer was simply no. Sometimes it's no. Sometimes you want money, and Hashem says no. Why? Maybe you think that if you have money, you're going to become a big donor. In reality, Hashem says, "You're going to be a big gambler instead." Now, because you have no money, you're going to be a big donor once you have the money. It's a different yetzer. So Hashem will sometimes say no because He knows you better than you know yourself. So to tell people that if you do this, this, and this, you're going to get rewarded for it in this world is an outright lie, and it also creates kefirah. It's a matter of time before those people fall off, and a lot of those people that fell off today or are falling off are from that mentality. They did certain things, they didn't get rewarded, they fell off. And they blame the guy that raped this one, and the guy that stole from that one, and the guy that lied on this one. They blame everyone else, but in reality, it's the original teacher they should blame. The one that told them that it's a rewards-based system, that they're supposed to be rewarded in this world. There's no such thing. There's no source in the Torah for it either.

2:29:02That's one thing I always try to understand: where do they get this stuff from? Okay. It's not just that at the tail end of your life, if you're 70 years old and you finally did teshuva and you died at 70 years and one day, does that mean you're not gonna get the reward? No, it means you will get the reward ultimately and eternally. All of the blessings that you get are eternal blessings; they are not timely-take blessings. Because someone could finally do teshuva. Do teshuva. He's 25. He's 30. He's 35. But his clock is finished. Hashem decided before he came to the world that he's only going to have 40 years in this world. The guy did teshuva. Finally, he's 39. He did teshuva. Baruch Hashem. Great. But he only has one year to go. Only has one year to go. But Hashem says, I have a whole wealth of blessings to give you. So why now? Because I decided you're going to die at 40. That's it. I'm not going to give you the blessings? No. All the blessings are eternal.

2:30:08All the blessings are eternal. And that's why, if you look at the details of the commentary on each one of the blessings, you see how each and every single one of them is not even applicable to this world. Yes, of course, there are certain things, there are certain comforts that you get in this world. But in reality, plenty of people fulfilled the entire Torah and don't even want one of those blessings in this world. Entire Torah and don't even want one of those blessings in this world, and plenty of them are very happy they're not getting it in this world, especially the more righteous they are. Why? Because they realize that any blessing in this world is meaningless in comparison to Olam HaBa. And that's why many of them would even ask for suffering and... And that's why in the Gemara it says that anytime that the sages saw that they weren't experiencing suffering for 40 days in a row, they would start bringing suffering on themselves by picking up rocks in the middle of the road. Because they were scared that maybe they committed a sin so big and didn't notice it, that Hashem just gave up on them. He wasn't going to let them do teshuva, so they started bringing suffering on themselves just because they hadn't suffered for 40 days.

2:31:10That's the mentality of a tzaddik, which is far from us, but that's reality. Our reality is not reality. That's reality. The tzaddik is the reality. So, again, we're not saying that you're ultimately supposed to be just suffering all the time and miserable and so on. No. But to think that if I do this, I'm going to get this is a wrong mentality. The same thing with Mashiach. Telling people the reason why we're not allowed to tell people when Mashiach is supposed to come, like actually putting a timetable on it, It's a hundred percent assur from the Torah. It's a hundred percent assur to tell people that Mashiach is going to arrive this year. Mashiach is going to arrive this Pesach. Mashiach is going to arrive before the year 5780, or before any year. Putting an actual timetable on Mashiach is a hundred percent assur. Not allowed. Why? Because you're building something that's bound to fail if people are going to listen to you. People, 50 people, a thousand people, 50,000 people—depends on your influence—say, "Oh look, so-and-so rabbi said the Mashiach is going to come before Pesach and..."

2:32:17They start doing teshuvah. The guy's tefillin three times a day. He's reading. He's this. He's that. His wife all of a sudden has kisui rosh, kisui guf, kisui everything. She's covering her eyes. She became Muslim. Everything. Everything. Teshuvah shleimah, everything is good. Everybody's celebrating. Little kids grow hair overnight. Everything is great. The little kid, seven years old, has a beard. Everything is great. Pesach arrived. Mashiach didn’t come. They go back to being kofrim. They go back to being, why? He's like, oh, look, the rabbi promised Mashiach was going to come on Pesach. No Mashiach, no nothing. See, it's the same thing they've been saying for 2,000 years. He's coming. He didn't come. They don't know. He doesn't know. No one knows. And if they don't know about this, they probably don't know Torah either. I'm not keeping anything. That's what creates kefirah. Creates heretics. The same Mashiach is at the doorstep. That's always been the case. It was the case 3,300 years ago. Say that he's coming in our lifetime, say that he's even coming very soon. You're not only allowed, you should, because one of the 13 principles of faith is that you're supposed to expect the Mashiach to come any given day. But to give a specific time, meaning,

2:33:32before Pesach this year, you know, 5780, actually putting a specific time on it is a 100% biblical sin. A biblical sin because people will build on that time much more. Many more people are going to pinpoint that specific time, even if a Talmid Chacham did it, even if somebody that's a complete fool says Mashiach is going to come according to my computer at 5780. People are gonna believe him much more than they'll believe the gadol hador says he's gonna come sometime in the next 10 years. Why? Because he put a specific time on it. He put a date on it. They'll go with him, and then when it doesn't happen, then it's a big problem. It's a very, very big problem. So b'ezrat Hashem, unless you guys have any more questions, b'ezrat Hashem, we have more shiurim this week. We have a shiur in Queens tomorrow night. Different topic, different things. I have no idea what we're going to say. Hashem has to say something else. So He'll tell me what to say and then we'll say it. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed it. Hopefully, it gets us to do a little bit of teshuva. Again, like I said, you have some CDs. Whatever extras, keep them. Give them out to people. The shiurim are online. You go to bezratashem.org. That's our website. There are countless shiurim. One thing I highly recommend is the Mussar series. What we've been doing for the last two years is the Mussar series. We're up to lecture 100. Each lecture is between two to three hours.

2:34:56Each lecture is completely different from the other. And it goes into the details of Mussar, the details of Pirkei Avot, the behind the scenes, a lot of interesting things. And pretty much if you don't do teshuva, it just means you probably died already. You're in Olam Ha'Emet already, you don't have to do teshuva. But the reality is, you listen to those shiurim, after a few, something's starting to move. After 10, 12, something more. After about 25, you already did teshuva, and now you start to do kiruv already. Because it's... The words of the sages have nothing to do with me. The words of the sages, when you hear them in pure form, they're powerful. When there's no sugar coating, they're powerful. And even a golem will do teshuva from them. A golem will do teshuva from them. And that's the reality. So that's the number one message today. Don't be a golem. Be a proud Jew. Show everybody else how amazing it is to be a Jew. Not just by the exterior.

2:35:59by your lifestyle, the interior, what's inside. Once you start feeling that way, the words that come out of your mouth will be like that. What comes from the heart reaches the heart. If each one of you becomes a speaker, locally, nationally, in your synagogue, in your work, even with your own family, if every single person starts delivering the truth, then the statistics that I told you today are just going to be a horrible memory that we forgot. But if we don't do teshuva, then the Mashiach is going to be worse than Yetziat Mitzrayim. And that's the scary part. Yetziat Mitzrayim was great if you look at just the fact that we left, but not if you look at the actual statistics of how many left. We don't want those same numbers. That's our obligation, the ones that actually know a little bit of Torah. Teach what you know without embellishing it, without putting your own opinion to it, without sugarcoating it, without worrying about whether they like it or not. Just give it to them as Hashem wrote it. If He wrote it that way, that means He wants people to know it that way. And b'ezrat Hashem, we'll get Am Yisrael to do teshuva, get Am Yisrael to give tzedakah, keep Shabbat, and stop worrying about...

2:37:10the hats and the coats and everything else. And most importantly, get us to at the very least be as proud of being Jews as the Muslims and the Christians are proud to be what they are. Because they have falsehood, we have the truth. We have to live like we have the truth, similar to how they live like they have their falsehood. Baruch Adonai le'olam, amen ve'amen.