Cleaning Out Our Inner Chametz In Los Angeles (1)

0:14First of all, thank you for having me. Baruch Hashem, it's very good to be here in Los Angeles. It's been a long ride, and traveling with two little babies to Los Angeles is not fun, but apparently Hashem wants us to do kiruv in Los Angeles also. We have our movie producer over here with our Torah and science movies, Baruch Hashem. He did many of our short films that have had a lot of success, Baruch Hashem. And see some familiar faces, some new faces. There are a million and a half different topics that you can talk about in the Torah. If you have any specific questions, you can interrupt me, you can ask them now. We can have this shiur about your questions, or we can have it about my questions. Somebody's going to have to ask questions. Now, I'm assuming everybody wants me to do it in English. Everybody speaks English? Okay. So, if you don't understand something, then I'll say it in Hebrew also. But either way, does anybody have any specific questions in mind? Or something that's been bothering you your whole life? I probably asked it at some point. So if you have questions along the way, ask. So, Baruch Hashem, another year has passed, and we are celebrating Pesach.

1:36We are celebrating our freedom. For approximately 3,300 years, we have been free from the Egyptians, and the story of Egypt, the story of the Exodus, is something that we're obligated to repeat, not only during Pesach, but actually every day. This is one of the primary reasons why you have to say Kriat Shema at least twice a day. Most observant Jews do it at least three times a day, the third time being for Kriat Shema al-haMitah. This also helps people who have bad dreams, nightmares, and things of that nature, or who see strange things in the world. The world is not what it appears to be. Some people see certain things that are very scary, but the reality is that this is very much part of nature, and Hashem wants you to see different things. But the most important thing for us to see is the truth. Now, 3,300 years ago, we were all slaves. And I say we because it was our neshamos, according to the Torah, it was our neshamos that were on Mount Sinai. And one of the interesting things that the Torah says is after we left Egypt in Parashas Beshalach, it says,

2:53It says it happened when Pharaoh sent out the people that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines because it was near. For God said perhaps the people will reconsider when they see a war and they'll return to Egypt. So it says that Am Yisrael was sent in a specific path out of Egypt. After we left Egypt, Hashem sent them on a specific path, a longer path, a much more difficult path. Why? Because despite all the miracles that we saw, and how Hashem destroyed the number one biggest and most powerful civilization in history, and made the slaves the master, and the master the slave in essence, for the first and last time in history. Still, Hashem knew that we had a lack of emunah. He knew that as soon as we had one test, we would reconsider. Even though He showed us miracles. Every month there was one makkah, one plague, starting with turning the water into blood, because the Egyptians did not let us drink. So Hashem says, measure for measure: "You don't let My children drink, I'm not going to let you drink."

4:06Then He gave them the frogs. Why? You didn't let My children bathe. You didn't let them make themselves clean and have good hygiene. Okay, so you're not going to have good hygiene either. Kinim: same concept—you didn't let My children bathe, and it got to a point where they became sick. So, I'll make sure you're sick too. Each one of the plagues has a measure-for-measure explanation of why Hashem gave that specific plague. Each one has at least a half a dozen or more explanations of why He gave it. But despite all of this, Am Yisrael saw the plague, saw the Egyptians get hurt, and Am Yisrael said... Saved at the same time, the polar bear from the end of the world came to Egypt and ate the Egyptian. But the Jew that was sitting right next to him, it didn't do anything to him. The African lion that came from Africa came to Egypt and ate the Egyptian and not the Jew. The point is that a lot of things that were open miracles were seen by Am Yisrael. But yet after we leave, Hashem says, let me send them on a really long route and...

5:17because if I send them on a short route, as soon as something happens, whether it's the Philistines—not to be mistaken with the Palestinians of today; the Palestinians of today are a modern-day creation, established about 70 years ago—but let's look at... Am Yisrael, they'll have tests as these Philistines. If not the Philistines, the Egyptians. If not the Egyptians, the weather. If not the weather, the scorpions, the snakes, the something. If they're too close, they're going to turn around. In the book of Isaiah, Hashem Yitbarach says to Am Yisrael, says to the prophet really, which is now delivered to Am Yisrael, Ani Adonai Elohecha melamdecha leho'il. I am God. I am your God that's here to teach you, to help you. What do you mean, teach you to help you? What other reason would you teach me? What other reason is there to teach a person? So here the sages explained to us that Hashem has explained to us why we all have tikkunim, why we all have kaparat avonot, why we all have difficulties. Why did somebody get a flat tire on the way to work or on the way to shiur Torah?

6:33Why did somebody lose some money in the market or lose a partner or lose a business or get sick? Why do all these things happen? Hashem says, "I am here to teach you, to help you." What teach you through what? Through actions, through difficulties, through suffering. It's all for you to learn. Learn what? Which way to go. Which direction to go. Am Yisrael thought they were going in the right direction, the shortest route from point A to point B. They found out over here that it’s the wrong point. It’s the longest point. It’s the most difficult point. Hashem says that’s the right way though. Why? Because first and foremost, it’s going to protect you. You're going to try to look for shortcuts from the beginning to the end of time, but the shortcut is not always the best cut. So, I’m going to take you the long way to Yam Suf, and... But then it says, the parasha starts with the word Vayhi. Vayhi, Chazal explained to us, also means oy vey. Oh no. Something bad, it's a sign of a bad thing. So what could possibly be so bad about leaving the Egyptian slavery that we were in for 210 years? We were slaves for 210 years. Why would anybody be sad? It says that all of Am Yisrael were crying. They were leaving Egypt, and they were all crying.

7:59Why were they crying? Because everyone knew somebody that died. And the reason why Vayhi is a negative sign is because the very following sentence says only a fifth of Bnei Yisrael left Egypt. One out of five. Why only one out of five? Where did the other four-fifths go? The sages explained that Hashem Yitbarach told Am Yisrael, "I put the plagues into the world. I destroyed Egypt. Now, there was a whole purpose for it." What's the purpose? To get to the climax of creation. Meaning, go get the Torah at Mount Sinai. Now the Egyptians, they got beat up. So we don't have to worry about the Egyptians anymore. So Am Yisrael said, "Listen, if you would have come to us a year ago," We're still slaves. We leave, go to the desert, go wherever you want. We're slaves now. We're not slaves anymore. We're not slaves anymore. Why are we gonna leave Egypt? This guy just opened a business, the other guy has a new partnership, this guy just got married, bought a new house. This one just bought a new car. He likes the roads over here in Egypt. It's already built. You want us to go to the desert? It's dangerous over there. What, my next-door neighbor is gonna be a scorpion or a snake? What am I gonna wear in the desert for?

9:25Am Yisrael did not want to leave Egypt. Not because they didn't want to leave slavery, because they were no longer slaves. But Hashem said, if you don't want to leave Egypt, then I have no need for you. And He killed them. How many of them? The best estimate says four out of five, meaning 80%. Rabbi Nachman in the Gemara says, Halvai was one out of five. Meaning I wish it was only one out of five that Hashem killed. But in reality, we all know it was more than one out of five hundred thousand, meaning that only two people out of every million survived Egypt. According to the Midrash Me'am Loez, we had 300 million members of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt, and only three million actually left.

10:25So here we learn a very critical lesson. Number one most important lesson, Hashem is not your friend. He's not your friend. He's your God. Doesn't mean that you can't love Him. Doesn't mean that He loves you any less. It just means that there's a certain type of relationship you have to have with Him. He's not your boy from the bar. And here we see that when He says something, He's doing it for a real reason. It's not like He doesn't change His mind. Now, the prophets also say, One of the main reasons why we're obligated to go over the sippur of Har Sinai and the Exodus and the whole Yetziat Mitzrayim on a day-to-day basis is because we have to know what's going to happen in the future too. What does this have to do with the future? The prophets say that everything that we saw in Egypt will be magnified right before the Mashiach comes in our generation and

11:28Everything that happened in Egypt is going to happen again, just magnified. So, for example, the prophet says in Egypt there were three days of darkness. During those three days of darkness is when Hashem killed a lot of the Egyptians and, unfortunately, many of the Jews that didn't want to do teshuva. The ones that didn't want to go to Har Sinai, that's when He killed them. Why did He do it during a plague of darkness? Because He didn't want the Egyptians to see Him killing the Jews and think that maybe it's nature and it's not God; maybe they're both the same type of criminal. Egypt, there were three days of darkness. During those three days of darkness is when Hashem killed a lot of the Egyptians and, unfortunately, many of the Jews that didn't want to do teshuva. The ones that didn't want to go to Har Sinai, that's when He killed them. Why did He do it during a plague of darkness? Because He didn't want the Egyptians to see Him killing the Jews and think that maybe it's nature and it's not God; maybe they're both the same type of criminal. But the reality is that these three days of darkness, according to the sages and according to the prophets, are going to be magnified. The Rambam says there will be 15 days of darkness before Mashiach comes. During those 15 days is when Hashem is going to close all the accounts, meaning anyone that hasn't done teshuva by then has lost his opportunity.

12:28page 4a and at the end of 3b, it says that before the Mashiach comes, there are going to be a lot of converts, a lot of people wanting to convert to Judaism. Now, this sounds nice, but anyone that knows a little bit of history knows that this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and The reason why, because at the time that this Gemara was written, almost 2,000 years ago, Am Yisrael was being killed in the middle of the street. They had just destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. They were killing the best and the greatest of us, and the worst of everybody. So to say that people from other nations are going to want to be like you, You lost something. Maybe there's a missing screw somewhere. Maybe you're in a different nation every year. There's going to be a lot of converts to Christianity or to Islam or to some other religion. To Judaism? It doesn't make any sense. But that's the difference, Rabotai, between a prediction and prophecy. Prediction is based on logic.

13:35You can predict that the economy will grow at a certain rate based on history. You saw that over the last 10 years, the relationship between America and China produced an X amount of returns. And you know that over the next 10 years, it will do somewhat of the same, maybe more, maybe less, give or take a percent or two. If a certain business you started grew in the beginning at 30, 40, or 50%, you know that over time, that percentage will shrink. Why? Bigger the company, the more difficult it is to grow at those same rates that you did in the beginning. In the beginning, you were growing at a hundred percent a day because you made zero and then you made a dollar and then you made two dollars. So it's easier to grow at high percentage rates. When you become a billion-dollar company, you could logically predict that the percentage of growth is still going to be there, but just not the same percentage. That's a prediction. That's what we did for almost 20 years on Wall Street. A prophecy, though—the way we know it's a prophecy is because it's not logical. In fact, for the most part, most of them are against logic. Most of them don't make sense at all. And I'll read you one that I had a chiddush on about a few years ago that I think you'll find very interesting. In the book of Yirmiyahu, it says a prophecy of what's going to happen at the end of days.

14:50It says, however, "Behold, days are coming," meaning he's giving a prophecy. The prophet Yirmiyahu is giving a prophecy of what's going to happen at the end of days. The word of Hashem, meaning this is not from me, this is from Hashem. When it will no longer be said, "as Hashem lives who took out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt." Meaning that all throughout history, for the last 3,300 years, We've all known Hashem Yitbarach took Am Yisrael out of Egypt. We say it in Kriyat Shema. All the goyim know it. Even those who hate us admit to it, whether they're Christians, Muslims, or whoever they are. Everyone knows: Am Yisrael, Hashem took them out of Egypt. How do we know? Because it didn't make sense for the Egyptians to release them by themselves. They were slaves. Why would you release your number one asset? And this is a historical event that has archaeological proof.

16:02And everyone has known that this is also the first commandment. The first commandment we have in the Ten Commandments. We got to Mount Sinai. Hashem Yitbarach says, "I am your God who took you out of Egypt." And many times throughout the entire Torah it says, "I am God who took you out of Egypt." But here he says, when the Mashiach comes, He's no longer going to be known as the God who took you out of Egypt. Why? Why? rather, "As Hashem lives, who took out the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all of the lands where He scattered them, and I shall return them to their land which I gave to their forefathers." See, He says He's no longer going to be known as the God who took His nation, the children of Israel, out of Egypt, but rather out of a land that's called the land of the north and... of the north and all the other lands. That's not one place. They're not gonna be like they were in Egypt. It was just all of them were in one place; all of them were in Egypt. There wasn't like some of them in Morocco, and some of them in Teiman, and some of them maybe in Tripoli over there with Libya eating some shakshuka, you know. None of that. All of them were in Egypt.

17:19Took them out of Egypt, said, "Okay, at the end of days, they're not gonna be in one place, not gonna be just in Israel. They're not gonna be just in one place; gonna be everywhere. But specifically, it says I'm gonna take them out of the land of the north and all the other lands to bring them back to the land that I gave their forefathers, meaning the land of Israel." This doesn't make any sense. Why? After we left Egypt, where did we go? The desert. After the desert, where did we go? We went to Israel. Now, at this point, the prophet Jeremiah sees the Churban Beit HaMikdash. There are very few of us left. We're scattered literally everywhere. But here he's saying something that doesn't make sense. He says most of you are going to be in something called the land of the north. And the rest of you are going to be everywhere else. What is the only place on earth that has "north" in its name? North America. You have seven continents in the world. One of those continents is called North America. Now, why is it significant to say North America and not just America? Because the number one biggest population of Jewish people in the world outside of Israel is in North America, which includes Canada and the United States, and...

18:46Canada and the United States. So he says, at the end of days before Mashiach comes, "I'm gonna take you out of Egypt, the new Egypt," which Egypt's called America, where we live. But where it's called the land of the free: free speech for me to say whatever I want on YouTube, and free religion for all of you to practice whatever religion you want. He's saying this is gonna be the place that before Mashiach comes, I'm gonna free you from there. And... This brings us to another point, how it doesn't make sense again. Why do you need to free us? We're free already. We're free already. Anybody here get persecuted? Nobody. There's no persecution really. It's here and there, small things, some annoying Nazis here and there. But in reality, you call the cops, they get arrested. There's a few of them emailing me every day. Every day some annoying person from the end of the world wants to send an email that he thinks I'm actually going to read. Reality is that persecution is virtually non-existent in comparison to our forefathers. So why is he saying, "I'm going to free you from there and then from the rest of the world"? Australia has a lot of Jews. The UK has a lot of Jews and many other places too. "I'm going to bring all of you to Israel." Now, remember the sages said that all of the things that we saw in Egypt are going to be magnified.

20:16Everything will be magnified. Now, what's the difference between Egypt and today? In Egypt, we were there for 210 years. For 210 years, it was pretty clear we were slaves, especially the last 86 years, which was counted from the days that Miriam was born and... It was obvious that we were slaves. They wouldn't let us eat. They wouldn't let us drink. They wouldn't let us do anything, not even have children. We knew we were slaves. And despite knowing that we were slaves, we still had a hard time. We didn't really want to leave. When it says It doesn't only mean hard labor. It also means we got used to the avodah zarah. We got used to worshiping their idols. This is the reason why before we left Egypt, Hashem gave us two mitzvot.

21:22He said, up to now, you had the merits of your forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. They made enough mitzvot, they had enough merit, enough kedushah they brought to the world, that it enabled Me to make it right to destroy the Egyptians, up to now. I destroyed the number one civilization for you, up to now. But now, to leave Egypt, you ran out of merits. In order for Me to take you out of Egypt, You have to do two things for Me. What? The first one is Brit Milah. Just like Avraham Avinu did Brit Milah, Yitzchak and Yaakov did Brit Milah, all the Shevatim did Brit Milah. Unfortunately, Am Yisrael stopped doing Brit Milah. They stopped doing Brit Milah. It says all of you have to do Brit Milah. The second thing is, you have to take the goat, tie it to your bed for a few days, and make sure that the Egyptians hear it. they come and ask you, "Hey, what are you doing to my god?" Because the goat was one of their gods. They had a few gods: the Nile River, the goat. So the Egyptians come and say, "Hey, what are you doing to my god?" You tell them, "I'm going to cook him in a few days, and I'm going to eat him." And in case the Egyptians didn't see, didn't come, didn't hear it...

22:38Make sure that when you make the goat, put him on a barbecue, make sure you barbecue him whole. Don't break off any pieces. That way, if the Egyptian comes, he sees the whole goat. So it's not like he doesn't look like a dog or cat or something else. He knows for sure this is a goat. This is the god of the Egyptians. And when he asks you, "What are you doing to my god?" say, "I'm going to eat him." Why is this such a big thing for Hashem? Okay, He's already punishing the Egyptians enough. punishing them. You want to just kill them? Kill them. You want to kill all the goats? Kill the goats. What's the whole scenario, what's the whole movie for? What do we have this for? What are you gonna do? You're putting Am Yisrael in danger. If you want to save them, just forget the goat. Do the brit milah, pick it in the mizbeach, Shabbat, kashrut, something else. Pick something else. What's the whole thing with the goat? The secret behind this... is that, unfortunately, Am Yisrael is known to have kept three mitzvot in Egypt. They kept their language, they kept their names, and they kept their clothes. Those are the three things they kept; they held on to. Moshe was still called Moshe, Yaakov was still called Yaakov. They still had the Jewish names. Clothes—they still wore Jewish clothes, still wore the clothes of Am Yitzchak and Yaakov—didn't adapt the clothing of the Egyptians.

24:08And the language—they still spoke Hebrew. But this also means everything else they didn't do, including Brit Milah. One of the reasons they fell is because once they became slaves, they adapted to it; they became accustomed to it, and eventually adopted everything else the Egyptians did, including their gods. The reason why Hashem commanded them to kill the goats in such a vicious way is because... Extraordinary way to make sure the Egyptians see it is because it's not only for the Egyptians. It's also for the Jews to admit that Hashem is their only God because they were also worshiping the goat. Hashem says, "You want Me to take you out of Egypt? Kill your other god, the other god you're still worshiping. Kill him first. You cannot come to Mount Sinai with another god." They cannot be two gods. This is also why the Gemara says that anytime a person has ga'ava, has pride, Hashem leaves the room wherever he is. Why? Because pride is a form of idolatry. Having pride, which unfortunately all of us suffer from at some point or another during our days or our lives, unless we work on ourselves. Having pride, having arrogance, is a form of idolatry. Idolatry of who? Ourselves.

25:31Worshipping ourselves. Hashem says if he thinks he's God and I know I'm God, I can't be in the same room with him. So now He told them if you're gonna have another god, I'm not gonna take you out of Egypt. So, He said they had to put themselves in danger and kill their god, their fake god, and make sure that the Egyptians know it. It's not like a fake thing, you know. Sometimes people do like a fake god. They want to know they do tefillin in their house. I have a guy, God bless him, he says, "I'm religious in my house all the time. In my house, I have tefillin, I have a kippah." I'm like, "Yeah, what about outside the house?" You know, "Outside, I'm uncomfortable." Why? "What's uncomfortable?" "Ah, my friends are gonna see me with tzitzit." "My God, they're gonna kill you!" The Nazis, because they know they're Jewish, so what's the problem with you? You know, I don't get it. Why so? That's the thing. He's not a proud Jew yet. It's not Hashem's time he became. But obviously, they had to become proud Jews very quickly. They weren't given much time. They weren't given many, many shiurim—a year, two years, five years. Sit on the spot. You want me to save you now? Kill that fake god of yours. And that's why...

26:48obligated to do such a thing where Balaam, who saw, said this was actually the biggest miracle of all of Egypt. Bigger than the blood, you know, the water turning to blood and all of the other things. This was the biggest miracle of all. Why? That the Egyptians got to such a state that they were afraid of the Jews. They were afraid of Bnei Yisrael. They were afraid to kill them even though they saw them killing their god. And The fact that the master became afraid of the slave, this was the biggest miracle. But now, what does it have to do with the End of Times? And I'll take your question. I think you raised your hand. What does it have to do with the End of Times? In that time, we knew we were slaves. We knew we were slaves and still had difficulty leaving. The prophet Yirmiyahu is telling us At the end of times, there are going to be bigger miracles, much bigger than Egypt. Much more magnificent than Egypt. So much so, that even the slaves are not going to know they're slaves. So much so that, unlike Egypt where we knew we were slaves, they were beating us up and

28:14End of times, we're not going to know we're slaves. Why? We have houses, we have cars, we have businesses, Baruch Hashem. Am Yisrael is prospering better than ever right now. In all of history, compared to Germany right before the Holocaust, right before the Holocaust, if you look at history, you see that the Jews were in government. They were in politics, they were in business. They were running the country. Communism, they started in Russia, helped them take control of many parts of Germany as well. And that's why, much more busy for Hitler, in his own book wrote that the reason why he hates Jews, he gave himself an excuse. What's the excuse? He says, if I don't kill them, they're gonna kill us. Why? They're communists, even though he himself was one. It's good for him, but not for them. The point being, Rabotai, is that we were prospering financially and... We're prospering with material. Right now, we're also prospering with material. And if Mashiach came today, right after the shiur, Rabotai, Mashiach is on CNN, CNBC, this BC, that BC, all the BCs are saying, oh, Rabotai, there's a shofar in Eretz Yisrael.

29:34Some guy, oh, it's Eliyahu HaNavi, right next to him, he's telling us, hey, Mashiach is coming in three days. Just like the prophet Zechariah says, three days before Mashiach comes, Eliyahu HaNavi comes. Eliyahu HaNavi says, Rabotai, that's it. Leave everything, leave your business, leave your car that you just bought. Leave the house you just bought an extension for, you bought the eighth floor. Leave the dog, the pet that you bought, leave them there also, because you can't fit dogs in the plane. People have to fit. Leave this, leave this, you have to go to Eretz Yisrael. Why? Mashiach is here. Which one of us is leaving? Which one of us is really leaving? How many of us are going to say, you know, listen, can he come next year? Can it be a little more? Can you give me a little more time? Actually, I'm planning a vacation next week. I've been waiting for this vacation for three months. I've been waiting for this vacation for three years. I saved up. I worked for UPS overtime. Shema Hashem, working this, working that. Finally, I have money for a vacation. And UPS is big. Can I go on a vacation at least before Mashiach comes?

30:39I just bought my wife a nice piece of jewelry. I'm going to give it to Mashiach. I'm going to give her the jewelry on the plane. It's not nice. I got to give it to her here. No, can you come in a few more days? A few more years? A few more? How many of us want Mashiach to come? We say Mashiach, Mashiach, Mashiach. We say Mashiach. How many of us would really be excited? The reality is the slave doesn't know he's a slave. The slave is connected to the material world to such an extent that he doesn't even realize that he's a slave because he thinks that the car, the house, the money, the bank account, the Bitcoin, the Shmit Coin, and all these other coins that are out there are life. He thinks that's actually the purpose of life. thinks that he came to this world to make money. He thinks that he came to this world to build an empire, to build the next Coca-Cola. He thinks that he came to the world to be an entrepreneur on CNBC and CNN and on Forbes. And tell him, you know, it's not really the purpose of life. No, I could do a lot of chesed. I could give a lot of money to people who are learning Torah. Yeah, but what about you? What about you learning Torah?

32:05So right after this prophecy, the prophet Jeremiah says, "Behold, I shall send many fishermen," the word of Hashem, "and they will fish them out." And afterwards I shall send many trappers, and they will trap them from atop every mountain and every hill and from the crevices in the rocks. So there are a few commentaries on this pasuk. One of the things that's very interesting is that he says before Mashiach comes, Hashem is going to give us a lot of different messages. What is it like? First, your wife sends you a text message. You don't answer, she sends you a WhatsApp. Then she sends you a voice message. Then she calls you. Then it's an email, and then she shows up at your office with the kids in diapers. Why don't you answer the phone? Hashem is no different. Hashem is going to send you a WhatsApp, and a Facebook message, and a tweet, and an email. But eventually, He's going to show up. The question is how long you're going to wait. He says first, I'm going to send you fishermen.

33:30Nice lectures, you know, smart things, clever, make you think, double-check yourself. He's going to send you fishermen. Why? They're going to fish them out. Who? They're going to fish the people out there who are looking for the truth. Once in a while, you find you have a crowd, you have a thousand people, you find one, two, three, four, five looking for the truth. The Rambam, alav hashalom, said, if I'm going to give a lecture and there's going to be 10,000 people, And I know that out of the 10,000 people, 9,999 are not only not going to listen to me, they're going to go against me. And only one will do teshuvah. The Rambam writes himself, I care less about the 9,999 because I only came for the one. Because he's the only one looking for the truth, the others are looking for excuses to justify their life. Hashem says, "I'm going to send you fishermen. They're going to fish you out. You're looking for the truth? They're going to fish you out. Fish. You don't fish with just nets. You fish one at a time. But afterwards, I'm going to send you trappers. Then trapping is a little more painful. Fish. You fish a fish. He can still live. You put him in a house, a nice little aquarium. But the trapper..."

34:54Most of the time, you don't survive. And if you survive, you're like missing a leg, missing an arm. So, I'm going to send them trappers. And they're going to be on every hill and every peak and everything. Why? It's going to happen one way or another. As He says to the prophet Yechezkel, you will worship Me whether you like it or not. You will be My nation whether you like it or not. The question is how? Which way? You pick. Everything is from Shamayim. Everything is from Heaven except the fear of Heaven. Meaning that you can choose only whether you fear Hashem or not. Everything else is from Hashem. Whether you can have money or not, whether you can get married or not, whether you have kids or not, tall, short, ugly, good-looking, all those things are purely from Hashem. Even though we think that we work really hard, even though that, you know, we work overtime and we have a different company. And somebody came to the Chafetz Chaim one time and he said, "I'm thinking of opening another business." He says, "Why?" can choose only whether you fear Hashem or not. Everything else is from Hashem. Whether you can have money or not, whether you can get married or not, whether you have kids or not, tall, short, ugly, good-looking, all those things are purely from Hashem. Even though we think that we work really hard, even though we work overtime and have a different company. And somebody came to the Chafetz Chaim one time and he said, "I'm thinking of opening another business." He says, "Why?"

35:59I need to make more money to give more money for the yeshivot and for the kollel, for all the chesed. But why are you opening another business for that? He said, "No, I want to make more money so I can give to the kollel, to the tzedakah." He didn't understand. "Why are you opening another business?" He thought the rabbi had maybe lost his hearing, maybe wasn't hearing him. "No, no, I need to make more money, so therefore I'm opening another business. I'm buying another building. I'm doing more." Chafetz Chaim says, I heard what you said three times, but you didn't hear what I'm saying. I asked you why you're opening a business. You said you need to make more money. So I asked you why you're opening a business then. Meaning, the Gemara in Masechet Beitza, page 16a, and Rosh Hashanah 16b. It says that on Rosh Hashanah, Hashem decides exactly how much money you're going to make. It doesn't make a difference whether you work 25 hours a day or two. your stockbroker or your real estate developer or you're working with the garbage team to collect the garbage every Monday and Thursday. Hashem decides how much money you're gonna make. So the Baal Shem Tov asked, if He decides already on Rosh Hashanah how much money I'm gonna make, why does He also decide

37:28The same issue arises every day. You already decided on Rosh Hashanah, so why do you decide every day? And the Baal Shem Tov gave a chiddush. He says what was decided on Rosh Hashanah is how much I'm gonna make. Every day, He decides how I'm gonna make it, whether I'm gonna make it from my job or, chas v'shalom, I'm gonna make it from an accident. Somebody gets fired. They think, "Oh, I'm not gonna make any money this year. I guess Hashem decided that I'm not gonna make any money." The next day, Hashem causes them to get into an accident. They lose a finger. It's a big loss, but then the lawyer says, "Listen, they're willing to settle with you for 15 million dollars." He thinks, "Oh, I should take the other fingers. It's better than my job." But the reality is that Hashem decided he's gonna make money. He's gonna make 10 million dollars, but it's gonna be through an accident. We want it not to actually want to work, want to better team terms, but the Chafetz Chaim says, you're saying that you need to make more money and therefore you need to open another business. You need to buy another piece of real estate, you need to do this, you need to do that. In reality, that just means you don't believe in Hashem; you believe in you. You believe you're making the money, and that's your mistake. What is it like? Somebody came and said, "Listen, I need to make more money. I'm selling wine."

38:47And I have one barrel. So I need to make another hole in the barrel to make double the money. He makes another hole. He spends the money to make another hole in the barrel. At the end of the month, he makes the same amount of money. He says, "Listen, something's wrong with this barrel. I have to make another hole. It's not enough." He makes another hole in the same barrel. At the end of the month, how much money is he making? The same exact amount of money. The same amount that Hashem is giving you is not changing, despite how many fountains you have. If he wants you to make more, you make more. You don't have to do anything else. All that extra time you're investing into this extra business, this extra real estate, this extra, extra, go invest it in learning what He wants from you in this world. Because you didn't come to the world to make money. You need to make money to survive. But surviving is 70, 80, 120 years max. What about after? Rabbi Ephraim said once to a bunch of avreichim, people that learn Torah all day,

39:48Gave them some mussar and he said to them, "Everybody knows that to have a house, you need a mortgage. Everybody has a very, very big mortgage to have a house here. Meaning, they had to have some money for a deposit. How many have made a deposit for Shamayim? How many of us are building a house in Shamayim already? And that's one of the things we forget about because we're so consumed with this world and..." It's no different in California, New York, Florida, Israel. It's everywhere in the world. And that's what the Yetzer Hara wants us to be consumed with. He wants us to be consumed with this world. With the material of this world. And that's why Hashem says, I'm going to have to send you fishermen. They're going to take you out of this dilemma that you call this world. This busyness. You're always busy. You don't have time for Hashem. You have time for everybody else except Hashem. Al-Isra'il says that fear is a very natural thing for a human being. Naturally, you're afraid of everything. You're afraid of bugs, you're afraid of poverty, you're afraid of all types of things. But once you do something that's beyond that fear—for example, you jump out of a plane and

41:10naturally, a human being, logically, will be afraid. Why? Jumping out of a plane. It's dangerous. So how does somebody jump out of a plane? They overcame that fear. It's not that they're not afraid. They overcame that fear. So Rabbi Yisrael Salanter says, naturally you're afraid of everything. Even the little spider in the corner over there, you're afraid of it naturally. If you're killing it, it means you overcame that fear and everything else. The reason why we work is because we're afraid of being poor. The reason why we get married is we're afraid to be alone. The reason why we don't speed in the middle of the highway is because we're afraid of getting a ticket or afraid of getting into an accident. Fear drives us to do everything in life. Anyone that says fear is bad for you is obviously living in a different world. Fear is what motivates us. There are other things that motivate us, but the number one motivator in life is fear. Fear of poverty, fear of loneliness, fear of everything. We're afraid constantly. Oh, Yisrael Salanter says, you were created that way. But there's only one fear you do not have naturally. What's that fear? Fear of Hashem. Why don't you have Yirat Shamayim naturally? Why don't you have fear of Hashem naturally? Because if you had fear of Hashem naturally, there would be no purpose to the world.

42:22If any of us here, including myself especially, had real fear of Hashem, we would never sin. Ever. We would never once ever miss tefillah. We would never once ever waste seed. Never once ever raise our voice. Never once ever take something that doesn't belong to us. Never once ever miss a shiur. Never once ever do anything against the will of Hashem. If we really had fear of Hashem. Which means that anyone that has fear of Hashem, it's a level. We're not at the highest level. So when Hashem told Avraham Avinu, "Avraham, Avraham, don't kill the young man. Don't kill Yitzchak. Now I know you fear Me." What do You mean, now I know? You already had nine tests. You sent him to Egypt, you sent him here, you sent him there, you sent him here. You had nine other tests. Now finally You know I fear You? Here, Rabotai, Hashem is telling us, Avraham didn't just have the basic level of fear we all hopefully will get to one day of fear and punishment. He got to the highest level of fear. What's the highest level of fear? Yirat HaRomemut. Fear of His Majesty. Fear of hurting the relationship between us and Him. What is it like? It's like a fear between a husband and a wife. A healthy husband and wife

43:45are not afraid to yell at each other or disrespect each other because they're afraid there's going to be violence. If they're healthy. If they're not healthy, then the conversation doesn't apply to them. We have a different shiur for them. But if it's a normal couple, they're not going to yell and scream and disrespect each other because they're afraid that one of them is going to hit the other. What are they afraid of? They're afraid of hurting their relationship. They're afraid, oh, she's not going to talk to me. He's not gonna talk to me. Oh, he's not gonna, you know, give me a joke. He's not gonna say this. He's not gonna say that. He's gonna look at me differently. Everything's gonna change. We're so afraid of hurting the relationship. We don't do certain things. That's the highest level of yirat shamayim, to be afraid to sin not because of Gehinnom or because of punishment in this world, gonna lose money or gonna lose this. No, that's the lowest level. That's the law. Levi, we get to that even. But realistically, where we're supposed to be is the highest level. The highest level is, Rabotai, don't hurt the relationship between you and Hashem. Why? Once you hurt it, it's never the same. Once you hurt the relationship between you and your wife, it's never the same. Okay, yeah, she still loves you, and he loves you, yeah. But once you do something like that on a regular basis, there's always going to be a scar that takes a while to fix.

45:10Father always says what takes you a second to break will take you a year to fix. This is also what Chazal say: making a sin takes one second; fixing it, real teshuva, if you really want to know, real teshuva, real teshuva, we do teshuva every day. That's real teshuva. Based on doing this for the last four or so years, I can tell you for sure, from all the rabbis that I talked to and learned from, everyone agrees on one thing. There's no such thing as frum anymore. There's no such thing as religious anymore. It's ba'al teshuva or nothing. It doesn't matter who your father is, if he's a rabbi, if he's this, if he's that. It's either you're ba'al teshuva in this generation, or you're not doing anything. Every single one of us needs to do teshuva for something. Some people for Shabbat because they don't realize it's important and they think it's just a day off of work, so instead they go to the pool. Some people it's for wasting seed. Some people it's for stealing. Some people it's for this. Some people it's for that. Everybody has to do teshuva for something. Once you start taking teshuva seriously and you apply it to your life on a day-to-day basis, then your life has no more room for sins.

46:28Because it's so hard to fix one thing, you're scared to do another. It's so hard to do it. One of the things I remember that I learned that you had to do is you had to actually start, get to a point where you forgive everyone. Everyone that hurt you. Especially the people that hurt you. Not forgive all the people that love you. No, the ones that hate you still. They still hate you. They still think you're an Amalek. Forgive them and actually start praying for them. It's part of teshuva. Pray for them to do teshuva. Pray for Hashem to give them good, even though they hate you. These things are illogical, but that's the Torah. Torah is illogical; it's divine. So, Rabotai, the biggest miracle in our generation is happening as we speak. People are doing teshuva because they're starting to realize that they've been slaves their whole lives. They've been slaves their whole lives. They were working Working and more working, and they forgot the purpose. They forgot to ask, "What's the point?" Okay, so I got a house, now what? I got the car, now what? I got the watch, now what? I got the Bitcoin and the Schmitt coin and the stock coin and all the coins, now what? Okay, so now you're Donald Trump, you're the president of the U.S., now what's the point? Let's look at the best case scenario. Okay, you're Donald Trump, you're a leader of America. You have, I don't know, zillions of dollars in the bank. Oh fine, now what? Tell people to do, okay, eventually it finishes and...

47:57Eventually, you're not president anymore. Eventually, life ends, and then what? Okay, so you just did your turn to a tree. Then what? Am Yisrael is obligated to ask themselves this question every day. So, the prophet says, "I'm going to send you fishermen. I'm going to send you trappers. You choose which one you want." Fishermen are nice; they give you nice lectures. You attend, and they come once in a while and... Hopefully, this gives you enough hischayvus to start learning on a day-to-day basis. Because if you think that just because you're keeping Shabbat and you keep a few mitzvot, that's it, you don't have to learn anymore, and you make time for Hashem once a week, I'm going to tell you, okay, I'll make time for you also once a week. What are you going to do the rest of the time? What are you going to do the rest of the week? For anyone that doesn't know my personal story, it's the first track on the black CD. The CDs that are here are free and... First is Wall Street 1 and Wall Street 2. The second one is the black CD. It's my personal story. Hashem taught me a very valuable lesson when I really needed it the most. I thought that I ran the world also. I had money, I had power, I had fame, I had all those things that people want in the material world. But then one day, I had a surgery, and I needed the surgery to heal. I needed the pain to go away, and it just wouldn't go away. It wouldn't go away for seven years.

49:14The reason why I do this is because I'm afraid for other people to experience the same thing. You don't want to make time for Hashem once every seven years like I did. You want to make time for Him every day. That's the biggest miracle we learned from this chag. The miracle is that we need Him. The miracle is that nothing has changed. 3,300 years, nothing has changed. We still need to do teshuva. The same teshuva that 80% of us didn't do back then. That's why we're still here. You had a question? Like an hour ago? Yeah. After? Can I ask now? Anybody? Anybody? Somebody's talking in the back? Same price. Yes. Ken. Ken. Okay. Torah is logical, but it's also not logical, meaning that there was some mistake that a big rabbi made recently. By recently, I mean seven years ago. He had a debate with a scientist, and after him, I'll answer yours. He had a debate with a very famous scientist, Richard Dawkins. He's like the number one atheist in the world.

50:35and the rabbi was supposed to represent the Torah, and it’s a very famous rabbi. Richard Dawkins asked the rabbi, "So, the story of Adam and Eve—you really believe this story?" So the rabbi, I don't know, maybe drank a few shots before the lecture. I'm not really sure what he was doing. But he says, no, it's just a parable, meaning it's a mashal, it's like a story. And he called, he called Eve a prostitute. And the prostitute is dead anyway. So the atheist asked a very good question after that. He says, wait, so how do you determine what's a parable and what's not? What's a parable and what's not? So now this rabbi is dumbfounded. He said, "Oh, okay, what do you do?" He said, "Oh, no. Our chachamim said that if our Torah agrees with science, then it's true. If it doesn't agree with science, then it's a parable. It's like a story to learn something from." By the way, our chachamim have never said that in history. He made that up completely just because he was caught off guard.

51:55But this is what happens when you create a "truth." What's the truth? The truth is that the Torah does not try, in one aspect of it, to compete with science. The Torah is not trying to compete with science. We're not here to prove ourselves against science, even though there are many scientific proofs of the Torah. We actually have a movie, so far it's three parts. The fourth part, b'ezrat Hashem, will come out soon, showing scientific proofs of the Torah. this is just for taste. This is just to show you proofs that the Torah is divine. It's not that the Torah needs the scientific proof, meaning even without these scientific proofs, the Torah's divinity does not change. The truth of the Torah does not change even without these. We didn't have these scientific proofs as obvious as they are today a generation or two ago, but nonetheless, the Torah is logical and illogical. So logical in the sense that if you learn Musar, for example... You see that the chochmah, the wisdom of the sages, is applicable to everyone: Jews, non-Jews, male, female, adult, child, teacher, student. It's applicable to everyone. If you actually learn Mussar, you will become a better human being if you apply it. Bottom line. There's no other way around it.

53:15If you apply what the sages say, whether it's be generous, be respectful, be patient, or don't interrupt people, and so on and so forth, you will become a better human being. This is very logical. Today, they also call it self-help. Self-help or coaching or things of that nature all come from Mussar. It's chochmah of the sages, but they just remove the Torah out of it. They remove the Torah out of it. All things that are any good in this world have to have a source in the Torah. Literally everything. If it's any good, if it's of any value, it has to have a part in the Torah. I'll give you an example, then I'll go back to the question. My daughter likes the song, "If You're Happy and You Know It." You know, a little kid's song, "If You're Happy and You Know It, clap your hands." You know it? Okay, clap. There you go, he's happy. So, you're telling me this song has a makor in the Torah? No. Page 25b also uses a source from the prophet Ezekiel. The source originally was: "If you're happy and you know it, say 'oy vey.'" Why? Because the goyim would sing it every time a Jew would die. They would be happy, and then we would say "oy vey" and cry. They changed it; now it's the opposite: "If you're happy and you know it, say 'hooray.'"

54:39Back then it was oy vey. But the song actually has a makor (source) in the Torah. There used to be a rapper before they killed him, Biggie Smalls. He says, "More money, more problems." It's also in the Torah. It's actually in the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot: "More money, more problems." And so on and so forth. All of these sayings, that have wisdom in them, must have a source in the Torah. Must. If it has wisdom in it. If it has no wisdom in it, then the cat could say it too. So that part of the Torah is very logical. If you apply the Torah to your life, you will become a better human being. Your life will improve. In general, you'll have a purpose in a purposeless world. On the other hand, it's illogical. Why? Because many of the laws in the Torah do not make any sense whatsoever. For example, anyone here that has a boy as a child has given them Brit Milah. Brit Milah makes no sense whatsoever. Why would you cut a piece of a human body when he's most vulnerable? He's only eight days old. Now, you can tell me, "Oh, yeah, but science proved that the vitamin K on the eighth day is at one hundred and ten to one hundred and sixteen percent, which is the highest level it's ever going to be in the human being's life." What do you need vitamin K for? That's the vitamin that heals the body.

56:00because you don't see God. If you don't see Him, it's not logical to believe in Him unless you learn who He is and what He is and so on. But I'm talking about logical to the average goy. It doesn't have God and Torah in his life. Exactly, that's the point. That's the illogical part, meaning that you are cutting your baby's foreskin and Technically putting the child at risk according to logic. You're cutting a human being. If somebody told you right now, "Do me a favor; Hashem said I read it in some book," and I said, "Cut your ear over here today. What age? Today, today, it's just today. During this, you cut." Everybody would start throwing tomatoes at me. Why? Is it you cut your ear and then we'll do it? You're not gonna cut. Why cut the ear? Cut the nose maybe, cut the finger? The other thing is the Torah never gives a definition. The written Torah never gives a definition of what orlah means. If it was up to me, they said, "Listen, cut the orlah at eight days old." I would say, "Oh, cut the fingernail. Orlah is fingernail. Doesn't hurt. Or cut hair. Give the kid a haircut at eight days old." In the written Torah, the Five Books of Moses, it doesn't say the definition of orlah. It doesn't say. Where do we learn the definition of orlah? In the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah says the orlah is the foreskin, meaning, the most sensitive part of the human body for a male. You want me to cut that?

57:28Obviously, it's not logical. It's against logic, especially if a male wrote the Torah. All of the mitzvot are illogical. There's also a mitzvah called Parah Adumah. Parah Adumah, the wisest man of all time, Shlomo HaMelech, says, "I learned from this Parah Adumah that it's beyond me." They asked him, what do you mean? The Torah, the mitzvah of Parah Adumah is beyond you? He goes, no, the entire Torah. Until the mitzvah of Parah Adumah, I thought I understood the Torah. Now that I learned about Parah Adumah, I don't understand anything. He said, why? Look, Parah Adumah, you need it. For the Beit HaMikdash. Why? They slaughter it, then they burn it, they take the ashes, they combine it with the special water and a special plant, they put it together, and the Kohen sprinkles it on the people and makes the people who were impure, pure. Nice. However way it works. Nice. What's the illogical part? Shlomo HaMelech says. He says the fact that the Parah Adumah makes the impure pure is logical.

58:33What's not logical is the guy that's making the Kohen, that's making everybody pure, he himself becomes impure. That doesn't make any sense. Why would the same water make him go from impure to pure, from tamei to tahor, and the guy that's tahor make him tamei? It doesn't make any sense. It should be either he stays tamei or they stay tamei. Something has to happen here. It doesn't make sense that it does both. It's illogical. But it says in the Torah, "This is the rule of the entire Torah. This parah adumah is the law of the entire Torah." Meaning, Some of the things make sense logically, but that's not really the real reason why we do it. The reason why we have all of our mitzvot, whether it's Brit Milah, Parah Adumah, Shabbat, Tefillin, any of the mitzvot, there's really only one reason for all of the mitzvot. The reason is, Hashem said so. That's the real reason.

59:33the other things that they say—it's feeling, it's good, it's close to the heart, and then the eyes here, and kosher food is healthier, and Parah Adumah is this, and Brit Milah is that—all those things are nice, but that's not really the real reason. The real reason is Yirat Hashem. You fulfill the mitzvot out of the fear of Hashem. That's His treasure. You do it because He said so. That's the real reason for all of the mitzvot. Once we actually are able to take that illogical argument and make it into our logic, then you can become a vessel to accept Torah to no end. But as long as we try to make everything logical and we refuse to do it until it makes sense to us, Hashem says you're never going to fulfill the Torah. Why? Because the number one rule is to learn from Noach. Be complete with Hashem. What does it mean to be complete with Hashem? What does it mean? Accept what He says completely, whether you understand it or not. Whether you like it or don't like it is irrelevant—accept it because it came from God. If it came from your friend, your buddy, your boss, or your employee, then it's something different.

1:00:43But if it came from God, you actually believe it's from God, accept it, like it or not. That's the most important thing when it comes to teshuva, when it comes to Torah, is you have to accept things. And then over time, b'ezrat Hashem, Hashem will help you understand them. But don't wait to understand it. And we apply the same rule with everything else. Somebody that gets into an accident... or they have something, a medical issue, they don't go to the surgeon and say, hold on a second, what are you going to do to me? I'm going to cut you here, I'm going to cut you here, I'm going to suture here, I'm going to drill here, I'm going to do this. Okay, okay, hold on, I need to understand it. The doctor's going to tell you, listen, by the time you understand what I do, you're going to be dead. Why? Because it took me 20 years to understand what I do. The doctor says, "Okay, take an antibiotic." Hold on a second. Before I take the antibiotic, let me understand what this antibiotic does. Okay, by the time you understand what the antibiotic does, you're going to die. Why? Because to understand how it's all made up, and why they pick this over that, and why if the antibiotic doesn't work within 48 hours, it's the wrong antibiotic. By the time you understand it, you're going to die already. Meaning, we already have blind faith in the system around us.

1:01:51We have blind faith that when we press these buttons, somebody at the end of the world is going to pick up a phone. How? We don't know. You ever see radio waves? You trust that if you dial a number, the guy in China, in Africa, at the end of the town, or wherever, he's going to pick up a phone, and he's going to say something to you, and it's really him saying it. So the point is, we have blind faith in everything else. What Hashem is telling us, have blind faith in Me. Do what I say, And then ask questions. Once you do what I say, I'll give you the answers too. Shorter answer, bigger question. Next. So, teshuvah, like she said, is a lifelong thing. So it says, a tzaddik falls seven times and rises. So, No one should mistake it to think that you're supposed to fall seven times in order to be a tzaddik or tzaddeket. What it actually means is that in order to get to the point of being a tzaddik, you have to learn how to get up. Because there's no such thing as someone who doesn't sin.

1:03:09There's no such thing as somebody who doesn't sin at all. Even if somebody's really righteous, male, female, rabbi, student, adult, child. There's no such thing as a person who doesn't sin. The key is to get up. The key is to get used to doing teshuva every single day. So the talmidim came to their Rav, one of the Tannaim, and asked him for the Rav. You said that we're supposed to do teshuva before we die. That was what he taught them. That was the shiur that day. Do teshuva before you die. They asked the Rav, does anybody know when they're gonna die? Even David HaMelech asked Hashem, when am I gonna die? Hashem says you're gonna die on Shabbat. He goes, this Shabbat? He goes, no, not this Shabbat. What Shabbat? I can't tell you. Why not? Tell me now. No, no. You have to do teshuva before you die. But which Shabbat is it? No, do teshuva. Cannot tell you when you're gonna die. All I can tell you is that you're gonna die on Shabbat. So David says to Hashem, "Listen, I don't want to die on Shabbat. I become muktzeh on Shabbat and you're not allowed to touch the dead body on Shabbat. It's not nice because other people that are honoring the Shabbat, you know, they're suffering because of me on Shabbat. Why don't you let me die on Friday? Friday before Shabbat, at least they can bury me before Shabbat and everybody can enjoy their Shabbat."

1:04:25Hashem says, there's no such thing as Me taking even an extra minute out of somebody's life. Whatever I wrote for them is what they're going to get. He said, okay, fine. No problem. Why don't You let me die on Sunday, Yom Rishon? He says, no. There's no such thing as Me giving extra to a person. Why? Why are these things? He says, when you're here in this world... And if I kill you on Friday, that means that Shlomo your son will be king first. But even if Shlomo, the tzaddik, the kadosh, brings a thousand korbanot, a thousand korbanot, each one, 15, 25 thousand dollars. Big cows. 2,000 pounds each. She brings me 1,000 of them. It's not worth one day of your tefillah. It's not worth one day of your limud Torah, David. So I can't kill you on Friday and give Shlomo extra time because that means I'm missing one day of Torah from David HaMelech.

1:05:30If I kill you on Sunday, that means that you're gonna be a king for one extra day and your son for one less day. Can't do that. Every king is a king in his place for exactly the precise time, around the world, with precise input, precision. So... David HaMelech had to literally do teshuvah every single day, especially on Shabbat. Why? Because he knew this is the day. This is the day I'm gonna die. He didn't know if it was now, a week, a month. He didn't know. And this is the reason one of the things that we have is a very strong minhag, and it's actually halacha, to have seudah rev'it. You know, you have seudah shlishit. Everybody loves seudah shlishit. You eat it in the Beit Knesset right after mincha. But the Chachamim say that you shouldn't eat too much. Why? You should have a lot of appetite to have a very big meal for the fourth meal. Why? That's after Shabbat because David HaMelech would celebrate Motza'ei Shabbat with the fourth meal. Why? He lived another Shabbat. If he survived Shabbat, that means I have another week. I have another week to learn Torah. I have another week to do Teshuvah. I have another week to repent to Hashem, to fix myself.

1:06:42So from here we learn, Rabotai, that if David HaMelech was worried about doing Teshuvah, David HaMelech, Mashiach comes from David HaMelech. David HaMelech, the Gemara says, anyone that says David HaMelech sinned is mistaken. He never made a sin. Meaning the sin that they think he made with Bat Sheva, the Gemara says, anyone that thinks he actually made a sin is mistaken. He never made a sin. Mashiach comes from David HaMelech. was worried about doing Teshuvah, which means we have to do Teshuvah every day. So when the students got the answer, they said the Rav says you have to do Teshuvah before you die. What's before you die? Every day. Why? Because you don't know when you're going to die. You don't know when you're going to die. Every day, if yesterday you made a sin, do Teshuvah today. If two days ago you didn't do Teshuvah, do it today. And that's really the goal of life. That's why anyone that wants to... The passage that we read in Tefillah every single day that Goel HaMashiach will come to save all the people who used to be poshim, all the people who used to be spiritual criminals against Hashem, to save the ones who used to be criminals against Hashem means Am Yisrael.

1:07:59So anyone that wants to be part of those that the Mashiach saves has to do teshuva. When? Every day. Doesn't matter if you're born religious or are religious, all that stuff is irrelevant. Every day you have to do teshuva for something. And the Gaon of Vilna said that the most important part of teshuva, the most important part of your role in this world, is to fix your middot. Mitzvot are easy. But for the most part, it’s not so difficult. Keep Shabbat; it’s your vacation once a week. Keep kosher; it's healthier anyway. Who wants to eat pig? If you just go on YouTube or on the internet in general and type in “pouring Coca-Cola on pig meat,” you will see what happens. If you or someone you know still has a desire to eat ham or eat pig in general, just go and watch a film or minutes. What happens to a pig when they pour Coca-Cola on the meat? You see all the maggots and worms come out of the meat. And this is brand new meat, just slaughtered a few days ago. Why? Because the pig is the only animal in creation who doesn't sweat and

1:09:05which means that all the disease stays inside its body. It never leaves. To such an extent that even if a cobra bit him 20 times, nothing would happen to him. Why? The disgustingness in his skin is more poisonous than the cobra's venom. But people eat this for breakfast, bacon, egg and cheese every day. They're going... Bacon, egg, and cheese—venom and egg and cheese—same thing. So all you need to do is just logically go see what happens to a pig. Look, they put Coca-Cola on it. Apparently, the maggots don't like Coca-Cola. They leave. It's all going to the next pig. But the point is that all of these meats are easy. It's easy to be a Jew today. It's easy. It's not that hard. We'll do meat forward. You have Shabbat. You have kosher. You have half the month with your wife. You'll have a longer marriage anyway. Reality is a lot of them, each one is easy. What's hard is fixing ourselves, fixing our middot. You're an angry little Gargamel? Okay, you have to fix that. You're a cheap, little, stingy Scrooge? Fix that. All those bad character traits—that's the hard part. Now, people love the truth until it obligates them.

1:10:16Always, they come to the shiurim. "Oh, this is good. Wow. It's great." Oh, they watch online. They watch this. Baruch Hashem, you see? Facebook Live right now. People are watching, Baruch Hashem. Everything is great, great, great until it gets to them. Until we start talking about something that affects them. It's what they're good with. Shabbat—talk about Shabbat from here to next year. Tefillin, tzitzit, taharat mishpacha, kosher—everybody, all religious Jews, they love those mitzvot. Why? It's easy. It's like we're accustomed to it. Just like the guy in Africa is accustomed to wearing underwear all day, all night, and that's it. No other clothes. He's accustomed to it. We're accustomed to wearing tzitzit and kippah and kosher and Shabbat, all those things. But you start telling him, listen, by the way, you're not allowed to be cheap. By the way, you're not allowed to be angry. By the way, you're not allowed to have all these bad character traits. You have to fix that. All of a sudden, the mood changes. We love the truth until it obligates us. But the Gaon Mi'Vilna says, that's the whole point. That's the entire Torah. Meaning that when a student asks him, why do we have all these mitzvot and not a mitzvah that says, fix your middot, fix your character traits, fix your anger traits, fix your stinginess, fix your whatever, all these bad things you have about you. Why isn't there a mitzvah that says fix yourself? The Gaon Mi'Vilna says, because that's the point of all of the mitzvot.

1:11:35The point of the 613 mitzvot is not because Hashem really cares if you eat this cow or that cow. The point is to show you that you have to control your desires. Show you patience. Show you gratitude. And learn different things from those mitzvot. To fix yourself. Because to fix yourself is the only reason you came here. If you came here Gargamel and you leave the world Gargamel, don't look for Gan Eden. There's nothing there for you. Why? You didn't do anything. Kibbitz Shabbat is nice. It's not enough. And that's why it's very important for Baalei Teshuva to take things a little more seriously with learning because that's the only way you're going to fix it. I see a lot of people do Teshuva. They start with something they like, Shabbat, Tefillin, Tzitzit, whatever. They do a few things and they stay on neutral for the next 20 years. They stay wherever they are. They started with these 5, 6, 7, 10 things and they stay there. So how come you're not growing? How come you're still in the same exact place where you were 20 years ago? Because you're not learning. Without learning, you're not growing. But that's the same thing in anything. The only difference is, in Shamayim, they're going to ask you, okay, you spent 20 years learning to be a superstar baseball player. Great. Why don't you become a superstar Jew? Why don't you at least spend 20 years learning to become a superstar Jew? Why don't you spend at least just as much time to be a tzaddik?

1:13:02And that's the Gan Eden in Shamayim. So teshuva is every day. Every day for males, every day for females. For females in general in this world, the biggest and most critical tikkun that they have, from what I've learned so far, the most difficulty is modesty. Women have a hard time with modesty. this is very difficult, and the reason is because, in general, we seek other people's attention. We seek other people's approval. Everyone will try to lie to themselves and tell themselves, "No, no, it's not for them. It's not for the guys. It's really for me. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good to wear a mini skirt and heels that are 19 inches long. It makes me feel great." Okay, so the way that you could Convince yourself that this is all nonsense. It's simply by repeating the story to yourself every day. Let's say there was a plane crash and, b'ezrat Hashem, you're the only survivor. You're now on an island. Your new neighbors are a monkey, a giraffe, an elephant, a few squirrels, and maybe some fish that come to visit once in a while. That's it. There's no people, and

1:14:27Would you still wear? And you have clothes from everybody now. Apparently, all of it fits you. They have 19-inch heels, 10-inch heels, 6-inch heels, all these different heels. I mean, heels, not nails. The heels, and you have the wigs, and you have the mini skirts, and the tank tops, all that stuff. And makeup from here till next year. Honestly, ask yourself, would you still put on makeup every day for the monkeys to see? Would you still walk around with the 20-inch heels? Would you still walk around with all the exotic clothes that you're walking around in? No. Why? Because nobody's watching. Who's watching? The monkey? What do you care about the monkey? Every normal woman would say, "I'm not going to dress provocatively." Why? Who's there to watch me? Which brings us to the reality of this world. Here, you know somebody's watching. It's not just for you. it's not just for you. It's for Carlos from the supermarket, and Steve from the muffler shop, and his friend from the other place. It's for everybody else. Hashem says, you're not everybody else's property. If you're really a diamond that Hashem believes and knows you are, you have to protect yourself like a diamond. If I had a hundred-million-dollar diamond, would I throw it in the air like this? "Hey guys, look at a hundred-million-dollar diamond."

1:15:49No. What do you do? You put it in a safe, and you put the safe in another safe, and the safe in another safe, and you put bodyguards around it, and then fool everybody into thinking it's in another safe. Why? You want to protect something that's valuable. If you, as a woman, are valuable, if you really respect yourself, then protect yourself. You're not everybody's property. Your husband is the only one who should know what you look like. As far as privately, everybody else, they can see a version of a human being. Modesty doesn't mean ugly. It just means that it leaves the rest to the imagination. And that's the biggest difficulty for women today. It's the issue of modesty, and it's also affecting the religious world, with wigs and short skirts, and so on. So this is something that every woman needs to work on, secular, religious, irrelevant. Guys, there's a couple of really big difficulties that I know of that are very difficult from the beginning of time till now. One is watching our eyes. A lot of guys are like the gilgulim of mamterot, of the fountains, fountains from the yard. You know, the fountain goes, they see everything that moves, they look at it.

1:17:01Sprinkler. Sprinkler system. A lot of guys are like the reincarnation of a sprinkler. They look at everything. So the first thing is you have to stop looking. Why? The first thing is if you stop looking at every girl that moves and give yourself the excuse that you're appreciating God's creation, then the reality is that your wife is going to have a much easier time being modest. Most women that are married and are not modest, they're not modest because of their husbands. Because they know that their husband is looking at every girl that moves, they think they're competing with all the girls. So if they're competing with all the girls out there, and all the girls out there are not modest, they say, "Listen, if I look like I just came back from Egypt with a schmatta on my head and thick clothing, and he's looking at half-naked women in the street every two seconds, he's going to leave me." That's what the woman thinks. And... So the guy, the husband, by him looking at other women, he's not only causing himself shalom bayit problems, he actually becomes part of the sin. Becomes a machtiyah rabbim. It's a problem. So we have to work on our eyes. The Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah says, watch your eyes in the morning so it doesn't lead you to sin at night. Meaning it leads you to wasting seed. Leads you to wasting seed. That's the second biggest issue.

1:18:20Our generation today, unfortunately, most people don't know that it's even a problem. The last thing is materialism, but that's both males and females. Being connected, competing with the Joneses — new car, new houses, new this, new that, and forgetting about God. There's no problem with you having a big house. There's no problem with you having a nice house and a nice car and a nice everything. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, Kodesh Kodashim, was a multi-billionaire, not millionaire, billionaire. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah had cities, cities with ships and boats. His Ma'aser, as Ma'aser de Gemara says in Masechet Shabbat, was 1.2 billion dollars. I did the math of how many cows he would give every year. He calculated based on today's prices. His Ma'aser was 1.2 billion dollars, meaning he was like a hedge fund manager. Tanna. What does it mean, Tanna? Tanna means that if he saw somebody died, he wanted to bring them back to life. He was so holy, he could bring them back to life. So you can, you know, it's religious. Kadosh doesn't mean poor, homeless, little misken in the corner. No one's telling you not to enjoy the things in this world. There's no problem with enjoying the things in this world.

1:19:37As a matter of fact, there's a Gemara that actually says that if you don't enjoy the things that Hashem gives you, He's actually going to ask you, why? Why don't you enjoy a tomato? I gave you a nice tomato. How come you didn't enjoy a tomato? Why don't you enjoy the, you know, the sky? Beautiful sky. How come you didn't look at the sky ever? You always looked. How come? I made a beautiful world for you. How come you didn't look at it? How come you didn't enjoy it? No one's telling you don't enjoy anything. No one's telling you be homeless. Be misken. But with tact, Don't make it your life, like I used to. My brother, God bless him, used to tell me, listen, there's people that work to live, and there's people that live to work. I was the live-to-work part, until Hashem woke me up. Don't make the same mistake. The point is, yeah, you want to make money, make money. You want to have a house, have a house. You want to have a car, have a car, no problem. But what's the point if that's all you're doing? Okay, you want to do that? No problem. Remember who's giving it to you. Who's giving you the house? Who's giving you the wife? Who's giving you the kids? Remember Him. Don't remember Him just because you came to the Beit Knesset and did Hashem a favor. You prayed for 15 minutes without kavanah. Remember Him every day. Make time for Torah, meaning you're supposed to learn Torah in the morning and at night. Make a half-hour, an hour every day in the morning. Half-hour, hour every day at night. If you can't come to the shiur Torah to see it live, watch the shiur Torah.

1:20:57Don't show up to Shamayim and say, "I didn't have time." What do you mean you didn't have time? You didn't have time for Hashem? Do you realize how illogical that sounds? "I had time to take everything You gave me. I didn't have time to give You anything in return to say thank you." Do you realize how illogical that sounds? So that's the thing, Hashem. And that's why the Gemara says, here in Masechet Shabbat, page 31. I'll give you an example unless you guys have more questions. We'll finish. It says, what if somebody knows the entire Mishnah, meaning all of the Oral Torah, he knows it by heart. What about him? It says, in his final heavenly judgment, after his death, meaning he comes to Shamayim, they're going to ask him some questions. Did you conduct your business, the first question, did you conduct your business transactions with emunah? What does it mean, did you conduct your business with emunah? What, you had emunah that you're going to get the deal? You had emunah that the customer is going to come? No. Emunah means you had Hashem in mind when you were doing business. Before you stole the guy's money, you knew that Hashem was watching.

1:22:08Before you gave the guy a good deal, you knew that Hashem was watching. Before you returned what didn't belong to you, you knew Hashem was watching. Meaning, emunah, emunah that Hashem is watching at all times. There's an eye that sees, there's an ear that hears, and everything is being written in the book, in Mishnah Pirkei Avot. Did you conduct your business with emunah? Why business? Why didn't you conduct your prayer in beit knesset with emunah? Why isn't the first question about beit knesset? Why is it about your business? Because in beit knesset, everybody looks like tzaddikim. You come in the morning, everybody with tallit, tefillin, everybody's Moshe Rabbeinu, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachya. Everybody looks like a tzaddik. In the business though, that's the truth. Here in the beit knesset, everybody's tzaddikim, tallit, tefillin. You don't know that it's Haman, be'emet. Tallit, tefillin, this guy over here looks like Moshe, David, Shlomo. In the beit knesset, that's in beit knesset. In the business, you have Paro, Haman, Hitler, and his friends. Why? Because when it comes to money, that's when the real you comes out. If you're honest with money, you can be a tzaddik. If you're not honest with money, nothing else is worth it. That's the first question. Second question. Second question, Rabotai. Kava'ta ittim laTorah? Kava'ta ittim laTorah? Do you make time for Torah?

1:23:27Why is the second question, "Kava'ta ittim laTorah?" Why isn't it, "Do you keep Shabbat?" Why isn't it, "Do you keep kosher?" Why isn't it, "Do you keep Taharat HaMishpacha," or any other mitzvah? Because if you didn't make time for Torah, there's no way you kept any mitzvot. No, he kept Shabbat. He kept Shabbat for 20 years. No way he keeps Shabbat without learning Torah. Why? He doesn't know how to keep Shabbat. One guy said this too. He said, "I've been keeping Shabbat for 20 years." I said, "I bet you're not keeping Shabbat. You're violating Shabbat every week." How do you know we're in my house? I said, I don't have to be in your house. I know for sure you don't keep Shabbat. How do you know? I said, because you don't learn Torah. He goes, how do you know that I don't keep Shabbat? I said, let's ask you a question, a test. Do you eat fistukim? You eat, what are those things called? Pistachios? You eat pistachios? He goes, yeah, of course, every Shabbat. Good example for you. I said, how do you eat pistachios? What do you mean, I eat pistachios? How do you eat pistachios? He goes, I open and I eat. No, no, no. What do you do? He goes, I have a bowl. I have the pistachios. I have another bowl. Nothing in it. And I put the peel of the pistachio in the second bowl. See, there you go. He goes, what do you mean? I said, yes, it's called borer. You're not allowed to take the good and the bad and separate them.

1:24:47If you can eat pistachios the right way or sunflower seeds or anything like that, you must have the good in both bowls. So it's not separating, it's not borer. Without learning hilchot Shabbat, you're violating Shabbat for 20 years. You're mechalel Shabbat. Do you know what in Shamayim they're saying to you? Here's the criminal, here's the mechalel Shabbat with the tzitzit on. He thought he's keeping Shabbat. Without learning halachot Shabbat, you're violating Shabbat. How do you wash it? You wash dishes, I told him. He's already in shock. I said, you wash dishes? He goes, no, my wife does. I go, she's mechalel Shabbat too then. He goes, no, she washes dishes. She's good. I go, how does she wash dishes? He goes, with a sponge. I'm like, what kind of sponge? He goes, the regular sponge. I go, mechalel Shabbat. You're not allowed to soak up the water with a sponge. So how do you clean dishes? I said, with something that's similar to a net. Something like a net or a brush. Why? So it doesn't absorb the water. If it absorbs the water, it's chilul Shabbat. I'm supposed to know this. I said this, halachot Shabbat. Halachot Shabbat is not to violate Shabbat. It's so easy to violate Shabbat, but it's also so easy not to. It's easy not to. Just learn it. Without learning Torah, you're always going to be mechalel Shabbat. You always will. And that's the thing. So they ask you, did you make time for Torah? You didn't make time for Torah? Don't even bother asking them the rest of the questions. Next question, rabotai.

1:26:10Did you engage in procreation? What? They don't know. In Shamayim, they don't know how many kids he has. What does it mean over here, Rabotai? It says, did you have kids only based on your income or based on Hashem's commandment? You know, some people, they only want to have two kids and a dog because that's all they can afford. Or maybe two dogs and a kid. "I don't have any more money. I only have money for a dog. I'll have a dog. It's cheaper." College and my brother told me college here at UCLA is how much, $70,000 a year? You have to be a zillionaire to go to college. Don't go to college anyway, but the point is, Rabotai, is that you think about these things like, "Oh, don't even have any kids. Each kid is going to cost a million dollars just to graduate high school." But that's what they ask you in Shamayim: did you engage in procreation based on Hashem's commandment, not based on your logic and finances? And that's also what people need to know, that parnassah comes with every kid. A person who says, "I'm not going to have another kid because I don't have enough money," means he didn't learn that parnassah comes with the kid. So you have two, three, four kids, and you're thinking, "I don't have enough money for the fifth kid." Hashem says there's two million dollars with the fifth kid. You just don't know it until after the fact. So that's what they ask you in Shamayim: did you engage in procreation based on Hashem's commandment or based on your logic and finances?

1:27:34Next question, it says, did you wait for the Messiah? What does it mean to wait for Mashiach? Did you do teshuvah every day? Wait for Mashiach, because Mashiach is good. But Mashiach is good only for people who did teshuvah. He is only here to save the people who did teshuvah. If you didn't do teshuvah, you should recite three Tehillim every day, then he doesn't come. People don't do teshuvah. People are still violating Shabbat every day. They should pray, so he doesn't come. Why? Time's over. There's no more teshuvah after him. After Mashiach comes, no more teshuvah. So that's the next question. Did you go into the wisdom? Did you go into the depth of the Torah? Did you learn things? Did you learn Gemara? Did you learn the Midrashim? And so on and so forth. And then they ask the last question. Last question, then we'll finish. He says, Even if he answered right in all of these things, but he did not have Yirat Shamayim, the answer is no in his judgment. What does it mean no? No Gan Eden. What do you mean? He learned Torah. He conducted his business with Emunah. He had kids. He waited for Mashiach. He did. No Yirat Shamayim. The answer is no Gan Eden. Why no Gan Eden? Because he didn't do it for the right reason.

1:28:58What is it like? They give us a mashal, a real mashal, not like this so-called rabbi says. This mashal, Adam Shalem, the person that sent his employee to his barn. He said, listen, take a kor of wheat, take a bunch of wheat, and put it in the attic for storage. Do it for me. Send an employee to the storage, put the wheat in there. The guy did what he said. He comes back, he says, Did you put it there? Yes. Did you put chumtin? What's chumtin? Chumtin is a preservative. Did you put chumtin to protect the wheat? He says no. So the boss says, ah, better off you didn't do anything at all then. Why better off? I brought the thing upstairs. Nah, it's all going to get ruined now. Chazal say Torah, mitzvot, all of these things, these six questions, without Yirat Shamayim, it's like nothing at all. Why? It's not going to preserve. It's not for the real reason. It's not going to hold on. You're doing it for logical reasons. You're doing it for every other reason except what Hashem said. Because Yirat Shamayim, that's the preservative. That's going to keep you in when there's a real test. A real test we get every day, but there's big tests once in a while. That million-dollar deal on Shabbat.

1:30:15That beautiful woman, that's not your wife. That, this, that—everybody has these big tests. Without Yirat Shamayim, you're not going to hold up to the test. And that's why the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat says, if you do all the right things but for the wrong reason, it's as if you didn't do anything at all. And that's why, Rabotai HaKareem, every single one of us has to do teshuva every day. It all starts with learning Torah every day. Half an hour, an hour, two hours, five hours, whatever it is. At the very least, it should be just as much as how much you invest in everything else in this world. But we can't start that way. I started with 15 minutes a day. That's the way I started. Why? Because I knew 15 minutes I could do. An hour, two hours, three hours sounded too big for me. I started teshuva with 15 minutes a day. But every day. Sometimes I do more, but I know I'm not going to sleep until I have 15 minutes a day. By B'ezrat Hashem, over time it became more than 15 minutes. Then it became 20 minutes, then a half hour, then an hour. And by B'ezrat Hashem, we try to do as much as we can. The key is you have to start with something. Show Hashem your teshuva is real, not just for show. Don't just give donations once a year and spend the rest of the year stealing money.

1:31:21Oh, Hashem, teshuva every day, learn Torah every day, sometimes every day. When the Mashiach comes, we say, ah, Mashiach, we've been waiting for you. Oh, save me. Say, oh, Baruch Haba. Baruch Adonai le’olam. Amen ve’amen. If you want to do Kaddish. No, he didn't know that he got 70 years from Adam HaRishon. He didn't know that he was going to live 70 years. He just asked Hashem, "When am I going to die?" He didn't know when he was going to die, obviously. By the question, we know he didn't know that he was going to die at 70 years old. Secondly, he asked Hashem specifically for a day—a day and a date. Like if it's going to be Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of this month or that month. And Hashem didn't want to tell him because He said that if He told mankind when they're going to die, it could cause delay. This is the reason why Hashem changed the life cycle of people to a maximum of 120 years for most people. There are some exceptions to this, but for the most part, people don't live past 120.

1:32:37like they did at the time of Noach. In the time of Noach, people lived 600 years, or before him, 900 years or more, even 1,200 years, with only a few exceptions to the case. That lived past 120 years. The reason why is because when one guy saw that his buddy lived 600 years, he said, "Ah, listen, I'll do teshuva later. I'm only 300, I'll wait till 450 to start doing teshuva." Hashem says this long life is causing people to sin for longer, and it created the reason for the Mabul (Flood). That's the reason for the flood because people didn't want to do teshuva. So that's why He doesn't tell us when Mashiach is going to come exactly and... That's why we're also not allowed to predict a specific day of when he's going to come, or even a year. And that's also why He didn't tell David HaMelech when he's going to die, because He wants us to do teshuva every day. But we know right now that, and it's like the Midrash says, that about the seven years, No, there are a lot of things that are known to people but not specifically to the person. For example, there is a Gemara that asks who wrote the last two sentences, the last two verses, of the Five Books of Moses. Why is that even a question?

1:33:56You're going to say, listen, Moshe Rabbeinu is the Five Books of Moses. He wrote the whole book. If he didn't write the whole book, maybe you call it a different book. Because the person that completes the mitzvah, the mitzvah is usually called after him. So it should be Moshe Rabbeinu. But then it says that Moshe Rabbeinu died. Did Moshe Rabbeinu actually write about his own death? Or he went to the mountain, Hashem hid him, and Moshe died? So there's actually a machloket, there's two different opinions of who actually wrote the last two verses. Some say it's like he said, Yehoshua ben Nun. Some say it's actually Moshe Rabbeinu, who wrote his own death. The point is that there are certain things that are left unsaid, either to a whole generation or to that specific person. So another big example is, why did Hashem not let Moshe Rabbeinu, Kodesh Kodeshim, Navi of all Neviim, go into Eretz Yisrael? If he didn't want to come as a human being, he said, Moshe Rabbeinu said, I'll come as a cow. If he didn't want to come as a cow, Moshe Rabbeinu said, I'll come as a dove, a bird. And Hashem says, still no. Why no? Why so mean? It's not mean. Why? If Moshe Rabbeinu himself came to Eretz Yisrael, the first thing he would do is build Beit HaMikdash. If he built Beit HaMikdash, Hashem already made a deal with him that anything that he does is eternal. It's permanent. Meaning he can't

1:35:12Break it. The problem is that Hashem already knew the future, and He knew that Am Yisrael was going to sin. A very big sin, to such an extent that He's going to have to give them a very big punishment. Now, when the Malach HaMavet came to Hashem a little over a thousand years later and told Him, "Listen, they just committed idol worship, murder, and so on and so forth. You have to destroy them." Hashem says there's only one thing that has the same weight: Beit HaMikdash, my house. Destroy my house and not them. If Moshe Rabbeinu built the house, he couldn't destroy the house, which means Hashem would have to destroy Am Yisrael. So it was actually for his own good not to let him in, but He also couldn't tell this to Moshe Rabbeinu. Do you understand? So there are certain things they know and certain things they don't know. The same thing with, for example, many times in the Gemara it talks about Mashiach. It's actually Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. He goes to Eliyahu HaNavi, his best friend, and says, "Eliyahu, when is Mashiach coming?" He says, "Go ask him." "Go ask him? Yeah, go ask him." "Where is he?" "He is at the gates of Rome." So, he goes to the gates of Rome. He sees a bunch of miskenim, a bunch of poor people, miskenim, all injured from the war, from all types of damages, and so on. Each one of them is taking off the dressing for their wounds. They take it all off...

1:36:38And then they replace it. But the Mashiach has more wounds than everybody else, but he takes it off one at a time. So he asks the Mashiach, "How come you're only taking it off one at a time?" He says, "Because at any moment, they can call me to be Mashiach. I have to be ready. If I took off all the dressings for all my wounds, all over my body, I'm not going to be able to put it on really quickly." He says, "Okay, so when are you coming? When are you coming to save us?" He says, "Tomorrow." Wow, tomorrow. He got so excited, he started celebrating. waiting for him. No Mashiach. He goes back to the Rabbi and says, "Mashiach is a liar. What happened? Why did he tell me he was coming?" The Rabbi goes, "What did he tell you?" He says, "I'm coming tomorrow." The Rabbi goes, "Ah, you didn't understand him. What he really meant is that if you do teshuvah, I'll come tomorrow. If you do teshuvah, I'll come tomorrow. If you do teshuvah, I'll come whenever you want me to come. Just do teshuvah." So the point is that there are certain things, certain midrashim, certain things, certain stories that appeared to specific people, but not necessarily to the public, or not necessarily to specific people. And that's why also they say in many places in the Torah, Mashiach would come on Pesach,

1:37:42Or it would come on Shavuot, or it would come during specific times. These are not guarantees. Obviously, it can't happen all those times. It just means that there are certain times that are more likely. Pesach is more likely. Shavuot is more likely. Certain times of the year are more likely. Tisha B'Av, more likely. Doesn't mean that it can't come at any other time. It just means those times are more likely. It's like, for example, l'havdil, in the business world, there's earnings season. It's more likely the company will announce good news during earnings season than any other time during the year. Why? Because everybody's expecting something from them. And if they give bad news, stock will go down. If they give good news, stock will go up. So most likely, they want people to have good news. So it's more likely times. Same thing with Mashiach. The point is, Rabotai, that we have to expect it every day. Because every day is the real likelihood. Every day. Next question. If a person lives all their life a bad way, and at the end of their life, they're asleep in a bed that makes them chew up, does being a person get along well?

1:38:45So, I mean, it's a very interesting question because there is actually a guy in the Torah, Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, who really wasn't a rabbi, but he, the Gemara says, in Masechet Avodah Zarah, I think it is, that there was no sinner bigger than him. Meaning, every woman that moved, he went with. Everything that was not his, he took. He was like the biggest sinner in the world. One day, one of these prostitutes told him, "There's no hope for people like you." He replied, "What do you mean there's no hope for people like me? God is not going to forgive somebody like you. Everything that moves you, the prostitute is giving him mussar. Imagine that. There's actually a few stories in the Torah where prostitutes give mussar for some reason. Anyway, so she gives him mussar, he takes it to heart. He takes it to heart and he starts crying." He looks at the heavens and says, "Help me, pray for me, for Hashem to accept my prayers." The heavens respond, "You've made so many sins that affected us; we can't pray for you, we have to pray for ourselves." He prays to the sun and the moon, "Pray for me, so Hashem forgives me." They say, "You made so many sins, it affected us, we went down a level because of you. We're praying for ourselves; we have to do teshuvah."

1:40:07He prays to the mountains. "Mountains, no, pray for me. I'm in bad shape here. No one's going to help me." The mountains say, "You affected us more than everybody. We're not praying for you. We have to pray for ourselves." He realized that he's all alone. No one's praying for him. No one's buying aliyot for him. No one, nothing. He started crying himself to death. He died from crying. His neshama left his body and a bat kol came out from Shamayim, the Gemara says, and said, "Olam Haba welcomes Rebbi Elazar ben Durdaya." He's not a Rabbi; he's a sinner, a rasha. So, Rebbi HaKadosh, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, heard this bat kol and he cried. He said, "Some people work their whole lives to do teshuva, and some people do teshuva in a moment." Meaning that his teshuva was accepted. Doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't have to come back as a gilgul or fix himself and so on. The point is that he was, like you said, living an atheist life or a sinner's life his whole life, but did teshuva before he died. But why was his teshuva accepted? Because he literally cried himself to death. To say, I believe in God two minutes before you die is not really teshuva. Okay, maybe it's something.

1:41:18But it's not the highest level. Okay, so maybe you're going to have less suffering and have to do things all over again. But people shouldn't think that it's so easy to say, "I believe in God," and then everything is finished. The rest of us are all losers that are keeping all these mitzvot. So there's a real story about it. But again, if you can cry yourself to death, then ashrecha. But the reality is, it's not a real thing. So, teshuva is available; it's a much easier way than crying. Just do the mitzvot. Just do the mitzvot, do what Hashem says, much easier. Because he cried himself to death. No, because he got so deep in his neshama, he got literally to the highest level that his neshama could reach. He literally died from crying. When we cry, we might get a runny nose for a while. Our eyes might be puffy for a couple of days. That's the best we can do. If you're a woman, multiply that by three.

1:42:19But the reality is, to cry to death is a different level. He used his entire neshamah for that. So, for that, he got the kavod of being called a Rebbe. But again, you could definitely learn from him. Your neshamah is supposed to be elevated. His neshamah got to a very, very high state. But again, would it have been better if he cried during his life and did full teshuvah? Yes. It's just that he had his test, and we have that story to learn from. Next. So, when the Torah says, "Love your neighbor as yourself," right? And so now we're going to move on. Maybe before, people were more observant. We're considering observancy levels. But maybe not the same level, not the same level like right now, where we're actually enslaving our neshamot with our bodies, right? That's what's happening right now. So, how can you... treat people disrespectfully, considering it doesn't matter for them. I'm talking about the Jewish, actually, people. Nothing for them to go and eat pork. OK, so two things. How can you treat them nicely? OK, so we'll answer this, and then we'll finish. Everybody can go, but I'll answer this quickly.

1:43:39First of all, the book of Ecclesiastes, Kohelet, writes seven times, meaning there's nothing new under the sun. The sinners of today are no different than the sinners of yesterday. In the book of Isaiah, the prophet says that he's rebuking the women. He says, you women that are walking around with high heels. This is 2,500 years ago. You women are walking around with high heels and bells on your heels. Not only high heels, but also bells on their heels. And short dresses and this and that and so on. so they say, "What do we have to be afraid of, for the Romans to want to marry us? Let the Romans marry us then." These are Jewish women. So, who are these women? You would think these women are maybe the prostitutes. Maybe they are just wicked, bad people. That's what you would think. Who are these? The Torah says these were the head rabbis' wives and The head rabbis of Am Yisrael, their wives. Meaning, sin is not new to the world. Sin is not new to the world. The women of today, the women of yesterday, the men of today, the men of yesterday, they're always sinners. There are always people who choose to sin. There are always people who choose to do right. The point is that people need to understand that Judaism does not depend on the Jews. It depends on the Jew. Meaning, it's the relationship between you and Hashem. You honor Hashem. You honor Hashem.

1:45:05son, you honor his daughter not because of just his daughter or just his son, but just because of him. You respect another Jew because Hashem said so. You honor another Jew because Hashem said so. You do all these things because Hashem said so, not necessarily because the Jew is deserving of it, and It's irrelevant if he eats pork or he doesn't eat pork to you. As a matter of fact, you're not even allowed to hate a Jew unless he's a kofer, unless he's someone that's intentionally getting other people to sin. He's a min and an apikores. He gets people to go to avodah zarah, to the idol worship. He gets people to become atheists. He gets people to stop keeping Shabbat. That person you're actually obligated to hate. There's actually a pasuk in the Torah for it. But if this person is just an ordinary sinner, he doesn't know the truth, or he just chooses not to live by it, you're actually obligated to love him and pray for him to do teshuva. The fact that he eats pork is his problem, but you also have to know that part of it is your problem. Because if he sins, it affects you too.

1:46:07So, as far as Rasha, wicked, and so on, that's always existed; it's nothing new. Our obligation is also nothing new. Our obligation is to do teshuva, to get Am Yisrael to do teshuva. So, any other questions, we'll ask after. I'll let everybody that wants to go, you can go; it's okay. I can answer some questions, but anybody who wants to go, don't feel obligated. I know it's a long night, a late night. Yeah, oh, haha. At what point do you classify an individual as a Rasha? I mean, one that is not even knowledgeable of Torah at all. Maybe someone, say, like, someone that is, you know, like, completely going against, you know, like... No, there are levels of being a Rasha. So, Rasha doesn't actually mean evil. People think that Rasha means evil. Rasha doesn't mean evil. Rasha just means wicked against Hashem. Meaning if Hashem said to keep Shabbat, and he chooses not to keep Shabbat, according to Hashem, he's considered a Rasha. our definition, especially in modern civilization that's politically correct, makes us think that "Rasha" means evil. So therefore, when we tell somebody that, they take offense to it. "Ah, he's not evil; he's such a nice guy. He gives so much money. He helps the local dogs. He helps with the whole community." It has nothing to do with it. "Rasha" is, by definition, wicked against Hashem, meaning he decides not to listen to Hashem. That's what "Rasha" means. Now...

1:47:28is if he does it on purpose, meaning he simply chooses not to keep Shabbat. He simply chooses not to keep kosher or not to do all these mitzvot, but he's considered a rasha. But it doesn't necessarily mean he's gonna be rasha in everything. He could be a rasha in one thing, meaning he keeps everything, but he still has the tikkun and he's still wasting seed on a regular basis. It's a problem. But he's not considered an overall rasha, just considered a sinner and But there are different levels. Then there are people that are considered apikorsim or minim. There's different levels. Some people cause others to sin with their behavior. Some do it intentionally, and some do it unintentionally. A woman that walks around today immodestly, she's technically causing other people to sin. But most of them are not doing it intentionally, meaning most of them don't really realize that Hashem considers it a sin. They do it because they think that's the way we're supposed to be. They think that, you know, this is the way that modern society dresses. Therefore, they fit in by wearing what they wear. So even though they cause other people to sin, they're not necessarily doing it on purpose. Is it counted in Shamayim as if they're not doing it? No, it's still counted as a big sin. But they're not considered the same thing as like a min, like someone that is a missionary or something like that.

1:48:47Either way, the sages, Ramban actually specifically says it's better to be viewed as a drunk your whole life than to be a shame in the eyes of Hashem for a second. Meaning, for all the people that don't want to do teshuva because they're afraid of how people are going to look at them. You know, he wears tzitzit, people are going to say, "Oh wow, why are you wearing that? He became religious?" Or the guy wears a kippah, "Oh, who died? Why are you wearing a kippah?" Oh, I went to the Beit Knesset. Oh, why? Somebody died, everything okay? Like everybody thinks that when you do teshuva, something's wrong. So people are embarrassed to do teshuva. They're embarrassed of being Jewish. The Muslims are not embarrassed of being Muslims. The Christians are not embarrassed of being Christians. They both have lies in their lives, but they're not embarrassed of living the lie. We have the truth, but we're embarrassed of it. One of the best examples, you go to every airport. The Muslims pray in the middle. The Christians pray if they pray. Jews always in the corner. They're embarrassed to pray in the corner. So we're not proud enough. The point being, we have to be proud of what we are. We have the truth. And that means that if you're connected to Hashem, that's your life. And you're not worried about what everybody else thinks. Not worried about what everybody else thinks. So you get people to do teshuva that way. Yeah? In response to what you just

1:50:11has nothing to do with numbers. Even if there were only three Muslims in the world, they would still pray in the middle of Broadway. No, they're just proud of what they have. They're proud; they believe they live the truth. The Muslims believe that they have the truth. That's why they started over 20 years ago something called Dawah. Dawah is the equivalent of Jewish kiruv, which is what we're doing—getting people to become more religious and... In the Muslim religion, in Islam, there's something called dawah, which is pretty much a methodology, a system to get other people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, to become Muslim, to become religious Muslims. Now, they believe in this shtuyot (this nonsense) that they have as a religion to such an extent that literally, to be a Muslim, you have to do dawah. It's not like something some people do; all of them do it. And that's why, for example, you go in New York... They have all the kiosks, the little carts in the corners. Practically in every corner, there's a halal food cart. If you notice, every single one of them has a sticker, a green sticker on it. It says, "Allah is the only God, and Muhammad is our savior." And they give this to people also. So there was actually a journalist, an Israeli journalist, who went undercover

1:51:33and came all over to France, to Germany, to Israel, to America, and to uncover this whole dawah thing. And he asked the guy in America, in New York, he asked him, what is this sticker? He goes, oh, we're doing dawah. You know, I'm recruiting people to become Muslims. He goes, oh, wow. So you make money and you're doing your own kiruv? He goes, no, no, no. I do dawah first. Money is secondary. Okay? Meaning, the average Muslim believes in his own lie to such an extent that his life, everything else is secondary. The Christian is no different. The Christians spend $300 million a year just in Israel to get Israelis to convert to Christianity. Now, $300 million in America is like chump change. In Israel, it's a large part of the GDP. It's a huge amount of money over there. They just sent 70 missionaries to Israel two weeks ago. specifically target Israelis to recruit them. A thousand people a week convert to Christianity in Israel. Why? Why are they willing to spend three hundred million dollars? And your average kiruv organization today maybe gets three hundred dollars a week, not three hundred million. Why? Because they believe in the lie. That's why the chachamim and the ba'alei mussar would say the reason why the goyim are winning is because they're...

1:52:59Living the lie as if it's true, and we're living the truth as if it's a lie. We're not as proud and as zealous. When we compare how the Jews have six hundred and thirteen mitzvot compared to seven... Laws of Noah. Yeah. Yeah. Common-sense law is also the Torah. The Rambam says that a non-Jew that keeps the seven laws of Noah because it makes sense to him... Not only does he not get olam haba, but he's actually considered foolish in the eyes of Hashem because he did everything he was supposed to and he's not going to get paid for it. But a guy that keeps the seven laws of Noah because Hashem said so...

1:54:06He's not only gonna get Olam Haba, but he's also considered one of the wise people among the nations. Why? Because in order to know what the seven laws of Noah are, he has to learn Torah. He has to learn the five books of Moses. He has to learn the things that he's allowed to learn, and the most important part of the Torah, aside from the five books of Moses, is Mussar. To learn how to behave, how to be a human being, my father always says, "Kodem kol, yehiyeh ben adam"—first of all, be a human being. Being a human being means being decent, being nice. So one of the common-sense laws for all people is honoring your parents. It's not one of the seven laws of Noah; it's one of the things I believe to do for us. It's a law; it's one of the commandments and so on. The point being is that we have certain laws in our Torah and... that we get rewarded for because we do them. They are just obligated to do it. So the reward, they have fewer mitzvot. They have fewer mitzvot; we have more mitzvot. Their reward is less than ours, though. A non-Jew's reward is less than a Jew's. So where does it say that they're obliged by common sense laws of respecting their rights? No, this is part of the laws of Noah. This is part of the Oral Torah when you learn the halachot of the goyim.

1:55:18whether it's the Rambam or the Poskim that talked about it, they would say that specifically they have to learn these specific laws in order to become righteous Gentiles. You can't be a righteous Gentile just because you don't murder. Because realistically, everybody knows not to murder. You don't have to be a genius to know not to murder. You can't observe those seven laws without observing the common sense rules too. Because when you embarrass another person, you're actually committing murder. So unless you're fulfilling the common sense laws, you're not going to fulfill the seven laws. Right, of course. So the thing is, though, is that there's not a specific Torah just for the goyim. But that's why the Jews are obligated to be אור לגויים (or la'goyim). They're supposed to teach them this. So if anyone is looking for the truth, they are going to find it. That's what it says in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 4. But ultimately, anyone that really wants to do the will of Hashem usually ends up wanting to convert because they see that what they have is not enough. So let's, because people wanted to leave, let's say Kaddish. Let's say Kaddish because there are still people left. Chabad. Good. Chabad.

1:56:37You guys can ask me as many questions as you want after everybody leaves. You can ask, come here. I want to at least say Kaddish for the shiur. After. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.