Cleaning Out Our Inner Chametz In Staten Island (Rabbi Yaron Reuven New York LECTURE TOUR)

0:13Always good to be back here and learn Torah. The only shul that I know of that has a living sefer Torah, Rav Zehev. Do you have such a Rav? The Chazal says that when it comes to zikuya rabim, when it comes to teaching Torah The words that the speaker, the rabbi, says all depend on the kehillah. Meaning, if the guy is coming to make money, then it all depends on his pocket. It depends on how much money he wants to get in his pocket. If he wants to get a lot of donations, he can just tell everybody everything's allowed. You want to drive on Shabbat? Enjoy. You want to eat treif? Eat twice. want to go out with a non-Jew? Go out with two of them. Anyone that wants a lot of money will just tell you everything is allowed, and I'll find you something in the Torah that somehow shows that it's allowed, even though it's not allowed. On the other hand, when somebody is actually trying to help you do teshuva, it's very different. The reason why is because things that come out of the heart reach the heart.

1:36Anytime somebody is actually going to try to help you do teshuva, he has to do it with a full heart. The reason why is because there's no money in it, number one. Number two, which is even more important, is that it's a thankless job. Most people, you're going to have a room of 10,000 people, the Rambam says, a stadium of 10,000 people, and he says if I know that what I'm gonna say is going to offend... gonna offend nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine out of the ten thousand people. They're not gonna like it, but one guy is gonna do teshuva. The Rambam 900 years ago says, "I care less about the nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine people. I only came for the one guy to do teshuva because he's the only one that actually was looking for the truth. The other nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine were just looking for excuses." So sometimes when you actually try to help people do teshuva, you get some people to do teshuva, but sometimes you get enemies instead. People don't like to hear the truth all the time. And Hashem already told us that we're a stubborn people.

2:49We don't like to be told what to do. We don't like to be told what to do by our spouse, our husband, our wives, our kids, our bosses, our customers. No one should tell us what to do. So as soon as somebody comes along and starts telling you you have to change your life and you have to start doing teshuva, immediately we are defensive. So, for example, if you start telling somebody, "Listen, you have to do teshuva," they immediately tell you, "Well, you know how much tzedaka I give? Okay, great, so you should do teshuva then. You know how much I go to Beit Knesset? Great, that's good, so you're already starting. You just continue the teshuva. But you know what, how much Torah I learned when I was a kid? Good job, you have a good start. That means you have to do teshuva. But you know I was born religious? Even a bigger plus. You still have to do teshuva." And after doing this for the last four years, five years already, seeing people from all over the place, from Israel to all over the United States, and talking to a lot of rabbanim that I've actually been doing it for much longer than me, there's one conclusion everyone agrees upon: there's no such thing as "religious" anymore. There's only ba'alei teshuva. It doesn't matter if you have a black hat or blue hat or no hat, or if you wear a small kippah or big kippah. Everyone has to do teshuva.

4:01Some people have to do teshuva by keeping Shabbat. Some people have to do teshuva by marrying a Jewish woman or marrying a Jewish man. Some people have to do teshuva and start eating kosher all the time and not just sometimes. Some people have to do teshuva because they have to start wearing modest clothing. If it's women, they have to actually start becoming modest. Some people have to do teshuva by not stealing anymore. And as crazy as that sounds, Chazal says that one crime Practically everybody is guilty of this unless they work on it, and the reason why is because we don't know how deep the details are in our business when it comes to actually doing honest business. So, on Pesach, Hashem tells us that we're supposed to honor this extraordinary day that He took us out of Egypt after... Being there for 210 years, 86 of those years were of very hard labor, to such an extent that it didn't even matter if we built something or we didn't. The Egyptians didn't even want to give us, not only didn't give us any money, they didn't even want to give us any joy. So, as soon as we built something, they destroyed it just to make sure we stayed down. So, after dealing with this, Hashem heard our screams and started making some major miracles.

5:27after month after month, we saw a new plague. It started with the blood, and if you actually see some of my older shiurim from a couple of years ago, I showed what Chazal, the sages, say about each one of the plagues having an actual reason. It wasn't just a mikreh; it wasn't like a happenstance where He decided, "You know what? Let's just turn the water into blood and see what happens." Every single makkah, every single plague, had a real reason and So, for example, the blood had a few reasons. The first one is because they didn't allow the women to go into the mikveh. In Judaism, if a woman doesn't go into the mikveh, you're not allowed to be with her, even if you love her, even if she's great, even if she begs you, and even if you beg her. A woman that does not go to the mikveh—a husband is not even allowed to touch her finger. Not allowed to touch her finger, and that's why... There's ever a situation, and unfortunately today, there are many where one person does teshuva and the other doesn't. The husband does teshuva, but the wife doesn't, or the wife does teshuva, but the husband doesn't. In the beginning, it's a problem because the wife wants to keep Shabbat, she wants to keep taharat hamishpacha, she wants to keep modesty, she wants to do all these things, but the husband still wants to go to clubs. He still wants to look at every girl that walks by. He still wants to do whatever he wants to do. He still wants to be the same free guy that he was his whole life, and...

6:51And she tells him, listen, there's a new rule in the house. There's taharat hamishpacha. I can't be with you for half the month. Now, if he says, okay, good, the marriage continues even if he's a mechalel Shabbat. Even if he continues to violate Shabbat, the hope is that he'll eventually do teshuva. Eventually he'll start keeping Shabbat, eventually he'll start eating kosher, eventually he'll start doing things. But if he refuses, if he refuses to allow her to taharat hamishpacha and she goes to the beit din. Most of the time, they give him a very limited time frame to either change his mind and allow her to go to the mikveh, or they give him a get. It's the one thing that breaks up a marriage. It's the one thing for which there's no excuse, even if the guy is a mechalel Shabbat, which according to Judaism is the worst sin. Still, we say there's time—there's time, maybe he'll do teshuva next month, or in six months, or in a year, or in two years, and but if he lets her go to the mikveh, at least he's honoring Hashem to some extent. But if he's that anti, that he can't contain himself for even a couple of weeks, then that means there's no hope for this marriage. The same thing vice versa if he does teshuva. Thank you. Thank you. If he

8:10teshuva and his wife doesn't want to do teshuva. And he tells her, "Listen, you need to go to the mikveh once a month. You have to go to the mikveh. During the time that you're pure, we can be together. During the time that you're not pure, we can't be together. It's about half the month approximately, not exactly." And she says, "I'm not going to the mikveh. Not going to the mikveh." The problem is that he can't touch her finger. He can't sleep in the same bed. He can't eat from the same plate. If she continues with this attitude, he goes to the rabbis. The rabbis say, "You have to get divorced." "Yeah, but I have seven kids, I have 18 kids." It doesn't make a difference. Why? There's no marriage without mikveh. So, there are certain rules in Judaism that are make or break. It's either make it or break it. And there are certain rules where we do it. Hopefully, we get to that stage. Pesach is one of those rules. Pesach... Hashem Yitbarach tells us we have to clean up our chametz. A person that eats chametz, eats pita, eats something that's not kosher for Pesach on Pesach, the din is karet. Karet is the worst possible punishment in the entire world because it's not a one-time punishment. It's forever.

9:30We can't think of forever. We can think of a week, a month, a year, and if you're really smart, five years. Anything beyond five years is just imagination. But that's all we can think about. We can't think about forever. Hashem can. Hashem can think about forever. It's not that He can't not think about it because He's eternal. He thinks eternally because He is eternal. For Him, the past, the present, and the future are all the same thing. Just as much as we would love to only get the love part of Hashem because He has unlimited love, He also has unlimited wrath. This means that when we do something He doesn't want us to do, the punishment is just as severe as the love is. And that's one of the things that most people don't like to hear about. They like to hear about the lovey-dovey part. They want Hashem to be Santa Claus. He just gives us presents all the time, and as soon as He doesn't give us presents, we don't like Him anymore. It's like it's business. If we do good, He gives us good. If not, it's somebody else's fault. People always ask, if God is so good, why did the Shoah happen? Why did the Holocaust happen?

10:40The reality is anyone that learned just a little bit of Torah, just one year’s worth of Torah, meaning that he went through every parashah in the Torah. At that point you will reach at least two parashot, Parashat Bechukotai, Parashat Ki Tavo. Both of them explain exactly why the Holocaust happened. And it tells you exactly 3,000 years before it happened, who did it? His name is God. He told you, if you do this, this, and this, I'll bring the Holocaust. Exactly what it says even tells you the Holocaust will have a symbol of an eagle. It'll be a foreign nation and so on and so forth. Now, why does Hashem talk so much? Almost half the Torah talks about punishment. The reason is, you have to keep in mind, fear of Hashem is the very basis of connecting to Hashem. It's the very basic level. If we don't fear Him, there's no way that we believe in Him. We believe in something else. So for example, one of the main things that's very critical for Hashem Yitbarach is to respect our rabbis. So for example, when you have a rabbi like Rav Zev, Baruch Hashem, it's very easy to respect him. Why? He's a Talmid Chacham, a Tzadik, and he has great Middot. Somebody has to be crazy to go against him. There's something wrong with you. Why would you? Who would he ever harm? If he harms a fly, he says sorry to it.

12:00Landing in the wrong place. Now, unfortunately, in today's world, a lot of people are not exactly that. A lot of people are wicked, but they just have a long beard, so it's hard to tell who's who, who's good, and who's bad. That's why we have to check. But the Zohar HaKadosh in Parashat Pekudei, just a couple of weeks ago, we read it. The Zohar HaKadosh says there's certain things that happen in the world. It's not because Hashem wants it to happen. It's only because we did something. You do something, Hashem has to react. There's an action, there's a reaction. There's a cause and effect. He says, when you're mevazeh, you embarrass a Talmid Chacham, you have a serious problem. But the Zohar says, you don't even have to get to that extent. If you simply don't give enough respect to somebody that taught you one piece of Torah. You ask them, "Listen, what's the parashah this week?" He says, "Parashat Ki Tisa." That's a chiddush for you. You didn't know what parashah it was. He told you it's parashat Ki Tisa. He says, what does parashat Ki Tisa say? It says, okay, that was the first time you ever heard that. You never knew that if you violate Shabbat, Hashem puts you on the bad list until you do teshuva. It's a chiddush for you. It's new. That guy, whoever he is, is officially, according to Gemara Bava Metzia, your rabbi. Meaning you owe him respect.

13:23And the Zohar says if you now decide you don't want to respect him, there are two angels whose names we are not allowed to say, whose job is to punish people who don't respect their rabbi. That's their only job in the world. Hashem created them just to punish people. They don't have the job of giving you presents—that's different angels. So we see that the weight of some of the crimes we commit is significant, especially since we don't even know they are crimes. And... A lot of the things that we do, we don't even think are bad. Like, for example, does anybody here think that saying "I told you so" to somebody is a bad thing? Like, you told somebody something, and he didn't listen. And then it happened—whatever you told them happened—and you say, "I told you so." Does anybody here think that's such a bad thing? No, no normal person thinks it's such a bad thing. It's actually in today's world, especially in the Western world. It's a common thing. People do it all the time. But if you look at the Proverbs, Shlomo HaMelech says it, and also you'll see it at the beginning of every Gemara. At the beginning of every Gemara, it says, "Hashem, may it be Your will, my God,"

14:47that a mishap not come through me, meaning I don't learn the wrong thing, and that I don't stumble in any matter of law because of learning the wrong thing. Instead of learning kasher, I say it's treif. Instead of treif, I say it's kasher. Instead of allowed, I say it's not allowed, meaning not learning the wrong way. Why? So my colleagues, my friends, the people in the kehillah, the people in the community don't celebrate because I failed. Then later on it says that I don't celebrate because they failed, meaning I don't tell them "I told you so" and they don't tell me "I told you so." Why is it such a big deal? Why do we see this in every single Gemara? You're going to find this in every single one. This is also in the Mishnah. The Mishnah came before the Gemara. This is also in Proverbs, Mishlei, Shlomo HaMelech. It's before the Mishnah. This "I told you so" is a big thing. Why? Because the Torah says, someone that takes honor in his friend's failure loses. He can keep Shabbat, he can keep Taharat HaMishpacha, he can give tzedakah until the end of the year. Unless he does teshuva for that specific thing, he has a serious cheshbon with Hashem. Most of us didn't even know it's a crime. Most of us didn't even think it was a mitzvah to tell him "I told you so."

16:11I told you so. I'm reminding you that I told you so. No? It's a problem. The only way you're going to find out these things is by learning Torah. And that's one of the things that I found out. The only way you're going to find out the truth is by learning Torah. You're not going to find it by learning five minutes a day. You're not going to find it by learning an hour a week. You're going to find it by regularly studying, at least in the morning and at least at night. Half an hour, an hour in the morning, if not more. Half an hour, an hour at night, if not more. I know everybody works. I know everybody has a family. I know everybody's got a lot of things to do. But you didn't come to the world to make money. You came to the world to serve Hashem, and that's the mistake that we're making. Now Pesach, Pesach Baruch Hashem, is that reminder. Pesach, Hashem Yitbarach says you have to clean the chametz. Now most of us think the chametz He's talking about is to stop eating bread. And yes, He says stop eating bread. But in reality, that's not the biggest mitzvah. If you eat bread, you have a serious problem. It's Din Karet. But the bigger problem is not the bread. B'ezrat Hashem, every one of us is going to have a Leil HaSeder. And everybody has different minhagim. Some people eat this, some people eat that. But if you ask people, what's the biggest mitzvah of the Seder? You sit with your family, you have 10, 20, 60 people, whatever you have, Baruch Hashem. Ken Yirbu, you should have many more.

17:39But now, what's the biggest mitzvah? One guy is going to tell you, eat matzah. Another guy is going to tell you, drink wine. Another guy is going to tell you, eat everything inside. You see it, eat it as long as it's not moving. If you're Chinese, if it's moving too, you can eat it. But now, is anybody going to tell you that the Maggid is the biggest mitzvah of the Seder? Only the Torah. What's the Maggid? The Maggid is talking about the Exodus, talking about what actually happened 3,300 years ago, but not just saying the story, hey, by the way, guys, God created the world, fast forward a couple of thousand years, we were in Egypt, we were in big trouble, He bailed us out, then we got the Torah, that's it, eat. The Maggid, Rabotai, is to say the entire story all the way until you go to sleep. until you can't talk anymore. Now, what about if you start talking and you have energy, but other people are falling off? This guy falls asleep, that guy falls asleep, she fell asleep, the baby is sleeping, everybody is sleeping. But you're still not asleep. You start teaching yourself until you fall asleep. That's the biggest mitzvah of the Seder. That's the biggest mitzvah of the Seder. It's not eating. It's nice to eat, enjoy, but it's not eating.

19:03You want to eat matzah? Enjoy the matzah. It's not the matzah. It's not the wine. It's the Maggid. Why is it the Maggid? You have to know where you came from in order to know where you're gonna go. And most of the kids today at the Leil Seder, instead of talking about Moshe Rabbeinu and Am Yisrael, they talk about baseball, football, basketball, Pokémon, Shmokemon, all these different games that are out there because that's their life. Us, as parents, the only point of Hashem making us parents is to make that change. It is to let them know that Pokémon is not Moshe Rabbeinu. Baseball is not actually important. Yetziat Mitzrayim is. It's a big responsibility to be a parent. Now, in Yetziat Mitzrayim, eventually, we get to Mount Sinai in Parashat Yitro. It says that Am Yisrael stood under the mountain. So the first question the sages ask is, did the mountain have a cave? Did Mount Sinai have a cave? It says no, there were no caves. So how did they stand under the mountain? It says that Hashem took the mountain and put it on top of them, similar to a chuppah. He made it like a chuppah. You know, you have a chuppah at a wedding. Baruch Hashem, we had a wedding over here.

20:25wedding, you have a chuppah like a tallit. He made Mount Sinai like a tallit, and in Gemara Shabbat it says that Hashem told Am Yisrael, "This is our chuppah. If you accept our Torah—the Torah that I already wrote 974 generations before I created the world—this will be our wedding. If you don't want the Torah..." This will be your burial ground, meaning, "I'm going to bury you with the mountain; the sand is already ready." So the sages ask, "Didn't we say that Am Yisrael accepted the Torah?" When you say you accepted the Torah, that usually means we had a choice. But if we tell somebody, "Listen, take me to work, or I'm going to kill you," that's not really a choice. It's more of a threat. What's my choice really? Either you take me to work, or you're going to kill me.

21:25So, but Tosafot say, yes, we had a choice. We had a choice to live. We had a choice to die. He said, yeah, but it's not really a choice. They say, what did you think? Our God is irresponsible and He's going to leave. Entire destiny of the entire world up to chance that maybe they're going to change their mind. They see they're going to accept it a month ago, and now they're going to change their mind and say, "No, no, you know what, we don't want it anymore." Because if they don't accept the Torah, there's no world. There is absolutely no world; there's no point to the world. I Once we start understanding the significance of these things, and we realize that the Torah is not a free choice, it's just choice, things change. Most of us think that we have free choice. Free choice means you can do whatever you want. If you go to work, you get paid. If you don't go to work, you don't get paid. That's what we think we have, free choice. The Rambam explains we don't have such a thing. What we have is choice. Choice means if you go to work, you get paid. If you don't go to work, you don't get paid.

22:34The boss sends people to the house, and he breaks your legs. That's what we have. We have reward, and we have punishment. We do good, reward. We do bad, we get punished. That's what we have. Anyone that tells you otherwise, he's lying to you. There's no other thing. This is one of the 13 principles of faith. Meaning, if I take you to the Beit Din, Queens, you want to convert, let's say they're gonna ask you, "What are the 13 principles of faith?" Meaning, "What are the 13 things you have to believe in order to be a Jew? If you don't believe in one of them, you cannot be a Jew. If you have one problem with one of these, saying, 'Yeah, maybe not so much,' you can't be a Jew." If you tell him, "Listen, I think that everything happened, Mashiach is going to come, Hashem is great, Moshe Rabbeinu is the prophet of all prophets. Everything is wonderful. But the whole reward and punishment system—I don't really see how it works. My friend drove on Shabbat, nothing happened to him." My other friend went out with a non-Jew. Nothing happened to him. The other guy ate treif. Nothing happened to him. The other guy is a thief. Nothing happened to him. So I don't really think this reward and punishment is really applicable anymore to our generation. So I don't really believe in it. At that point, the beit din says, goodbye. Goodbye. Now if the person's already Jewish, he loses his olam haba until he does teshuva. Why? At that moment, he became a kofer b'Torah.

24:01kofer b'Torah means a heretic, and that's a serious problem. Now, most of us have a hard time believing until we see something. So, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, zt"l, used to say that the Rambam says that at the end of days, you're gonna have to have zechut, you have to have merit to do teshuva. Not everybody's gonna do teshuva. And just like there were three days of darkness in Egypt as one of the the ninth plague, and It's gonna be 15 days of darkness before Mashiach comes. Now, during that time, Hashem is gonna clean up the world of all the reshaim, all the people that violate Shabbat, all the people that go against Am Yisrael, and so on and so forth. Now, to be one of the select few, you actually have to have merit. Why do you have to do teshuva before it happens? Meaning the Goel, the Mashiach, is coming to help the people that used to be poshim, used to be criminals. Criminals what? What, they used to kill people? Not necessarily, it could be just simply criminals against Hashem. That’s who the Mashiach is coming to save; he's coming to save the baalei teshuva.

25:14It doesn't say, or the guys that wear a hat, or the guys that have a beard. It doesn't say that. It says, meaning all of Am Yisrael, but the ones that did teshuva. The ones that did teshuva, that's who the Mashiach is going to come to help. Now, if somebody says, "I believe in everything except reward and punishment," he cannot be included in that list. So this is why, Rabotai, there are a few things that you should know about the Mashiach. In the Gemara Masechet Sanhedrin, page 98, Yeshua ben Levi meets his best friend. You know who his best friend was? Eliyahu HaNavi. You have a chair for him over here. Eliyahu HaNavi. Eliyahu HaNavi was his best friend. He showed him Gan Eden, he showed him Gehinom, showed him a lot of nice things. So Yeshua ben Levi says, When's the Mashiach gonna come? When's he gonna come? He says, Mashiach, go ask him. Go, go ask him. He goes, where is he? He says, he's at the gate of Rome. He's over there. They destroyed Beit HaMikdash, balagan, a lot of craziness. He's over there with all the people that are suffering.

26:28So like us, Yeshua ben Levi thought he was going to see someone, some melech kadosh mefoar, you know, really fancy, beautiful, big, strong. What does he see? He sees a bunch of miskenim, a bunch of people that are wounded, and they're all replacing their wounds. They all have different wounds all over their bodies, and each one is taking off the thing that's covering it. They're taking off everything and then they replace it. But the Mashiach, Mashiach has wounds all over his entire body. But he doesn't take off all of the tachboshet, he doesn't take off all of the stuff that's covering it. Why? He just takes off one at a time. So the first question is, Yeshua ben Levi asked him, "Why are you only taking one at a time? Why don't you do the whole thing? Why, like everybody else?" He says, "Because at any moment they're gonna call me to be Mashiach. I have to be ready and..." have to be ready. He says, "When are you going to come?" He said, "Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm going to go tell everybody." He goes back. He's excited, waiting for him tomorrow. He didn't come. So he goes back and tells Eliyahu HaNavi. Eliyahu HaNavi says, "No, he said he’s going to come tomorrow. This is 2,000 years ago. This is going to come tomorrow." He goes, "No, Rabbi Yehoshua, you didn't understand what he meant. What he meant is he's going to come when Am Yisrael does teshuva."

27:52That's tomorrow. Tomorrow, if you do teshuva tomorrow, I'll come tomorrow. If you do teshuva in a week from now, I'll come in a week from now. Whenever you're ready, I'm ready. So now the sages ask, why does he have all these wounds? Why does he have all these wounds? Why isn't he powerful and strong, 20 feet tall like Moshe Rabbeinu? The Gemara in Masechet Shabbat says Moshe Rabbeinu and most of the Leviim were 20 feet tall. 20 feet tall. To us it seems like, what, they were giants? No. That's how big they were. Because in order to carry the Mizbeach, you had to be that big. So now, how come the Mashiach is not huge and strong and everything? Why does he have all these wounds? The sages teach us suffering was divided into three. Hashem divided it. There has to be suffering in the world. One-third of the suffering of the entire world was given to the Avot HaKedoshim. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and even Moshe, Aharon, David, Shlomo, all of the giants in Judaism had to suffer in order to become giants. Mesirat Nefesh is a requirement to be a Jew. And I don't mean just a Jew because your mom is a Jew. A Jew that's a holy Jew. Why? Because in order to get close to Hashem you have to sacrifice. So the Avot HaKedoshim sacrificed the most.

29:19Avraham Avinu was wont to sacrifice his son. Yitzchak was wont to sacrifice himself. Yaakov was wont to sacrifice everything. The second third of suffering was given to the Dorei HaShemad. Difficult generations that went through the Holocaust, went through the Inquisitions, went through the pogroms, and all of the suffering that Am Yisrael has gone through over the last 3,000 years. The Beit HaMikdash, by the way, if you read the Midrashim on Tisha B'Av of what actually happened at the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash... With all due respect to people who lived through the Holocaust or know somebody who lived through the Holocaust, what actually happened at the Beit HaMikdash and its destruction makes the Holocaust seem like a small little thing. It was much, much worse at the Beit HaMikdash. We had many, many more people die, and it was much, much more brutal. We only know the Holocaust because we have pictures of it and because we know some people who lived through it.

30:29One of my students lives in Florida. He's 94 years old, Baruch Hashem, a Baal Teshuva, and a Holocaust survivor. It's never too late. And he told us what he saw. He says everything he says, it's much worse. We had a shiur about some tough things. He started, at the end of the shiur, he's 94 years old. He was already there for two and a half hours. He says to everybody in a low voice, "Everything he says, it's much worse than what he says. I saw it. It's much worse than what he says." So now the second third of suffering went to those generations that suffered that we know of and we heard of. What's the third third of suffering? The third third of suffering goes to the Mashiach. And the Chachamim say that every month on Rosh Chodesh, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov all go to the Mashiach and they beg him to continue to suffer.

31:30Because every single time every one of us sins, he suffers for it, too. So one of the biggest bushaot, one of the biggest embarrassments, that every one of us is going to have when we meet Mashiach, if we have the merit to do teshuvah and actually see Mashiach when he comes very soon b'ezrat Hashem, is you're gonna see the wounds and immediately say, "Oh, you see that infection over here? That's from you." Yeah, that scar over here. That's from you. We're gonna want to melt. Imagine the Mashiach comes to visit. He says, "Oh, by the way, this scar is from you. Remember you went out with that girl? Remember that one time? Yeah, that's from you. That's from you." Just thinking about it should cause us some type of anguish. You suffer for it. Like, "I caused this tzaddik to suffer?" That's the reality. That's the reality, Rabbotai, as hard as it is. So the biggest mitzvah is for us to learn all of these things because the only way we can do teshuva is by learning these things. Now, the Gaon MiVilna said, "What does it mean to be a Jew? Does it mean that you do mitzvot?" He says no. Doing mitzvot is easy. The hard part of being a Jew is that the Torah is supposed to fix you.

32:53The Torah is supposed to fix your Middot. It's supposed to fix your character traits. You're brought into this world with certain challenges. Some of us are more angry. Some of us are cheap. Some of us are arrogant. Some of us think we're the smartest people in the world, and some of us have no confidence at all. Each one of us has different Middot. The Torah is supposed to fix them. That's the point of the Torah. Now, how do you fix them? The number one way to fix your Middot is by learning Mussar every day. Now, everyone knows, everyone has heard of the Shulchan Aruch, right? Heard of the Shulchan Aruch. It's not a cookbook. In one shiur, I said Shulchan Aruch. He said, yeah, it's a cookbook. No, it's not a cookbook. It's the book of laws of all the Torah. So, Shulchan Aruch was written by Rabbi Yosef Karo. And his chavruta was an angel. studied with an angel every day. An angel would come to him and teach him, and he wrote a journal. This is 500 years ago. He wrote a journal of what happened to him every day, what the angel told him. One time he wrote in the journal, he said, "Today the angel rebuked me. He yelled at me." Why did he yell at him? He says, "How come you didn't learn enough Mussar?"

34:19As we told them. How come you didn't learn? This is Rabbi Yosef Karo. We learn in the Shulchan Aruch. All of our halachot, we hold by him. This is a person whose best friend was an angel. And he's getting yelled at by an angel. Why? He didn't learn Mussar. Why? He only learned two hours of Mussar. If he had to learn two hours of Mussar, we should learn a thousand hours of Mussar. Why? Because that's the point. The whole point, Rabotai, is for the Torah to fix us. If it's not fixing us, it's the wrong Torah. Now, most people think the Torah is difficult. So Hashem says, if it's heavy for you, it's not My Torah. What is it like? One time there was a businessman who told one of his assistants, "Listen, I forgot my briefcase in that building, in that office. Go get the briefcase and bring it back."

35:19He goes, catches a cab, drives 20 minutes, gets to the other building, goes in there, he sees there's a bunch of briefcases, he remembers what the description was of the briefcase, he picks it up, goes back in the cab, returns to the boss. "Here you go, boss," and he's like carrying it, like it's really heavy. "Here you go, it's really heavy. What do you have here, rocks? What do you have here?" He goes, "It's not my briefcase." He goes, "How do you know it's not your briefcase?" It's not my briefcase. How do you know? You said it has a white strip. You said it's black. You said it's this big. This is exactly the description. He says, yes, it's exactly the same briefcase, but it's not my briefcase. How do you know it's not your briefcase? You didn't even look inside. He goes, I know it's not my briefcase because my briefcase is full of diamonds. Diamonds are not heavy. You're carrying something that has something heavy, like steel. My briefcase has diamonds and... The toy is heavy for us. It's because it's not the Torah. It's something else that we created, and most people that you read about today that were born religious or were religious and stopped being religious, it's not because of the Torah. They didn't stop becoming religious because of the Torah in the history of mankind.

36:36the beginning of the world all the way until the end of the world, no one will ever stop being religious because of the Torah. No one. It's impossible. And the reason why is because Torah is good for you. People, all they want is good for them, which means that the people that are leaving Judaism either because Born religious, now they decide not to be religious, or they did teshuva, but then they say it's too much. They don't want to do it anymore. The only reason is because of things that were added to it, and we call those things minhagim, the chumrot, the stringencies, the things that are above and beyond, the steel on top of the diamond. The good news is that, in order to... For us to see Mashiach, in order for us to get to the next world, we don't have to do any chumrot. We don't have to do any minhagim. All you gotta do is keep the basics. You're not allowed to drive on Shabbat. You're not allowed to play with your phone on Shabbat. You're not allowed to light a fire on Shabbat. You're not allowed to do business or talk business on Shabbat. Which, by the way, today, most people think doing business means you don't go to work. No. In today's world, business is very different. 99.9% of all business is talking.

37:52Reality is, very few people actually do any manual labor; most of the business you do is talk. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna buy that property. Okay, fine. So what's the action? You just bought a 500 million dollar property by what? One word. Eventually, a month later, maybe you have to sign some paper, but that's not the real deal. The real deal is that you said, I'm gonna buy the building. A 500 million dollar transaction was just one word. You say that on Shabbat. That's Chilul Shabbat. You say, "Oh, I like that car. I'm going to buy that car for my son." Oh, it's a mitzvah. No, it's not a mitzvah. It's Chilul Shabbat. It's Chilul Shabbat. You can't talk business. You can't talk about what you're going to buy, what you're going to sell. You can't even plan to go get a haircut after Shabbat. On Shabbat, you plan for Shabbat. The only thing you can do on Shabbat is Shabbat. Other than that, you can plan a mitzvah, meaning you can plan, let's say, for example, on Tuesday, we're going to have a shiur Torah. You can plan that shiur Torah on Shabbat because it's a mitzvah. Other than that, all you can do on Shabbat is Shabbat. That puts us in a very big dilemma because we have to start finding things to talk about because most of us talk business on Shabbat. Some people, we tell them, you know, you can't talk business, and they tell you, so what else do we talk about?

39:10Do not try it because you don't know Torah. That's the point of learning. Baruch Hashem, today you can learn by simply pressing a button and the book arrives at your house. It's called Amazon. Go to Amazon, go to ArtScroll, go to Feldheim, go to all these websites. You press a button, and in two minutes you have a book. A day or two later, it's in your house. It's very easy, and if you can't afford it, come to the shul. I'm sure Rav Zev will give you plenty of books to read. You can't read. You don't know how to read. Come learn a shiur. That's Shabbat. It's very simple. Eat, drink, rest a little bit, talk Torah, finished. That's the number one mitzvah in Judaism. The second thing that's very big is when it comes to modesty for women. Since women are not obligated to learn Torah, they're only obligated to learn just enough to run the house. They have to know the laws of kashrut. the laws of Shabbat, what to teach the kids, the basics of the Chumash, but they don't have to learn all the intricate details like the husband does. So the number one mitzvah for a woman is modesty. That's the number one mitzvah. How big is that mitzvah? The sages say some critical things about it. Rav Pincus, alav hashalom,

40:41One time when he moved to Yerushalayim, he saw that there was a poster of an immodest woman, an advertisement for, I don't know, a phone company or some company. It was an immodest woman, and even though he was older and not in the best shape in the world, he climbed and ripped this poster off. Now a couple of Israeli cops saw him and they arrested him, took him to jail, and eventually he went to court. The judge told them, "No. Why'd you do it?" He said, "Listen, your honor. I'm not a criminal. Everyone knows who I am. I'm a big ba'al chesed. I help a lot of people. I teach Torah. But you have to understand that in our Torah, in Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 23, verse 15, it says, 'V'lo yireh becha ervat davar v'shav me'acharecha.'" Hashem Yitbarach, our God, tells us that He will not see nakedness among us because that will cause Him to turn away. You see, Am Yisrael has an army, and I think I heard that the judge has a son in the army. Right? Just as you might not know, I just saved your son's life.

42:05Hashem says that if there's nakedness among us, He's going to leave us. So if you want your son to come back from war, I have to rip the poster. But if you want someone to knock on your door and say, "Excuse me, Your Honor. Yeah, your son—we're sorry, we're sorry. Why? There was a poster. Hashem says there's immodesty in the streets; bad things happen. Two verses later... Hashem says there shall never ever be a promiscuous woman. Why is a promiscuous woman mentioned right after immodesty? Because immodesty symbolizes promiscuity; one thing leads to the other. That's why, rabotai, if there was a percentage made in the Torah that says what's the weight, how much out of a hundred percent of the mitzvot of a woman is modesty? Modesty is the difference between passing and failing for a woman, meaning that a woman can retain tzniut from here till next year. She has groups for Tehillim. She's saying Tehillim. They even mention her on TV. Everything is tzniut, tzniut, tzniut, good.

43:19Great Shabbat, she keeps the kids, she feeds them kosher, everything is great. But she's not modest because she doesn't want to cover her hair or she wants to wear miniskirts or she wants to be like Michelle Obama with no sleeves. You know, all those things, like today. She's not modest. Unfortunately, she failed. She failed the test. Why? Because if a hundred percent is what we have and a passing grade is 51... Modesty is 51, meaning that even if she's perfect with every other mitzvah, the best she's going to get is 49—a failing grade. But that means she's perfect with Shabbat. She's perfect with everything else, which realistically, it's very hard to be. That's how big modesty is. Unfortunately, today, that's the equivalent of a kid that eats chazerus. That's the equivalent of sacrificing our kids and Women today depend on their men for confidence. Now, when a man gives his wife compliments non-stop, when she wakes up in the morning and she looks like Tisha B'Av, when she goes to sleep and she looks like Tisha B'Av, and in the middle of the day when she looks like she's a princess, either way, he's always giving her compliments. Whether he likes it or not, he only has good words—never a single thing to say that's bad.

44:46She cooked something that is terrible. He still tells her that he loves it. All he has are compliments; he is helping her build confidence. Now, if she walks in the street and all his attention is on her, that builds her confidence. If every time she calls him he asks, "How are you doing?" instead of "What do you want?" that builds her confidence. He actually cares about what she has to say and spends a few minutes a day talking to her; that builds her confidence. She wants to be modest. Why? She says, "My husband's eyes and attention are all mine. I want to be only his." On the other hand, if it's the opposite, it feels like a gilgul, as if he's a reincarnation of one of these mamterot. What's a mamtera in English? Sprinkler, sprinkler, you know, a sprinkler. He’s like this, his head is like this. He looks at this woman, that woman, he looks at every woman that moves. He’s like a reincarnation of a sprinkler. Immediately, the wife loses all of her confidence. Why are you looking at other women? That’s because you’re looking for something better. How come you’re not looking at me? Immediately, her confidence goes into the garbage and...

46:03calls him. She asks him, "How are you doing?" He says, "What do you want?" Her confidence drops to nothing. She cooks something. It's a little bit less salt than what he wants, and instead of just putting the salt on there and being quiet, he says, "Ah, you don't know how to cook." Confidence—garbage. All of these things destroy the woman's confidence. What does she want to do? She wants to be Gotta get my confidence from somebody else when Steve and Daniel and Mustafa and Marcus from the supermarket say, "Oh wow, you look good, man. You look good." That gives her confidence. She has to get it from somewhere, but you just have to decide where. The reason why is because the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat, page 54, says that someone who doesn't rebuke another person gets the sin himself. But the Rambam says something worse. There are four people that Hashem can't stand. To what extent? To the extent where He doesn't want them to do teshuva. He doesn't allow them to do teshuva. He says, "You stay rasha. I don't want to help you," meaning it's going to be very hard for you to do teshuva. One of them is someone who doesn't rebuke. He sees somebody do something wrong and he doesn't say anything. The other one is a machti harabim, someone that causes other people to sin.

47:23When a woman walks around immodestly, she's a machtiat harabim. She's someone that causes other people to sin. She's in serious trouble with Hashem. If the husband is the reason, he's in the same basket with her. So when you got married and you said, "I, you know, I, yes, yes, yes, I marry her," you really married her. Through thick and thin, you're going to stay together. You might as well go to Gan Eden together, not the other place. It's much colder. The reality is, rabotai, is the Torah, it's not a chumra. I'm not teaching you anything. I'm not telling you anything that you never heard, or if you haven't heard, Baruch Hashem, that you heard it now. But it's nothing new. This is not me'ayan chidushim. The Chafetz Chaim said that there's five levels of Jews, five levels. There's someone that's boiling, there's someone that's hot, warm, cold, and frozen. The Chazon Ish, about 50 years ago,

48:26One Shabbat, he saw an Israeli guy smoking a cigarette on Shabbat. And immediately, he saw some Hasid run past him, run past the Chazon Ish, the Gadol HaDor, run past him, run to the Israeli guy, slap him in the face until the cigarette came out, and start screaming at him, "Why are you embarrassing my Father?" The guy was so shocked. He didn't know what to do. He ran away. The guy was smoking a cigarette. So the Chazon Ish told his helper, "Go, go get this guy. Get him, get him. Go get him. Get the Hasid." He brings him. He thought maybe he did something wrong. "No, you have a new job." What's the new job? You're going to be the Mashgiach of all the Eruv. The Eruv is a very big responsibility. Anyone that carries anything on Shabbat has to depend that there's an Eruv. If there's no Eruv, you can't carry anything. You're going to be responsible for the entire Eruv of Bnei Brak and all of the Mikvaot. Meaning every single house that has a wife that's pure is depending on you. Because if the Mikveh is not pure, we have a serious problem.

49:41Yeah, but for the Rav. Thank you very much for the offer. I appreciate it, but I don't know the halachot for you, and I don't know the halachot for mikvaot. So how could I be responsible for these things? No, don't worry. That's the easy part. Learning the halachot is the easy part. The hard part is finding a boiling Jew, a Jew that's on so much fire from loving Hashem that he's willing to run across the street and slap his brother to wake him up and... It hurts to slap your brother, but sometimes you have to for your father. Sometimes you have to—that's the hard part. The hard part is to be that boiling Jew that's constantly fighting for Hashem. Now, there are very few Jews that like Arabs. The reason why is because they're terrorists for the most part. There's over a billion Arabs in the world, almost two billion today.

50:41Recent research that was done by Prager University and a few other places, like Pew Research and a few other major research houses, proved the world wrong. This whole concept of Islamophobia, where we're scared of people from Islam, and it's really being racist and it's not really nice—they're not really all terrorists. They did research on how many of the people that are Muslim and That the world should go into Sharia law. Sharia law means that if someone violates the law, they could kill him in the middle of the street—no questions asked. It doesn't matter what the government says; that is the government. It also decides that circumcision is not only for boys; it's also for girls. They torture their women. Chas v'Shalom the woman would actually have any enjoyment in her life, and they add all these different things that torture their people. And it's allowed to lie, and you're allowed to steal, and you're allowed to do a lot of things that are against God. Even though they say it's Allahu Akbar all the time, in reality, it's against God from day one till the end. So most Jews don't like them, not because of the Sharia law; they don't like them because they constantly try to kill us.

52:07But there was a recent documentary made by Tzvi Yehezkeli, an Israeli journalist, who actually showed something that should make us embarrassed. He went into the Arab world, in Israel, in France, in Turkey, in the United States, in Germany, and he saw that there's one common denominator. There's one common thing among all the places that have these two billion Muslims. The research that the research houses did confirmed that most of them believe in Sharia law, which means that most of them believe that terrorism is perfectly okay. Blowing yourself up just for the sake of Allah, for the sake of Muhammad, or someone in between, is perfectly okay, meaning most of them are terrorists for sure, and that's what their belief is even if they themselves are not terrorists. That's what their belief is even if they themselves are not terrorists. That's what they believe. But what Tzviyech Eskeli found out is the chiddush. The chiddush is, rabotai, that every single one of them, in order for them to be a Muslim, they have to do something called dawah. Dawah is the equivalent...

53:25But it's the equivalent of what Judaism calls kiruv, meaning making people do teshuva. Now, as a Jew, you tell somebody, "Listen, not only do you do teshuva, but go help other people do teshuva." Like, "Listen, let me fix myself first, then I'll worry about somebody else. Let me fix myself first." The Muslims, on the other hand... There's no question asked—you want to be a Muslim, go recruit people to be Muslim. So the question is, who? He says there are eight billion people in the world, two billion are Muslims. Go recruit six billion. And that's why every single time you'll see the halal trucks all over New York, all over Jersey, all over everywhere pretty much today, you're always gonna see a sticker. And the sticker says that God is the only God and Muhammad is the prophet. So Tzvi Yechezkeli asked the people running the trucks, "Why do you have this sticker? Why do you have this sticker?" He said, "Because I'm trying to help people become Muslim." He goes, "Yeah, but they're Christian. There are other people." He goes, "Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to help them to become Muslim." He goes, "Oh, so through your business, you're also doing dawah." He goes, "No, I'm doing dawah and sometimes business."

54:42Meaning, my number one thing as a Muslim is to get people to be Muslim and then do business. Us, Rabotai, we're Jews; our number one thing is to go do business and then be Jews. That's the problem. That's the root of the problem. They have falsehood, the Christians have falsehood, and... But they play as if it's real. They believe it as if it's real. Every neighborhood has a Christian guy that knocks on people's doors, whether Jehovah's Witness or Jews for Jesus or some other avodah zarah they created for the week. Every neighborhood has somebody dropping off some Bible by you or asking you to talk or asking you to come to church, or they’re even willing to pay you. They're willing to pay you, buy you a house, buy you whatever you want. Just go worship their idol. Every single one of them, to be a Christian, you have to do it; you have to be a missionary. To be a Muslim, you have to do dawah. The secret is Hashem told the prophets that to be a Jew, you actually have to do kiruv. It's not just about you doing teshuva. It's actually about helping other people do teshuva, and the reason why...

55:58Because even if you start keeping Shabbat perfectly, you never talk business again, even if you stop driving on Shabbat, even if you leave the non-kosher business and start a kosher business, even if your wife becomes a tzaddeket gedolah, everything is perfect. She looks better than the Rebbetzin. Even if you start learning Torah from morning till night, everything is good. Baruch Hashem, you're good. From today on, the problem is until now. The problem is what happened until now. When we go up to Shamayim, Hashem says, "Good job! You've been keeping Shabbat for 70 years straight, great. The problem is the first 50 years. The first 50 years you didn't keep Shabbat. Somebody has to pay." Missing account of Shabbat: you didn't keep Shabbat for 50 years, so we're gonna discount the first 13 years for a boy, and we're gonna discount the first 12 years for a girl. Other than that, you have to pay the bill. Now, you have two ways to pay the bill. One, you pay over there. It's very expensive and very hot. I have a shiur about it if you guys want to know. The cheaper way, the better way, is to go help Am Yisrael do teshuva.

57:07is to go help Am Yisrael do teshuva. And the reason why, if you give them a CD, or you bring them to a shiur, or you help somebody give a shiur, whatever it is, you get them to come and do teshuva every single time. They keep Shabbat, you now kept two Shabbatot. Your Shabbat and their Shabbat. They married somebody and that person is now going to keep Shabbat because of them. Now you kept three Shabbatot every week. You kept three Shabbatot every year, over 150 Shabbatot. So now, instead of arriving in Shamayim after 120 years with a great account for seven years and a terrible account for 50 years, now you have extra. Now you have extra. That's why, Rabotai, for all of you that are asking, how come Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai—how come they have so many zechuyot, they have so many merits, that people can ask them, "Please, Rabbi Meir, pray for me in Shamayim, help me out?" Why? What gives them so many merits? The answer is, Rabotai, they help people do teshuva. When you help people do teshuva...

58:11Gives you extra. He arrived to Shamayim not only with his Shabbat. He arrived with all the people that did Shabbat because of him. He didn't arrive to Shamayim with just his feeling; he arrived with everybody else's feeling. He didn't arrive to Shamayim with just his kosher food. Everyone else that ate kosher and every single mitzvah goes to his account too because mitzvot are like fire. When you take one candle, you want to light another candle and... The first candle has fire, the second candle has no fire. After you light the second candle, both of them have fire. But the first fire didn't change. That's a mitzvah. Once you do a mitzvah, if it's just for you, it stays just your fire. You help somebody else do a mitzvah, your fire stays the same, and now you have two fires. That's helping Am Yisrael do teshuva. And that also helps you do teshuva. So during this Pesach, we're gonna actually start working on what we're supposed to do, and not just eat, and not just talk business, and not just make money. Because the guy is important and all the things that we do are important, but it's not as important as fulfilling our purpose in the world. Our purpose in the world is not to stay in Mitzrayim. We left Mitzrayim 3,000 years ago because we were slaves. If we're only working and we only focus on work today, we're still slaves. Nothing changed.

59:31That's what Pesach is all about. Get out of the slavery and start thinking about Hashem. Any questions? You had some questions in the beginning. You said you had topics. Usually, I close the camera. There are 25 questions everywhere. Yesterday we had a shiur. Baruch Hashem. They had some questions and answers and everything in Queens. There were over a hundred people. Baruch Hashem. It was packed. It was almost a three-hour shiur. After three hours of talking to people, Mitzvot arguments, they asked me about the wig, about Shabbat, and different things. Three-hour conversation, three-hour recording—you figure it's finished, right? People started to leave. We stopped the recording, both about "thank you very much," and then 25 people came and started asking more questions. We stayed there for another three hours, another three hours worth of questions. By the time we finished, it was four o'clock in the morning. Usually, when I shut off the camera, there are more questions. The only thing is today I have another shiur in Brooklyn at 10 o'clock. So, you only have about a half hour for questions if you want. Okay, so, well, first off, I...

1:00:55When it comes to the non-Jews, the prophet says that at the end of days, all of the non-Jews are going to have a choice just like the Jews. They also have to do teshuva. Some of them are going to actually convert to Judaism. They're going to take on the mitzvot and Baruch Hashem the Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah, page 3b and 4a, says that before the Mashiach comes, there's going to be many converts. We're seeing it every day. In the old days, once in a blue moon, you'd see somebody convert because Jews were persecuted, were being killed every week. Why would anybody want to be a Jew? Today, every day, hundreds of people are converting, Baruch Hashem. So one thing we're seeing, we're seeing that prophecy come true. So many of them are going to convert to be Jews. The second thing is, is that many of them are going to learn what the Torah is. They're going to choose to follow it. And they're going to become what the Rambam calls the righteous among the nations. The righteous people among the nations that are fulfilling the Torah because Hashem said so. But not the same mitzvot that Am Yisrael have. They have the laws of Noach. Seven mitzvot Bnei Noach.

1:02:11Which is seven core laws similar to our Ten Commandments? Plus all ethical laws like honoring your parents and other things of being honest and so on. So total for the goyim, there are about 50 mitzvot. This is seven just like we have the Ten Commandments. They have seven and then there's about another 50. We have another 606. Now, the Rambam says that if a non-Jew is keeps those mitzvot like they don't murder, they don't commit adultery, they don't eat a living animal, and they don't believe in a false god, and so on. If they don't do all those things simply because it makes sense not to do it—it makes sense not to kill people; you don't have to have the Torah to understand it's a bad thing to kill people—if they keep the mitzvot because it makes sense, the Rambam says not only Do they not have Olam HaBa? They have no reward, but now, instead of being Chasidei Umot HaOlam, they're called Tipshai Umot HaOlam. They're called the foolish people among the nations. Why? They did all the work, but they're not going to get paid. Meaning that the reason to do all of the mitzvot is not because it makes sense to us and not because it makes sense to them. The reason to do all of the mitzvot is because it makes sense to God. If you do it because God said so, then you're fulfilling the mitzvah. In the Gemara,

1:03:31Rabban Gamliel says a person should never say, "I hate eating milk and meat," or "I hate stealing," or "I hate committing adultery." You should never say that. You should say, "I want to steal, I want to eat milk and meat, but what can I do when my Father said I'm not allowed?" Meaning, "I want to eat a cheeseburger, but my Father in Heaven said I'm not allowed, so I can't do it." And... The wisdom is not to avoid a crime against Hashem because it's bad. The wisdom here is to not do it because Hashem said so. That's the entire Torah. That's the entire thought. It doesn't make a difference if it makes sense to you or it doesn't make sense to you, if you agree with it or you don't agree with it. If you're going to wait to agree with every single mitzvah, you won't have enough time to live. And that's why we have the mitzvah of parah adumah. The parah adumah, the red heifer, Shlomo HaMelech says... This one shows me I know nothing. He was the smartest man of all time. But he says, once I got the parah adumah, I realized I don't know anything. What about parah adumah? You don't know anything? He goes, no, I don't know anything about anything. Everything I learned, I realized I don't know anything. Why? He says, because I thought the mitzvot are supposed to make sense. And that's why you do them. The parah adumah doesn't make any sense and you still have to do it.

1:04:54That's the entire Torah. Whether it makes sense or doesn't make sense, you still have to do it. Why? Because Hashem said so. That's the entire Torah. That's Shabbat, that's tzniut, that's everything. It doesn't make a difference if it makes sense or not. When you go up to Shamayim, they're not going to ask you, "Did it make sense to you, sir?" Oh, it didn't? Okay, Gan Eden. Don't worry about it. It's fine, it's fine. You're cute, you made some funny jokes. Go to Gan Eden, go. Moshe Rabbeinu is waiting for you. Moshe Rabbeinu is waiting for you because it didn't make sense to you. Reality as a bow tie is the first of all, it does make sense for anyone that learns it. But even if it doesn't, there are certain laws that don't make sense. For example, circumcision. Circumcision doesn't make sense logically. It doesn't make sense. Why would you put your son at life risk on his eighth day? Wait for a year until he's healthier. Wait for a year, wait for two years. Why are you even cutting a piece of your skin? If I told you, "Listen, there's a new mitzvah. I just ran the Rambam. You have to cut your ear." Anybody who's doing it, raise your hand, and... cut your ear. Cut your ear. No one's raising their hand. Why? You're crazy. I don't want to cut my ear. Okay, cut the other ear. Cut the nose. Cut your finger. Why? I'm not cutting anything. So why are you cutting your son? Why are you cutting your son? Even a more sensitive spot. Why don't you wait to ask him until he's a little older and he has an opinion? Ask him. My son, do you want me to cut you?

1:06:17Why not? Doesn't make any sense. That's the entire Torah. The entire Torah, it's not supposed to make sense. If it made sense, it wouldn't be from God. It would be from a human being. Rambam says, if I understood Him, I would be Him. There are certain things that are nice. There's something called ta'amim. There's like a taste, there's a flavor. Where, you know what? On the eighth day, it happens to be that the vitamin K in the body is at the highest level it's ever going to be in your entire life. It's nice that you're able to heal faster if you do brit milah on the eighth day than if you do it any other day in your entire life. Now, we only found this out in the last 20 years, though. So, for the last 3,000 years, we still have to do it, meaning that with or without the vitamin K, we still have to do it. Now, if chas v'shalom the kid is sick and... And he can't do it. He has tzhevet. He has jaundice. And he can't. He can't do brit milah on the eighth day. And by the time he's healthy, he's two months old. Like it happened to a friend of mine. His son, by the time he was healthy, he was two months old. Do we still have to do brit milah? Still have to. But he's not eight. But there's no vitamin K. You still have to do brit milah. Why? The vitamin K, it's a nice thing. It's a nice feature. It's like power windows.

1:07:33But it's not the reason you have the car. You get the car to drive the car. It's not the reason you do brit milah. You do brit milah because God said so. Shabbat is nice. You have a vacation once a week, but that's not the reason you have Shabbat. Because in reality, if it's vacation, go to Vegas. It's much more fun. Go to the Taj Mahal, go to Bali, go to Tahiti, go to Israel, go somewhere if you really want a vacation. It's not the vacation part. It's Shabbat. Shabbat is not about the vacation. Shabbat is about learning Torah. If you're not enjoying Shabbat, it's because you're not learning Torah on Shabbat. It defeats the whole purpose. If all you're doing is playing basketball and football on Shabbat, you're not keeping Shabbat. You're playing basketball. You just have a day off of work. Because what happens when you play sports and you do all these secular things? Number one, there's no Oneg Shabbat. You're keeping something that's not Shabbat. You've made Shabbat into something else. That's number one. Number two, you put yourself in a situation where you have to take a shower. You're not going to take a shower on Shabbat. Not going to take a shower on Shabbat. Yeah, but I kept the entire Shabbat, except I took a shower once. You have a problem. Why? What is it like if I told you that if you email me, you email me?

1:08:49Email tomorrow morning at exactly 8 a.m. As soon as the email arrives in my inbox, 1 million dollars will arrive in your bank. Good deal, now everyone’s doing it though. Everyone's ready to go. What depends is what my email is, okay? So I tell you what my email is: yaron@bezathashem.org. Now, all of you, after this, you are immediately, even during this shiur, starting to write the email now just to make sure you write it. Now, by tomorrow at 8 a.m., you see no million dollars. You call me. "No, what's going on with the million dollars?" I tell you there's no email. "What do you mean there's no email? Let me see." I come to your house and show you there's no email. So why is there no email? So I check. "So what email do you have?" He said, "Yaron at Be'ezrat Hashem dot org." I said, "Ah, that's the problem. You missed the dot. The dot in dot org. Like the dot in dot com." He said, "Ah, no, come on. It's such a long email. I missed one dot. What's the big deal?" The one dot is everything. No dot, no email. You don't keep Shabbat 100%, it's no Shabbat. You don't keep kosher 100%, it's not kosher. The mitzvah is the entire mitzvah, not just the part that you like. Not just the kiddush. Everyone likes the kiddush. I remember I used to like the kiddush too, and then go to the movies, then go to the clubs. That's not Shabbat. That's not Shabbat, rabotai. That's not tzniut. Tzniut is not just wearing a dress. It's wearing a long dress.

1:10:14A lot of people wear, a lot of women wear short dresses. They think, oh, I have a dress now. No, it's better off you didn't wear the dress. Better off you wear pants now. Why? It's so short, the pants are more modest. So the reality, it's not just a hafta mitzvah, it's the entire mitzvah. Why? Just like we want, if you ask Hashem for refuah shlema. Refuah shlema. Today, we have, B'H, David ben Chana and Leah Ilana bat Sara. We need, for them, we did this whole shiur for their refuah shlema. We also did for the ilui neshama of Israel Kaalani ben Shulamit. These people, we need their neshamot to get stronger. The ones that are here and the ones that left us. Now, if you ask for refuah shlemah, Hashem says, you know what? I'm going to give you 99% refuah shlemah. 99%. I'm going to give you, everything is going to be good. You're going to have ears, eyes, nose, legs, teeth. Everything is going to be good. Except you're going to have a little bit of a small, tiny tumor in your brain. That's it. No more. Everything else is going to be good. A tiny little tumor. Just a little one. Deal or no deal?

1:11:16No deal. Why? You want refuah shlemah. You want the entire refuah. Not just some refuah. He tells me, "What about parnasah tova?" What's parnasah tova? I'll give you money. Okay, how much money? Just a thousand dollars short of how much you need. No, no, that's not parnasah tova. I want exactly what I need and maybe even more. I need 5,000 a month. I need 10,000 a month. No, no, I'll give you a thousand dollars short every month of what you need. That's not parnasah tova then. We want Hashem to give us the whole thing and more. Hashem says, can I ask for something too? Can I ask for the entire mitzvah? Can I ask for the entire Shabbat? Can I ask for the entire tzitzit and not just tzitzit sometimes? And not tefillin sometimes? And not kosher sometimes? And not tzniut, modesty, sometimes? The whole thing I want. If you do it, do it right. That's Pesach, Rabbi. Because the entire Pesach, Hashem says this chametz. You keep Pesach, you eat, you drink, everything is good. A lot of food, everything is good. But if what you're eating has a little bit of chametz, there's no Pesach. It's din karet. It's the worst punishment in Judaism. Why? It's an incomplete mitzvah.

1:12:27It's an incomplete mitzvah. An incomplete mitzvah is a mitzvah that's full of poison. It's not a mitzvah; it turns into a sin. So, Pesach, it's time for us to do teshuva. Why? We did teshuva 3,300 years ago. To such an extent, we were able to receive the Torah. Now we have to remind Hashem why we still have it. There's no shame; this will help us continue growing in Judaism, continue growing with Hashem Yitbarach. Stop playing games, get parnassah, get refreshed. Lama? Because we also have mitzvot and teshuvah. Baruch Adonai l'olam, Amen v'amen.